I sighed—had really geared myself up for the hard conversation with Rog—but dismounted again. Jones immediately took my arm to pull me aside. He was windswept from cycling, and the smell of the island breeze had caught in his jumper. I resisted the alarming urge to breathe him in.
“She’s crying,” he said grimly.
“Red?” I said, horrified enough to stop checking out Jones in his jumper. “But Red’s so…cheerful! That’s like her whole personality!”
“I’m not sure cheerful is anyone’s whole personality.”
“Maybe that’s where I went wrong when I got here.”
Jones laughed, then said “What?” when I looked at him in surprise.
“Look at you, laughing at my jokes. You barely cracked a smile week one here.”
“Well, you got funnier,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching.
The way his eyes crinkle when he smiles…I had to look away. The conversation with Brianna was still fresh in my mind, and it was such a little thrill to make this shadowy, complicated man laugh.
“Did you need something from Rog?” Jones said.
“What? Oh, shit.”
Rog had set off again. I yelled his name and chased his tractor down the track.
“Can’t stop, Charlie! I’m already late after sorting the plumbing at Karyn’s place!”
Could well believe that. Rog isalwayslate.
“What do you need Rog for?” Jones said from behind me.
I sighed, slowing to a walk. “Don’t ask. You don’t want to know.”
“Is it shop business?”
“Yes. I wanted to keep you out of it until it was done, so you didn’t have to bear the brunt of everybody’s outrage, too, but…” I stopped walking. Found myself actually quite desperate to share the burden. “I need to fire Rog.”
Jones stared at me as Rog chugged off into the distance behind us. “You’re going to fire Rog? One of our four employees? Without discussing it with me first?”
“Trust me. If you knew what I know—”
“Which I don’t.”
“Well, I just thought—”
“What happened to trusting each other?”
“This isn’t about trust! I just didn’t want you dragged down into all this. Galoshes already hates me, but she’s all right with you, and you’ve been really getting somewhere with the coffee and biscuits thing, and if you were part of this—”
“She might get the mistaken impression that we’re jointly managing the shop?”
“She might blame you!”
“Thisisabout trust,” Jones said grimly. “You don’t trust me to be able to handle it. Are you even going to tell me why we’re firing a good man who works hard and does a great job?” He paused. “Sometimes? If he turns up?”
“I saw him stealing, Jones. That’s why the till never balances at the end of the day.”
Jones was silent for a moment. “You actually saw him?”
“Yes. He took a couple of twenties out while he was cleaning and locking up.”
