Chapter Four
“I heard that he snitched on the Russian Mob. They killed his partner, and now he’s on the run. Well, that’s what I heard.”
FLYNN TOSSEDhis phone—one generation old, five generations worth of battered—onto the scarred old desk that was shoved into a corner of the office. It bounced off the six weeks of receipts and paperwork that he was almost definitely going to get around to.
Not yet, though. Maybe that excuse was why he’d agreed to Nate’s ridiculous idea.
He remembered Nate in his house, all expensive suit, bitten-lip smile, and hair that managed to look like he’d just rolled out of bed. No surprise there. He hadn’t been able to get Nathan Moffat out of his brain all week. The man was good-looking enough to be fantasy fodder just walking down the street, never mind in Flynn’s living room, making proposals that could have done with being a little more indecent.
So yeah, it might not be entirely down to wanting to avoid admin.
The office door opened, and Kenny stuck his head in. There was a smear of oil running from his pierced eyebrow up into his buzz-cut, bleached-out hair.
“Boss?” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder into the garage and pulled a face. “Mr. Park is here. He wants to talk to you.”
What that actually meant was “Mr. Park wants to complain.”
“Tell him I’ll be right there.” While Kenny ducked back out to do that, Flynn had a quick shuffle through the paperwork for Park’s invoice. It was folded in half under a letter from his old captain that he hadn’t gotten around to reading yet. And for some reason, it was stuck together with a Post-it he’d written a phone number on. The number didn’t ring a bell, so he tossed it. Then he folded the invoice up and tucked it into a pocket on his thigh.
Mr. Park stood in front of the main doors of the garage, his feet shoulder-width apart and braced as though he intended to prevent anyone else from coming in. At his feet a scruffy black-and-white collie looked vaguely embarrassed to be there.
“Mr. Park,” Flynn said. “Come to settle up?”
Outrage puffed Park up, and a red flush crept from under his collar and over his face.
“Settle up?” he blustered as he wagged a gnarled hand in Flynn’s direction. “You’re trying to rip me off, Flynn Delaney. Your pa must be turning. In. His. Grave.”
Probably like a top. Not only was Flynn still fucking men, he was going on a date with someone who worked for Teddy Saint John. Even if he’d been cheating Park, which he wasn’t, it wasn’t going to add a revolution.
“I’m not ripping you off, Mr. Park,” Flynn said. He crossed his arms and leaned against the bumper of the Volvo he’d been working on. It creaked under him. “Your tractor needed work. I did the work. Now you have to pay.”
“Well, I talked to my son, and he went on the internet. Apparently all that was wrong with the tractor was a blockage in the filter inlet. I could have fixed it myself.”
“If that had been what was wrong, you could have,” Flynn said. “The lift pump was cracked and sucking air, and there was a carbon buildup on the injectors. I told you that, and what it would cost, when I called you to ask if you wanted to go ahead with the fix.”
“Well, my son says that—”
“Then you should have gotten your son to fix the tractor,” Flynn said brusquely. “I said what was wrong with it, and I fixed it. Now you have to pay up.”
“I still think you’re charging too much. Sixty pounds an hour for your time? What’s so valuable about your time? I pay blokes to work the fields eight pounds an hour, and they work a bloody sight harder than you do.”
Flynn rolled his head to the side. The crack of the vertebra in his neck sounded painfully loud as it settled between his ears.
“I guess iftheyhad the keys to your tractor, they could ask for more,” he said. “Either pay up or I’ll go in and take the pump back out.”
“I’ll pay for parts,” Park said. He pulled the invoice Flynn had sent him out of his pocket and ripped it up. “And half the hours you’re billing for.”
Bits of paper floated down to the oil-greasy floor. The collie dropped its nose to sniff curiously at one. Flynn waited out the drift and then took the other copy of the invoice out of his pocket. If Park had been one of the old hill farmers, the ones still trying to crawl out from under the dead sheep left after the last bad winter, he’d have given a discount.
But Frank Park was not hurting. He’d had enough grant money to build wind farms and turn old crofter cottages into B&Bs. A bill for a broken tractor wouldn’t break the bank.
Park balled the invoice up in his fist. For a second he looked like he was going to throw it. Then he depuffed and sourly shoved it into his pocket.
“Fine,” he snapped. “I’ll pay you, but only because you’d probably send your heavies round to my farm if I didn’t. I won’t be using your garage again, I can tell you that. Twenty years I’ve been coming here, since your pa opened it, and now you’ve lost my business.”
Flynn scratched his jaw. His nails scraped through the short scruff of stubble.
“I can give you the number of a good garage on the mainland,” he said. “Don’t know what the ferry would charge for a tractor, though.”
