by Kait Nolan
Chapter 4
“Well, it’s happened!” Ruby made this pronouncement in tones of The end is nigh, as she marched up to the counter.
Riley looked up from the computer. “What’s happened? And what are you even doing here? It’s your day off.”
“Walgreens is opening a store out on the highway.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I just had it from Pearl.” Ruby’s sister, Pearl Buckley—Mama Pearl to everyone else in town—ran the local diner, Dinner Belles, and was the undisputed queen of gossip in Wishful.
Jessie paused in the midst of inputting the prescriptions that’d been called in. “How on earth did we not know this?”
Riley wondered the same.
“I don’t got a clue, but what are we gonna do about it?” Ruby demanded, shifting her attention back to Riley.
“What do you mean do about it?” It wasn’t like they could engage in some kind of corporate espionage or something. “We’re going to carry on with business as usual. It’ll take them time to build and stock a store. We’re fine.”
“They’re not building. They bought up the old WingStop building. Won’t take much to convert that. Pearl says they’re supposed to be open in a month.”
Jessie’s eyes widened. “A month? That’s not much time to prepare.”
“Y’all, nothing’s going to change,” Riley assured them. “This has been the only pharmacy in town for half a century. Almost everybody comes here. That’s not going to change just because Walgreens opens up on the other side of town. People aren’t going to be so easily seduced.”
She hoped like hell that was true.
“I think we oughta call in Norah,” Ruby said.
Earlier that year, Norah Burke had waged and won a war against a warehouse store that had threatened their small town way of life. She’d mobilized the citizenry to form a citizen’s coalition and made huge strides in the revitalization of downtown Wishful—and that had all been before she’d been hired as the new City Planner. She was a woman who made things happen. But even she couldn’t put a genie back in its bottle.
“Norah has bigger things to do than be bothered about something that can’t be changed,” Riley said. “If Walgreens is already in the process of retrofitting the building, they’re coming. Even she’s not going to be able to stop that. Our customers are loyal. We’re going to be fine.”
A steady stream of patrons put an end to the discussion and seemed to prove Riley’s point. They were exceptionally busy for a Saturday, with everybody trying to get in before the pharmacy closed at noon. As the lunch hour drew near, Riley cut Jessie loose to go work on the latest city beautification project, so she was alone as the last customer of the day wandered in.
“Tara! How good to see you.”
Tara Honeycutt crossed to the counter with an unconscious grace that Riley envied. “I come bearing a special delivery of legal stimulants from Cassie. Just got off my shift at The Grind.”
Pleased, surprised, Riley accepted the coffee and took a deep inhale. “God, I have such a weakness for these. Thanks. Those are really fabulous earrings, by the way.”
Tara lifted a hand to the funky chandelier earrings made up of long, fanciful twists of wire. “Thanks. They’re just something I’ve been playing around with in my spare time.”
“You made those?” Riley leaned in for a closer look. “Those are amazing. You could absolutely sell something like that.”
“I did for a while on Etsy before they screwed the marketplace by removing the handmade requirement. These days it’s too hard to get found there, and I don’t have all that much time in the first place juggling both jobs and the kids.”
“Where are they today?”
“Vacation Bible School this week. Not that Austin is any happier about that than he has been about anything he’s done this summer.” She rolled her hazel eyes. “I am not, as he likes to point out, his parent.”
“Raising your siblings has to be hard on you.”
Tara shrugged. “It’s better than the alternative. They need someone in their life who’s stable and responsible. Anyway, I needed to pick up some more syringes for Ginny before I teach my one o’clock class at the gym.”
“Which is it today?”
“Pilates. Then yoga at two-thirty. You should come.”
Riley snorted with laughter. “I am not bendy, nor am I graceful.”
“You can’t get bendy without trying,” Tara pointed out. “There’s a beginner class Tuesdays and Thursdays at seven. Great way to unwind from the day.”
“I’ll think about it. Now. Syringes.” Riley retrieved them. “How’s Ginny doing on that new dosage? Are you having any trouble?”
“Her blood sugar’s pretty stable, but we’re fighting the athlete’s foot again.”
“Bless her. There’s an oil for that. Several, actually. But probably your best option is Melaleuca.”
“Mela what now?”
“Melaleuca. Tea tree oil. It’s likely to work when the over-the-counter stuff doesn’t. Want to give it a try?” Seeing her brief hesitation, Riley added, “It’s really affordable. A little bit goes a very long way, so a bottle is likely to last you up to a year.”
“Okay. How do we use it?”
Warming to her subject, Riley all but bounced. Essential oils were a personal passion. She retrieved the oil and scribbled down instructions on application to send home with Tara. As she launched into an explanation of carrier oils, the bell over the door jangled. Even though she didn’t look, even though she was very focused on her customer and her pet subject, Riley knew Liam had just walked in. The store suddenly felt ten degrees warmer, the air thicker and harder to breathe.
Done with the instructions, Riley held them out, keeping her gaze fixed on Tara. “You should also use it to make a shower spray to use between showers. It’ll help kill the bacteria that keeps reinfecting her feet.”
As Tara took the offered paper, Riley caught sight of Liam standing patiently off to the side. God he looked good. She hadn’t seen him in days, and it was a struggle to keep her attention on the sale. Pathetic. Up until January, she’d hardly seen him in twelve years.
She finished ringing Tara up. “Let me know how it works out for you.”
“I will. Thanks.” She waved on her way out the door.
Riley wished she had some lavender oil in the diffuser at the register. She needed something to take her heart rate down a notch as Liam ambled over, hands tucked in the front pockets of his jeans. His sandy hair, grown out some from the military buzz, was rumpled, making him look younger, if no less a badass. The rumpled, boyish thing worked on him. Hell, everything worked on him. She couldn’t read his face to gauge whether the news about Jo was good or bad.
Riley shoved her own hands into the pockets of her lab coat. “Well? Out with it. What’s the final prognosis on my baby? I assume that’s why you’re here.”
“It is.”
He crossed his arms, which made his impressive biceps flex, straining the sleeves of his polo shirt in a way that had Riley’s mouth watering. “Frankly, your baby is a stubborn bitch.”
Riley winced, her attention dragged back to the matter at hand. “Your dad used to say she was a special snowflake.”
“She’s a special something. I just spent the last week tearing her almost completely apart and putting her back together. Rebuilt the engine, put in all new seals and fluids from front to back, a new battery, new spark plugs.”
She reached out and grabbed hold of the edge of the counter, praying he hadn’t done all that only to have the car stay dead. “And?”
He pulled her keys from his front pocket. “She’s had the tires rotated, the front end aligned, and a bath. You’ll need new tires by winter, but I doubt she’s run this good for you since you got out of college.”
“Oh, thank God.” But her relief dimmed almost immediately as her mind tried to tally up the cost of everything he’d done. “What’s the damage?”
He pulled out his wallet and fished a folded paper from inside. “Just the cost of parts and fluids.”
She couldn’t read most of the items scrawled on the receipt he handed her from Wishful Auto Parts, but the total at the bottom had her looking back at him in suspicion. “You did not just do all that to my car for $293.74.”
“New fluids and seals cover a multitude of sins,” Liam said easily, his gray eyes level on hers.
Jesus, the man had a helluva poker face.
“Cost of parts aside, your time is worth something.”
He shrugged that off. “Consider it the cost of my therapy. Wrenching is good thinking time, and I had a problem to work out.”
“Did you figure it out?”
“Think so.”
“Well, that’s great, but I still can’t let you just do all that work for free.” Not that she could really afford to pay him more than the bill he’d handed her. But it was the principle of the thing.
His brows angled down. “I don’t expect my friends to pay me for a favor.”
He kept saying that. Friends. But they’d never been friends. Not like that. Not even after he’d slipped into the role of her own personal hero. She’d only ever been in his orbit at all because of Wynne. Now they were both grown, Wynne was gone, and what he’d done for her had become the stuff of Things Best Left In The Past. Which made them…well, nothing at all.
“Besides,” he continued, “being in the garage all week was the closest I’ve felt to Dad since I got back. I needed that.”
He hadn’t even been able to go into the garage in the months after Uncle John’s death. And he’d gone there for her? Riley’s heart softened. Anything else she could’ve argued about but not that. Of all of them, Liam had taken his father’s death the hardest. During the final eleven months of his last tour, Riley and Molly had both been worried sick that the unresolved grief would dull his edge and land him in harm’s way.
“How did it go?” she asked softly.
He gave a nostalgic half smile that was still a little pained around the edges. “I kept expecting him to come in to help, start bossing me about what he’d do different.”
Riley ached to step out from behind the counter and slip her arms around him. But after what close contact with him had done to her last time, she didn’t dare give in to the impulse. “I miss him, too.” Uncle John had been on her incredibly short list of men who could be counted on.
Liam flipped her keys around his pointer finger and didn’t quite look at her. “This is the first time I’ve been able to really talk about him without wanting to hit somebody or blow something up.”
Riley did move around the counter then to lay a light hand on his arm. All that smooth, hard muscle was bunched with tension. “Healing takes time, Liam. Your daddy was a good man, and there are a whole lot of great memories of him. You’re really lucky to have them.”
He did look at her then, covering her hand with his. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. Do you remember your dad?”
Those big, strong fingers were warm and gave her a comfort she hadn’t even realized she wanted. “Some. I was only five when he died. Some of what I think I remember is probably more my mom telling me stories over and over. Showing me pictures. And some I know are really my memories.” She smiled. “I have a lot more of your dad. All good. Eventually, you’ll get to where that’s what comes to mind when you think of him, instead of the hurt.”
He studied her, as if she were a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out. “You’re an intuitive woman, Riley.”
She had no idea how much of it was intuition and how much was the fact that she’d been a student of this particular man for years. For all that they’d never really been friends, she knew him. Better than he probably realized.
She stepped away before things got weird. “He was so proud of your service. And he’d have been proud of you for taking the hard road and getting out of it in the name of family.”
Liam huffed. “Oh sure. His eldest son, the combat engineer, still unemployed six months after telling Uncle Sam to take a hike.”
“I gather that’s not the problem you were working out on Jo’s guts.”
“Thinking about that one would’ve more likely resulted in Jo’s guts being obliterated. My specialty is demolition and urban breaching. Not a lot of use for that around here.”
The trilling of her phone put an end to whatever opportunity she had to reply to that—not that she knew what to say.
“I know it’s not your strong suit, but try to have some patience. You’ll figure it out. Meanwhile, thanks for fixing my car.” She held her hand out for the keys as “Crazy Train” continued to jangle from her pocket.
As he laid them in her palm, his fingers brushed her wrist and a bolt of heat shot up her arm. Riley managed not to tense, but a shiver worked its way from her tail bone up her spine.
Liam frowned faintly before dropping his hand “I’m gonna go look around the storeroom and sort out the best plan of attack.”
She pocketed the keys and left her hand there to hide her trembling fingers. “A few pounds of C4 might be quicker than actually cleaning out. And, hey, you’d know how to repair the resulting damage.”
“Ha ha,” he said flatly, but the corner of his mouth quirked.
She tugged out the phone. “I’ve gotta take this.” He wandered over to the storeroom as she answered. “Mom?”
“Hi, honey.”
She headed into the office for a little more privacy. “Where are you? I thought you’d be back by now.”
“I’m still in Fresno.”’
“What?” It’d been almost a week.
“Well, I got back in touch with Hal.”
“So you’re back together?” Riley guessed.
“No, no. But I got my things. Put them all in the mail to ship home.”
“Okay, so when can I expect you?”
Her pause had Riley’s gut tightening. “Well, that’s the thing. Between the shipping costs and the motel and food…I don’t have anything left of what you sent me.”
“Are you kidding me?” But Riley knew she wasn’t.
Sharilyn got immediately defensive. “I couldn’t just abandon my things. That’s everything I have.”
Except for the stuff still in storage in Wishful. Riley was footing the bill for that, too. But there was no sense in bringing that up now.
“I just need a few hundred more for that bus ticket.”
After she paid Liam back, Riley’s personal account would have all of $32 in it. Her savings had flat-lined months before, and the business account was doing a constant tango between profitable and nail-biting. She wasn’t about to jeopardize her ability to make payroll. Her employees didn’t deserve to be shorted. She could buy the ticket herself on her almost maxed out credit card—and, in fact, that was what she should’ve done in the first place—but she wouldn’t put it past her mother to cash in the ticket and do something else to squander the money.
She was tired. So incredibly tired of this whole scenario.
“I’m done, Mom.”
“What?” Riley could practically hear her reaching to clutch the pearls perpetually at her throat.
“I’m done. I’m tapping out. I have paid and paid and paid for your mistakes and bad judgment, and I just can’t do it anymore. I don’t have it to give. Every penny I have has been sunk into the pharmacy.”
“You’re…you’re just going to leave me out here?” Sharilyn’s voice shot high with incredulity and not a little bit of fear.
“I’m telling you I don’t have any money I can loan you. You’ll have to pick up some kind of temporary work. Earn enough for a bus ticket home.”
“But I don’t have any skills!”
Right. Because professional damsel in distress was not exactly the most stellar career move.
“You can wash dishes. Wait tables. It’s time you learned how to take care of yourself.” Because God knows no one else had ever made her
.
“But Riley—”
“I have to go, Mom. Good luck.”
She hung up before the tears could start.
~*~
Liam found Riley in the office, her head pressed to the desk, her shoulders slumped.
“Everything okay?”
She jolted upright as if he’d shocked her. “Fine.” But he could see the strain around her eyes and hear the slight catch in her voice that said otherwise.
He might’ve thought that had something to do with him, except he’d heard enough to know it was her mother on the phone. They hadn’t had an easy relationship back when she was younger. Liam doubted that had changed. He considered asking about it, bullying her until she spilled whatever was on her mind. But she hadn’t pressed his tender spot about his dad, and he didn’t think she’d welcome the intrusion.
Riley got to her feet. “Did you sort out whatever you needed to on the storeroom?” She held herself stiff, clearly waiting for him to get the hell out of her way.
He didn’t need to know the why to help. “Yep. Come here.” Without waiting for her acquiescence, Liam tugged her into his arms.
She shoved at his chest, trying to step back. “What are you doing?” Was that a faint trace of panic in her tone?
“You’re upset about something. Figured you could use a hug.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
It didn’t seem worth pointing out that he’d always been able to read her better than that. “Riley, you don’t have to talk about it. You don’t even have to acknowledge it. But for once in your life, lean for two damn minutes. I promise I won’t tell.”
With an annoyed sort of growl, she gave a half-hearted shove before finally giving up, dropping her head against his chest and sliding her arms around his waist. He stroked a hand up and down her back. Degree by slow degree, she relaxed. Liam tried his damnedest not to think about how good she felt against him or to notice the pretty floral scent to her hair.
“I forgot what good hugs you give,” she murmured.
She’d been very much still a girl the last time he’d hugged her. She wasn’t a girl now.
