“I’ll take care of everything,” Lia promised, just grateful for an excuse to get away from Gregory.
“Fabulous. Thanks, sis. You’re awesome. I’ve got to go, we’re about to speak with her math teacher.” She hung up before Lia could respond. Lia looked at Gregory with feigned regret.
“I’m so sorry to cut this short, Gregory, but I have to go. Daff has asked me to help her out with an urgent matter.”
“Anything I can do?” he asked, looking concerned, but Lia could see the impatience and anger in his gaze. Guy obviously thought he was going to get lucky tonight, and suddenly his date was bailing on him. Bummer. For him. Lia, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to get out of here and away from him. She didn’t think she wanted to see him again. They definitely were not compatible. But a tiny part of herself couldn’t help but wonder if she would have been this picky before her experience with Brand. She hoped he hadn’t spoiled her for all men. He had certainly raised her expectations much, much higher than before.
“No. It’s something I have to do by myself,” she said quickly.
“You can come around to my place afterward,” he suggested.
“I’m pretty tired,” she said with a fake yawn. “I think I’ll head to bed afterward.”
He looked miffed by that information.
“Thank you for a lovely evening,” she said with a polite, strained smile. She turned to unlock her car door and thankfully he stepped away, allowing her to climb into the car.
Charlie’s eight-month-old brown-and-white miniature pinscher/Chihuahua mix, Toffee, ran up to greet Lia enthusiastically when she let herself into the house. The dog ran for her tiny tennis ball, dropped it at Lia’s feet, and stood watching her with an expectant tilt of the head.
“Sorry, girl, I can’t play right now. Your family has left me a shedload of work to do,” Lia groaned, planting her hands on her hips as she took in the bags of groceries in Spencer’s kitchen. Daff had bought up an entire store. Somewhere in Riversend a store manager had finally paid off his business loans and was probably planning his retirement trip to a small island in the Bahamas, thanks solely to Daff’s extravagant spending today. Now Lia wondered if Daff actually had a PTA meeting or if she, Spencer, and Charlie were laughing their behinds off at getting Lia to do all this fetching and carrying in their stead.
She shook her head and, with Toffee—tennis ball in her mouth—dancing around her feet, started to lug the bags out to her car. It took four trips and ten minutes for her to get everything loaded up. After making certain that the forlorn-looking Toffee was safely inside the house, the drive was just a matter of taking a left turn and bringing the car to a stop a minute later. The places were only meters apart, but walking up and down the small incline with the bags would have taken a lot longer in the dark, on uneven terrain.
She let herself in through the kitchen door. The place had the musty smell of a home that had been unlived in for a few months. Mason and Daisy had moved to Grahamstown at the beginning of the year, just a couple of months after their November wedding. They were nicely settled into a pretty house outside the university town, where Daisy did locum work at a small veterinary practice and Mason had started his studies in March. Lia switched on the lights and opened a few windows to air the place out a bit. The mild late-April evening air had a slight autumnal nip to it, but nothing too extreme.
Lia got to work carrying the shopping into the kitchen, feeling like a scurrying ant with all the back-and-forth. She started unpacking everything, placing the groceries neatly in kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator. She was humming quietly to herself when the sound of a heavy tread behind her had her grabbing a knife from the block and whirling to face her would-be assailant.
“Great reflexes, princess,” Sam Brand observed in amusement. He was in the living room, his hand curled over the top of an easy chair, obviously for balance, because he looked seriously wobbly. “But I’m pretty sure even I could disarm you in seconds, and I’m definitely not in peak condition at the moment. The key is to look like you mean to use the weapon. You look like just a cough would have you scampering off in the opposite direction.”
“W-what are you doing here?”
“Well, I was taking a nap on the sofa. But you were making more noise than a herd of elephants,” he said, sounding strained. His grip on the chair tightened so much she could see the white of his knuckles. He looked pale and sickly and much too thin. His right arm was in a sling and cradled against his chest.