Know Me Well (Wishful 3)

Chapter 1

Riley Gower hadn’t planned on spending her anniversary surrounded by boxes of stock and empty shelves. From a business standpoint, the empty shelves were a good thing. It meant people were actually buying the products she carried, in addition to the medications kept behind the counter. In the year since she’d bought out her boss’s share in Wishful Discount Drugs, that had often meant the difference between keeping the lights on and having to rob Peter to pay Paul. She was in the black—barely—and that merited celebration, albeit more of a chips and queso and margaritas at Los Pantalones variety than champagne and caviar.

Instead of celebrating, she was camped out filling shelves, well after the late summer sun had faded, because Ruby Fellowes, her cashier/stocker/order-taker/general-Jill-of-all-trades, who’d worked at the pharmacy since God was a boy, had taken off all week to help prepare for her niece’s wedding. At her current rate, Riley would be lucky to eek out a half-assed celebration with the emergency bar of Toblerone in the vegetable drawer of her refrigerator before she fell into bed and passed out from sheer exhaustion.

“Happy businiversary to me,” she muttered.

The butt busting was worth it, even if owning her own business felt a little more like prison than freedom at the moment. It meant she’d succeeded on her own terms, without a handout or a hand up from some man. Her success and its consequent stresses were hers and hers alone, and she couldn’t put a price on the value of that.

As her phone rang out with the tones of “Crazy Train”, all pleasure in her accomplishment bled away. She could ignore it, let the call go to voice mail. It might be nothing.

But long experience had her instincts tightening with dread. She knew it wasn’t nothing. Bracing herself, Riley answered. “Hi Mom.”

“Hey, baby.” Sharilyn sounded tired, with that forced edge of cheer that made Riley’s stomach curdle.

“What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Why should anything be wrong? Can’t I call my only child to say hello?” She was talking too fast, too breezy, so Riley said nothing, just waited. At length, Sharilyn hiccuped and burst into tears. “Hal left me.”

Riley repressed a curse and tried to find some sympathy. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

Sharilyn launched into a diatribe about everything that had gone wrong on the multi-month cross-country RV trip she’d taken with her most recent beau. By the time her mother finally wound down and got the tears under control, a tension headache had sunk claws deep into Riley’s scalp.

“I really am sorry.” And some part of her was. Because her mother had truly believed Hal, like all his predecessors, was The One, and she’d given herself whole-heartedly to the relationship.

“It will be all right.”

The note of determination creeping into Sharilyn’s voice made Riley wonder whether she already had some other guy in mind to save her this time. Or was it to be Riley herself in the role of knight to her mother’s damsel in distress? Riley’s own armor was pretty damned battered after all these years.

“I need a favor, sweetie.”

Wary, she asked, “What?”

“I’m out here all on my own and Hal didn’t leave me with anything.”

Don’t say it, Riley thought. Don’t you dare say it.

“I need you to loan me some money.”

She said it.

Riley pinched the bridge of her nose. Why was she even calling it a loan? It wasn’t like she’d paid back any of the other loans Riley had made her over the years when the boyfriend or husband du jour turned out to be a shit and not interested in dealing long-term with the damsel in distress routine her mom had perfected. Christ, Riley had taken over the bill management in junior high school, started paying the mortgage her freshman year of college.

“Just enough to get me home,” Sharilyn continued.

“Mom, did you forget you sold the house?”

“Of course I didn’t. But Wishful is still home.”

How could it still be home when she had nowhere to live here anymore?

“I thought I could stay with you for a while.”

Oh God. Riley could actually feel the blood vessels behind her eyes threatening to burst.

“There’s no room at my place, Mom. I don’t even have a guest room.”

“I could sleep on the couch. It’d just be for a little while. Until I get back on my feet.”

Until she found another sugar daddy with a savior complex. A thump sounded from above, pulling her attention.

“Riley?”

“Hang on a sec.” Straining, Riley listened harder, expecting scratching or other signs that squirrels or raccoons had taken up residence in the empty second floor of the building. But what she heard were clear footsteps. Person-sized footsteps.

“Mom, I need to go.”

“But what about—”

“I’ll wire you money for a bus ticket home.” Never mind that it was her last $300. She couldn’t leave her mother stranded in Timbuktu. “Text me where you are.” Riley hung up before Sharilyn could say anything else. Striding across to the light switch, she flipped it off so she could see the street outside. The empty street.

Surely anyone with legitimate business up there would be parked out front. And what legitimate business could there be? The upstairs had been vacant forever.

She dialed 911.

“911, what is your emergency?” Riley blessed the interconnected nature of small towns as she recognized the voice of the dispatcher.

“Janette, it’s Riley Gower. I’m at the pharmacy aft

er hours and there’s an intruder upstairs.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes. I’ve been stocking.”

“Are the doors locked?”