“A lot.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How much?”
“You have to get my sister-in-law off my back.”
“What are you up to?”
Matt gave her a crooked grin. “Patsy’s big on family. She has these family get-togethers, and she . . . ” He trailed off.
“She what?”
“She’s going to skin me alive if I don’t take you with me when I go.”
For a moment Bailey considered what he was saying. He was, of course, making it up about his “charge.” What he was really doing was offering to pay for the lawn mower and do the work for free. “In other circumstances I wouldn’t agree, but since Opal told me you were paying Patsy seven-fifty for rent and me o
nly six hundred, I figure you owe me.”
Matt laughed, unembarrassed at being caught. “Opal didn’t hear that from me. Janice does my books, so she’s probably the one who told Opal.”
“Whatever. When I think of the way you acted as though I was overcharging you, I could—”
Bending, he kissed her cheek. “You’re cute when you’re angry,” he said as the clerk approached them.
“I’ll get you back for this,” Bailey said under her breath.
With his back to the clerk, Matt winked at her.
“You two lovebirds decide yet?” the young man asked.
“Yeah, that one,” Matt said as he pointed to a behemoth of a lawn mower. It looked like something used to cut the north forty.
“Good choice,” the young man said. “That’s the one I would want.”
“You and all the boys,” Bailey said in disgust as she looked away. Only Matt heard her.
“And we’ll need some hand tools too,” Matt said, turning to Bailey, unperturbed by her sarcasm. “Come on, honey, let’s get some loppers.”
An hour later they were in Matt’s pickup truck. The back was loaded with the oversize tractor lawn mower and one of every shovel, rake, digging fork, and garden cutting tool the store carried. After the first two shovels, Bailey had quit protesting.
When they were out of the parking lot, Bailey said, “You said Janice does your books?”
“Such as they are. When I ran a business, I had an accountant, but now Janice does the work. Not that Janice isn’t as good as an accountant. She did the books for all four of her husband’s car dealerships, until Scott decided that he shouldn’t work with his wife. Between you and me, I think he didn’t want his wife knowing everything he had.”
Bailey didn’t know how to comment on this information. Besides, she was more interested in Matt than in Janice. “Is your move back to Calburn permanent? Or are you just licking your wounds after the divorce, and in a few months you’ll go back to being a big-city architect?”
Matt was quiet for a moment, turning on his blinkers and checking his mirrors before making a left turn. “The truth is that I don’t know. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life driving nails, I can tell you that.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“Domestic architecture. Personal dwellings. It’s what I’ve always liked.”
“So why did you work on skyscrapers?”
“More money in it.”
“Ah, right. Money. That ever-important commodity. Jimmie used to say that if you work for money, then you’ll never have any.”
“Spoken like every poor man.”