“Good. Now look up the phone number and call one of them. And, Arthur,” she said just as she was about to break the connection, “calm down. You can do this.”
“Right,” he said breathlessly. “I can do this. I can do this.”
Arthur was still reciting the mantra as she bid him a crisp, “Goodbye,” and terminated the connection. Placing the phone back in her pocket, she finally looked at Max. He’d been observing her the entire time she’d been on the phone.
“What?”
The woman sounded as if she were a five-star general in training. “What is it you do again?”
“I run a restaurant. My own restaurant,” she felt compelled to add since it was obvious that no one had said anything to him about her.
She had no idea why it mattered that he know she wasn’t just some flunky for a corporation, even though she had worked for a major insurance company for several years to save up enough money for a down payment on her restaurant.
If she was looking to impress him, she was disappointed.
Max nodded, taking the information in. “Sounds more like you’re a general planning some kind of major strategy.”
She didn’t know if he was just making an offhanded remark or criticizing her. She didn’t react well to criticism. In-law or not, she definitely hadn’t made up her mind to like Sheriff Max Yearling. “Arthur needs a firm hand.”
She sounded as if she were talking about a horse or a pet. It was as plain as the nose on his face that the lady liked being in control. He pitied the man who had the misfortune of falling for her face, not realizing what the total package involved.
“Arthur, your fiancé?”
Eyes widening, Lily laughed. It was the first time, she realized, since she had found Allen in bed with that former patient of his. Arthur was a dear in his own way, but definitely not someone she would even remotely think of in a romantic light. It wasn’t even his tall, gawky frame or the fact that he had an Adam’s apple that seemed to be in perpetual motion. It was that, quite truthfully, he was skittish of his own shadow and if ever she were to think about romance again, she wanted a man, not a mouse. Not even a tall mouse.
“Hardly. What makes you think that?”
Max lifted a shoulder carelessly, letting it drop again. “The way you were ordering him around, it sounded as if you had a relationship.”
Lily stiffened her shoulders. She didn’t like what he was implying. “We do. Arthur is my assistant manager.”
He studied her for a moment, thinking that she was probably one of those people who hadn’t a clue how to kick back. “I thought you came here to relax.”
Though his voice was low, and to an outside ear, easygoing, Lily felt as if she was being interrogated. “I did.”
He nodded at the pocket where she’d put her phone. “Don’t you think you should turn your phone off, then?”
She looked at him as if he’d just suggested that she practice skydiving without a parachute. She’d had a cell phone on her person ever since they’d been invented. In the early days that had meant carrying around something that had resembled a talking brick.
“Why would I want to do that?”
He heard the defensive tone in her voice and knew his estimation about her inability to relax was right on the money. “So that the people who work with you can’t bother you with questions.”
“They don’t work with me, they work for me,” she corrected. “And what do you suggest I do, shut off my phone, forget about everything and after two weeks, come back to no restaurant? No thank you. I want Arthur to bother me with work questions if it means I have a thriving restaurant when I get back.”
Max was trying to get a fix on what she was actually saying. “Then this Arthur you have running things for you while you’re gone is incompetent?”
Lily became indignant. Arthur might have his failings, but no one was going to say that about him but her.
“No, of course he’s not incompetent.”
A smile spread along his lips slowly, like the early morning sun creeping out over the horizon. “Oh.”
She didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What do you mean, ‘oh’?”
Again Max shrugged, pausing to look out the window before he answered. They were getting close to home. Longest run from the airport to Hades he could remember, he thought.
“Just that maybe you’re afraid that this Arthur guy can get along without you.” He watched her eyes. They began to darken as he spoke. “Maybe you don’t want to find out that you’re not as indispensable as you’d like to think you are.”
She’d had just about enough of this man. She hadn’t come all this way to be ignored by her siblings and packed off with some know-it-all guy with a badge.
“Is this what you do as sheriff? Hand out homey advice?”
He saw her eyes grow darker still, like a storm coming in from the ocean. “I like to think of it as pointing people in the right direction.”
“Well, your sense of direction is off, Lawman. Because my instincts are fine and I’ll handle my restaurant the way I see fit, thank you very much.” She could feel her anger building. “Where do you get off, telling me how to run my business?”
The louder her voice grew, the quieter his became. The way he saw it, for every storm, there had to be a calm. That was his role in the scheme of things. He rarely, if ever, lost his temper.
“Wasn’t telling you how to run the restaurant, I was telling you how to relax. Something—” he cast about for a polite wording of the problem “—I don’t think you quite know how to do.”
When was this damn plane going to land? She wanted to get out of these close quarters, where she was confined with this man, before she forgot that she was a lady. A very tired, exasperated lady. “Not all of us are lucky enough to have found a way to make a living doing nothing.”
“We’re here,” Sydney announced a little too brightly, hoping to prevent a major flare-up.
“Great,” Lily growled.
The sooner she was away from the know-it-all sheriff, the better. What were Alison and Jimmy thinking, sending him to accompany her? She would have sooner ridden in a cage with a boxful of tarantulas. They might have been hairier, but they would have certainly been better company. And a hell of a lot less judgmental.
The landing that came several minutes later was almost flawless, but Lily could still feel her stomach churn as the wheels touched down. The second they came to a stop, she began unbuckling her seat belt. It wouldn’t give.
It figured, she thought grudgingly as she heard Sydney disembark. Frustrated, she tugged on the belt, trying to disengage the two halves.
“Stuck?”
Lily looked up to see that the know-it-all with the liquid-green eyes had not only gotten off the plane, but had rounded the rear and come to her side. To add insult to injury, he was looking down at the belt that refused to come undone.
“I can manage,” she snapped.
For a second, Max debated standing back and letting her continue to struggle. But then his training got the best of him. Being a sheriff meant taking the good with the bad. This part was obviously the bad.
“Why don’t you stop being superwoman and let someone help you once in a while?” Not waiting for an answer, Max moved her hands aside and took over.
She was about to swat his hands away, but her desire to get free overrode her