* * *
Boone managed to keep B.J. away from Castle’s until after lunch, but only by bribing him with a handheld game he’d been wanting for months. He could already tell he’d made a mistake. Just as he’d feared, B.J. hadn’t put it down for a single second all morning.
As they pulled into the Castle’s lot, Boone held out his hand. “Turn it over,” he commanded.
“But you gave it to me,” B.J. complained. “And I want to show Ms. Cora Jane and Emily.”
“You can show them another time. For now, we need to put it away. We’ll decide later how long you can play with it each day.”
“But that’s not fair,” B.J. argued. “You said it was mine.”
“It is yours, but there are limits, just like the ones we have for TV.”
B.J. gave him a sour look, but he handed over the game, then jumped out of the truck and went running inside the restaurant. Apparently he’d already forgotten how he wound up with those stitches in his arm, Boone thought, watching him with a sigh.
He followed B.J. more slowly, stopping to talk to Tommy about the roof repairs and how soon he’d be able to get to the work in his restaurant.
“I’ll finish up here tomorrow morning at the latest,” Tommy assured him. “I’ll have the crew at your place after lunch.”
“That’ll work,” Boone said. “And the bill for Cora Jane’s roof? See that I get it.”
Tommy looked uneasy. “Boone, she’ll have a fit. You know she will.”
“Just tell her you haven’t had time to get to it.”
“You want me to put her off?” Tommy asked incredulously. “It’ll take about two days for her to get suspicious.”
“Only one, more than likely,” Boone conceded. “I owe her. I want to do this for her. If she puts it on her insurance claim, heaven knows what it will do to her rates. This is better. I’ll battle it out with her. You won’t be caught in the middle.”
“If she starts lecturing me about my lax business practices for not billing her or, worse, calls my mother to complain about them, I swear to you that I will spill the beans,” Tommy warned him. “I do not want to be on Cora Jane’s bad side. Nor do I want my mother sticking her nose into my business. She’s been itching to take over the accounting, and this would give her the perfect excuse.”
Boone laughed. “Not to worry. I’ll take the heat.” He gave Tommy an amused look. The man was successful, thirty-seven, six foot four and, despite that, obviously still scared of his mother, who was admittedly something of a force to be reckoned with. “I won’t let you get in trouble with your mama, either,” he consoled Tommy.
Tommy muttered an expletive in response, then walked off.
Just then B.J. came bounding back out the door, his expression dismayed. Boone reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder, then hunkered down in front of him.
“Hey, buddy, what’s the problem?”
“Emily’s gone,” he said with a sniff, his eyes filling with tears. “Nobody knows when she’s coming back.”
Blast it all! Boone thought furiously. This was exactly what he’d feared all along. “When did she leave?”
“This morning, I guess.” He gave Boone a betrayed look. “I should have been here, but you made me stay with you. Maybe if I’d been here, she wouldn’t have gone.”
“You knew all along she’d be going back to her job, back to where she lives,” Boone said, though he was as thrown by the suddenness of her departure as B.J. was.
“But not yet,” B.J. protested. “It’s too soon. I thought she was my friend, and she just left without even saying goodbye.”
Exactly as Boone could have predicted, he thought heatedly.
“I’m sorry, pal. You said she’ll be back, though, right?”
B.J.’s shoulders heaved in what could have been a shrug or a heartfelt sigh. “I guess. That’s what Ms. Cora Jane said.”
“Then I’m sure she will be,” Boone said, though he was certain of no such thing. Needing to do something to put a smile back on his son’s face, he said, “Why don’t you get your game out of the truck and show it to Jerry? I’ll bet he’d like to play it with you.”
There was a brief spark in B.J.’s eyes. “It’d be okay?”
“I think just this once, yes.”
B.J. took off across the parking lot.
“Slow down!” Boone called after him.
B.J. obediently slowed. Once he’d retrieved the game, he walked back, exaggerating each careful footstep in a way that had Boone hiding a smile.
“Just so you don’t start running the second my back’s turned,” he commented as his son passed him. B.J. gave him an impish grin but kept his pace slow.
As soon as B.J. was back inside, Boone pulled out his cell phone, found Emily’s number still on the list of incoming calls from the other night when she’d phoned from Ethan’s clinic, and called her.
“Boone?” she said when she answered.
“I warned you,” he said, his voice low and furious. “I told you not to hurt my son.”
“What are you talking about?” she said softly. “I didn’t do anything to B.J.”
“You left without even saying goodbye. He’s devastated, Em. He doesn’t understand. He thought the two of you were friends.”
The harsh words she uttered under her breath were filled with self-derision. Aloud, she protested, “But I’m coming back, Boone. Didn’t anyone tell him that?”
“He’s eight. His mother left and never came back, even though I’d reassured him she’d be okay. He’s not exactly trusting when it comes to that sort of thing. He’s feeling abandoned. I told you it would be like this. I begged you to keep him at arm’s length.” Unable to help himself, he lashed out. “If you do come back,
