“Scared, I guess. Divine’s a little pond but I know it well. Hard to prove yourself all over in a new place.”

“I suppose.”

He rolled onto his back.

She curled next to him and slid her leg up and down his. “You ever think about settling down somewhere?”

“Lots of times. In fact I thought I had the place to do it, but it turned out it wasn’t.”

“What happened?”

“It just wasn’t.”

The phone rang. Abby looked at the clock. “Who could that be at this hour?”

“The hospital?”

“I just talked to them before we had breakfast. And to Danny. He was okay.”

“Maybe it’s the restaurant. People want their breakfast at Rita’s.” Stone was glad of the change in the conversation’s direction.

“I already called there too. I got my helpers opening the place.”

She climbed over Stone and snatched up the phone. Stone put a hand on her butt and gave her a gentle squeeze. She smiled, grabbed his hand and gave her backside a hard slap with it. Then she let go.

“What? Um.” She glanced at Stone. “No, he’s not here. Right. If I see him I could ask him, sure. Okay, right.”

She put the phone back in the cradle, pulled a pillow into her lap and sat cross-legged facing him.

“Who was that?”

“Charlie Trimble. He heard about Danny and what you did. He wants to ask you some questions. And he seemed very determined.”

“Great, well, my position hasn’t changed. I’m not answering any questions.”

“Ben, listen to me. If you don’t want to do it, fine. But if you keep saying no to Charlie he’s going to start digging. And unless you’ve got nothing you care about him finding, it might be smart to just talk to him. That way he can focus on what happened here instead of on you.”

Stone opened his mouth and then closed it. “How come you’re beautiful and smart? That’s hardly fair.”

“Just the luck of the draw, I guess.”

“You have his number?”

“Yes, or you can just go to the newspaper. It’s around the block from the restaurant. Can’t miss it.”

“Call him and tell him I’ll be there sometime this afternoon.”

He rose to get dressed.

“This afternoon? We can do a lot in that amount of time,” she said playfully.

“As great as that sounds, I’ve got something I really need to do.”

“What’s that?” she said, sounding a little hurt.

“I’ll let you know if I find it.”