“Shut up,” he told her, covering the phone.

“I’ve got nothing but time, especially since this will get me out of helping your mom reorganize the pantry,” Morris announced.

“The woman loves her alphabetized canned goods. I appreciate it.” He looked at Maggie. “I’m up at the Old Campbell Place. Oh, and don’t bring any lollipops. The patient doesn’t deserve any.”

Maggie flipped him the bird as he hung up.

“This high-handed, ‘I’m in charge’ bullshit does not fly with me,” she announced.

“You either tell me what happened or I go inside and get Jim to tell me, since you had no problem talking to him. And if you make me hear this secondhand, I’ll be very, very pissed off.”

“For Pete’s sake. It was no big deal. Four kids—teens—showed up here last night and tried to get in so they could drink their cheap garbage liquor. The front door was locked, and they were having a debate about going someplace else or breaking a window to get in when I scared the crap out of them. Most of them peeled out like it was the zombie apocalypse.”

“What happened to your toe?”

“Jammed it on one of the stones on the terrace when I snuck around the side of the house.”

He looked up and counted backward from ten. It didn’t work. “You confronted a gang of trespassing criminals in the dark when they tried to break into your house?”

“They were teenagers with a bottle of Mad Dog, not mastermind villains,” she argued.

“Did you call the cops?” Her hesitation had his blood pressure skyrocketing again. “Did you call Dean? Me? Anyone to come over so you wouldn’t be alone if they came back?”

“No. I handled it.”

“You need to get it out of your stubborn head that every single thing has to be handled by you.”

She yanked her foot off his knee. “I don’t like being handled, Wright.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t like you taking unnecessary risks just because you think you’re safer depending on yourself.”

She scrambled to her feet on a gasp of indignation. “This is exactly why I don’t tell people shit. You open up to some good-looking, landscaping jerk one time, and he can’t wait to throw it in your face.”

He rose to his full height. “Get over it, Nichols. And sit your ass down.”

“You sit your ass down. In your truck. And drive away from here. Far away from here.”