do you reckon?”
Riley shrugged. “I like her the way she is, but then I’m not competing with the new kid on the block.”
“Have you checked out the wine bar’s liquor license?” Darcy was only half joking. “The owner seems to me like a shady character.”
“You want me to shut him down, I’ll shut him down.” Riley grinned as he sipped his beer.
“Not good enough. He would reapply and be back in business.” Darcy leaned over the bar and dropped his voice. “You must know some crims who would torch the place. Put me in touch, then look the other way and five percent of my takings are yours.”
Riley chuckled. “Yeah, that’ll be a big help when Paula nails my ass and puts me in jail. Seriously, have you got a plan?”
“I’m fighting fire with fire.” Darcy nodded to the chalkboard above his head listing a dozen new wines by the glass. “And the makeover. Hope it’s enough. Speaking of renovations, how’s the extension on the police station coming along?”
“Slowly, but it’s getting there. I’ll be glad when I don’t have to dust my desk for sawdust every morning.”
Darcy rearranged the swatches once more. “Which do you like best, the green and brown together or the peach and blue?”
“Mate, you’re asking the wrong person, but I’d say neither.”
“Paula makes quilts, doesn’t she? She must be good at fabrics and color combinations. If I took these over to your house one night, would she give me some advice?”
“I’m sure she would—if she was around. She went up to Tinman Island for a couple of weeks to visit John and Katie and Tuti.”
John Forster, who’d given Darcy half the cruise ticket, used to be in charge of the police station until he’d left to take up a position on a remote island in tropical North Queensland with Katie, his new wife, and Tuti, his half-Balinese daughter from a previous relationship.
“I had an email from John last week. Sounds like he and Katie like it up north.”
“He’s glad to be back on active duty. Paula called today to report in. Katie’s working on her third children’s book, and Tuti’s learning to boogie board. Apparently they can’t keep her out of the water.”
“Excellent,” Darcy replied distractedly. He leaned his elbows on the bar and studied his color swatches.
Riley sipped his beer. “Emma did a good job decorating your old house. Have you asked her?”
“She’s got too much on her plate. Anyway, neither of us is interested in getting involved again.” Darcy pulled himself up. No one had mentioned getting involved. Was that a Freudian slip?
“I was talking about decorating. But now that you mention it, you two have a child together. It doesn’t get much more involved than that.”
Darcy stared at Riley. What was this backflip on Riley’s part? “You were against me having anything to do with Emma. You said she was bad for me.”
“I’m not talking about you and Emma. I meant you and your son.”
“Oh.” A muscle in Darcy’s jaw twitched. “I tried to offer her child support and she wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Money isn’t the only thing a kid needs.”
“I’m not father material.” How many times did he have to say it? “I’m never around. I’m not good at the hands-on stuff. I make more work for Emma when I do try to help. No, I don’t want to screw the kid up. Having no father is better than having a bad one.”
“I don’t believe for one second that you don’t care about your own kid. Even if Emma doesn’t want you to play an active role, you don’t have to accept that. And you weren’t a bad father to Holly.”
“I wasn’t there for her enough. I wasn’t competent enough to do things for her, change her diapers, feed her, bathe her. I was the playmate. Kids need more than that.”
“Nobody’s born knowing how to care for children. You have to learn. You were absent for Holly because you had to work, but when you were around she thought you hung the moon and the stars. I saw you. You were a great dad. In fact, I remember thinking that if I ever had a child I hoped I could be as good a father as you were.”
“If by good you mean I gave a lot of horsie rides, yeah, I was a great dad. Can we drop the subject?” Darcy didn’t want to get into this. There were some things he didn’t tell even his best mates. Like the fact