I had a meeting I wasn’t expecting.” She was such a bad liar, but she didn’t want him to know she and Matt had tangled again.
Tim merely grunted a reply and held the screen door open for her. Liv went straight to her bedroom, where she took off her shoes and started changing into her riding clothes. She figured she had time to make the loop around the fields and be home in plenty of time to put dinner on the table.
Tim was off the tractor early and the fields were full of bales waiting to be loaded into the retriever, but he had a set schedule and he stuck to it. Dinner at six. Liv was happy to oblige because it gave her some time to deal with the Matt situation, get a few things straight in her mind.
Bend Beckett’s ear a little.
Her boots clunked across the hardwood floor as she headed for the front door. Tim looked up from his paper. “Just going for a short ride,” she said. “I’ll be back in time to make dinner, so don’t do anything.”
Tim let out an eloquent sigh and went back to reading.
* * *
FOR ONE GLORIOUS hour Liv managed to avoid thinking about Matt or her father—for the most part anyway—focusing instead on Beckett, the feel of his solid body beneath her, the wind blowing back the hair that had escaped from her ponytail, the feeling of total freedom she always got when she rode. It was as if Beckett’s strength flowed into her through some magical connection that she was too logical to believe in but felt all the same. Once her feet were back on the ground, the mystical power evaporated and thoughts of Matt began crowding in.
Liv resolutely shook them off. She’d handled Greg—which had not been easy, because Greg could be damned persuasive when he put his mind to it—and now she’d handle Matt. At least he wasn’t trying to buy her off with flowers and jewelry. Yet. Right now she was more concerned about dealing with Tim. Last night he’d looked like he was ready to keel over when he’d come in off the tractor and tonight he’d looked no better.
He wasn’t in his chair when she walked into the living room, but he hadn’t cooked dinner, either, so they were making some progress. She slapped together a meal of frozen ravioli and canned sauce.
He wandered into the kitchen from the direction of his bedroom at six o’clock sharp, took a chair without meeting her eyes.
“Not very fancy,” she said as she set the pot on the table. “I need to start planning a little more in advance, I think.”
Tim merely nodded and filled his plate.
They ate in silence. Tim was no talker, but usually they exchanged a few remarks during dinner—or they used to before Tim had started clamming up about whatever was making him feel so bad.
Liv pushed her food around her plate, having no appetite herself, and finally gave up and scraped most of what she had taken into the trash.
“What’s wrong?” Tim asked.
Liv frowned over her shoulder at him, then opened the dishwasher and started unloading it. She’d only put two plates in the cupboard when he said, “Well, something’s wrong,” before setting his fork down on his still half-full plate. Between the two of them, they’d barely eaten a single serving.
Liv stopped putting away the dishes and turned to face him, one hand propped on her hip. “And if it is?”
“I’m just wondering if that guy is bothering you again.”
“Matt?” Liv asked, wondering who had seen them wrangling in the parking lot and reported back to Tim.
“No. The other guy. The one you were engaged to.”
“Greg?”
“Yeah.”
“I haven’t heard from Greg in two months.”
“But he was harassing you.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m not stupid, Liv. After you broke the engagement, you changed. You got more, I don’t know, stressed.”
“And from that you knew he was harassing me?”
“I wondered.” Tim took his plate to the trash and scraped out most of the ravioli. “You just confirmed my suspicions. You should have told me about him.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, setting a plate in the rack with exaggerated control. “Just like you’ve been so open with me.”
“There’s nothing I haven’t told you that you need to know.”
“I guess I can say the same.”
She wondered if her father knew how much his appearance had changed just over the past few months, how his face was pinched with pain, his shoulders slightly stooped. “Do you have