Promise Me (Book One of the Kirkland Family)

Promise Me: Chapter 29

Chapter 29

On Monday, Hannah’s car was still in the repair shop, so she had to rely on Kim for a ride to work.  Justin brought Josie to the store, stuck around long enough to chat with Mark and Chad for a minute or two, and then left, returning that afternoon to pick Josie up.  It was all very impersonal and indifferent.  And enough to make her sick to her stomach.  Hannah didn’t know how much longer she could go on this way.  Granted, it had only been a few days since she and Justin became intimate, but it seemed so much longer.  So much had happened in those few days.  Hannah felt like she’d run a marathon...and the finish line was nowhere in sight.

But something else happened on that Monday which opened Hannah’s eyes to another world of contemplation and indecision.  It was a simple phone call, which came in when she was knee-deep in Mark’s famous fertilizer bin, shoveling the wonderful crap into fifty-pound bags, because the machine designed to do this job was broken.

Broken.  Like needing an entire, new crankshaft broken. 

Okay, so Mark’s filler machine had been built with parts from an old harvesting combine and broke down all the time, but that did not make her any less grouchy about it.  While she was sweating like a pig in muck, there were about six guys from the warehouse scratching their heads over the broken piece.  Okay, maybe not six…just the one, and the rest were helping to fill bags, too, but they were all scratching their heads and calling out suggestions to the one on top of the machine.  And to Hannah, it seemed she only one working here.  Her back and shoulders were killing her!  None of that negated the fact that she was short forty-five bags of fertilizer for an order that had to be delivered that afternoon.  Leaning tiredly on her shovel, with Josie holding open bags for her, she shot Mark a look.

“Tell me again why Mr. Shaw couldn’t buy this by the truckload.  It’s a hell of a lot cheaper and damn easier,” she shouted at him over the din of the solitary man trying to figure out the best way of removing the old crankshaft, and the other five offering their two-cents worth towards the solution.

Mark wiped sweat off his brow.  “Because he likes to stockpile it in his shed,” he grumped.  “Frankly, I think the old geezer is black-marketing it.”

Hannah sighed.  Mr. Shaw wasn’t doing anything of the sort.  The old, dark-Irish, antiques dealer was a hoarder, plain and simple, literally stockpiling everything he got a hankering for – and he had a wicked fondness for his pepper plants, swearing only this brand of fertilizer worked the best.  “How many more do we need?”

“About twenty,” Mark answered, and Josie’s head swiveled to the pallet outside of the bin, mentally calculating the bags already piled there.

“Twenty-three,” she clarified, and Mark grunted, “I liked twenty better.”

Josie grinned at him.  She thought this was fun, but she wasn’t doing the shoveling.  Hannah bent to lift another shovelful into the bag, keeping an eye on the scale under it.  Fifty pounds per bag, and not an ounce more, damnit.

A few bags later, Mark’s radio beeped on his belt.  Mark depressed the button and yelled, “Yeah?”

Chad’s voice came over the speaker.  He tore out a tendon on his knee while running this past weekend, so Hannah had him manning the store all day.  Otherwise, he’d be out here doing this crappy job.  “Hannah there with you?  She’s not answering her radio.”

Mark shot Hannah that look again.  Okay, so she left it…um, somewhere, not sure where, but it was around here somewhere.  “Yeah, she’s here,” Mark answered.

Chad said, “She’s got a phone call.”

Hannah huffed out a breath and snatched the radio from Mark.  “Is it a customer?” she keyed in to the office.