That left Fiona.
Sighing, he turned to take the EP out of the CD player, moving carefully when pain shot up from his side. A few moments later Dar Williams’s sweet soprano was replaced by the high lonesome sound of Gillian Welch. Though Welch had grown up in California, you’d swear she’d just come down from the Appalachian Mountains by way of the Stanley Brothers to make this recording. He loved the raw, emotional narrative of the songs and her unadorned delivery. By the third cut he was in a bit of a better mood, the store’s poor business and the pain in his side notwithstanding, and returned to finish up the last of his paperwork. It was only when the CD ended and he was back thinking about how he was going to tell Fiona that she was being laid off that his melancholy returned.
He considered his figures again, wondering if he could make it just a temporary thing. A few weeks, no more than a couple of months. Only until business started to pick up again with the warmer weather. He was still worrying at it when Miki came in a little later, wrinkling her nose at the Dan Bern CD he had playing on the store’s sound system.
“Okay,” she said as she offered Hunter one of the coffees she’d brought with her. “I realize that someone up there has decided that every generation needs its Bob Dylan, but really. Doesn’t this guy sound like an exact clone to you?”
Hunter shook his head. “It’s just a style of songwriting. You know, talking blues. Anecdotal.”
“And it doesn’t bother you, the way he’s got Dylan down so well it might as well be Dylan? I mean, hello tribute city. Look at me, I’m pathetic.”
“I don’t hear it that way.”
Miki raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Besides,” Hunter went on. “I hear he’s really into Coltrane.”
“Really?”
Hunter nodded, having no idea what Dan Bern’s tastes in music really were. What he did know was Miki’s inclination to forgive a great deal if your taste was what she considered to be good. Classic sax players were right up there at the top of the list.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “ Trane. Bird. Wayne Shorter. Lester Young.”
“You’re making this up.”
“No, I’m sure I read it an interview somewhere.”
Miki cocked her head, giving the CD another listen.
“Well, maybe he’s not so bad,” she said. “There is a kind of improvisa-tional flavor to what he’s doing, isn’t there?”
Hunter managed to keep a straight face until she went to hang up her coat in the back room, only just wiping the grin from his face before she stepped back out into the store. Miki made her way slowly back to the front counter, straightening CD cases in their bins as she came.
“You’re looking rather well,” she said when she was standing on the other side of the counter. “Considering the state you were in last night.”
“The—oh, right.”
She leaned over the counter for a closer look. “You’re not hungover at all, are you?”
“Quick recovery.”
“Umhmm. Very quick. Now I’m wondering if you were even drunk in the first place.”
“Very. Could barely stand up on my own.”
“Which brings us to the question, why would you be pretending to be drunk?”
“Could barely see straight. Sick as a dog. Trust me on this one.”
But Miki wasn’t buying it. “You weren’t just trying to avoid me, were you?”
“Of course not.”
“Don’t lie now. That’d hurt my feelings worse than if I thought you didn’t fancy me.”
“I’m not…” Hunter began, but he couldn’t do it. This was Miki, after all. “It’s just that Donal…” He broke off again.
“Oh, Christ. What did he tell you this time?”
“It’s just…”
There didn’t seem to be an out—not and be honest at the same time. So he told her all of it. Miki was quiet for a long moment when he was done. She regarded him thoughtfully from under long lashes.
“You and Ellie, eh?” she said finally. “I could see it.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Not yet.”
Hunter sighed, then gave her a slow nod. “Not yet,” he conceded. “Maybe not at all. Who knows?”
“You’re thinking I’m mad at you,” she said.
Hunter shrugged.
“Don’t be. I won’t deny I was wondering a bit if things could go somewhere with us, but it was only wondering.” She smiled. “Idle conjecture. The fleeting stuff of dreams.”
“You are mad.”
“Only at Donal. What was he thinking? First this business of trying to set us up in the pub the other night, and now this. You know he and Ellie used to be an item?”
Hunter nodded.
“He was quite desperate for her, but she didn’t feel the same, which is why they broke up.”
“So what are you saying? That all of this was planned?”
“Well, not the business at the pub. How could he even know you’d be meeting Ellie last night?”
Hunter laid a hand gingerly against his kidney. “And the hard man—”
Miki cut him off. “Donal’s moody, and a tease, but he’s not that mean. He’d never put someone up to that. But what’s he driving at with this business of not telling Ellie?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“And what would the hard men be wanting with Ellie?”
“He didn’t tell me that either,” Hunter said.
“Well, it can’t be good. That lot aren’t exactly renowned for their charity and goodwill towards others.”
“Someone should tell Ellie.”
Miki nodded. “But first I’ll have a word with Donal. I’ll ask him when I get home tonight and see what he’s got to say for himself.”
“Sure,” Hunter said. “He must have had a good reason to want to keep it from her.”
“He’d better. Or I’ll give him such a rap across the head he won’t see straight for at least a week. Ellie doesn’t need this sort of thing, and neither do you.”
“I forget how fierce you can be,” Hunter said, laughing.
Miki gave him her most innocent look. “Why don’t you come along after we close up tonight and be reminded?”
“Dinner afterwards at the Dear Mouse?”
“Done.”
Miki took a swig of her coffee, then picked up the stack of inventory cards from beside the cash register and swaggered off to restock the items that had been sold yesterday.
“Stop smirking,” she told Hunter who was hard put to stop from laughing at her antics. “I’m trying to be a manly man,”
“It’s not working.”
She rolled up the sleeve of her T-shirt and flexed her muscles. “How can you say that? Just look at these biceps.”
Hunter dutifully admired them. “Donal will be shaking in his boots,” he assured her.
“If he’s involved in any of this, he’ll be doing more than shaking. And that’s a promise.”
They closed the store a half-hour early. Along with freebie promotional copies of new releases—or better yet, pre-releases—making a judgment call about closing early was one of the few perks of actually owning the store. It hadn’t been a hard one to make today. Except for a brief flurry of business in the midafternoon, they’d only had a half-dozen customers for the rest of the afternoon, and none at all for the last half-hour. Miki had wanted to hang a GONE FISHING sign in the door, just in case some diehard showed up at the door before the official closing time, but Hunter—using the power of ownership once again—vetoed that idea.
“Too frivolous,” he explained.