Page 63 of When Morning Comes Around

Her dad chuckled. “I’ll keep you posted, Josh.”

“Don’t mind me,” said Sadie. “I’m just standing here, in the middle of it, while you talk about me.”

“It’s not like that, Mom, and you know it.”

“I do, and I appreciate the intention, but don’t push too far. Either of you,” she added with a pointed look at her dad.

He just grinned. “We’d better get going, Josh.”

“Yeah, me too. It’s good to talk to you, Grandpa. I’ll call again soon.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

“Thanks for calling,” said Sadie.

“Yeah. I’m going to keep nagging you, you know.”

“I know, but you won’t need to. I’ll get on it on Monday, and I’ll call you to let you know how it goes.”

“Thanks. Love you, Mom. Love you, too, Grandpa.”

“Love you,” her dad called.

“Love you.” Sadie ended the call.

Her dad raised his eyebrows. “Do I need to hound you about it?”

“Absolutely not.”

He chuckled. “Okay then. I’ll give you a chance to get on it yourself. But we both know that if you don’t…”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I thought you wanted to get out into the garden center.”

He grinned and started making his way toward the front door. “You know I do. You were the one who held me up with your phone call.”

She had to laugh as she hurried past him to get the door.

“I’m glad you’re home, honey bun.”

She leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Yeah, me too.”

~ ~ ~

Dom grinned at Sadie as they watched the couple that they’d been helping, push their cart out to their car.

She grinned back. “You’re some salesman!”

He shrugged. “I didn’t mean to take over, it was just when he talked about building a retaining wall, I knew exactly what he meant. And I knew the kind of pavers that she was talking about – I looked at them when I first came in. So, it was easy to show them where they were and…” He shrugged again. “Things just kind of went from there.”

“You were amazing! You’ll have to watch yourself, though. Dad will want to hire you when he hears how well you’ve done today.”

He checked his watch. “Do you want to go and check on him?”

Harvey had hung around the garden center and clearly enjoyed himself this morning, but by early afternoon, Sadie had insisted that he should go back to the house and rest. He’d grumbled about it, and Dom had played along with him, but it had been obvious that he was worn out.

Sadie checked her own watch. “It’s almost time to close up. The last time I went in to see him, he told me to stop making a fuss.”

Dom chuckled. “Okay, we should probably wait then. What do you think – should we stick around with him this evening?”

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