Live (The Burnside Series): The Burnside Series by Mary Ann Rivers

is one of the best things to happen to you. It’s not your job to check on these people all the time.”
    “I just wish they would check on themselves.”
    “Before they wreck themselves, I get it.” Lacey stretched out her legs.
    Sam and PJ came over and gently woke Sarah up, helped her limp to the door. Des and Lacey followed, turning out lights and grabbing Sarah’s bag.
    As quickly as her date anticipation had been doused when Sarah called, it smoldered back to life, low and hot, when she saw Sarah safely into Sam’s car.
    She chased the opposing cold guilt with a new, small memory—touched her neck where she felt that memory. She pulled the paper sack map from her front pocket, where she’d been keeping it and leaned against POS Limo to look at it again.
    In the little outline of the couple, the man and woman were holding hands. She just didn’t think his pencil could say something that wasn’t true.

Chapter Nine
    Hefin sat on the stoop of his condo, waiting for Des.
    She was late, and it bothered him a bit more than it should. The weather was fine, and he hadn’t even checked it though he should done before asking her to the batting cages. He wondered if she’d stand him up.
    The idea should bother him less than it did.
    He didn’t even have her number, which made their arrangement seem rather tenuous, somehow. Looking at the fluff of clouds race in all the clear blueness, he could almost believe he had imagined her. The sparks in her hair. Freckles like ochre flicked onto canvas from a fan brush.
    He watched a navy blue limousine turn carefully into the loop in front of his condos and wondered which of his neighbors had hired it. He hoped that whoever it was hadn’t paid too much because the beast had seen better days—it was boxy, low-slung, and the door edges and joins were outlined in rust. It rolled carefully to a stop and the driver’s window, dark with bubbling and peeling privacy film, squeaked its way slowly down.
    He somehow knew it would be her, and it was, this unlikely woman leaning on her arm hooked out the window of the world’s unlikeliest vehicle. He would have liked to play it cool, to lean back on the stoop and raise an eyebrow, cross his feet at the ankles.
    Instead, he was grinning like a child, stumbling off the last step in his eagerness to get to her. Of course, at the end of the day, he was just a small-village Welsh boy good at math and filling notebooks with drawings. Not cool at all.
    “Burnside’s Fine Limousine Service at your service, mister.”
    He laughed, and the way she lit up made him realize that his laugh was giving her something she wanted. “You drive a limousine?”
    For the first time, he noticed the chauffeur’s cap she was wearing. She adjusted it so it sat perfectly over her ears and straightened an imaginary tie. “Family business.”
    “Can I get in?”
    “Wait, let me do this right.” She got out and walked around to the passenger’s door in front, holding it opening with a little flourish. “Your steed. I’d set you up in theback, but that seems a little … weird.”
    He walked around and stood in front of her. Couldn’t help tapping up the visor on her cap, just to touch something connected to her. “Even though I’ve never ridden in a limousine, I think I’d rather ride up here with you.”
    One of those streaks of pink raced up from the neck of her T-shirt and over her jaw. She rolled her eyes. Trying to be cool, too. She opened the door wider so he could get in, but then stopped. “Hey, Hefin?”
    “Yeah.” He looked back at her. She was holding the door tight, whitening her knuckles. The sun washed right across her face and he realized her eyelids were a bit puffy, her fair skin shadowed blue above her cheeks.
    “You still want to do this? Hang out with me?”
    “How was your morning?” He was going entirely by feel here, and it felt like forcing a skew through a block of ebony. He wasn’t sure he had the muscle. She sighed,