A Small-Town Reunion (11 page)

“I might have had something to do with that. And I feel awful about it,” Tess added in a rush when Addie stared at her. “I warned Dev to leave you alone.”

“You did? Oh.” Addie’s lips turned up in the beginning of a smile.

“What do you mean, ‘oh’?”

“When did you give him this warning?” Addie asked. “Before or after he signed up for my class?”

Tess settled back in her chair with a sigh. “Before. An entire week before.”

“Before Geneva’s party?”

Tess nodded.

“And yet he sought me out for a talk that day. And he signed himself up for four afternoons at my shop. Not to mention coming in on two other occasions to buy things for Rosie.” Addie’s smile turned wicked. “Guess you’re not as scary as you think.”

“I don’t know what to think.” Tess chewed on the side of her thumb, an old, nervous habit. “I know all this time you’re spending with Dev is making you happy. But remember—he’s got a lousy track record.”

Tess’s doorbell chimed.

“It’s Charlie!” Rosie raced through the room. “I’ll get it.”

“Let’s drop the talk about Dev.” Addie swung her legs off the sofa and stood. “This is Charlie’s night.”

“I survived,” Charlie announced as Rosie dragged her into the room. She draped a large garment bag over the back of Tess’s ladder-back chair. “Just barely. Mom wanted to stay another night and shop for shoes and lingerie—lingerie, ugh!—but we’ve got that big pour out near Fern River tomorrow, and we’re short one driver.”

“Got to keep your priorities straight.” Addie ran a hand down the bag, savoring the anticipation.

Charlie and Rosie both grabbed for the zipper.

“Oh, no you don’t.” Tess scrambled from her chair to snatch the bag from their prying fingers. “In my room. Put this on and then come out here to show us.”

“Yes, please,” Addie said, cutting off Charlie’s protest before she could make it. “We want to see it on you.”

“I’ll help.” Rosie stood and tugged Charlie by the hand. “Come on.”

Addie carried her tea glass into Tess’s kitchen and rinsed it in the sink. She was tiring of all the concern
and advice, tiring of the entire situation. She wanted to enjoy her friends’ wedding plans without suspecting Charlie and Tess felt guilty because they each had something that Addie didn’t: a man.

She made her way back to Tess’s front room as Rosie peered around the corner. “Are you ready?” Rosie asked.

“Ready,” Tess told her. She grabbed Addie’s hand and gave it a hard squeeze as Charlie made her entrance. “Omigod.
Omigod
. Charlie—is that you?”

Charlie laughed and spun in a subtle cloud of soft-white satin and chiffon, as delicate and airy as a dandelion puff. “You’ve seen me in a dress before.”

“I’ve never seen you looking like a bride before.” Tess dropped Addie’s hand and clasped both of her own beneath her chin. “I love it. I absolutely adore it. Let me see the back again.”

While Tess crooned over Charlie’s dress, Addie stood apart, enjoying the scene, giddy with excitement. She was incredibly thrilled for her friends and delighted to share in moments like these. There may have been no search for a white dress or plans for cakes and flowers in her immediate future, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t reach out and seize a big helping of her own happiness.

And she swore to herself, as she hugged her friends, that she would find a way to do precisely that.

T
WO POKER GAMES IN
as many weeks didn’t exactly qualify as a tradition, Dev told himself as he shuffled and dealt the first hand Friday night. But the fact that Bud had just mentioned he’d cleared a Friday night date two weeks from this one sure felt like a dangerous pattern.

“Can’t make it.” Jack grinned. “Wedding rehearsal. With all the trimmings.”

“Bachelor-party poker could work.” Rusty chewed his wad of gum for a while and then signaled for another card. “Start later. Play longer. Drink more. Unless you’ve got other plans.”

Jack shook his head. “Sorry to disappoint y’all, but my only plans for that evening include dinner with the honored guests and a quiet drink with my best man.”

“Charlie’s brother, right?” Dev raised the betting another nickel. “I heard he’d moved to the city.”

Jack nodded. “Got into some fancy art school, and Tess fixed him up with a job at her mother’s gallery. He’s happy as a pig in slop.”

Rusty took the pot, and Jack dealt the next hand.

Quinn pulled his chirping cell phone from his jeans pocket and checked the number. “Hey there,” he said with a gooey smile that meant Tess was on the other end. “What’s up?”

The others scooped up their cards to examine their hands while Quinn listened patiently. “Tess wants to know if there’s a ladder in the house,” he said after a few seconds.

“At Chandler House?” Dev shrugged. How the hell would he know? “Why does she want a ladder?”

Quinn offered him the phone. “You want to ask her that?”

Dev lifted his hands in self-defense. “Never mind.”

“Tell her I’ll drop one off in the morning,” Jack said, “but it’ll have to be early. I want to get to the office by six.”

“You can drop it off on the front porch.” Dev reached beneath his T-shirt to scrub a hand over his belly. “No way in hell I’m going to be up and around at that time of day.”

“Tess says six’ll be fine,” Quinn said with a grin, “since that’s when she and Addie are planning on getting here to decorate.”

“She’s kidding, right?” Dev shoved away from the table and stalked to the kitchen for another beer.

“Tess says you can carry the ladder in when you meet her to open up the house.”

“Hell.” Dev lowered the bottle before he could take the first sip. “Why does she have to get started so early?”

Quinn offered him the phone again, and Dev waved it away.

“Women.” Rusty slumped in his chair, his jaw working furiously on his gum. “Why can’t they figure out a way to have a wedding shower without messing things up for us?”

“Us?” Dev scowled over his bottle. “I don’t see you
setting your alarm for the crack of dawn on a Saturday. Sorry,” he quickly added when the three construction workers stared at him.

“Guess I’ll be the only one sleeping in tomorrow.” Bud spread his cards on the table and scooped the chips toward his pile. “Winner all around.”

“Except you’ve got a wife telling you what to do with your weekend,” Rusty pointed out.

“You’ve got Quinn telling you what to do with most of yours,” Bud shot back.

“I don’t mind waking up to the alarm to find a beautiful woman beside me,” Jack said. “Bet Quinn here feels the same.”

Quinn slipped the phone back into his pocket. “Haven’t had enough of those experiences with the beautiful woman in my life to know for sure. Want to take Rosie for the night so I can test your theory?”

“Kids.” Rusty leaned his bony elbows on the table. “They sure can mess things up for a guy.”

“They’re okay.” Dev strolled back to the table and took his seat. “Rosie’s definitely in the okay category.”

“You volunteering for an overnight, Uncle Dev?” asked Quinn.

“I might consider it, later in the summer.” He thought it might be fun to rent some DVDs, pop some corn. Tess would owe him, big-time—that was worth one evening with Rosie.

Quinn’s phone chirped again. Rusty threw down his cards with a curse. “Bet the guys who play in the big game across town don’t put up with this crap.”

The movement around the table stilled, and Bud glared at Rusty. Quinn glanced at them both with a frown, stood and walked from the room, his phone to his ear.

“What big game?” Jack asked.

“High stakes.” Rusty shrugged—a jerky, dismissive movement—and picked up his cards to study them as if they held the answers to all life’s questions. “Don’t know much else.”

“Poker?” Dev asked. He waited for Bud to meet his gaze. “Here in the Cove?”

“A rumor. That’s all it is. If there had been a game like that, it ended a long time ago.” Bud threw down his cards and headed toward the kitchen. “Anyone else want a beer?”

Dev won most of the pots that evening, his luck as good as ever. Luck had always been on his side, it seemed. Unlike his father, who had been unlucky in love and unlucky with his business investments.

Maybe his father had been unlucky at play, too. Maybe there was another explanation for the curious holes in the Chandler profits, for the sizable checks Addie’s mother had written out to “Cash” and handed over to Jonah. For the missing sum of sixty-two thousand dollars that had nearly landed her in jail for embezzlement.

Gambling debts.

T
HE
S
HANTYMAN HADN’T CHANGED
much over the years. Dev recognized the bass beat of an old tune thumping from the same domed jukebox in the corner. The same black-framed photos on the dark plank walls, the old billiard table angled across one corner, the familiar tacky feel of the floor beneath his feet. Looked like the typical Sunday-night patrons at the bar—a couple of off-season fishermen hunched over their brews and staring glassy-eyed at a closed-captioned baseball game rerun.

Johnnie Murphy was still tending bar here, too. He
leaned on the counter, close enough to his customers to catch an order but far enough away to avoid any conversation that might start up between innings. Johnnie wasn’t into idle chat. Why he’d chosen employment in a pub was one of life’s mysteries.

“Hey, Dev.” Johnnie nodded as Dev took a stool down at his end, far from the sports fans. “Heard you were back.”

“Yeah.” Dev gave his order and watched Johnnie pour a finger of whiskey into a thick glass. “Pretty quiet around here.”

“Summer’s always slow. Students on vacation, locals at their summer cabins.”

“Never could figure out the appeal of a summer cabin.” Dev spun his glass on the counter. “Makes you feel obligated to take the same vacation, over and over. You got one?” he asked.

“A cabin? Would I be here if I did?” Johnnie trudged off to check on his other customers. It was a tough choice between tolerating aimless sports chatter and having to make small talk, but in the end the bartender drifted back Dev’s way.

“Got a friendly poker game going up at my place the past couple of weeks,” Dev said. “Nickel bets,” he added when Johnnie didn’t respond. “Nothing to give the women back home anything to worry about.”

Johnnie gave him a bland stare.

Dev sipped his drink. “One of the guys said he’d heard a rumor about some high-stakes card games around the Cove.”

Johnnie lowered his gaze and rubbed at an invisible spot with his clean white cloth. “Might have heard the same rumor.”

Dev took another sip and waited.

“Couple of big-shot lumbermen had a regular game going in a suite at the Cove Redwood Inn.” Johnnie’s gaze flicked up to meet Dev’s for a second. “But that was a few years back.”

“Back when my dad was still alive?”

“Yeah. Back then.”

At least nine years ago. “Nothing since?”

Johnnie flipped the cloth over his shoulder, placed his palms against the edge of the counter and leaned toward Dev. The bartender’s expression was less welcoming than usual. “You thinking I might know how to hook you up with something like that?”

“No.”

“Good.” Johnnie stalked off to watch the silent game on the screen above the bar.

Dev wasn’t all that sure the bartender would return to this end of the counter any time soon. He sat and stared at the bottles clogging the shelves around the mirror. Probably the same bottles that had been there for years, too.

He shoved his drink aside and let his mind wander through the memories this place had jogged loose. Challenging Bud to a game of pool to see which one of them was going to run a stolen crab pot up Mrs. Stelzer’s flagpole. Dancing oh-so-slow on this sticky floor, his hand spread over Shelley Terzian’s soft butt while he tried to figure out the logistics of sex in a sports car.

The tune in the jukebox changed to one he’d heard the night he’d watched geeky Alan Schwartz lead Addie onto the floor of the high school gym for her first homecoming dance. She’d been so pretty that night, all dolled up in her strapless pink dress, her long
hair pinned up in the kind of tangle that made a guy want to release it. Dev’s date had fumed on the sidelines and then stomped off to the ladies’ room when he’d leaned against the wall to watch the dance instead of taking to the floor, too.

He should tell Addie about his research, tell her what he’d discovered so far about her mother and his father. He was beginning to feel guilty about keeping this from her, worried how she’d react if she found out what he’d been up to.

Tomorrow. He’d tell her tomorrow. If he got a chance. And the timing was right. If she—

Coward.

He glanced at Johnnie, who was still pretending an interest in the game. Eventually the bartender would be forced to head back Dev’s way, if only to kick him out the door at closing time.

Dev took one last sip, barely wetting his lips. He hadn’t come in to drink, and he didn’t want the rest of the whiskey. He’d wanted to find out whether his father had enjoyed the occasional poker game, too. Johnnie might not have answered all of his questions or revealed the names of the men involved, but he’d confirmed Rusty’s rumor.

And there were only two big-shot lumbermen who’d been friends of Jonah Chandler.

F
IVE MINUTES AFTER
Addie had slipped into her apartment on Monday to nuke some leftover pizza for a late-afternoon snack, the bell rang above her door. She dashed back into her shop to find Dev standing near the entry and holding two cones from the ice-cream parlor down the street.

He nodded at one of the cones. “Double fudge ripple.”

He’d remembered her favorite. Ridiculously pleased, she crossed the shop, but he lifted the cone out of reach before she could take it.

“Not so fast,” he said. “These are outside cones. The ice cream loses its flavor indoors.”

“I have to work.”

“That’s all you ever do. Work, work, work.”

“Bills, bills, bills,” she answered.

“I’ll make it up to you.” He took a slow, sensual taste of the other cone, the expression in his eyes hot enough to melt the ice cream.

She swallowed. “How will you do that?”

“I’m working on it. I can be productive, too.”

He stepped outside, and since he’d taken her double fudge ripple with him, she had no choice but to follow. She flipped her sign to Closed, locked her door and collected her cone.

He took her hand and led her on a casual stroll down Cove Street, as if they were two tourists window-shopping their way toward the waterfront. “When was the last time you left your shop?” he asked.

“On Saturday. For Charlie’s wedding shower.” She licked her ice cream and enjoyed the sensations of coolness inching down her throat and sunshine warming her skin. And his strong fingers laced through hers. Gulls glided overhead, screaming abuse at a fisherman dumping his bait in the bay.

It should be a simple, natural thing to hold a man’s hand on a walk like this, but this was Dev’s hand. There had never been anything simple about being with Dev, and nothing natural about their relationship.

“Not yesterday?” he asked.

“There wasn’t any need. I’ve got food in the fridge and plenty of work to keep me busy.”

“It was beautiful yesterday.”

“It’s beautiful today.” She squeezed his hand, delighted with the mild weather and the unexpected treat, with the considerate company and the blissful contentment. “Thank you for reminding me to notice.”

“You’ve got to get out more.”

“I’m out now.”

“So you are.” He grinned at her, and then his step slowed and his smile faded. He seemed to have something on his mind, as though he were about to say—or do—something important. Something very serious. She slowed, too, wondering what would come next.

He stopped and faced her as she bit into a ribbon of gooey fudge, and he stared at her mouth as she licked a bit of ice cream from her lip.

Would he kiss her today? Was that why he’d come? Would he taste of butter pecan and salted air? Would he whisper her name again and make her melt against him?

“Addie,” he said as he leaned closer.

“Yes?”

He hesistated. Straightened.

“How are the windows coming?”

Geneva’s windows. He’d come to check on her progress, not to kiss her. “Fine.”

“Not keeping you from enjoying life and getting out once in a while, I hope.”

“No.” She tossed the remains of the cone to the complaining gulls. “But I’d better get back.”

“I made a solid start on my story today.” He told her
about the characters, gesturing with his cone and with their joined hands as they started back toward her shop. She waited for him to release his grip on her, but he never did. He’d never touched her for so long before today.

She should be grateful for that, she told herself. It was a start. What that start was, she had no idea. Nothing simple, that was for sure.

Dev stopped on the corner one block from her shop. “Is that Lena?”

Addie watched her mother get out of her car and head toward A Slice of Light. Childish panic tugged her hand from Dev’s. “Yes.”

“Looks like she’s waiting for you.” He slipped his hands into his pockets. “Go ahead.”

“Dev, I—”

“It’s all right. ” He backed toward the curb. “Thanks for the walk.”

“Thanks for the ice cream.”

She stood in place until he’d ducked around Mona’s coffeeshop, and then she hurried up the street. “Mom. What a nice surprise.”