A Small-Town Reunion (16 page)

A matching case soon appeared, and he collected that, too. “Is this all?” he asked.

“Yes.” She handed him her tote, and he stacked it on a case and looped the strap around the handle. “I also shipped a few things home,” she said.

“I knew there’d be more.” He gently nudged her with his elbow. “I know how much you like to shop.”

“You seem to enjoy the things I buy for you.”

“Not complaining,” he said with a grin, “just saying.”

He led the way to her car, which he’d parked near the exit, and opened her door before loading her things in the trunk.

“I heard you’ve developed an interest in stained glass,” Geneva said after he’d pulled out on the highway.

“Should have kept that interest strictly academic.” He shook his head. “I am, according to Rosie, a ‘total loser’ at the craft.”

“Does Addie share her opinion?”

“I’m sure she does. But she’s too smart to tell a prospective client that he has no business handling the stuff.”

“You seem to admire her a great deal,” Geneva said.

“Addie?”

“You know very well who we were discussing.”

“You were discussing her.” Dev struggled to keep a grin off his face. It wasn’t often he got the upper hand in a battle of wits with his grandmother. “I was talking about craft classes.”

Geneva’s eyes narrowed as she stared at him, and he could practically hear the wheels turning in her devious mind. He knew he’d soften and tell her what she wanted to hear. In part, because his grandmother had given him one of the many shoves he’d needed to get him to this place: madly, passionately, completely in love with a woman who’d always been here, in his true home, waiting for him as he traveled the world looking for her.

“Okay, then,” he said at last. “We can talk about Addie. I’ll start by pointing out that the last thing you
said to me before you left—after all your fussing about walking your dogs, and collecting the newspapers and keeping the kitchen clean—was that you wanted me to realize I’m not seventeen anymore.”

He gave his grandmother a smile filled with everything that was in his heart. “I’m happy to report that I followed all your instructions. To the letter.”

“I’m happy to hear it. And Addie?”

“Is my date to the anniversary dance at The Breakers tomorrow night.”

“Well.” Geneva relaxed against her seat, her posture declaring mission accomplished. “That PDA was a nice welcome home. But this news is even better.”

She rested a hand on his arm, a personal display of affection. “Welcome home to you, too, Dev.”

L
OCKING HER SHOP DOOR
shortly after closing on Friday night, Addie fumbled as she tried to pull her ringing cell phone from her purse. “Yes?”

“Charlie’s here,” Tess said. “Are you on your way?”

“As soon as I get off this phone and into my truck.”

“Relax. We’ve got everything under control.”

Which is why Addie had called her friends in a panic that morning. She needed a dress—heck, she needed everything. Shoes, jewelry, a handbag, perfume, makeup. A makeover, she thought as she climbed into her truck and caught a glimpse of her reflection in her rearview mirror.

She took another minute to stare. The bags beneath her eyes couldn’t disguise their cat-that-got-the-cream shine. Tess and Charlie would take one look at her face and know exactly what had happened the night before.

No way, Addie laughed as she backed out of her
alley parking space, giddy with the memories of what she’d shared with Dev throughout the night. Her friends had great imaginations, but they’d never come close. Addie’s own fantasies hadn’t come close.

She drove east, toward the newer subdivisions along the river. An evening breeze ruffled the delicate foliage of the redwoods hanging over the winding road, and the charcoal scent of a backyard barbecue drifted through her open window.

At this time tomorrow night, she’d be out on a date with Dev Chandler. At The Breakers Golf and Country Club.

“I don’t believe it,” she said and laughed out loud. It was like prom, for adults. Competitive dressing, intense scrutiny of every detail. She’d need to make an appointment for a pedicure—and then find the time to keep it.

Tess opened her front door before Addie had a chance to lift the silly tortoise-shaped knocker. “We’ve already decided what you should wear,” she said as she yanked Addie inside. “All we need from you is your official okay.”

Her friend’s announcement didn’t do anything to lower Addie’s stress level. “I don’t have a say in this?” she asked as Tess dragged her down the hall to her bright blue bedroom.

“About the dress?” Tess paused in the doorway. “Or about how you’re going to pay us back?”

Addie frowned as she moved past Tess and entered the room. “I asked if I could borrow a dress. I didn’t ask you to…
oh.
” She staggered to a stop and stared at the cloudlike dream of a dress spread over Tess’s quilted spread. “Oh, my.”

“Isn’t it perfect?” Charlie ran a hand along the
frothy hem. Thin, sparkling straps supported a silver-beaded bodice cinched with a softly pleated chiffon sash. A floaty skirt of the same whispery fabric fell in darker, ruffling layers like curling smoke.

Addie shook her head. “I can’t possibly afford this.”

“We can,” Charlie said.

“But I can’t pay you back.”

“That’s what you think.” Tess lifted the dress and held it against Addie. “Gorgeous. I knew it would be. Perfect for the club and for the occasion. Perfect with your coloring.”

“It is perfect. Thank you. Oh, I love it.” Addie spread her hands over her midsection to hold the fabulous outift against her faded cotton camp shirt. “But a true friend wouldn’t take advantage of my desperation.”

“Girlfriend, you don’t know what true desperation is.” Tess held one of the sparkly straps against Addie’s shoulder, her head cocked to one side. “You owe me one slumber-party overnight chaperoning Rosie and the friend of her choice.”

Addie caught a glimpse of her reflection in Tess’s mirror. “Deal.”

“I’m thinking we’ll do your eyes in smudgy grey, make them look even bigger than they are.” Tess spread the dress over her bed again and pulled a handful of brushes and tubes from a quilted satin sack. “Glossy lips. Mauve, maybe. Something translucent on your nails.”

Addie shoved her hands behind her back. “Not my hands.”

“You’ve got to have a manicure. And a pedicure,” Tess added, glancing at Addie’s toes. “You’ll need
some strappy shoes, too. Heels would be best, but you don’t want to break an ankle dancing.”

“I don’t have any strappy shoes.”

“That’s tomorrow’s chore. Along with the appointment at the salon.”

Addie turned to the one woman she knew would understand. “
Charlie.
”

“Don’t ask me for help,” Charlie warned. “She’s already scheduled a torture session for me before my wedding.”

“And what do I owe you for your share in this?” Addie asked Charlie.

“I’ll think of something.”

“I can’t agree to those terms.” Addie ran a finger along one of the ripply chiffon layers. “But this dress…”

“Try it on.” Tess passed it to Addie. “I want to see it on you. All that blond hair tumbling down in the back—”

“I thought you said she’d have to wear it up.” Charlie frowned. “I thought you said—”

“I said a lot of things. I’m allowed to change my mind. First, the dress.” Tess’s lips curled up in one of her witchy smiles. “Then we’ll argue about the rest.”

D
EV CARRIED A PLATE
heaped with Julia’s pancakes into the breakfast room at Chandler House shortly after seven on Saturday morning. He placed a hand on Geneva’s shoulder, gave her a quick kiss on her cheek and slipped into the seat across from hers.

“I’m speechless.” Geneva stared as he poured himself a cup of coffee. “Absolutely speechless.”

He spread a napkin in his lap and grinned. He hadn’t put in a breakfast appearance since he’d graduated from high school. Setting his alarm for half-past dawn this morning had been worth seeing the delighted shock on her face. “You could start with ‘Good morning, Dev,’” he suggested.

“All right, then.” She lifted her coffee, sipped, set her cup aside. “Good morning, Dev.”

“Good morning, Grandmother.” He settled more comfortably in his chair, stretching his legs beneath the table. “How did you sleep?”

“Much better than I did while I was away.”

“That’s one of the best things about travel.” He poured warm syrup over his stack and cut the first wedge-shaped bite. “Coming home.”

“Yes, it is.” Geneva cocked her head to one side. “And did you sleep well, Dev?”

“I slept alone, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m not about to pry into your personal affairs, if that’s what you’re volunteering.” Geneva’s lips curved in a hopeful smile as she spooned a dab of marmalade onto a slice of toast. “Is it?”

“No.”

“I thought as much.” She lifted her fork and poked at her omelet. “Well, then. Out with it.”

He swallowed another mouthful of pancakes and took a sip of coffee to wash them down. “You never pressed charges against Lena Sutton.”

“No.”

The challenge on Geneva’s face made him reconsider his next question. He wanted answers this morning, not clever obstructions. “So she never got the chance to clear herself of any suspicion,” he said.

“I didn’t suspect her.” Geneva set her fork on her plate. “That should have been good enough.”

“But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.”

“She admitted to writing those checks.” Geneva lifted her cup and sipped again. “That was poor judgment on her part.”

“Dad was her employer,” Dev pointed out. “She’d just completed a grueling year of night-school classes, taken after long hours of daytime work. She’d landed a dream of a job—for the most influential businessman in town—and she probably didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize it. If she’d told her new boss she wasn’t going to give him what he wanted, he probably would have fired her, and then she’d be out of work without a reference. What was she supposed to do?”

“The honest thing.”

“Tell you what was going on?”

Geneva’s expression hardened. “She could have, yes.”

Dev shifted upright and forward. “Give me one good reason why she wouldn’t do that.”

“Why she wouldn’t?” His grandmother was obviously surprised by the way he’d phrased his question, but then her brows puckered as she thought of a response. “She might not have been completely certain there was anything wrong with what Jonah was asking her to do.”

“Do you buy that?”

Geneva hesitated, frowned. “No.”

“Okay. Let’s try another reason.”

“Must we?” She poked her cooling omelet with her fork. “I’d like to finish my meal without this interrogation.”

Dev shrugged and helped himself to another bite. They ate in silence for a few minutes, and then his grandmother brought her napkin to her lips, carefully folded it and laid it beside her plate. “Assuming she did think Jonah was doing something wrong,” she said, “perhaps Lena was trying to protect him.”

“From you?”

Geneva slowly nodded. “Perhaps.”

“Why?”

Geneva’s fingers pressed against the linen before she met Dev’s gaze. “Because she suspected I knew your father was a failure.”

“At business?”

“At everything.”

Dev considered ending it there. After her protest, Geneva hadn’t finished her meal. And in spite of her steely spined posture, he could see the signs of strain
around her mouth. “Let’s limit this to the problem of the missing money, shall we?”

“To Lena’s problem?”

“To my father’s.”

“And what problem,” Geneva said in a coldly precise tone, “are you referring to, exactly?”

“His gambling.”

Dev had been watching her closely for a tell, and he didn’t catch one. Not a twitch of her tightly pressed lips, not a deepening of the creases around her dark eyes, not a movement of her fingers on her napkin, not so much as a flicker of a lash.

Geneva was a woman in control of her emotions and appearance, but even she couldn’t be that rock-steady. She hadn’t known.

“What evidence do you have for that accusation?” she asked.

“I followed a hunch. Something Bud Soames mentioned at a poker game last week. It led me to his father, Win.”

“Winston Soames.”

“Yes.”

Geneva dragged in a deep breath. “A gambling debt?”

“Yes.”

“Not a failed business venture?”

“No. Although I discovered, while looking through his papers, that he wasn’t doing well with those ventures, either.”

“Oh, Jonah.” She closed her eyes, and Dev wondered if she grieved again. “Did Lena know?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.” He stood and paced to the window,
staring sightlessly at the limestone terrace brightened with flowers bursting from oversize concrete urns. “Which brings me back to an earlier question. Whether she knew or not, why didn’t she come to you with her concerns? I thought you’d been close.”

“We were. She may have been my housekeeper, but we were friends. Good friends. And I loved…” love her daughter as if she were my own.”

“And yet you sent me to her.” He turned to face his grandmother. “After all those years of warning me off, you practically threw me at Addie with that crazy window repair business and the lecture at the airport.”

“Guilty as charged.” Geneva picked up her coffee, sipped, grimaced, set it down.

“Why now?” Dev asked.

“I’ve thought for some time that you were ready to settle down and form a family of your own. I hoped you wouldn’t hurt Addie this summer, and I took that chance. Besides, when I discovered she’d become involved with that nice young man, that ballplayer, and—”

Geneva smoothed her hand across her napkin with a sigh. “I’m so tired of waiting for my grandchildren to give me great-grandchildren. I can’t wait forever.”

“Back to Lena.” Dev leaned against the window and crossed his arms, determined to see this through. “Why do you think she didn’t come forward, earlier, with what she knew? Why didn’t she put up a stronger defense?”

“I think she may have been trying to protect Jonah’s reputation.”

“Why would she do that, at the risk of losing her own?”

“She was in love with him.”

Dev shut his eyes for a second. So many pieces fell into place with another of those silent clicks. “And yet he used her. Betrayed her. Set her up. No wonder she hates the Chandlers.”

“Not all of us, surely.”

Dev chuffed out a short laugh and shoved away from the window. “Don’t kid yourself.”

“I didn’t press charges.”

“If you had, she might have been able to clear her name.”

“That’s difficult to do in such a small town.”

“No kidding.” Dev slowly drew in a deep breath and blew it out. “Have you ever tried to make amends?”

“I wasn’t the one writing those checks.”

“So, you haven’t forgiven her.”

He was shocked to his core to see his grandmother’s features collapse like softened wax and her lower lip quiver. The lapse in control lasted only a second, and then she raised her chin. “I want to make this right,” she said.

“Then help me piece together the rest of this puzzle. Help me find out whether Lena wrote those checks for my father so that he could cover his gambling debts.”

“All right.” She fingered the edge of her napkin. “I’ll talk to Winston.”

“That’s not all, I’m afraid.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. You’re going to have to grovel.”

“I’ll do it for you.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

His grandmother rallied with a smug smile. “If you continue seeing Addie, you’ll reach that point soon enough.”

“I’ve been told you suggested Jack Maguire start his
own business, and that perhaps Carnelian Cove might be a good location.” Dev walked her and gripped the back of her chair. “And that you hired Quinn to be the contractor on Tess’s project.” He leaned down, his face close to her ear. “I don’t think that even you could arrange for an earthquake to do your bidding, but I wonder if you took advantage of a natural disaster to use as a cover for the damage to those windows.”

“That statue may have had a bit of assistance smashing into the glass.”

Dev groaned and dropped into the chair beside her.
“Grandmother.”

“I’m an excellent matchmaker, if I do say so myself.”

He shook his head. “You’re as much of a gambler as my father was.”

“I’m better.” She raised one eyebrow. “And I play for higher stakes.”

D
EV PULLED TO THE CURB
in front of A Slice of Light a few minutes ahead of schedule on Saturday night. He glanced in the mirror to check his tie and wondered whether he’d appear too eager if he knocked on Addie’s door five minutes early. And then he figured he’d look like a fool if she saw him sitting here waiting, so he climbed out, grabbed his package and strolled to the shop door.

Everything mattered a great deal tonight. Though Addie wasn’t yet aware of it, he was courting her. Officially.

There was something else Addie wasn’t yet aware of. His steps slowed. When she found out he was investigating the mystery behind her mother’s embezzle
ment scandal, she might put a stop to his courting before he had a chance to propose.

The scents of salt-washed docks and hot waffle cones sailed in from the bay, and the bass backbeat from a passing car’s sound system thumped down the street. It all tangled with Dev’s memories of summer evenings spent prowling the Cove’s neighborhoods, a crowd of friends crammed into his rumbling muscle car. They may not have gone looking for trouble, but they’d found it often enough to keep the adults in their lives threatening curfews and doling out punishments.

The sign in Addie’s shop window told him she’d closed early, and the knob he turned was locked. He cupped a hand against the glass and peered inside to see a single light glowing over the rear work area. The door to her apartment hung open, a dark gash in that long, curtained glass wall.

He lifted a hand, wondering if she’d hear his knock, and then he noticed a button set in the wall beside the lock. He pressed that and waited, shoving a hand in a pocket as more memories ghosted through his mind. Waiting like this in front of Sheila Gardner’s front door on prom night, his tuxedo shoes pinching one toe. Cruising down the highway, Cyndi Mattison’s floral perfume competing with the pine scent of his car deodorizer.

Addie opened her door and peered through the narrow crack. “Hi, Dev.”

“Sorry, I’m early. I know that’s the last thing a woman wants when she’s getting ready for an evening.”

“It’s okay.” She stepped back and beckoned him inside. “I’m nearly finished.”

She shut and locked her door behind him. And when
she turned to face him, he froze, as tongue-tied as he’d been on his first date.

Smoke and mirrors, he thought as his eyes traveled over her. A mirage—it had to be. This woman wasn’t the Addie he knew. And yet that was her hair caught up in twisting loops with sparkling pins, making his hands itch to pull them free and wrap those curls around his fingers. And those were her eyes, looking wider and bluer than ever and ringed with sooty, sexy smudges. And those were her lips, slicked with something that made them look as though she’d just run her tongue over them. And her bare shoulders and tiny waist, outlined in silver that glinted like stars. And her slender legs emerging beneath layers of gray froth, and oh, God, her bare feet. And her toes, with something shimmery on the nails. He made a mental note to pay special attention to those toes later, after the dance.

“Is that for me?” she asked, pointing to the tissue-wrapped bouquet he held at his side.

He tore his gaze from her toes and cleared his throat, extending the package toward her. “I brought you flowers. I thought you’d rather have them in a vase instead of on your wrist.”

She looked puzzled for a moment, and then her cheeks dimpled as she gave him a dazzling smile. “A corsage. You didn’t need to…I mean, thank you for the thought, but you—”

They stood, staring at each other, for several strange, awkward seconds while he doubted the wisdom of this date. He longed to sweep her into his arms and carry her into the special haven behind her bedroom screen, to keep her to himself. And then she
took the flowers from his hand, and he relaxed enough to breathe properly.

“Come on back,” she said. “I’ll put these in water and get my shoes, and then we can go.”

He followed her into her apartment and prowled through the front room while she filled a thick white pitcher with water. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you the other night how much I like your things.” He ran a hand along the edge of a scarred oak icebox. “They suit you.”

“Most of them are thrift-shop finds.” She placed the pitcher in the center of her table and fussed over one of the buds. “So they mostly coordinate with my decorating budget.”

“Everything’s unique.” He stared at her legs as she dropped onto her love seat to slip on silvery sandals. “Like your windows.”

She stood and brushed a hand over her skirt. “You’re full of compliments tonight.”

“You deserve them. Tonight.”

“I suppose it’s your turn.” She tilted her head to one side. “I suppose I should tell you I like the scent of your aftershave.”

“Yes, I think you should.” He closed the distance between them. “Anything else?”

“I like your tie.”

“I picked it out myself.”

She looked up at him, smiling. “Did you pick out your shirt, too?”

“No. The salesman did that. He said it matched the tie.”

“Yes, it does.”