A Small-Town Reunion (3 page)

Addie stared at Geneva’s back until the elderly woman stepped onto the marble foyer floor and disappeared around a corner. And then she shifted to face him, her expression completely shuttered, those wide, sapphire-blue eyes of hers devoid of the slightest hint of emotion or reaction as they settled on his.

And then, for just one second—for a slice of time as narrow and fragile and sharp as one of the slivers of glass—she let him in. And on that lovely face of hers—a face that had slipped through his memories and drifted through his dreams—he could read the evidence of one more thing that hadn’t changed with the passage of all the years. She’d hidden it well enough throughout the morning’s appointment, but in that instant he could see it in every line of her ramrod-straight posture and in every puff of the icy vapor that emanated from her frosty exterior: Addie Sutton’s deep and abiding contempt.

A
DDIE HAD LEARNED
a long time ago to surrender to her mother’s wishes when she didn’t have the energy, or time to spare, for a siege. So when Lena had called with a dinner invitation that afternoon, Addie had postponed plans with her friends and agreed to travel across town to the riverside apartment complex her mother managed in exchange for her rent. The rest of the bills got paid with the money she earned cleaning offices after hours.

Her mother had once dreamed of a house of her own, Addie recalled, as she parked her truck in a guest spot in the complex’s lot. A house with a yard for a swingset and a place where Addie could leave her toys and crayons strewn about if she chose. But Lena hadn’t possessed any special skills or education, and the housekeeping job at Chandler House came with room and board, and a welcome for her daughter.

After a time, Lena had begun night classes, studying to be a bookkeeper. She’d demonstrated a talent for spreadsheets, and when she’d graduated from the course during Addie’s sophomore year in high school, Geneva’s son Jonah, had given her a job in his office downtown. A good job with the area’s most important businessman. An opportunity to leave Chandler House, to renew her earlier dream of saving for a place of her own.

But that dream had died three years later, shortly before Addie’s graduation. Jonah’s car had gone off a winding cliffside road. And in the days that followed, Lena had discovered sixty-two thousand dollars was missing from the business account—a sum she’d been accused of embezzling.

She hadn’t been guilty; Geneva Chandler had
agreed, refusing to press charges. But the mystery of the missing funds had never been solved. And Lena had never again found employment as a bookkeeper, not after such a big scandal in such a small town.

Lena opened the ground-floor door and pulled Addie into a quick, tight hug. “I know you’re busy, and I know I’m being a pest, but I had to see for myself that you came through that quake all right.”

“I told you on the phone,” Addie said as she eased out of her mother’s arms, “everything’s fine.”

“You said some of your shop glass was broken.” Lena took the pink Bern’s Bakery box Addie handed her and carried it into her compact kitchen. “Did you file an insurance claim?”

“I found another way to replace the supplies.”

Addie took her usual spot at the tidy table set for two. Her mother had folded her faded cotton-print napkins into the foiled stained-glass rings Addie had made for a birthday present years ago. Addie ran a fingertip over one of the pretty bevels. “I went to Chandler House today.”

“Oh?”

Lena could pack a sky-high load of meaning into that one syllable. Tonight, disapproval underlined her stone-faced delivery.

Addie searched, as she so often did, for traces of herself in her mother’s features. When she was younger, Addie had imagined she could find her father in the differences. But she’d soon abandoned that game, once she’d figured out she’d probably never see the man. It seemed fitting to give up on him, since he’d never given her or her mother anything. No contact, no assistance. Lena had never told her daughter who he was—not so
much as his first name—and Addie had long ago ceased to care.

She could see her own saturated blue in her mother’s eyes and a bright hint of gold twining through the older woman’s darker hair. But Lena’s face was thinner, her cheeks less curvy and her jaw less sculptured. It was as though age and hard times and bitterness had worn her features.

Addie lowered her eyes, guilty over her unkind thoughts. “Two of the stained-glass windows were broken,” she stated. “Do you remember the set on the landing between the main floor and the bedroom floor?”

“The four seasons. Yes, I remember.” Lena ladled seafood chowder into a large bowl. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

“She’s hired me to fix them.”

“I suppose that means you’ll be spending a lot of time at the house.”

“As little as possible.” Addie pulled her napkin from its glass ring as Lena set the bowl of soup in front of her. “I’ve already had the windows removed and delivered to my shop.”

Lena took her own seat without comment.

“She sent a ‘hello’ for you,” Addie said.

“Who did?”

“Geneva.”

“Oh.”

Addie cut off a sigh and leaned forward, hoping her mother would raise her eyes to meet her gaze. “She asked how you were.”

Lena idly stirred her thick soup. “That was kind of her.”

“She’d be more than kind to you if you’d give her the chance.”

“I don’t want Geneva’s charity.” Lena lifted a basket of rolls and handed it to Addie. “Or her pity, or anything else she’d care to offer.”

“I was talking about friendship.”

“We were never friends.” Lena shredded one of the rolls on her plate. “We were friendly. There’s a difference.”

“I don’t think Geneva ever saw it that way.”

“She wasn’t your employer.”

“She is now.”

It wasn’t often that Addie disagreed with her mother. The silences that stretched through the tense times that followed their arguments weren’t worth the trouble. Jonah Chandler was dead; Geneva Chandler had become the focus of Lena’s bitterness and resentment.

Addie sought a new topic, but the only thing that came to mind wasn’t a subject she particularly cared to discuss. “Did you know Dev was back?”

“No.” Lena paused with a spoonful of soup near her mouth. “And even if I had known, it doesn’t matter,” she said with a meaningful glance.

Addie was tempted to confess that it did matter. He still had an effect on her that she couldn’t control. But she knew her outburst would be followed by a lecture instead of sympathy. Lena had a lecture for every situation concerning the Cove’s most influential family.

And all those lectures ended with one essential piece of advice: never get involved with a Chandler.

A
DDIE PULLED INTO
Charlie’s drive on Friday evening and parked behind Tess’s sporty car. She jumped from her truck, exercised her temper by slamming the door and marched along the short walk to the front porch.

“Hi, Addie.” Rosie Quinn, the daughter of Tess’s fiancé, held one end of a chew rope. Charlie’s naughty black Labrador retriever, Hardy, growled and tugged at the other end.

“Hi, Rosie. Staying for dinner?”

“Yep. Tess said we could have a girls’ night.” Rosie didn’t bother to hide her delight at being included. “She brought a wedding video.”

“Does Charlie know?”

“Not yet.” Rosie worked the rope loose and tossed it across the yard for Hardy to chase. “Tess said we’d get some wine into her before we tie her to her sofa and make her watch.”

Addie stepped up to the trim front porch and whacked the iron knocker hard against its panel on the Craftsmen-era door. Jack Maguire, Charlie’s handsome fiancé, swung the door open. “Hey, Addie,” he said with his Carolina drawl and megawatt smile. “Glad to see you’re all in one piece.”

It was hard to resist Jack’s grin, especially when it
deepened those grooves on either side of his mouth. His dark blond hair was still damp from a recent shower, and he smelled of a spicy aftershave. His dark blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he looked her up and down, making a show of checking for earthquake damage.

Addie dredged up a strained smile of her own. “Thanks. I’m fine.”

“If you say so.” He stepped aside to let her in. “Charlie’s back in the kitchen, watching Tess spoil a perfectly good rock cod with a mess of fancy fixings.”

He trailed her through the house, and she noted his influence in the bright new paint on the wall behind Charlie’s dull brown sofa and the glossy new finish on her secondhand dining-room table.

Addie halted in the kitchen doorway, her hands on her hips, and her eyes narrowed to slits as she glared at her so-called friends. “Why didn’t one of you warn me Dev Chandler was back in town?”

“Because the earthquake sort of knocked that little detail from my mind.” Tess, seated at the kitchen table, sliced through a lemon and picked out a seed. “And because I didn’t think it was that big a deal.”

“Well, it’s not,” Addie said.

“Could have fooled me.” Charlie rinsed her hands at the farmhouse sink. Her thick, curly hair had been tamed in a braid hanging between her shoulders, but coppery tendrils escaped to twist and curl at her temples and nape. “Especially since you’re standing there looking like you can’t decide whether to kill us or yourself.”

Addie tossed up her hands as she moved into the kitchen. “Okay, so I’m upset. Mostly I’m upset that I’m upset.”

And that was the one basic fact at the heart of her personal storm: she shouldn’t care whether or not Dev Chandler had squandered his gifts and wasted all the advantages he’d been handed. “What’s he doing here, anyway?”

“Visiting our grandmother is a likely guess,” Tess said, “considering he’s staying in her guest house.”

“And?”

“And what?” Tess set the knife aside and arranged lemon slices over a thick, pale fillet in a baking dish.

“And what other little details might have gotten rattled loose and lost in the excitement over the natural disaster this week?” Addie asked.

Tess shot her a sympathetic glance. “It appears he’s planning on staying there for a while. Maybe for another month. Or two.”

“Great.” Addie threw her arms wide, narrowly missing clipping Jack’s jaw as she paced the kitchen. “Wonderful. Fantastic. I’ll have plenty of opportunities to run into him.”

“And plenty of time to quit being so upset.” Charlie dried her hands and studied Addie with cool gray eyes. “I thought you were over him.”

“I am. But it’s a heck of a lot easier being over him when he’s living somewhere else.”

“You have a thing for Dev Chandler?” Jack asked.

“No,”
Addie, Charlie and Tess answered in unison.

Tess shoved a platter of chips and salsa to the edge of the table. “So. You’re not actually over him. Not really.”

“The teensiest of technicalities.” Addie plucked one of the chips from the platter and bit into it. “One of several, including the fact that there was never anything to be over in the first place.”

Jack pulled a jacket from a rack near the rear patio door and cautiously circled Addie to brush a quick kiss across Charlie’s cheek. He headed for the dining room.

“Where are you off to tonight?” asked Tess.

Jack froze. Something suspicious crept along the edges of his smile. “Out.”

“Interesting,” Tess said. She glanced at Charlie. “Where, precisely, is this ‘out’ Jack is headed to?”

“Don’t be so nosy.” Charlie grabbed a bottle of Chardonnay from a cupboard. “It’s just a friendly poker game. Quinn invited him.”

“Now I’m twice as nosy.” Tess narrowed her eyes. “Quinn said exactly the same thing when I asked him where he was going tonight. ‘Out.’ He told me Jack had invited him.”

Addie, Charlie and Tess stared at Jack.

He shrugged into his jacket. “We kind of invited each other. At the same time. When the subject came up.”

“How did this subject come up, I wonder?” Tess asked.

“And where is this poker game taking place?” Charlie asked.

“At Chandler House.”

“Dev,”
Addie said.

Jack slid his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, he’ll be there, too.”

“Convenient.” Tess drummed her nails on the table. “Considering the game’s at his place.”

“This was all his idea, wasn’t it?” Addie asked.

“It doesn’t matter whose idea it was.” Charlie filled a goblet with the wine. “They get a guys’ night out. We get a girls’ night in. Works for me.”

Addie pulled out a chair, dropped into it and reached for more chips. Terrific. Poker games with her friends’ fiancés. Poker games would lead to barbecues, and those would lead to who knew what. An ever-expanding network of people who’d multiply the reasons and occasions for her to run into Dev throughout the long summer months.

“Here,” Charlie said, handing Addie the glass of Chardonnay. “You look like you could use this.”

D
EV POPPED THE TOP
on a beer Friday night and passed it to his old pal Bud Soames. Hard to picture Bud with thinning hair, a job at a bank, a house undergoing remodeling, a wife in real estate and a kid in elementary school. Nearly made Dev feel like an underachiever.

Each time he’d returned to Carnelian Cove, Dev had found fewer old pals willing to spend a Friday night leaning on the bar at The Shantyman and reminiscing over a few drinks. One by one, the people he’d left behind had moved on to busy lives and expanding responsibilities, building careers and forming families. This time, Dev had decided to skip the lonely bar scene and bring the social hour home.

He glanced at the others gathered around the guest quarters’ old kitchen table, its wide oak surface heaped with servings of Julia’s layered nachos, crumpled paper napkins, whiskey glasses, beer bottles and poker chips. Jack Maguire and Quinn, owners of their own businesses and both soon to be married. Rusty Wheeler, an expert machinist and builder on Quinn’s construction crew. Although Rusty was single, like Dev, he at least had a mortgage. And a dog.

Dev didn’t have so much as a goldfish.

“Where are you taking Charlie for the honeymoon?” Rusty asked Jack.

“I wanted to take her to Hawaii, but it turns out she’s afraid of flying.” Jack tipped back in his chair, his cards close to his chest and a wide grin on his face. It was obvious Jack loved the game, especially bluffing. And even though Dev suspected what he was up to—most of the time, anyway—it was hard not to fall for that drawl and the “aw, shucks” act. “I’m finding out all sorts of fascinating things about my fiancée,” Jack said.

“Wedding jitters.” Quinn shook his head. “Tess has already thrown a couple of fits, and ours is still a ways off.”

“Tess throws a fit at least once a week,” Dev pointed out. “She used to say it beat going to the gym.”

“Watching her work up a fuss can be pretty entertaining, once you figure out she’s just keeping her temper tuned up. Rosie thinks so, anyway.” Quinn studied his cards, his expression impossible to read. He played poker the way he seemed to do everything else—with quiet, intense efficiency. Of all the players at the table, he had the least to say and the most chips in his pile. He folded and glanced at Jack. “So, where are you taking Charlie?”

“She wants to check out the Tahoe area. We’ll do some hiking, some boating.” Jack took the pot and scooped his winnings into his pile. “Maybe go to a couple of shows down in Reno.”

“Sounds like fun.” Rusty shoved a fresh stick of gum in his mouth and dealt. “I won a couple of hundred at the blackjack tables last time I was there.”

“After you’d lost four,” Bud reminded him. Bud was
all about keeping track of the winnings and playing it safe.

Dev glanced at his cards. Another lucky hand. He could continue to coast, which suited him fine.

“Where are you staying?” Rusty fanned his cards, frowned and chewed his gum faster—which told everyone at the table he liked what he saw. “Somewhere near the lake?”

“A private estate, right on the north shore. Nice dock, tennis court, maid service.” Jack signaled for another card. “The owner’s an old friend of mine.”

Dev was learning Jack had dozens of “old friends” up and down the state. And he’d managed to make plenty of new friends in Carnelian Cove in the short time he’d been there. The guy had a natural gift for pleasing people. If he ever chose to run for public office, he’d be hard to beat.

“I took Caroline down to Cancún.” Bud shook his head. “Man, was that a mistake. She couldn’t handle the food or the sun. Spent most of her time in the bathroom, and when she came out she wouldn’t let me touch her.”

Dev won the pot, as he’d expected.

“Where does Tess want to go?” Rusty asked.

“We haven’t discussed it.” Quinn shuffled the deck. “We can’t go anywhere until Tidewaters is finished. And we’ll have to wait until Rosie has a long school holiday.”

“Kids.” Rusty shook his head as Quinn dealt. “They sure do complicate everything.”

“You’ve been around, Dev.” Bud gestured with his bottle. “Where would you go?”

Dev thought of all the places he’d seen that most
people probably considered romantic destinations. Fiji. Paris. The Bahamas. The Greek Isles. Rio, Monte Carlo, Marrakesh, Bali. He imagined any place would seem special, as long as he was there with the right woman. “I’d ask my bride where she wanted to go.”

“Well, duh.” Bud set his bottle down with a clunk and picked up his cards. “It was Caroline who picked out Mexico.”

“Been to Jamaica?” Rusty asked Dev.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve always wanted to go to Jamaica.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Just do, that’s all.”

They played in silence for a few minutes. Quinn won a small pot, and Bud swept up the cards to shuffle.

“Heard Addie Sutton came by here the other day to see about some broken windows.” Bud glanced at Dev as he picked up a chip for the ante. “You still got a thing for her?”

The action around the table stilled. Tweaked in midtoss, Dev’s chip went wide and landed on Quinn’s plate of half-eaten nachos.

“You and Addie?” Jack tipped the front of his chair back to the floor. “Since when?”

“Since high school.” Bud blundered on, dealing the next hand, unaware of the daggers Dev was shooting at him across the table. “Or maybe before.”

“I didn’t know that.” Rusty’s chewing slowed to a stop. “You never took her out on a date or anything.”

“Didn’t have to,” Bud said. “They practically lived together.”

“Her mother was Geneva’s maid,” Rusty explained for Jack’s benefit.

“Awkward.” Jack studied Dev, a curious expression on his face. “Still awkward, I s’pose.”

Dev shrugged. He wished he could shrug off the sneaking suspicion that he looked the way he felt: like a teen with a crush. “We’re friends. Sort of.”

Quinn gave Dev one of his neutral, level stares. “Hard for a single guy to be friends with a woman like that.”

“Like Addie?”

“Like a single guy. Who’s a ‘friend.’
Sort of.
” Quinn lifted his soda can and stared at Dev over the rim. “Addie’s had some tough breaks. She doesn’t need any more.”

“I’m not out to make things difficult for her,” Dev said.

“Didn’t say you were.”

Dev met Quinn’s stare and raised him one eyebrow. “Nice to know she’s got people here looking out for her.”

“Yeah.” Quinn nodded, smiling. “One of them is Tess.”

“And another is Charlie,” Jack pointed out.

While a round of bets were laid, Dev winced at the thought of two of the toughest women he knew coming after him. One more reason to steer clear of Addie.

“Although,” Jack added in his most leisurely drawl, “neither of them seemed all that concerned about Addie’s feelings on the matter earlier this evening.”

Rusty shrugged. “Maybe that’s because Addie’s still got a crush on Dev.”

This time, Dev’s chip slid across the table and over the edge, landing on the floor beside Bud’s chair. Addie had once had a crush? On him? How could he have missed that? Unless…

Bud sighed as he leaned down to retrieve the chip. “Are we going to play poker or chat all night like a bunch of girls?”

“This isn’t girl talk,” Rusty pointed out. “It’s not like we’re gossiping.”

“Men don’t gossip.” Quinn tossed down his cards. “They discuss.”

“Damn right.” Rusty neatened his stack of chips.

Bud raised the bet, tapping his cards on the edge of the table. “So can we discuss something other than Addie and Dev and whether they’re still mooning over each other the way they were in high school?”

“Mooning?” If Jack’s grin got any wider, it would split his face in half.

“There was no mooning.” Dev quickly looked to Rusty for confirmation.

“No mooning,” Rusty agreed with a teasing smile that said otherwise. “Must have been mistaken about Addie, too.”

Dev scowled at his cards and folded.