A Small-Town Reunion

“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.”

DEV 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.

“Calling it quits so soon?” Jack shook his head at Dev as he revealed another bluff and scooped the chips into his pile. “You need to pay more attention. Might want to rethink your strategy, while you’re at it.”

Dev picked up a few of his chips and let them slide through his fingers. He’d been playing it safe for far too long, relying on his luck to get him through. Now he wondered who’d been bluffing whom all these years.

CHAPTER FOUR

DEV HUNCHED OVER his laptop late Saturday morning, scrolling through his notes and inserting random thoughts in parentheses. Eventually the pages would transform into something resembling an outline for a story; right now, they looked as though they’d been partially composed in code, with ellipses and dashes and chunks of text in boldly colored fonts. It was his method of organizing his thoughts and themes in the misty early stages as the piece lurched and stumbled toward coherence.

He’d intended to write a unique piece of literary fiction—a clever story with bit of homage to film noir, a tale of mystery and murder set in his adopted city of San Francisco. But somehow the setting had shifted north, to a town suspiciously similar to the Cove. And the story had wormed its way inside him to sweep dim, flickering beams over the shadowy places in his past. Cobweb-filled corners he hadn’t yet decided he was prepared to examine.

Literary noir was turning out to be a dark and depressing business, indeed.

“Shit,” he muttered, as he read the lines he’d just tapped on the keyboard. “Geneva is going to disown me.”

The thought of his demanding grandmother had him glancing at his watch. “Shit,” he said again as he saved his notes and closed the laptop. He was expected for a coffee-break meeting in her office this morning, and he was running late. Tardiness was near the top of a long list of faults and weaknesses for which Geneva had little patience.

He ran a hand across his chin before stepping into the black-and-white tiled bath. He could cut some time by skipping the morning’s shave. Second day in a row, and the stubble had stepped up to whisker stage, so he might catch one of his grandmother’s sharp and frosty glares. But that was better than catching another pithy reminder about the importance of promptness.

His thoughts drifted with the shower steam, fragments of story ideas and pieces of memories tumbling together as the scalding water pummeled his body. Writing had always been his scholastic ace in the hole, so he’d followed the path of least resistance and studied journalism in a San Francisco-area college.

After graduation, he’d pleased his family and postponed steady—and suffocatingly routine—employment by pursuing an advanced degree in English. And after that, it had been an easy slide into a part-time position as a lecturer teaching basic writing courses to first-year students at the same university.

The pay wasn’t great, but he didn’t need much. After his father had been killed during Dev’s junior year of college, Dev had handed a few chunks of his inheritance to friends in the electrical engineering program, and those investments in software development had brought him far more than the funds tucked away in the family trust.

Nothing earned, plenty gained—the one consistent pattern to his life. And since it seemed to be working, he’d gone with the flow. Without much effort, he’d created a laid-back lifestyle that suited him down to his scuffed loafers. Part-time work, part-time play, parttime friends. Part-time lovers, when he was willing to expend the effort on the mating ritual. A low-maintenance rental when he was in the city, some low-key travel when he was in the mood for different views and experiences.

But lately he’d grown bored explaining the thesis statement, critiquing freshmen essays, avoiding committee work and dating as casually as possible. And the slightly cynical entries that he read in some of his students’ journals made him feel as though he was stuck with them in player mode, trapped in an endless and self-indulgent adolescence. He was too young for a midlife crisis and too old to be making short-term career plans and the same moves on the opposite sex he’d been making since he was an undergrad.

He was itching for a change, eager for a challenge. Taking his talent for writing more seriously seemed as good a place to start as any. He didn’t even have to quit his job to do it, since his teaching stint had never been permanent.

He needed to read through his father’s papers again. Geneva would resist, at first, but he was certain he’d get his way in the end. She had no reason to deny his request, other than a desire to avoid the memories he’d churn up with his poking and prodding. Memories of his father’s final days, of the accident that had claimed his life and the scandal that had briefly flared before fading to whispers.

Rubbing a towel over his head, he escaped the jungle-like humidity of the bath. He pulled on a pair of jeans and a navy T-shirt before shoving his feet into scuffed, shapeless loafers. As he exited the guest quarters designed to resemble an old carriage house, he combed his fingers through his hair. A few crunching steps across the parking area, and he headed along the footpath winding through a shadowy redwood grove toward the mansion.

Lingering tatters of morning fog floated around thick ferns sprouting from the springy carpet of auburn bark and needles. The mist caught the sun’s rays, spreading them in silvery fans beneath the tangled canopy of redwood branches, vine maples and wild rhododendron. A jay squawked in protest as he disturbed its flight path, and a mule deer bounded into one of the narrow trails leading up the hill. The brine-scented breeze flowing in from the ocean carried the rumble and rush of the surf.

Later today he’d pester Julia for one of her ham-and-cheddar sandwiches and carry that and a couple of bottles of beer down to the tiny cove wedged between the cliffs. He’d sit with his back against a sun-warmed rock, plow his toes into the cold sand and let his thoughts drift, just like old times.

Old times. He’d laughed and winced over a few of those last night with Rusty and Bud. Drag races on the beach, exploding mailboxes, blackened eyes, broken hearts. Parties that had gone on too long and too loud. He’d probably turned Geneva’s hair gray ahead of schedule.

He paused at the edge of the grove to admire the mansion that came into view. His great-grandfather had worked his way from lumberjack to mill owner, buying this land and laying the foundation for the family fortune. His grandfather had made a series of brilliant business investments in Carnelian Cove and built Chandler House to showcase his success.

Dev’s father, Jonah, had knocked a few holes in the walls.

Jonah may have had an obsession for work and several lofty ambitions, but he hadn’t inherited his parents’ business sense. And now Dev had come back to this house to find out what had really happened nine years ago. To read through his father’s papers, to try to unravel the lingering mysteries about the night of Jonah’s death and the days following, when the extent of his father’s carelessness in overseeing the family business interests had been revealed.

Skirting the open service-parking area, Dev detoured to the south side of the house, entering through the conservatory doors. Water dripped from copper-lined planters to pool on the slate beneath, and a tiny green frog leaped for cover beneath a waxy begonia leaf as he passed. The scents of loam and violets rode on the humid air.

Moving quickly through the formal rooms, Dev made his way to the entry hall and paused near the wide marble steps leading from the main entry. The ugly plywood sheets standing in for the missing windows were a shock, two blackened gaps like missing teeth between the jewel-like morning light streaming through the glass on either side.

He grinned over the memory of Addie’s efforts to maintain control of the situation two days ago. If she’d known how transparent she’d been, how easy it had been to read every emotion in her lovely features, her cheeks would have burned as pink as the roses in the windows she’d had transported to her shop.

Addie Sutton, businesswoman. He’d always known she had a talent for art. He had to admire the way she’d used it to make a life for herself.

There was a lot to admire there.

A familiar uneasiness swept over him, from the restless shuffle of his feet on the marble floor to the faint pressure in his chest, which he tried to ease with a shift of his shoulders. The talk around the poker table had him recalling an earlier memory. A memory of Addie standing at the grassy end of the high school parking lot as he’d rumbled by in his car, of the way she’d lowered her head and peered at him from beneath her lashes. Just for an instant, like the click of a camera shutter, he’d witnessed in her features the same emotion that had smoldered deep inside him.

And then there’d been a tug, as if he were a fish on a line, as if he’d swallowed the bait so deep an escape would rip out his guts. It would have been so easy to let her reel him in. It would have been so easy to stop, to roll down his window and offer her a ride. They were headed in the same direction, after all.

But Bud had jogged over, hopped in the passenger side and leaned on the horn, trying to catch the attention of another girl across the lot. Addie had jerked and dropped her books on the grass, her cheeks burning and her hands clumsy as she gathered them. And Dev had sped away, ashamed for so many reasons and blaming Addie for most of them.

A high-pitched growl brought him back to the present. One of Geneva’s yippy little dogs edged close to sniff at his loafers, the silly blue bow tied to a tuft of fur on its head quivering in outrage. “The scouting expedition,” Dev muttered.

He started down the dim hall toward Geneva’s office, and the rest of the pack of Yorkies swarmed around his ankles and raised the alarm as he entered the room.

Geneva silenced the dogs with a wave of her hand. “Good morning, Devlin.”

He bent to press a kiss against her soft gray hair. “Good morning, Grandmother.”

She lifted one elegant eyebrow and the pot by her side. “Coffee?”

“Yes. Please.” He reached for the cup she handed him and then settled back against downy chair cushions. Julia’s coffee was worth the trip from his rooms at this relatively early hour. “What’s up?”

Geneva shuddered delicately. “Nothing is up. I have a few things to discuss with you before I leave next week.”

Dev froze with the cup raised near his chin. “You’re going somewhere?”

“I’ve decided to accept an old friend’s invitation for a cruise in the Caribbean. I’ll be flying to San Francisco the morning after my annual Fourth of July picnic to do some shopping and to make a call on your Aunt Jacqueline before I leave for the gulf.”

Aunt Jacqueline. Dev had lived in the same city, and yet he hadn’t seen Tess’s mother for years. “Why didn’t you mention this before I decided to come up here for a visit?”

“You needn’t bother sounding so wounded, Devlin. You’ll embarrass us both.” Geneva sipped her coffee.

“I assume you didn’t make the trip north just to visit me.”

“Why else would I be here?”

“That’s one of the things I’d like to discuss this morning.”