A Small-Town Reunion. Terry Mclaughlin

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ