A Small-Town Reunion (10 page)

She handed him his purchase with one of her guileless, sidetracking smiles. “Thanks for stopping by. Let me know what Rosie decides.”

He set the bag aside and leaned an elbow on the counter, bringing his face within a few tantalizing inches of hers. “And what about me?”

“You?”

He dropped his gaze to her mouth—to those beautiful, curving, plump, inviting lips—and then lifted it to meet hers again. “Wouldn’t you like to know what I’ve decided?”

“That depends.” She narrowed her eyes. “Have you decided you don’t want to pretend to be friends anymore?”

Smart lady, all right.

A
DDIE HAD THOUGHT SHE
was well-prepared for her first stained-glass class. She’d arranged a roomy new work space, including a sturdy table and a couple of old metal stools she’d located in a secondhand shop. She’d assembled a basic supply kit for each of her students and selected a few simple patterns in a variety of styles.

But when Dev walked into her shop, Rosie in tow, her thoughts tumbled and tangled, and all her lesson plans seemed to bounce right out the door that clicked shut behind him.

He paused, shipped his hands into his pockets and smiled at her as if he could read her thoughts. As if he knew the effect he had on her. As if—

“Do you have anything in a slightly softer green?” Barb Katz refocused Addie’s attention on the task at hand: helping her students find the pieces of glass they’d need to complete the patterns they’d chosen.

“There might be an opalescent piece that would work,” Addie suggested.

“I don’t care for those.” Barb returned the square with a sigh. “They’re so hard to see through.”

“I think they’re gorgeous.” Teddi Moreno set a piece with wavy stripes like melting tropical sherbet over the others in her pile. “And each one is unique.”

“Hi, Addie.” Rosie leaned against the sample table, bouncing on the toes of her grubby athletic shoes. Up, down, up, down, emanating energy while sapping Addie’s. “Dev told me I could pick everything out. Where’s the stuff?”

“First you need a pattern.” Addie pointed toward the rear of her shop. “Go help Dev choose one, and then you can start shopping for your glass.”

“Cool.” Rosie dashed off.

“Do you think my wife will like these?” Virgil Hawley, Addie’s former high school algebra teacher, set two squares of rose-colored glass on the table. “She likes pink.”

“I think she’ll like whatever you choose for her,” Addie told him.

Virgil frowned. “She didn’t like the last present I gave her.”

“What was that?” Teddi asked.

“A leaf blower.”

Rosie materialized by Addie’s side. “Here. This is the one we want.” She waved a line drawing of a sunset over ocean swells. “I get to choose the glass. I’m Dev’s assistant.”

Addie turned to find him standing behind her, unnervingly close. His mouth eased into another of those casually intimate grins, the ones that seemed to brush like invisible fingertips over every inch of her skin.

“Hi, Addie.”

“Hi, Dev.”

“I think we should pick the sun piece first.” Rosie pointed to a bin filled with yellow and orange glass squares. “Pull out a couple of those.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He stepped around the table to follow Rosie’s orders while Addie helped the other students finalize their selections. For the next several minutes she kept busy filling out receipts for more glass sales than she’d made in nearly a month.

At last it was Dev’s turn to pay for his supplies. He and Rosie had chosen a nice mix of shimmery blue and green textured glasses for the water and found a stunning—and expensive—gold-and-orange iridescent piece to use for the sun in the center. “Nice job, guys,” Addie said as she calculated the total.

“It’s going to be great,” Rosie said. “Just like the mosaic I made for Tess. Dev said I could bring it in and show you.”

“I look forward to seeing it.” Addie smiled at Rosie’s enthusiasm as the young girl lifted Dev’s box of supplies and carried it to the work area at the back of the shop, where the others waited.

“Great way to drum up some business.” Dev pulled his wallet from a back pocket. “Now comes the hard part.”

Addie gave him her strictly business smile. “Working with stained glass is a fun and relaxing hobby.”

“Was that the first lesson?”

“No.” She stepped from behind her counter and led the way toward her first group of students. “It’s a mantra. Tax-free.”

The joined the group, and Dev took the spot beside Rosie at one side of the class table. He extended a hand. “Mr. Hawley? Dev Chandler. Calculus.”

“I know who you are. And it’s Virgil, now that I’m retired and you’re old enough to think about settling down.”

“What makes you think I’m not already settled down?”

Virgil narrowed his eyes. “This your kid?”

Dev glanced at Rosie. “No.”

“Got any of your own?”

“No.”

“A wife?”

“No.”

“A mortgage?”

Dev hesitated, his smile collapsing at the edges. “No.”

Though Addie was secretly enjoying the grilling, she took pity on her best-paying student. “Sorry to interrupt, but we’re running a little late. I’d like to get started.”

“I’m ready.” Virgil pulled his glasses from the bridge of his nose and scrubbed the lenses on the tail of his faded cotton shirt. “Mr. Chandler, as usual, was the tardy one.”

“Had to pick up my assistant.” Dev nudged Rosie. “Rosie Quinn, this is Virgil Hawley, the meanest math teacher who ever taught at Cove Central High School.”

“Did you ever give Dev an F?” Rosie asked.

“Never had the chance.” Virgil narrowed his eyes at Dev. “Young fellow always was too smart for his own good.”

Rosie slumped on her stool, obviously disappointed. “What about Addie? Did you ever teach her?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And now I’m returning the favor,” Addie cut in quickly, changing the subject to pattern shears before her own math scores were revealed.

A
N HOUR LATER,
Dev’s neck was stiff with tension. He was having flashbacks to kindergarten traumas. Tracing
lines, wielding scissors, handling glue. His old adversaries.

“Not again.” Rosie sighed impatiently and set aside the extra set of shears Addie had loaned her. She pried the pattern paper and shears from Dev’s cramping fingers and tugged a wrinkled wad of paper from his jammed tool. “Addie told you—you’re only supposed to cut a fraction of an inch at a time.”

“Want to finish the rest for me?” He shoved his share of the pattern in her direction. Tess hadn’t been pleased to hear that Dev had signed up for Addie’s class, and she wasn’t sure it was the right place for a ten-year-old. But Rosie had insisted, promising to be on her best behavior. And Dev was counting on Rosie to set a good example for him.

“How much will you pay me?” Rosie asked.

“You’re paying her to sit through class with you?” Barb sighed her disapproval as she slathered glue on one of her pieces and stuck it to a square of glass. “How much do craft class assistants charge these days?”

“I’m not getting paid for this. Not yet, anyway,” Rosie added with a meaningful glance at Dev. “But he’s paying me fifty dollars to walk his grandmother’s dogs.”

Barb frowned. “Fifty dollars is a lot of money for a child.”

“I’m not a child.” Rosie looked as though she wanted to climb across the table and give Barb’s unnaturally red hair a hard yank. “I’m just younger than you.
Lots
younger. At least forty or fifty years younger.”

“Rosie.” Addie pulled the jar of rubber cement from
Dev’s box of supplies. “Let’s make sure you glue that sun piece to the right spot on that special orange glass you and Dev picked out.”

His pretty teacher cast a sympathetic look his way with those big, beautiful eyes. He’d seen that look before, when he’d discovered he’d turned his carbon paper upside down and traced his entire pattern onto the wrong place. He’d thought this class would give him a chance to spend more time with Addie. He hadn’t realized it would also give her a chance to watch him make a fool of himself.

And he couldn’t quit, as much as he wanted to. He couldn’t even make an escape, not now that so many people had wrapped him up in so many expectations. Rosie was looking forward to coming back to Addie’s next three lessons. Tess was counting on him to keep Rosie occupied in the afternoons. Geneva was relying on him to keep watch over Chandler House and feed her dogs. He had Jack and Charlie’s wedding to attend and a poker game to host.

And Addie—what did she expect from him?

Today’s lust for his teacher was complicated by his guilt over last night’s search through his father’s papers. He’d found several cancelled checks made out to “Cash”—checks for large amounts, in Lena’s handwriting and cashed by Jonah. Checks that didn’t seem to match any business expenses or charitable donations.

Checks that seemed to cast a shadow of suspicion over Lena’s innocence. But there was no proof, no answers in the paperwork.

Geneva had claimed that Jonah had made several foolish investments. And Dev had been a fool to think
he’d find something that had eluded the accountants and investigators who’d combed through the family’s business records searching for a clue to the missing funds.

He’d returned to Carnelian Cove determined to find the answers to his own questions about his father’s affairs. Now he wanted those answers more than ever—to give Addie and her mother the closure they deserved.

He looked up to see Addie over Teddi’s shoulder, helping her position her pattern pieces on her glass squares. One of the funky clips in Addie’s hair shifted to the side, and a perfect blond spiral slipped over her shoulder to brush along her breast.

Dev lowered his gaze to his shears and concentrated on how much he hated cutting out these stupid pattern pieces instead of how much he wanted to pull Addie into his lap, and kiss her senseless. She’d taste of that soda she was sipping, cool and tart and effervescent.

He waited for his breathing to slow to normal and for his heart to stop pounding against his ribs. Then he sighed inwardly and picked up the next pattern piece. One class hour down, fifteen more to go.

A
DDIE SPRAWLED ON
the petite, blue-checked sofa in Tess’s living room on Thursday night, a plump pillow scrunched beneath her head and one leg dangling over the stylishly curved arm. Her second stained-glass class had exhausted her more than the first—probably because Dev’s work had been a bigger disaster. She hadn’t expected him to be so clumsy with his hands, since he’d been a star athlete in high school. Of course, sprinting down a basketball court on a fast break or
smashing a serve across a tennis net required different skills than grinding small pieces of glass that had been awkwardly cut.

She glanced at her watch, expecting Tess’s cell phone to ring at any moment. Maudie had dragged Charlie down to the city the day before to buy the wedding dress, and Charlie had promised to report in person when she and her mother returned this evening.

As soon as they got a good look at Charlie’s dress, Addie and Tess would choose their own outfits. Addie didn’t care what she wore, and since fashion mattered far more to Tess, Addie was willing to leave the shopping up to her. Instead, Addie flipped through the pages of a bridal magazine, scanning the pages for white-flower bouquets. “I still can’t get over the fact that Charlie decided to have an all-white wedding,” she said.

“At first I thought she was just chickening out on the color selection.” Tess handed Addie a glass of iced tea and then sank into a deep chair across the room, careful not to spill her own beverage. “But now I think it’s a brilliant idea.”

“It sure simplified the wedding shower decorations.” Addie straightened, took a sip of tea and then set the glass on a nearby table before collapsing back against the pillows. “Too bad we have to get up at the crack of dawn on Saturday to put them up.”

“You’re the one with the shop that never closes.”

“Closed shop, no sales.” Addie yawned and dropped the magazine to the floor. She shifted to her side, snuggling into the downy sofa cushions. “Not that many sales anyway, but at least I know I’ve tried my darnedest.”

“How are the classes going?”

“Doesn’t Rosie fill you in?”

“Only to tell me what a total loser my cousin is.”

“He’s not that bad, not really.” When Tess gave a disbelieving snort, Addie grinned. “All right,” she admitted, “he’s
awful
. I never imagined one person could be so bad with every step of the process.”

Tess leaned over one arm of her chair to peer around the corner, down the hallway leading to her room, where she’d left Quinn’s daughter with a huge bowl of popcorn and a DVD. And then she turned back to face Addie. “My little spy also says he spends most of his time watching you.”

Addie picked up the magazine and made a show of studying the cover. “They all do. I’m the teacher. I demonstrate things.”

“Things, hmm?” Tess set her glass on the fussy French table beside her chair. “Your face is getting red.”

“I hate it when that happens.” Addie tossed the magazine back on the floor. “And I’m really too tired for one of your interrogations tonight.”

“That’s why I didn’t bring out the thumbscrews.” Tess grabbed one of her bare feet and tucked it beneath her, settling into her quarter-lotus gossip position. “Come on, Addie. Spill.”

“There’s nothing to report. Nothing has happened. Maybe a couple of interested looks, but—ugh.” Addie grabbed the pillow from beneath her head and smashed it against her face for a few mortified seconds. “That sounds so high school,” she mumbled against the scratchy wool.

“I didn’t catch that last part. And stop molesting that chicken.”

Addie pulled the pillow from her face and smoothed a hand over the needlepoint rooster posing on the sham. “I said I feel like I’m back in high school.”

“Because we’re gossiping about boys on a weeknight?” Tess shrugged and reached for her tea. “I’m sitting here waiting for an old friend to show up with her wedding dress. I’m in a sentimental mood.”

“Maybe that’s all I’m feeling, too. Sentimental.” Addie rolled to her back with a sigh. “Remember that awful board game we used to play when we were kids? That one where you could send your opponent back to square one? Just when I think I’m making some progress with my social life, Dev shows up and knocks me out of play.”

“I take it you’re referring to Mick.” Tess shook her head. “Too bad.
Way
too bad. Nice guy.”

“
Extremely
nice guy.” Addie flung an arm over her eyes. “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I appreciate the nice guys I’ve met and forget about the one who has trouble deciding whether he wants to risk something as simple as a friendship?”