CHAPTER TWENTY
ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Dev stalked into A Slice of Light and flipped the sign on the door to Closed.
“What are you doing?” Addie asked.
“Taking you to the wedding rehearsal.”
“I don’t have to leave for another two hours.”
“We’re taking the scenic route.” He strode behind her counter, unplugged her soldering iron, grabbed her hand and dragged her toward her door. “I have something to tell you.”
“Is it about my mother?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, God.”
“She’s not sick.” He waited while Addie locked her shop, and then he led her down the block to his car, opened the passenger side door and helped her in. “Not yet, anyway,” he added.
“What is this about?” she asked as he pulled away from the curb. “Where are you really taking me?”
“To your mother’s apartment.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to go steady with you, but she’s grounded you for life. I’m hoping we can negotiate better terms.”
“You’re talking nonsense.”
“That’s exactly what this feels like.”
Addie stared out her side window while they made the trip across town, her fingers laced in a white-knuckled fist. “I missed you,” she said at last.
“Same goes.” He turned into Lena’s apartment complex. “You got my message this morning, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry I—”
“Don’t apologize.” He shot her a narrow-eyed glance. “Just tell me whether or not you erased the evidence of my incoherent babbling.”
“I did.”
“Okay, then.” He nodded. “No apology necessary.”
He pulled to a stop in one of the guest spaces near her mother’s apartment and switched off the ignition. “Here’s the deal. Geneva found out what happened to that money your mother supposedly embezzled all those years ago.”
“How did—”
“I won’t reveal my sources. Or my methods. I’ll only admit that I put her up to it. And that I waited to tell you about this until I’d gathered all the facts.” He glanced over Addie’s shoulder at Lena’s door. “I’m fed up with the enmity between the Suttons and the Chandlers. I’m not going to play Romeo to your Juliet. I’m ending this. Today.”
He touched a hand to Addie’s cheek. “Are you with me?”
“Yes.”
“No matter what happens?”
She took his hand and gave it a squeeze.
“Okay, then.” He started to open his door and then settled back against his seat. “One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“I’m driving down to the city in a few days to get some more of my things.”
“I heard you were moving back to the Cove.”
“I want you to go with me. We can make a long weekend of it,” he said with a flash of inspiration, “spend some time in the wine country.” At a place with a whirlpool bathtub for two, he thought. And a shower that didn’t run out of hot water before he’d finished with the soap.
“A vacation weekend?” She smiled. “I’d love to.”
“And when we get back, I want you to move in with me.”
Her smile faded.
“We’ll talk about it later.” He opened the door, jogged around to the passenger side and helped her out. “First we have to survive the next half hour.”
DEV KNOCKED ON HER mother’s door, and a few seconds later, Addie heard footsteps on the tiled entry floor inside. “What do you want?” Lena’s voice was muffled through the door.
“To talk to you,” Dev stated.
“I have nothing to say to you,” came the answer.
“Mom.” Addie knocked again. “Please. Let us in.”
A few more seconds passed, and then the locks clicked open and Lena faced them, barring the path into her home. “What is this about?” she asked.
“We don’t have a lot of time.” Dev glanced pointedly at his watch. “Addie is due at Charlie’s wedding rehearsal in another hour or so.”
Addie didn’t ever think she’d seen her mother angrier—or more afraid—and the full force of her rage and distress was directed at her daughter.
Dev’s hand closed around Addie’s. She turned her wrist, slid her fingers through his and squeezed again. Choosing him. She took a deep breath and sidled past her mother, pulling Dev inside with her. “This won’t take long,” she said.
Lena followed them through her small apartment to the living room in the rear. Beyond the wide picture window framed with plain beige drapes, an elderly man walked his overweight bulldog and two young children played a noisy game of tag.
“What is this about?” Lena asked again as Dev took a seat beside Addie on the matching beige sofa. “Why are you here?”
“There is no easy way to start this conversation,” Dev told her, “so I’ll come straight to the point.” He settled back against the cushion. “Why do you hate the Chandlers so much?”
Lena’s gaze shifted to Addie. “You know why.”
“No, I don’t,” Dev said, directing her attention back to him. “I’ve been told that my father turned off the audit trail on his bookkeeping software so he could take a certain sum of money without anyone being able to trace it. And that you were blamed for that after he died.”
“Isn’t that reason enough?” Lena began to pace through the room. “He set me up. I could have gone to prison. He stole my reputation. I lost any chance I might have had of working in a better-paying job in this town.”
“He couldn’t have known he was going to die that night. It wasn’t a suicide.” Dev’s voice was calm, reasonable. “So he didn’t set you up.”
“He would have had to cover up the loss somehow. He could have lied and blamed it on me. We were the only two people who knew the password.”
“What about Geneva?” Dev shifted forward, his elbows on his knees. “She believed you. She dropped the charges.”
“She never cleared my name.”
“She was burying her son,” Addie pointed out. “Dealing with her grief. To clear your name, she would have had to brand that son as a thief.”
Lena turned on Addie. “So she branded me, instead.”
“She kept you out of jail,” Addie reminded her.
“She stole my future from me.”
“I’m sure that if you’d gone to her,” Dev said, “she would have written a reference for you.”
Lena wrapped her arms around her middle.
Addie imagined the white-hot heat of her mother’s anger would ripple the air around her like a desert mirage. “Mom. There’s something you’re not telling me. Something that’s missing from all this. Some reason you hate Dev, too.”
Her mother pressed her lips together in a stubborn line. Dev checked his watch. It was no good, Addie thought, her heart sinking. He’d tell her what he’d discovered, but she’d remain trapped in her resentment.
And Addie would have to choose between them, again.
Someone knocked on Lena’s front door. “Excuse me,” Dev said as he stood and exited the room. “That’s for me.”
“I saw the way he looked at you,” Lena said when Dev had gone. “All those years ago, when you were too young to notice. He wanted you.”
“I wanted him back.” Addie fisted her hands over her heart. “I still do. With every cell in my body, I want him. I want to be with him, to love him. I love him, Mom. And I feel like I’m dying a little inside every day having to choose between the two of you.”
“You’ll be sorry.” Lena moved toward to the hall to check on Dev’s whereabouts. “He’ll use you and cast you aside like—”
“Like his father used you?” Queasy with a sudden rush of understanding, Addie pressed a hand to her stomach. “You were in love with Jonah Chandler,” she whispered. “Did you—”
“No.” Lena gulped and swallowed a choking sob. “He w
ouldn’t have me.”
“I’m sorry.” Addie went to her mother and held her tight while Lena’s body shook with violent sobs. “I’m so sorry.”
Geneva stepped into the room behind Dev. “I beg your pardon for arriving at this little meeting so late. But I’m not going to ask anyone’s forgiveness for accidentally overhearing the last few seconds of your private conversation.”
Lena withdrew from Addie’s embrace and moved to the window, her back to the others in the room.
“Lena.” Geneva sank into a nearby chair and carefully arranged the pleats of her linen slacks. “I loved my son as much as you love your daughter. I loved him in spite of his faults—and he had many of them. One of his biggest faults was not loving you. Another was his selfishness. I know it brings you no comfort now, but he never would have made you happy.”
“I would have made him happy.” Lena whirled to face her former employer. “That might have made all the difference in the world to us both.”
“I think you may be right. And that gives me more pain than you can imagine.”
Addie was shocked to see Geneva’s mouth tremble. The older woman clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “Jonah could have used more happiness in his life,” Geneva continued after another few seconds of visible struggle. “I believe you would have brought that to him. But we’ll never know that now.”
She stood and moved to Lena’s side. “I miss you, old friend. I could use more happiness in my life, too.”
Addie’s mother closed her eyes and leaned toward the window, resting her hands on the sill. She shook her head. “It’s been a long time.”
“And it will be difficult to move beyond the past. But I think it’s worth the effort.” Geneva glanced over her shoulder at Dev and Addie. “I think our families would appreciate the effort.”
“I need more time.” Lena straightened and inhaled a deep breath. “And I need to fix my face. I’m sure I must look a fright.”
“May I wait here until you return?”
Lena nodded and stepped back. With her chin held high, she walked past Dev and Addie. “Excuse me,” she said.
“Why are you still here?” Geneva asked Addie. “You have a wedding rehearsal to attend. I’ll handle the rest of this.”
ADDIE THOUGHT CHARLIE’S all-white wedding was the most beautiful celebration she’d ever seen. Everything was perfect—the weather, the setting, the flowers, the food, the handsome groom and his well-behaved bride. Even watching Quinn solemnly mop Tess’s crumpled, red-nosed, tear-streaked face had a certain charm.
Her mother had decided against attending, but Addie was certain she’d come to Tess’s wedding. There were too many years of pain to overcome in such a short while, but Lena was made of tough stuff. Addie hoped she’d inherited some of that backbone.
She shifted in her chair at one of the tables near the dance floor, craning her neck, looking for Dev. He’d been prowling the edges of the crowd at the reception, sending her scorching glances that promised another passion-filled evening of playful caresses, drenching pleasure and fiery lovemaking. Addie shivered, thinking of what he could do to her in the meantime with his affectionate squeezes and sweet kisses. A complicated man with a simple way of showing her how he felt.
“Looking for someone?” Dev dropped into the chair beside her, a plate of all-white cake in his hand.
“Looking for you,” she said.
“Looks like you found me.” He gave her his most wicked smile. “I have something to tell you.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah. Brace yourself.”
He forked up a piece of cake, popped it into his mouth and chewed. “You know,” he said after he’d swallowed, “not so very long ago, someone told me that if you can find a way to make a living doing the thing that makes you happy, you’ll have a happy life.” He took another bite of cake. “I didn’t need to find a way to make my living because everything I needed was simply handed to me. And maybe, because of that, I got lost for a while trying to find the one thing that would make me happy. But I finally figured out what that one thing is.”
He stopped for another bite. Addie’s heart had started drumming a hard, insistent beat when he’d begun his speech, and she thought it might burst if he didn’t continue. “What?” she asked, her voice a raspy whisper.
“Loving you.” He shrugged and dug into the cake. “I’ve always loved you, you know.”
“That’s nice to hear.” She tugged the fork out of his hand and shoved the plate out of his reach. “I’ve always loved you, too.”
“I figured. You were just too stubborn to admit it.”
“Maybe I was waiting for you to say it first.”
He lifted her hand to his mouth and grazed her knuckles with his lips, staring at her with hot, dark eyes. Stealing her breath with that searing gaze, with that same fierce yearning she’d seen on his face in their high school parking lot so many years agao. With that same intensity she’d felt when they’d met again at the kitchen door and when they’d sat in the echoing stairway, and when he’d brought her ice cream on a summer afternoon. And when he’d moved inside her for the first time and made them one. “Why are you always so tough on me?”
“Do you want me to apologize?”
“No. I want you to marry me.”
Oh, Dev. Dev, Dev. “Don’t we have to go steady first?”
“No, let’s skip straight to the engagement. We have to make up for lost time.”
“We could elope.”
He shook his head. “Geneva would kill us both.”
“I don’t suppose my mother would be too happy with us, either.”
“God,” he said, wincing. “You know, they’re going to have to work together on the wedding plans.”
“That’s a happy thing to do together.”
He frowned, obviously unconvinced. “If you say so.”
And then he stood and tugged her from her chair. “Dance, with me, Addie. Let’s get in plenty of practice, so we can be one of those amazing couples who move together like they’ve been doing it forever.”
She let her hand rest within the warm, solid weight of his for a few moments, and then she gave it a little squeeze. “I thought you’d never ask.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4506-2
A SMALL-TOWN REUNION
Copyright © 2009 by Teresa A. McLaughlin.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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