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“Not without setting up a duplicate shop.” Addie trailed her fingers along a twisting length of lead, her gesture resembled Geneva’s. “And even then, I’d still have to remove the windows from their frames.”
“Then take them.” Geneva inhaled deeply and squared her shoulders. “Do what you need to do. As quickly as possible. Devlin will help you.”
“I need expert help,” Addie clarified, ignoring Geneva’s suggestions and his presence. “And I’ll need crates made to brace and transport them. I’ll call Quinn to come and take a look at what needs to be done.”
Geneva hesitated and then nodded. “All right. I’ll have Devlin arrange for Quinn to meet you here, and then the men can get the windows out of the wall and into their crates.”
Addie narrowed her eyes. “Quinn and I can take care of everything.”
“I’m sure the windows must be quite heavy,” said Geneva. “Quinn will need Devlin’s help.”
“If he needs any help,” said Addie, “he can—”
“Don’t bother checking with me.” Dev crossed his arms and leaned against a newel post. “Just pretend I’m not here, that I have nothing better to do while you two make your plans.”
Though she didn’t move so much as an eyelash in his direction, the flare of pink in Addie’s cheeks told him she’d noted the tone beneath his remark.
“When I need your input, Devlin, I’ll ask for it.” Geneva turned and started down the stairs. “Addie, you can use the phone in my office to make your call.”
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.
ADDIE 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.
CHAPTER THREE
ADDIE 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.”
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.
