Free A Small-Town Reunion by Terry McLaughlin Page B

evidence of that same heat in her cheeks when he’d stopped by last week. He’d felt that same awareness. Felt that same yearning to…be with her.
    Might want to rethink your strategy, while you’re at it. Yeah, Jack had been right about that, too. He turned a corner and found himself making another pass down Cove Street. Even his subconscious was driving him to her door. Might as well go in.
    Or not.
    He stepped on the gas and accelerated past her shop. God. Had she seen him again? She’d think he was stalking her.
    Which might not be far from the truth.
    With a curse, he gripped on the wheel and made a sharp turn, bumping one wheel over the curb as he entered the tiny public lot a block away. He took the last available space, switched off the ignition and slumped in his seat. Staring out the windshield, he waited for the mortification to subside and for some rational thought process to take its place.
    Why Addie Sutton? Why had seeing her again after all these years unleashed the ghosts of high school past? She’d made it clear she didn’t want to see him, wasn’t comfortable around him. Hell, there was another guy in the picture, even though she’d denied it. So why did he keep setting himself up for rejection?
    Maybe because he had such a talent for it. His mother had left him behind, his father had virtually ignored him. He suspected most of his friends here inthe Cove had tolerated him only because of his last name and the money he always had in his wallet.
    Break out the violins. Dev Chandler, healthy and wealthy—if none too wise—was indulging in a hell of a pity fest.
    Calling it quits so soon?
    Not quits. Not exactly. Just playing it safe. This was too important to bluff his way through.
    Tess would slap some sense back in him, he decided as he climbed from his car. He rammed his hands into his pockets and stalked around the corner, heading for her Main Street office. Tess had always been good at tossing advice like darts. She’d poked at him plenty of times during those vacation weeks she’d come to stay at Chandler house.
    He strode through the door of her architectural design business and then stopped short. Charlie Keene was sitting behind Tess’s desk, her muddy work boots propped on the rungs of a visitor’s chair. She’d been an irritating part of his life ever since he’d moved into Chandler House—the daughter of Geneva’s friend, the friend of the housekeeper’s daughter. The snotty little brother he’d never had. And though he’d never done anything to hurt her—that he could recall—it seemed the redheaded runt had always had it in for him.
    He’d never understood what sweet, gentle Addie had in common with her two prickly best friends.
    “Well,” Charlie said with a sneer, “look who came to pay a call.”
    “Can it, Keene.”
    “No problem. I’m not in the mood to make small talk with small people.”
    “And I’m not in the mood to listen to you two clawat each other,” Tess said as she stepped from a storage area, struggling to maneuver a large model on its oversize board past a brick wall. “Not this afternoon, anyway.”
    She set the model on the desk, in front of Charlie. “Tell me what you think.”
    “I think it looks expensive.”
    Dev stepped closer, studying the form. A series of steep shed roofs rose and fell in an intriguing saw-tooth pattern, providing plenty of spaces for high windows that would flood the interior area with light. Still more windows were set two-by-two in a complementary pattern of zigzagging corners. Strikingly clean lines, plenty of interesting angles and a clever way to maximize a view. “What is it?” he asked.
    “It’s a new office building for Keene Concrete.” Tess turned the model to show a side view. “It’s time that business moved out of its rusting office trailer and started looking like it’s going to stick around awhile.”
    Charlie frowned and poked at one of the roof peaks. “Did Jack put you up to