SLOW PLAY (7-Stud Club #4) - Christie Ridgway Page 0,11

expression on her face as her grandmother placed a plate of toast in front of her. “That’s too bad, Grandpop,” she said, trying to think how to tease the information out of him. “Maybe you—”

“Now I’m going to have to go to town and get what I need,” he groused, shaking his head.

“We can do it together,” Harper offered. A little time with just the two of them might cause him to come clean about this incident and all the others. Then she could assess for herself the true seriousness of the situation.

“I’ve got that meeting with Mitch and Jorge this morning.” He rubbed his jaw. “Could you do it for me, Harper? Do you remember how to get to Ewing Irrigation Supply?”

“Sure, Grandpop.” She’d ask her phone for directions, but he didn’t need to know that. “But can I borrow the truck?”

His bushy gray eyebrows drew together. “Of course. Is there something wrong with your car, though?”

“I want to give it a break.” Because when the moment came, she’d need her escape vehicle ready and rested for the getaway.

In the meantime, she dressed in jeans and another of the Sunnybird Farm T-shirts she pilfered from her mother’s closet. Following the voice on her smartphone, she found Ewing’s, with its expansive parking lot that it shared with Paulson’s Feed Store. She found a spot between the two businesses and made her way into Ewing’s, a note written in Grandpop’s—not aging—handwriting clutched in her fist.

Inside, she paused, overcome by a sense of familiarity. On another occasion she must have accompanied Grandpop to the place, because the tinkling sounds of various water features was a sound she remembered…and one that made her smile.

“Harper Hill,” a voice said, and she looked over to see a middle-aged man approaching from a side aisle. It took a moment for a name to appear on her tongue. “Mr. Gill, hello.”

He beamed. “Have you moved back to Sawyer Beach?”

“No!” She tempered her voice. “I mean, no, I’m just visiting for…uh…today.”

“It’s still good to see you.”

“Right. Thanks.” She held out her list. “Grandpop needs a few things. He said we have an account?”

“Sure do.” He took it from her hand and started walking. “I’ll have to tell Mrs. Gill I saw you. She’ll be green with jealousy.”

“How is she?” His wife had been her English teacher three out of four years in high school. “She was my favorite.”

“The feeling was mutual.” He glanced over as he pulled something off a shelf. “She always hoped you’d come back to town someday and join her department. Teach in the next classroom.”

Maybe once she’d thought that too. Freshman year, before she caught a glimpse of Maddox Kelly and then she didn’t think of her future in quite the same way again. “I did get into teaching, though,” she said. “In South Korea and Costa Rica and Portugal.” Where she’d caught that terrible case of pneumonia.

And homesickness.

“Harper Hill!”

She whirled at the sound of her name, coming face-to-face with another person she recognized. Smiling, she moved in for a hug. “Dr. Winters,” she said, squeezing. The vet had cared for all her animals over the years. Two dogs, four cats, and one class goldfish she’d been kind enough to try and bring back to life when she’d visited Harper’s third grade on career day.

They caught up while Mr. Gill continued gathering her supplies and finally presented her with a box and an invoice.

When she left the store, she was smiling some more.

It was nice to be remembered. In Vegas, everyone was a stranger, the kind of stranger who wanted to forget your name not to mention their entire visit once they returned home. “What stays in Vegas” was all the people who worked there along with the memories of everyone else’s raucous good times. Those never seemed quite so good at the beginning of long work nights when another couple of lonely guys on a golf vacation or a pair of women pretending they were “celebrating” a divorce slid onto the stools on the other side of her bar.

She tried introducing the women to the men when she thought they were decent enough, but nobody was looking for romance in Vegas.

For sure she’d never found any there.

“Harper Hill!”

At the sound of her name once more, she looked up and around, ready to greet another friendly face. Who now?

A young woman was hailing her, one arm waving, white teeth in gleaming evidence, the sun brightening her already bright, strawberry-blonde hair.

“Harper! Harper Hill!”

Maybe if her

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