SLOW PLAY (7-Stud Club #4) - Christie Ridgway Page 0,71
kitchen shelves. Crowns on all the pink princesses. Teeny tiny flowers and rainbows on ponies hardly bigger than your thumb.” Eli shuddered.
“Let’s play,” Mad said, scooping the cards in his direction. “I’m dealing. Five card draw.”
He won that hand and the next too. Turned out his luck was running very hot because his friends finished the evening by cursing him out each time he took their chips.
“Music to my ears, boys, music to my ears.”
They finally called the evening at eleven. For the first time in recent memory, he was the clear-cut winner. Time to start hitting on twelve as a rule.
Shane bagged up the recyclables in preparation for his last-guy-in chore. “Anyone heard from Coop? Didn’t you text him, Boone?”
Boone nodded. “Hart let Coop into his house. Now they’re sitting in the dark living room. No words have been exchanged but no rending of garments, either. A relative happy ever after, I suppose.”
Happy ever after.
Was that the kind Mad had to look forward to? Nights alone in the dark? Of course, there was the bachelor uncle role in his future. Stickers and bail bondsmen. Woo-hoo.
As he was stacking the bills he’d won, Raf leaned in. “My advice, don’t spend all that at the Little Sweethearts XXX Club. Well, unless you take me with.”
“Your guidance is so noted,” Mad said, and standing, stuffed the roll of bills in his front pocket.
But as he walked out into the early-fall chill toward his car, it wasn’t his friend’s last piece of advice that echoed in his mind over and over. Instead he heard something else altogether.
You don’t win a game by sitting it out.
Chapter Fifteen
The farm teemed with visitors. About eighty students from Sunshine & Unicorns along with teachers, parents, and grandparents milled about. Harper watched the children skip around the pumpkin patch, their voices high-pitched, their expressions excited. Some had already claimed their gourd which they presented to a school staff member for tagging. There were other events to enjoy too—they’d arranged with a neighbor to provide pony rides, the chicken coop was available for inspection, and her mom had set up a station for face painting. “Another successful Pumpkin Day,” Harper said as her grandmother arrived with a to-go coffee cup that she passed over.
“And only better because you’re here,” Mary Hill said, and Harper pressed a kiss to her grandmother’s lavender-scented hair.
“Thank you…” she started, then her voice trailed off as she saw another car pull into the makeshift parking lot alongside the pumpkin patch. Out of it climbed Mad’s mom, Mayor Kelly, and from the passenger side, a dark-haired man with gray at the temples.
About the right age to be a fix up for Harper’s mother.
She sent a sidelong look at Grandmom. “Did you invite the mayor?” And the would-be suitor?
“I ran into her at Duffy’s yesterday and she might have mentioned stopping by. She likes to show her interest in community events.”
“Did she mention the man accompanying her?”
This time the sidelong look came from her grandmother. “Well…”
As they watched, Mayor Kelly took no time before bee-lining toward the face-painting station, the handsome man at her side. While Harper couldn’t hear the words exchanged, the threesome smiled at each other as Rebecca rose to her feet and held out her hand to the stranger, looking cordial, though not particularly friendly. Still, cordial was something.
Harper let out a breath. “Do you think it’s possible…?” Then she shook her head. “We shouldn’t count on it, Grandmom.”
“No.” Her grandmother stroked Harper’s back with a gentle hand. “But wouldn’t that be something? One missing man has made you both so very wary for so very long.”
“Me?” Harper frowned at her grandmother. “Like I told Mom, though I admit to having some natural curiosity about my father, I don’t believe his absence ever held me back.”
“It sent you away.” Mary stroked Harper’s back again. “I’ve always thought you worried your feelings for Maddox would stifle your life because your mother’s life seemed stifled to you.”
“This isn’t about me. Though I agree in terms of Mom—her life has been stifled because she loved my dad too much.”
“Sweet girl.” Now her grandmother patted her cheek. “There’s no such thing as loving too much.”
“The problem is loving the wrong person, then.” Wait—if she followed that logic did it mean that Mad was wrong to love? No, Mad was a good man, a good person. Not wrong. Not at all.
“If the man makes you feel happy, and happy about yourself, there’s no too much,” Grandmom said.