“What is the point of playing a game if you’re not doing what it takes to win?” PawPaw asked.
Will couldn’t argue with the old man.
“You end up mad at whoever is on your team.” She glanced at her grandfather in the rearview mirror and held up her hand to stop him before he could interrupt. “And before you fib and say ‘not me,’ I want to remind you of that game night four Christmases ago when I refused to turn my hat inside out like a rally cap when we were down to our last five hundred dollars and rolling to get past Park Place. You retaliated by putting coal in my stocking.”
The older man sank down in his seat. “You can’t prove that was me.”
Hadley let out a little chuckle. “PawPaw.”
“Fine, it was me, but that doesn’t change anything.” His gaze bounced from Will to Hadley. “If you want my silence, you’re on my team.”
There weren’t a lot of times when Will had ever felt like he was in over his head or that he couldn’t read the room’s undercurrent. At this moment, though? Yeah, there was obviously family history here, and the game night must have some really high stakes. Hadley’s beseeching gaze slid over his way. He shrugged.
She let out a sigh. “We’ll be on your team.”
“Excellent.” PawPaw’s smile was wide enough to cross both lanes of the highway. “Did I ever tell you about the time I danced with Dolly Parton while I was dressed up as Dolly Parton?”
And that was how the rest of the drive went, with PawPaw telling one farfetched story after another until they were on the gravel path leading to Hidden Creek Ranch and then pulling into the drive in front of the main house.
“Before we get out, are you sure you don’t want to just come clean?” PawPaw asked, leaning up close to the front seat, his voice low, as if the people inside the house might hear him. “You could tell them things didn’t work out, and no one would say a word.”
“Yeah, that’ll be the day when this family doesn’t have an opinion to offer. We’re not a couple. We never will be a couple, but Mom doesn’t need to know that,” Hadley said a little too fast for Will’s ego.
PawPaw muttered something that sounded a lot like “young fools” but didn’t press it further. Will had just gotten out and Hadley had crossed the front of the rental to join them on the way to the house when Adalyn came hustling out of the house and down the stairs, her smile huge but tight at the corners.
She stopped in front of Hadley. “Try to remember all the reasons you love Mom.”
Neither of them got a chance to ask why, because that’s when Stephanie walked out onto the porch.
“There you are!” Stephanie said, shooting an apologetic glance at Hadley. “Look who stopped by out of the blue.”
Right on cue, a man who looked like a smug version of the Marlboro Man if he Juuled followed her through the front door.
“Matt?” Hadley asked.
The man strutted down the stairs and across the gravel, ignoring PawPaw, Adalyn, and the fact that somehow in the middle of all this Will had started holding Hadley’s hand. When had that happened? He had no fucking clue, but he wasn’t letting go now.
“Hey, Hads.” Matt leaned down and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “You know I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to come by and say hi.” He turned to Will, holding out his hand. “Don’t suppose you’re the Web everyone keeps telling me about. Hads and I used to date eons ago. Nothing to worry about at all.”
“I’m sure there’s not,” he said, dropping Hadley’s hand to shake the man’s offered one. “My friends call me Will.”
“Good to know,” Matt said and squeezed his grip before letting go. “Web.”
Grinding his molars to dust, Will watched as Matt slung an arm around Hadley’s shoulders and walked with her back to the house. This was a good thing. A very good thing. Really. And if he said it enough, he’d start to believe it.
He fisted his hand and hung back by the rental, going through all the ways that the appearance of her ex-boyfriend would be good, as if that would make his gut twist less. The biggest being that if she went for the guy, then Will wouldn’t need to worry about exposing Hadley’s gold-digging ways to save Web. Hadley would be off his radar and not his responsibility. He started toward the house, pulverizing the gravel under his boots with every stomping step. What the hell did he care if she ended up ripping a hole into Matt the Asshat’s bottom line? That would be all the better.
If that’s the case, then why do I want nothing more than to punch his lights out?
At the front door, PawPaw looked back at him and shook his head. “Well, this should get interesting.”
Why did Will suddenly feel like he’d chewed glass the whole trip, and that was going to be the best part of his day?
Chapter Twelve
Once inside, Hadley made a beeline for the kitchen while everyone headed out back for a game of horseshoes.
She found her mom peeking into the oven to check the two pans of Frito pie baking. Hadley almost forgot why she was there when the smell of melted cheese, seasoned ground beef, corn chips, enchilada sauce, and beans hit her. This was heaven in food form. Damn, that wasn’t fair. Her mom had definitely planned her move well. It was hard to concentrate on being annoyed that her ex had finagled his way inside with her favorite comfort food in the oven. She took a deep inhale, closed her eyes, and could almost taste the salty crunch of the chips.
Rubbing her now rumbly stomach, Hadley sat down on one of the barstools at the island. “Is that Aunt Louise’s recipe?”
“You know it is.” Her mom tossed the flour sack tea towel over one shoulder and moved to the celery sticks by the sink.
“With the secret ingredient?” The one her great-aunt had lorded over everyone at every family gathering where food was involved since the dawn of time.
Stephanie nodded. “Yep.”
This was epic. They were finally in possession of the only family secret any of them had ever managed to keep for longer than a week. “If you share what it is, I’ll forget all about Matt being here.”
Stephanie snorted in amusement and handed the rinsed celery to Hadley. “Good luck with that.”
“Mom,” she said as she started to chop the ends off the celery. “What were you thinking? Why didn’t you kick him out?”
Stephanie didn’t look even the least little bit embarrassed. “Honestly, I tried to get him moving, but he came all the way out to personally deliver the mason jars your sister said had to be a part of the wedding decorations. It’s not like I invited him.”
“Mom, you know I’m not interested in Matt.”
“No one said you should be,” her mom said. “Although who would object to Matt is a mystery to me. He’s the kind of man who stays close to home, talks to his family on a regular basis, and isn’t embarrassed by where he came from.”
“I’m not embarrassed about where I’m from.” She wasn’t. It’s just that she wanted to live in a place where everyone didn’t know absolutely everything about her from the time she was born.
Stephanie looked up from the mixture of peanut butter and honey she was spooning into the celery sticks and raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you?
How many times had they had this conversation? At least a million since she had left for college. It never changed. Her mom just kept repeating the same lines, praising the virtues of small-town life over and over again, never understanding that despite all the open space, being out here crowded her in. In Harbor City, she had the freedom granted by anonymity and the opportunity to try new things or meet new people. Out here, it was the same faces, the same scenery, the same old same old every day until you died. Arguing about it would never change that, so what was the point of fighting about it?
“Mom,” she said, the word coming out as an exhausted sigh. “I love you, so let’s just change the subject.”
“Fine. You know Matt’s been asking Gabe and the boys about you every time they stopped in to Feed and Steer.” Stephanie arranged the celery sticks on the plate. “I might have mentioned to him when you’d be coming home, and I guess he decided to shoot his shot. Sorry about that. You know Aunt Louise is waiting for an announcement from you two.”
Yeah, Hadley didn’t need three guesses to figure out what kind of announcement.
The buzzer on the oven went off before Hadley could deny it, but not before an image of Will in the bathroom last night flashed in her mind. Damn. It took all of half a heartbeat for her body to go from primed for a fight to primed for Will. Ugh. This was not how this was supposed to go. Last night didn’t change anything. The man was…well, he was the evil twin who was convinced she had gold digging on the brain. The man did not get a place in her spank bank, he did not get to be in consideration for another roll in the metaphorical hay, and he most definitely was not husband material, no matter what Aunt Louise wanted to be true.
“Wait a minute.” She gasped, realization making her jaw drop. “Did you promise to help her nudge Will and me along the matrimonial road? Is that how you got the secret ingredient?”