SLOW PLAY (7-Stud Club Book 4)

by Christie Ridgway

  But this pain felt serious.

  Rebecca Hill-level of pain. Unrequited love-rut level of pain. The kind of pain that scarred a person for life.

  Mad found her in the kitchen where she was removing a chilled beer from the fridge. He sent it a pointed glance even as she removed the cap and brought it to her lips. Before the rim met her mouth, she pulled it away. “You want?”

  “Nope. I think you should take a swig or more before I give you the bad news.”

  Frowning, she handed him the beer. “What bad news?”

  “Are you aware your license plates are missing?”

  “My what?”

  “Your Nevada car license plates. The one that belongs on the front as well as the one that belongs on the back.”

  “Oh.” She tried thinking of the last time she’d seen them. Who noticed license plates? “What might have happened to them?”

  “Could be anything.” He shrugged. “On your vehicle, maybe they just leaped off due to shame.”

  She squinted at him.

  “Or maybe they were stolen. That’s not uncommon.”

  Her eyes widened. “Do you think that teenage crime syndicate…?”

  He shrugged. “I can try asking. Though we didn’t find any plates in the house where they were squatting.”

  “Oh, well.” Harper shrugged it off. “I’ll replace them when I get back to Vegas.”

  “Of course you can,” Mad said, rubbing his jaw. “And you must. But you’ll need to bring with you an official Sawyer’s Beach police report when you report them stolen at the DMV.”

  Her jaw dropped. “An official report?”

  “It’ll take a couple of days, I’m afraid.”

  “But—”

  “Even if I expedite it, and I will.”

  Harper grimaced. “Do I need license plates to drive? The car still works and everything.”

  “Of course it still works. But you risk getting pulled over all the way from here to Las Vegas.”

  “Ugh.” Four hundred miles and there were known stretches where you drove like an old lady or risked falling prey to speed traps. They’d be looking for license plates, for sure. “How much is the fine for driving plate-less?”

  “I don’t know, babe. But if you can you wait a couple of days you won’t have to know.”

  “Right.” She bit her lip. She couldn’t stay in Sawyer Beach forever, no matter how sweet the idea was sounding by the day, because she couldn’t stand to live so near to Mad and never really have him. “What should I do?”

  “Take a couple of days.” He touched her hair. “In that time we’ll sort it all out.”

  Mad hurried up the sidewalk toward his buddy Boone’s house, hoping he wouldn’t prove to be the final man to make it to poker night. Rule was, last one in was required to be the last one out, along with taking the recyclables and garbage to the cans. Upon reaching the walkway to the front door, a car pulled up to the curb. Hah. Not the last arrival.

  He watched as Shane leaned from the passenger side toward the driver, kissing the cheek of the woman behind the wheel. Then he climbed out at the same time his half-brother Raf exited the back seat. As Shane moved to the trunk and popped it open, Raf walked around the front of the car and leaned against the frame of the driver’s open window.

  To chat up his brother’s girlfriend.

  The shit-eating grin on the man’s face only served to turn up the volume of the warning bells going off in Mad’s head. He couldn’t assess the response of the driver-cum-Shane’s-girl, but when the hood of the trunk slammed down, Raf straightened away from the car. All innocence.

  Totally underhanded.

  Mad rubbed the back of his neck, then waited for the other two men to join him. “Good evening,” he said, as they walked toward the entrance.

  “What’s with the stink eye?” Raf murmured.

  “I saw what you were doing,” he answered through gritted teeth.

  “Had to report on the vanilla-almond oil hunt.”

  “Right.”

  Raf elbowed him. “You don’t win a game by sitting it out.”

  With a shake of his head, Mad pulled open the front door and ushered the other men in. He’d thought about making excuses and persuading Harper to spend the entire night with him, but had decided that maybe some time with the guys would straighten out his muddled head.

  Give him some clue on how to proceed. If he should proceed at all.

  Shit.

  “What did you say?” Boone asked, as he handed him a beer in exchange for the non-greasy snack that each poker participant was obliged to bring.

  “Nothing.”

  “Hey.” Boone held up the bag of black licorice bites Mad had purchased on his way to poker night. “What the hell? When do you bring licorice? On poker night we count on you for those rye pretzels.”

  Mad narrowed his eyes. “I’m not always rye pretzels.”

  “You’re always rye pretzels. And when it’s your night to host poker, you’re always the tamales.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You’re rye pretzels and tamales. And when we play blackjack, you never hit on twelve and when you lose big you never get shit-faced and murder Journey songs at the top of your lungs like Cooper.”

  “Hey!” yelled Cooper from across the room.

  “I don’t murder Journey songs or any other band’s because I never lose big,” Mad said, with a touch of smug.

  “You never win big either,” Boone pointed out.

  Mad could only frown at him.

  The poker crew gathered in the kitchen to help themselves to the grilled steak, baked potatoes, and salad that Boone provided—and yeah, Mad had to admit the other man’s host menu varied, unlike his. Once they were done eating and the dishes piled in the sink, they gathered around the poker table for the first round of play.

  It was then that their friend Hart Sawyer’s mood made itself apparent.

  The man sat back in his chair, nursing a whiskey straight-up and eyeing the cards as if they were venomous snakes. As the evening progressed, he left the conversation around him untouched. When it was time to bet, he shoved his chips toward the center of the felt and when it was time to fold he threw down his cards with a violence that made his long-time friends uneasy.

  They exchanged glances but no one said anything until they took a break. Some of the guys moved to grab another beer. Hart took himself into the backyard, alone.

  “I thought it was getting better,” Boone said, frowning after him. “That he was feeling better. I shouldn’t have discussed the guest list for my bachelor party with him on Tuesday.”

  Eli took a long swallow of his beer, an act that didn’t erase his guilty expression. “I may have asked him to go out with me next week to listen to a band we’re considering for my and Sloane’s wedding reception.”

  Next, they all turned their gazes to Cooper, the third of their group to have recently made a serious commitment to a woman. “What?” he asked, holding up both hands. “I didn’t do anything!”

  Then he mumbled something.

  Raf tilted his head. “What was that? Speak up.”

  Cooper glared at him. “Fine, it’s possible that I mused aloud—I was really talking to myself and he just happened to be there, okay?—whether Willow would prefer a diamond or a colored stone for her engagement ring.”

  They all groaned.

  “What’s the matter with you guys?” Raf asked. “Don’t you know better? Talk to him about sports and weight lifting and the best power bars you can buy in bulk. Manly things, not matrimonial things.”

  Mad could only agree. “Maybe we happily single guys should go out in the yard and hang with him…you know, in an act of solidarity.”

  Now all the gazes swung his way.

  “Happily single?” Raf asked, one black brow winging upward in clear incredulity. “That’s you?”

  “I…”

  Before he could come up with an answer, Boone peered into the darkness of t
he backyard and then strode to the front window and widened the blinds. “Never mind. We lost him.”

  They all rushed to Boone’s side to see the taillights of their friend’s truck receding in the distance.

  “What’s the date?” Cooper intoned in a quiet, dire tone.

  Shane told him.

  Coop sighed. “It’s Kim’s birthday. He mentioned it to me in passing a couple of weeks ago—he was planning to call her folks today. I didn’t remember until now.”

  His dead fiancée’s birthday. Mad scrubbed his face with his palms. “Somebody should go after him.”

  “I vote you,” Cooper said.

  He dropped his hands and stared at his friend. “Why me?”

  “The whole thing’s got to be familiar to you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know that look on Hart’s face tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cooper shrugged. “Just like yours those many months after Harper left and before you did that head-smack-with-a-loose-floorboard thing that you called an engagement to perky Courtney.”

  “Remind me to have your car towed,” Mad said, disgusted. “And leave Courtney out of this.”

  “You managed that yourself, thank God,” Eli said, “before we had to stage an intervention.”

  Exasperated, Mad looked around at his friends. “Wow, I’m having so much fun here.”

  Cooper sighed again. “I’ll go after Hart,” he said, “since I’m the one who forgot the date.”

  “And I’m going to sit down and deal ’em up,” Shane said, “because you dudes still have money in your pockets.”

  After Cooper exited the house, they did get back to play, but this time it was Mad in a mood, as he shifted from thinking about Hart’s grief to his own dilemma. What had he been thinking, falling in love with Harper and then considering a relationship with her again? Certainly he hadn’t been recalling the anguish of his grieving friend or his sister Tracy’s despair after her divorce. Not to mention his own hell upon losing Harp the first time. How could he take a chance on someone who had already hurt him once before?

  Ruminating on all that, he bet and folded and bet and raised and lost chips and won chips and won chips again. And won again.

  “What the hell?” Boone said, tossing down his latest hand in clear disgust. “You’re not playing like the reliable Mad we know. You never bet and raise aggressively with a nothing hand. I know if you do it’s because you have the damn goods to back it up.”

  Boone shot him a dark look. “But you just bluffed, asshole. For the third time.”

  Mad shook his head. “What are you talking about? That’s part of the game.”

  “Not your game,” his big friend grumbled.

  “Apparently even ol’ Mad can change on occasion,” Shane said.

  “Hey—”

  “Yeah?” Boone said. “I bet he still irons his boxers.”

  “And eats fiber every morning,” Shane added. “I’ve witnessed it.”

  “Predictable,” Raf declared.

  “Stop.” Mad stared down the table. “I’m not so damn predictable. I didn’t bring the rye pretzels this time. I went with black licorice.”

  “Yeah, well, we like the rye pretzels. The licorice not so much.”

  “Maybe we’ve been friends for too long,” Mad said, annoyed. “Because I’m beginning to notice how you can all be shitheads.”

  Eli shook his head. “You gotta stick with us,” he said. “There’s gotta be at least one dependable bachelor uncle in the group, and face it, you’re the man we can always count on.”

  Mad frowned. The man counted on to be reliable, predictable, to not hit on a twelve, and to never win big. Pathetic. “What the hell is a bachelor uncle, anyway?”

  Shane pointed at him with his beer bottle. “You teach our kids to drive, you bail them out when necessary, you show them how to forge their parents’ signatures on report cards or do it yourself if they’re squeamish.”

  “We needed a bachelor uncle,” Raf said to his half brother.

  “More important than all that,” added Eli, “is you come over on Christmas Eve and put all the stickers on the plastic toys.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Mad muttered.

  “Little cupcakes on fake 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 th
at 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.

  Like Mad. Mad made Harper happy. Mad made her happy about herself. At the thought of him, her breath evaporated and she was struck by a wave of deep, seemingly endless yearning.

  She ignored it, ruthless. Letting these feelings swallow her up was no way to make it through today. Mad had promised to come by this afternoon and it could very well be with that police report she needed to take to the Nevada DMV.

  With the paper in hand, she might just make it to Vegas by midnight, in time to join the golf bachelors and the divorce-moon women roaming the streets in search of ways to ease their loneliness.

  “Harper?” Grandmom said. “Another visitor.”

  She looked over to see Mad’s SUV turning into the parking area. Her spine straightened and she made another effort to clamp down on all the emotions churning inside her. He wouldn’t welcome her complete unraveling— I know this isn’t going anywhere, he’d said—and it wouldn’t make her leave-taking any easier.

  Only more humiliating.

  So pasting on a friendly smile, she strolled to greet him and linked her arm with his. “Interested in a great deal on a pumpkin?”