Page 13 of A Family Affair: The Ring
The more unbelievable part of it all was the fact that Nate Desantro agreed to appear in Nick’s clothing catalogue!Who would have ever believed that possible?Nobody, not even Nate’s closest friends, but the guy surprised them all and did it.Will guessed a guy would do anything for the right woman, and word had it Christine had been involved in the asking part of getting her husband in that catalogue.
Will sat in a booth at O’Reilly’s, sipped his beer and waited for Cash.Tonight was specialty wing and slider night and Cash had invited him for a few beers and tax advice.Will and Cash developed a bartering system a few years back: Will provided tax expertise and Cash offered home repairs.After they’d gotten past the initial jabs about Will not knowing how to use a power screwdriver and Cash not understanding depreciation, they’d settled in and decided to concentrate on their own areas of expertise.
Will could get a lot of work done on his house just for offering insight into how a person could save money.He enjoyed the challenge and the intricacies of tax code, and while some might call it boring, he looked at it as a puzzle to be dissected and solved.
“So, got a new list for me?”Cash Casherdon slid into the booth across from Will, set his beer bottle on the table.“Maybe one that includes an addition?”He slid Will a look, raised an eyebrow.“Say…a nursery?”
The guy might be married with kids, but he would always be a tormentor.No problem, because Will knew how to push back and when to ignore the guy.This was not the time to ignore.“Hmm… Not sure you’re up to that challenge yet… An entire room addition?You’d have to sub that out and then what?I’d have to do your taxes for free for the next twenty years,andall your friends and their friends…”
That comment made Cash laugh, his eyes crinkle at the corners.“Good one.Really good one.I have a lot of friends who have skills, so I could get a whole house built with my connections.”Big sigh and another laugh.“That’s a lot of taxes and a ton of tax advice.”
“You think you can just use that charm to get whatever you want?Let me guess...Pete Finnegan would be the general contractor...Vic Tramont would handle carpentry...Beck Durrell for electrical...and I’ll bet you could even talk Law Carlisle into pitching in if you mentioned the wordnursery.”Will sipped his beer, pushed a little further.“But what would Nate say about all of this?And how about your wife?Do you think Tess would be okay if she knew you were trying to barter my services through retirement by offering up your friends to do the work?”
Cash’s smile slipped, shifted to a frown.“You really haven’t learned what the line is, have you?”
Of course, Will knew the line and he liked to walk right up to it.Cash could dish out his torments, but if Will mentioned Tess or how she might not think her husband was an above-board, stellar human being?Game over.“You knew I was going to play that card the second you started pinging me about a nursery, which implied marriage, which implied a proposal…which implied commitment...”
Cash’s shoulders relaxed, but his gaze narrowed on Will, his tone serious.“Okay, maybe that was a bit much, but… Was it really?You’re thirty years old, have a good job, own your house, been with the same woman for almost a year...So?”
“So?”Everybody wanted him to get married and start a family, especially his mother.Maybe he wasn’t ready, maybe he didn’t want that sort of commitment, not now, maybe not ever...though there had been a time...
“So, guess you know she’s back in town.”
And there it was, tossed onto the table between them—the real reason Will was sidestepping his intentions with Delaney.If he played it cool, maybe Cash would let it slide and circle back to talk of household additions and nurseries.
Or not.
The shrug and sideways glance said he had a lot more to say and was trying to decide how much to share.“Tess and I both saw her.She looks great.”
“Good to know.”Eight years had only made her more beautiful, more sophisticated, more—
“Figured she’d head back here now that her grandmother’s gone.It’s not like anybody else in that family is going to come here and clean out the place.”
“Right.”Susannah Russell wouldn’t set foot in this town again, neither would her beaten-down husband.Nope, apparently, they’d rather pretend around what had happened, move to a different town, and start over.Start over?Nobody could start over.Did they really think they could leave the past behind like it never happened?Bury the secrets with a new address and a different backstory andpretendthey were different people?
Good luck with that.Everybody carried scars and memories, no matter how much they wanted to deny it.Will should know.
“I’m just saying, Delaney’s a nice girl, and I hear she bakes killer chocolate chip cookies, but that doesn’t mean you have to spend the rest of your life with her.”
“Thanks for expanding on what I figured out a while ago.”The guy was poking around, trying to gauge Will’s reaction to Melanie’s reappearance in Magdalena.Wait until he found out she’d visited him and tried to apologize.Of course, where his ex-fiancée was concerned, he could only pretend for so long.She’d burned him, ruined him from ever opening his heart again… But he wasn’t admittingthat.
“Have you seen her yet?”Cash eyed him with those whiskey-colored eyes as though they were in a poker game, and he’d just “called”.
Did the guy already know the answer?Had the questions all leading up to this second been to see if Will would admit the truth?“I saw her.”
“Well then.”Cash blew out a long sigh, his expression unreadable.“She’s sticking close to her grandma’s, trying to sort through a lifetime of memories.I stopped over the other day to fix a leaky sink and a broken cabinet hinge.”The narrowed gaze homed in on him.“I like her.Tess likes her too, and my wife is a hard sell.She invited Melanie to join in on a girl’s night next month.You know, the ones where the women sit around, drink mimosas, and talk about life, love, and how they can fix us.”He laughed, took another long pull on his beer.“And then they admit they might like totweaka few things, but there’s not much they’d change.”
That’s because they’d figured it out and gotten the right partner.Cash and Tess Casherdon.Nate and Christine Desantro.Ben and Gina Reed.Adam and Bree Brandon.Bree had picked a real loser the first time, but she got it right with the lawyer husband.Delaney was desperate to get invited to one of their get-togethers, had hinted at Will asking Cash who might suggest it to Tess.Not happening.Will didn’t poke around in other people’s business and ask them to invite his girlfriend to their gathering.
Girlfriend.He guessed that’s what Delaney was, but he couldn’t say she’d ever make it past that title.Life partner?Wife?Mother to his children?It was a stretch to picture that.In fact, it was a stretch to picture anyone with those titles, not since—
“So, no details on when and where you saw her?”Curiosity spilled through Cash’s words.“Maybe just a hint?”
Fortunately for Will, Nick Borado interrupted with more beers, a platter of sliders and a basket of wings.“Extra hot sauce on the side.”He patted Will on the back, pointed at Cash.“This guy says you take too long to decide, so he ordered ahead of time.”
Cash’s laugh bounced from the table to Will.“Hey, unlike some of us at this table, I have a wife to get home to and don’t want to hang out here all night while whiz kid compares the saturated fat content and calories.”
“Funny.”Will eased a slider onto his plate, scooped up three wings.
