Page 29 of Home Team Advantage
And that was all it was to him—a game. He was a player, for sure. The hair, the piercings, the ripped body, and the sex-on-a-stick smile told her as much.
The walk to the municipal lot was a short one, and before long, Anna was picking up the ladies at the spa. From the sounds of it, they’d had a wonderful time. The four of them had been friends for more years than Anna had been alive, and it showed.
Everyone should have friends like that, she thought.
Anna dropped them off one by one. One lived with her married daughter in town. The other two shared a two-bedroom cottage in a retirement village. The place was neat and well tended with a central community center and dining area.
“This seems like a nice neighborhood,” Anna commented.
“Oh, yes. Millie and Esther love it here. They keep trying to convince me to sell my house and move there, but it’s not for me.”
“Why not?” Anna couldn’t help but ask.
“Too many old people,” Mrs. Campbell said with a quirk of her lips. “So, what did you do today?”
“I ran some errands and did some exploring.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
“Nothing much to tell. I went to the library and a bookstore, then got a bite to eat at a diner on the square.”
“Alone?”
The hair on the back of Anna’s neck prickled at the woman’s too-innocent tone. She shot Elsa a sidelong glance. “Who else would I go with?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” the older woman said unconvincingly. “I just thought you might have run into someone. Pine Ridge is a small town, you know.”
The very limited number of people Anna had met since her arrival made the probability of running into one of them astronomical. Which made Matt’s conveniently timed appearance at the diner extremely suspect.
“Like Matt, for instance?”
“Well, now that you mention it, yes.”
“I ran into him at the diner.”
“Did you? How fortuitous.”
Fortuitous? Or contrived? “Mrs. Campbell, did you have anything to do with him showing up there?”
“What? No, of course not,” the woman said, bringing her hand to her collarbone and managing to sound offended. “I did perhaps mention that we would be in town today and that I would be otherwise occupied for several hours, but I suggested nothing. No, dear, if he was there, it was purely because he wanted to be.”
Anna sighed. She couldn’t even be angry. Mildly irritated that Elsa seemed determined not to listen to her, yes, but not angry. The older woman would discover soon enough that she was hanging her hopes on an impossibility.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“How did it go? Your lunch with Matthew, I mean.”
“I said I ran into him, not that we had lunch together.”
“Oh.”
There was so much disappointment in that one word that for a moment, Anna nearly took pity on her and told her that they had, in fact, eaten together. She remained strong, however. The less encouragement the wily old matchmaker had, the better.
When they got back to Mrs. C’s house, the older woman suggested an early, light dinner and an old movie, so that was what they did. With all the excitement of the day, Mrs. C was in bed by nine.
Anna couldn’t help looking out the window while she did up the dinner dishes. The Callaghans’ cottage was aglow with warm yellow lights spilling out of diamond-paned windows and smoke curling out of the multiple chimneys.
