The screen door slammed open and they both started, breaking apart. Hadley looked at him, wide-eyed with flushed cheeks, and pressed her fingertips against her lips as if he’d actually kissed her. Adrenaline and lust were raging through his body as if he had.
“Are you guys coming in?” PawPaw asked, taking a step out of the back door. “We drew Louise’s team for Scrabble. It’s her, Raider, and that Matt fella.”
The mention of Hadley’s ex, who was obviously ready to make a play, pierced the haze of attraction and anticipation that had him fisting his hands to keep from reaching out for her. Matt was staying, huh? Suddenly, winning game night got a little bit more crucial—not that losing was ever an option. He stood up and stepped over the bench seat, ready to send Matt packing.
“You explained the house rules to him?” PawPaw asked.
Hadley shook her head, her gaze a little fuzzy as she looked up at him and got up. Will reached out and helped her steady herself as she stepped over the bench seat and started toward the door.
PawPaw lifted a bushy gray eyebrow. “What have you two not daters been up to out here?”
Hadley cleared her throat and looked down at the patterned stone marks on the cement patio. “We’ve been working on the riddle.”
“Uh-huh.” PawPaw looked them both up and down before shaking his head. “So here’s how it works. We’re on a team of three. Instead of the usual seven tiles each, we get five. At the beginning of your turn, one of the members of your team will give you a tile from their pile without knowing what letters you have. Then you have to make a word playing off what’s on the board plus using the tile your teammate gave you. Got it?”
Will nodded.
“Good,” PawPaw said with a nod. “Now, hustle up. I have to get Louise a sun tea, and then we’re starting.”
Then the older man went back inside, letting the screen door slam shut behind him, which left Will and Hadley alone again.
> “Is there a reason it’s so complicated?” Will asked, looking at the handcuff around his wrist.
“Because when we were younger, everyone wanted to play. There were only so many pieces and Knox was too little to play by himself and be competitive, so we came up with the Donavan-Martinez house rules,” Hadley said. “It all sort of grew from there.”
He wasn’t sure how to process that. It wasn’t like he had any experience in his own family with something like that. For him and Web, being too young to participate meant that they didn’t. Period. No exceptions. Yet here was Hadley’s family willing to rewrite the rules so everyone could be a part of it. He didn’t even have to guess at what kind of reaction that would have gotten from his grandmother. She would have taken one look at him or Web and would have told them that the world didn’t make allowances and neither did she. There was no wiggle room for ability or age or just kindness—a person was either able to compete or not. He’d always thought that’s how everyone’s family was.
“That sounds—”
“Totally bananas?” Hadley asked with a wry chuckle.
“I was going to say kinda nice,” he answered before he had time to think through his words, only realizing as they came out that it was exactly what he meant.
Hadley laughed, the sound light and musical—like the way she chuckled when Web told one of his jokes. “Don’t tell me you’re drinking the sun tea and thinking this”—she lifted their shackled wrists up again—“is normal behavior.”
“I’m not sure there is a normal when it comes to you.” At least not the way he would have described it before meeting her. Now? Well, things were starting to look different.
He held open the screen door for her and they made their way inside—a little more awkwardly than normal, since they were cuffed together—and that’s when he spotted it. A pink-and-yellow-painted snake sculpture sitting by a trio of flowerpots.
“I sizzle like bacon and am made with an egg,” PawPaw had said. “I have a backbone but not a single good leg. When I peel like an onion, I still manage to remain whole. And even though I can be long like a flagpole, I can fit in a hole. What am I?
A snake.
He opened his mouth, about to let the answer out so they could tell PawPaw and get these damn handcuffs off, but nothing came out.
“Think of something?” Hadley asked.
“Nope.” He shook his head, not sure why he didn’t just come out with the answer but not willing to examine it. Not yet anyway.
Then they walked inside to utter pandemonium.
…
It took a while, but all the we’re-gonna-kick-your-butt family game night smack talk finally simmered down enough that everyone was settled around their particular board game in the family room under the watchful painted eye of Miguel Martinez, the original Martinez to own the Hidden Creek Ranch.
The oil painting hanging over the fireplace of Gabe’s grandfather standing under the sign for the ranch had been a gift from Hadley, Adalyn, Weston, and Knox last Christmas. She’d found an artist in Harbor City to paint it from a photograph whose edges had started to curl that Gabe’s parents had kept on the fridge until they’d retired and moved down to Arizona. Next to the painting were graduation pics of each of the kids, a photo from Gabe and her mom’s wedding day, and a picture from the last family reunion that had been shot as a panorama to fit everyone in. A lot of the people in that photo were here, laughing, strategizing, and stuffing their faces with popcorn balls. In the middle of the room, Gabe and her mom were facing off against Knox and Weston in a cutthroat game of speed Monopoly.
They were all laughing and teasing one another, meanwhile PawPaw must be thinking that Hadley had banged her head on the overhead bins on the flight out here. He’d dropped the words “hiss” and “slither” and “rattle” on the Scrabble board, giving her a nudge with his elbow each time, as if she hadn’t realized the answer was a snake. Yeah, riddles weren’t really her thing, but he’d used this one before.