His voice sounded disgruntled.
“I’ll have to catch up with them and say hello,” Leandra murmured, stepping around the table and lining up her next shot. She hoped Evan didn’t get any grumpier about the shoot. She truly didn’t like the idea of making someone miserable just so she could achieve her own goals. “Where’s your sister been staying while they were gone?”
“Tris and Hope’s. Though she’s eighteen now. She could have stayed by herself at the house. Jake doesn’t know anything about Ed-wa-ahrd.”
Her shot went wide, the ball banking uselessly off the side cushion. She straightened, propping the end of the stick on the toe of her tennis shoe. “What did you do? Ask him about it when he called?”
“Yes.”
An invisible band seemed to tighten around her skull. “I told you it didn’t concern Jake. It doesn’t concern you, for that matter.”
“Sounding a little defensive there, Leandra.” Evan leaned over and sank two balls in the corner pocket.
So much for her sympathy. She had an intense urge to smack him over the shoulders with her own pool cue. “And you are sounding pretty interfering there, Evan. What does it matter, anyway? Why do you care?”
He was studying the table, his head slowly tilting to one side, then the other. “Jake’s one of my best friends.”
“So out of loyalty to him you figure he needs to know about Eduard?”
He leaned over again, his movements with the pool cue infuriatingly confident. “Does he?”
Despite her intense concentration on them, the infernal balls didn’t have the sense to thwart his rapid shots. They went sailing exactly where he wanted. At the rate he was going, he’d have the table cleared in minutes. “I’ve already said there’s nothing for him to know. Why are you making a deal about this?”
“You’re the one being closemouthed.” Only the eight ball remained. He lined it up. A second later, it rolled neatly into the pocket. Looking smugly superior, he straightened.
“Bet you can’t do that a second time.”
His lips quirked, amused. “Bet I can. Don’t forget, sport, I’ve been hanging out here at Colbys since before you moved away.”
“Maybe I hit the billiard circuit in California.”
“You’re a rotten liar. Have been ever since you tried to convince Mr. Pope that you didn’t cheat on that junior high math test.”
“I didn’t cheat!”
“Have you convinced yourself of that in the years since?”
“I don’t have to convince myself of anything. I know what happened with that test whether Pope—or you—believed me or not.” She walked around the table to the other side, facing him. “If you must know, it was Tammy Browning who was cheating off my test. I’ve never cheated on anything. And you’re trying to sidestep the bet. What’s the matter, Evan?” She leaned over, propping her forearms on the side of the table. “You afraid of losing to a girl?”
“Wouldn’t matter if you weren’t a girl. How much?”
She rolled her eyes in thought. “Twenty.”
“Sissy bet.”
“Forty.”
He waited.
“Fine.” She pulled some of the cash from the front pocket of her blue jeans, counted through it. Slapped several bills down on the rail. “Fifty.”
Of course, now the man smiled. Slow and easy. As if he’d been the one baiting her all along.
It annoyed her to no end.
“Rack ’em up, sport.”
She made quite a production out of it. “What’s with the ‘sport’ thing?”
He leisurely chalked the tip of his cue, watching her. “You’re the one dressing like a Little Leaguer.”
She looked down at herself. Blue jeans and a zip-front sweatshirt. Well, okay, she was wearing a ball cap with the show’s WITS acronym sewn on it, but that was hardly a damning fashion statement. Most of the crew wore the caps. Even people around town were sporting them.
She captured all of the balls within the triangular rack and rolled it back and forth, finally positioning it at the footspot. “Knock yourself out, Doc.”
He hit a sound break, solids and stripes bursting outward in a rolling explosion. He waited until they all came to a rest, his blue gaze studying the positions.
“Getting cold feet?” Her voice was dulcet.
He snorted softly and leaned over to begin smoothly picking them off, one by one—and sometimes two—into the pockets. He didn’t miss a single shot.
“Who taught you to play, anyway?” She silently bid her money a farewell.
“My dad.”
“Figures. And I know he must have played plenty with my uncles during their misspent youth.” The Clay brothers, and Tag, had all been notoriously wild teenagers.
“And your dad. He’s one of the worst ones when it came to playing hard.”
“Worst as in best,” she muttered. Not once in her life had she been able to best her father at the pool table, whether it was the one housed in their basement or elsewhere.
“It’s all Squire’s fault.” Sarah had come up to stand beside Leandra. “He’s the one who taught his sons how to play in the first place.”
Leandra nodded. “True.” Their grandfather had raised his sons alone after the death of his first wife, Sarah, after whom Leandra’s cousin had been named. According to the stories, he’d been a hard-nosed man with little softness afforded to his boys after his wife’s death from giving birth to Tristan, their youngest. And then Leandra’s mother, orphaned before she was even ten, had gone to live with Squire and all of those boys. And all of their lives had been forever changed.
Evan sank two more balls. The table was nearly clear again, and Leandra’s hopes that Evan would make even one small misstep were dwindling.
“He’s going to keep running the table if you don’t do something,” Sarah murmured as she lifted her soda to her lips. She’d changed out of her schoolteacher clothes into jeans that were nearly identical to Leandra’s. But instead of a shapeless gray sweatshirt, Sarah wore a pretty pink crocheted top over a matching camisole, and instead of scuffed tennis shoes on her feet, she had pointy-toed black boots with killer heels that made her look even more leggy than she really was.
And Leandra was beginning to feel decidedly frumpy. She turned on her heel, looking at her cousin. “What am I supposed to do about it? I already feel stupid for putting the money down.”
Sarah shook her head slightly and her long hair rippled over her shoulders. “Distract him.”
