A Reunion And A Ring (Proposals & Promises Book 1) by Gina Wilkins Page A

a few. This explained some of the raucous laughter she’d heard.
    With an exaggerated clearing of her throat, she reached out and rearranged a couple of Rob’s tiles on his rack. He frowned at the board a moment, then laughed and slapped all of his tiles down in a triple-score play. “Boo-yah!” he crowed. “Top that, losers.”
    “Oh, that’s no fair,” J.T. protested with a shake of his head. “Jenny gave you the word.”
    “I’d have come up with it on my own. Probably.”
    “Right.” Gavin’s chair creaked as he shifted his weight. Though he was smiling lazily, he rested his right arm rather gingerly across his lap, and Jenny thought she saw a shadow of pain in his eyes. He had so overdone it that day, not that he had listened to anyone who tried to dissuade him, she thought in exasperation.
    “Jenny’s deadly at Scrabble,” he drawled. “Dad thought he was the Scrabble champ until he took her on. The two of them got into some serious competitions. Holly called it full-contact Scrabble.”
    There was a barely notable moment of silence before Rob and J.T. responded with smiles. Jenny moistened her lips even as Gavin suddenly frowned, as if he’d become abruptly aware of just what he’d unthinkingly revealed about their past. It would be hard to maintain now that they had simply been passing acquaintances in college. Judging by the speculation on their faces, she realized that Avery must not have enlightened the others earlier, after all. She would leave it to Gavin to decide how much he wanted to tell them later, after she’d gone her own way again.
    “Your dad was a worthy opponent,” she said casually. “You were always pretty good yourself, but not your sister. Holly tended to make up words as she went.”
    “Yeah. Holly calls herself a ‘cheerful cheat’ when it comes to games.”
    She smiled. “I remember that.”
    Avery’s chair scraped against the floor as he stood. “Let’s go check that flooding down the road. Might need to shovel more brush and leaves out of the drainage ditches so Jenny can get out of here. And I’ve got to head back before long myself. Lynne and I are planning to stream a movie tonight.”
    She bit her lower lip. Avery was making no secret that he wanted her gone. Seriously, he acted as though she were a ticking time bomb or something. She couldn’t imagine why she still roused such hostility in him after all these years.
    * * *
    The men were gone longer than she’d expected. After half an hour, she was beginning to worry that something had gone wrong. She sat on the porch for a while, then went inside and busied herself wiping the kitchen counters and cleaning the mud-tracked floor with a mop she found in the pantry. She preferred cleaning to sitting and waiting.
    She had just put away the mop when she was startled by a burst of noise. Lights came on in the kitchen and the refrigerator began to hum, cooling the contents that would mostly have to be discarded. A ceiling fan in the living area began to spin lazily. Country music flowed from speakers she hadn’t noticed before. Apparently Gavin’s taste in music hadn’t changed. Her heart clenched when she recognized the tune and the artist. But it wasn’t “their” song, she realized after a moment, and thank goodness for that. It had been a long time after she and Gavin had broken up before she’d been able to listen to country music again, for fear that she might hear Diamond Rio’s “Beautiful Mess,” the song they’d both loved and which they’d always sung along to whenever it came on the radio in his truck.
    She’d never been the type to have a little too much wine on a melancholy night, put on an old song and wallow in bittersweet memories. She started across the room with the intent to find the music player and silence it now. She liked this song just fine, though the sentiment about wanting a chance to spend one more day with a loved one made her a bit uncomfortable.
    The front door opened