A Small-Town Homecoming. Terry Mclaughlin

as she tossed the soiled, crumpled tissue toward her waste bin. The wad bounced off the rim and tumbled to the floor. This just wasn’t her day. “I tend to get upset when my job site is the scene of a criminal investigation, and I’m not notified.”

      “Although I appreciate your enthusiasm for this project,” Geneva said in a terrifyingly frigid tone, “I must remind you that Tidewaters belongs to me, not to you.”

      Tess stiffened and dropped the shoe. “Yes, Mémère.”

      “You may be my granddaughter, but you are also, where Tidewaters is concerned, my employee.”

      It was that fact, more than her grandmother’s scolding, that heated Tess’s cheeks with embarrassment and guilt. An angry phone call wasn’t the best way to display her professional abilities to her biggest client to date.

      She detested being caught making an error in judgment. She despised weakness, especially in herself, and she loathed the shriveling remorse that swamped her at times like this. That was why she worked so hard, took such care, fussed over the details. Stayed in control. There were fewer mistakes that way.

      She shut her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “I want—I need—to be kept in the loop. I have to be a part of this, each step of it, all the way through. It’s not just the way I want it. It’s my job. And if I’m going to do a good job, I need to be informed about everything—all the progress and all the problems.”

      “I don’t suppose,” Geneva said, “it would do any good to ask you to be civil to Quinn when you discuss this with him.”

      “I can be civil.” Tess slowly sank into her chair. “I can be anything I want to be.”

      “Except punctual.”

      “Except that.” Her smile was faint. “But I’m working on it.”

      “Good. Now,” Geneva said with a brisk change of tone, “I have some unrelated news I think will please you.”

      “About Charlie’s wedding shower?” Tess had left an earlier phone message asking if she could host the party at Chandler House. Tess’s own house was too small for the event she had in mind, and Addie’s apartment was literally a hole in the wall behind her shop.

      “About her wedding,” Geneva said.

      “Her wedding?”

      “I’ve offered Maudie the opportunity to hold Charlie’s wedding here. There’s plenty of space in the garden, near the pergola.”

      “I’m sure she was thrilled. Charlie will be, too.” Tess swiveled in her chair and stared out her windows, seeing white chairs in neat lines and pastel ribbons twined with wisteria instead of the pale wisps of late-afternoon fog drifting across Main Street. “And that means the pressure’s on now. Charlie will have to choose a summer date.”

      “That’s what Maudie and I thought, too.”

      “She didn’t have a chance, not with you two plotting against her.” Tess grinned. “Besides, who wouldn’t want a wedding at Chandler House?”

      “My granddaughter, for one.”

      Tess released a silent sigh. They’d had this discussion before. “I never said I didn’t want to get married there.”

      “You never said you wanted to get married.”

      “There are things I need to do before I’m ready to think about it. And one of those things is finding a man I want to marry.”

      “Find one,” Geneva ordered as if she were instructing her gardener where to place a rosebush. “Before I get too old to dance at the reception.”

      Tess grinned. “Yes, Mémère.”