Once and Again Read Online Free PDF Page B

Walt owed me a favor,” he said, smugness creeping into his voice.
    “I don’t want to ask.”
    “Good, ’cause I don’t want to tell. Unless you want to tell me which little birdie likes to sing?” Link just gave him a smirk. “Fine. Then let me show you what Walt has planned for this hole.”
    “Okay.” Link pulled his cap even lower, gave a nod to his caddy, and began the walk down to the green. “I still can’t wait to hear how you’re going to keep the old folks happy while getting new blood in here.”
    Jake followed in his footsteps, his own caddy trailing behind. “I have a secret weapon.”
    “You gonna tell me?”
    “After that little-birdie shit you pulled? No way.” Link would figure it out soon enough, anyway.
    Carolyn Rivington.
    Her threadbare suit. Her hair, perfectly in place. The quivering of her body she tried so hard to keep under control. The deep expression of resolve on her beautiful face—like a down-on-her-luck Jackie Kennedy with those pearls and that proud smile.
    He needed her.
God damn it,
even after everything she and her family did to him, he still needed her to make nice with the members and the Board while he worked them from the other end.
    Yeah, he needed her, bad. He’d even told her so.
    But he’d be a fucking liar if he said he didn’t want her, too.

Chapter 4
    Carolyn swept her gaze over the seated crowd in Briarwood’s main ballroom before turning to the club’s chief steward, a silver-haired man named Wes Valles. “It looks like the Rotarians are set,” she said.
Finally.
    Planning this event had been ridiculously tough, as most of the members of the Eastbridge Rotary Club were elderly men completely set in their ways. The infighting among the group had made organizing their annual luncheon more difficult than some of the weddings she’d done. Ultimately, though, after numerous frustrating phone calls and more than one meeting where tensions ran high, Carolyn managed to figure out who was
truly
in charge and got the vice president of the club to sign off on the event.
    Wes nodded. “We’re about to serve dessert. Then they can start the toasts.”
    As if on cue, servers appeared from a side door, quickly spreading throughout the room. Each server bore a tray of vanilla custard flecked with raisins, a choice that had taken no less than two hours to decide. Carolyn leaned a bit closer to Wes so that her words would reach his ears only. “I know these guys aren’t the easiest to deal with, but you and your team have made this event run so smoothly.”
    “Just doing my job, Carolyn,” he said, her name sounding awkward on his tongue. Still, she was pleased by it. Wes was one of the old-school staff, and he’d been at Briarwood when she was a girl. For a full month after her arrival, she was Ms. Rivington. It had taken considerable effort and charm to get him to drop the formality. He was still uncomfortable about it—she could tell—but it was a breakthrough.
    “How’s the new grandbaby doing?” she asked.
    Wes’s worn face broke into a smile. “Crawling, now. He’s got some legs on him, that one.” He pulled out his cellphone and showed her a picture of a cherubic child with dimpled knees.
    “Aww,” she said. “Tell me when he takes his first steps, Wes. There’s nothing cuter than a little guy toddling around, grabbing everything in sight.”
    For one long moment, he studied her face, searching for the truth. He must have found what he was looking for, because he finally gave a short nod. “I’ll do that. Thanks for asking about him.”
    Carolyn gave him a wry smile. “I’m definitely living vicariously through you. Not that I want kids right now,” she said quickly, punctuating the words with a nervous little laugh, “but I like hearing about other people’s children.”
    “I get it,” Wes said, and maybe he did.
    In every one of her romantic relationships, the subject of children hadn’t come up. She and Jake had been young—way