Chapter Ten
Laney was a matter of mere paragraphs from the bigwhodunnitreveal in the mystery she was reading, since she hadn’t been able to settle on a movie, when somebody knocked on the side of her camper. A moment later, Liz’s face appeared on the other side of her screen door.
“Hey, Laney, what are you doing?”
“Just reading.” She set the tablet down and went to the door. “What do you need?”
“We don’t need anything. We want you to come play Scrabble with us.”
That made Laney laugh, and Liz backed up so she could open the screen door and step out. “When did Scrabble become a campground game?”
“When it’s girls’ night out. Okay, maybe notoutsince we’re already outside and we can’t really go anywhere, but the men are in charge of the kids, and it’s Dirty Scrabble.”
“Dirty Scrabble?” With this crowd, Laney couldn’t be sure if a game being called dirty meant it involved sex or mud.
“Come play and we’ll explain it to you.”
So much for her resolve to maintain some distance tonight. She’d already gotten talked into an ATV lesson by Ben. And then she’d ridden a couple of miles down the trail and back with Sean and Johnny. And she’d loved it, more than she’d thought she would, but then she’d found the strength to excuse herself so she could get back to her original plan.
And now this. She hadn’t been very good at alone time since the Kowalski family showed up, but maybe she was overthinking. This summer was about learning to enjoy being by herself, but it was also about rediscovering whatsheliked. And she liked spending time with these people.
“Okay. Let me grab a sweatshirt.”
Liz waited for her and when they got close to where the men—including Mike and Lisa’s two teenagers—were helping the kids make s’mores, she leaned close to whisper. “Don’t look at them. Donotmake eye contact. Pretend they’re invisible or they’ll suck you into helping them.”
Laney was tempted to laugh, but she suspected Liz was being serious. And through her peripheral vision, she saw all the men turn to look as they walked by.
“It’s okay, Jackson,” she heard Drew saying to Liz’s little boy. “Mommy’s going to play a game, but we’ll be fine. I’ll try not to get melted marshmallow in your hair. Or smear chocolate all over the T-shirt you’re wearing, which is her favorite.”
Liz snorted and kept walking. “He’s the chief of police. He can melt a marshmallow.”
Laney heard the men laugh and then Andy’s voice. “That was weak, son. Don’t forget she was raised by Rosie, so if you were looking for sympathy, you’ve gotta try harder.”
“You know what Terry says,” Evan said. “If you’re looking for sympathy, it’s between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”
“Wow, the Kowalskis are tough.”
That was Ben’s voice, and Laney was proud of herself. She didn’t stop and turn around, or trip over her own feet. Anybody watching her probably wouldn’t have guessed that her pulse jacked up and her cheeks got hot when she heard him talk. The more time she spent thinking—or fantasizing—about him, the stronger her reaction to seeing or hearing him, so she really needed to stop thinking about him.
Like that was going to happen.
The women were all gathered behind Leo and Mary’s big RV, which made sense. If the little ones could see their moms, it would be that much harder on the guys. And despite Drew’s little display, Laney guessed they were having fun being in charge and giving their wives a break.
“You got her!” Katie waved and gestured to an empty chair next to her. “Come sit next to me.”
Laney did, noticing that Katie was sitting in a straight-backed kitchen chair instead of a camp chair, as was Paige. “Do you want to switch chairs? That doesn’t look very comfortable.”
“We can’t bend over the boards from those chairs,” Paige said. “I can barely bend over the board fromthischair, but at least my butt doesn’t sink down into it.”
Liz clapped her hands. “Okay, the rules are pretty simple. We use regular Scrabble scoring, but we have three boards going at a time because there are a bunch of us. You get a bonus double word score for any word you can’t say in front of the kids. And if you can’t even say the word out loud, you get a triple word score.”
“Obviously you want to get those words early in the game,” Lisa said, “because the longer we drink, the more uninhibited our vocabulary gets.”
“So a shy person has the advantage?” Laney asked.
“Somebody...” When Lisa paused, they all looked at Beth, “tried to cheat once by pretending she couldn’t say any bad words, but she forgot we know her better than that.”
“So now we have the Beth Rule,” Keri said. “If there’s any doubt about a word being a triple, we go around and if anybody besides the person who played the word balks at saying it out loud, it’s a triple word score.”
