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His rules be damned.
Fortunately sanity had reigned even if it had left him with a little less than three hours of sleep.
“Isn’t she a beauty?” Ronnie asked a few minutes later as he held up his catch, a large silver fish that was more than half his height from mouth to fin.
“How you doing over there, RJ?” Porter called to Reynolds, who was still patiently holding his line. “Any bites?”
“Not yet.”
He came over and took a seat next to him. “I’m not much of a fisherman myself. But it’s nice to get out here with the guys. Get a change in pace from the usual grind, you know?”
Reynolds nodded.
With Bry and Ronnie occupied with figuring out what to do with the fish, Greg came over to join them, sliding the cooler of beer along with him. “I hear you’re in computer security?” he asked Reynolds, twisting off a cap on another bottle of beer.
“Cybersecurity, that’s right.”
“Do you work with any companies that I might know?” Greg pushed.
“Probably. But I try to keep my clients’ identities confidential.”
“What’s the name of your company? I might want to look into your service.”
The guy wouldn’t stop. “How about I give you my card before I leave?”
“Sure. I mean, it’s not like I’m asking you to—”
“He’s right, Greg,” Porter said, interrupting. “The guy wants to take a break from talking work, something I think we can all relate to. It’s why we’re out here, after all. To get away.” He checked his watch. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting hungry for some real food here,” he said, nodding to the array of prepackaged pastries. “And maybe some coffee. What do you say we finish up and head back? I don’t like to leave Lexi alone for too long anyhow, seeing as how she doesn’t know everyone just yet.”
The topic turned to Porter’s fiancée and some crass jokes that Porter smiled at along with everyone but that Reynolds could tell were getting under this skin. He seemed to be a decent guy, even if his taste in friends was questionable.
Personally, Reynolds would have rather stuck it out back at the house as well, but he didn’t want to risk missing Ronnie going off on his own to meet up with Spencer. And unless there was a hidden message in the gut of that fish, it was safe to say that Ronnie hadn’t had any meaningful contact with the guy since last night.
By the time they finally docked and got back to the house, it was nearly noon, and he was eager to see how Waverley was getting on with the women. Okay, maybe he was eager to see Waverley, period.
He was pathetic. But for some reason, even owning that couldn’t take the near smile off his face. Especially when he spotted her sitting at one of the tables poolside with a tiny little guest sitting opposite her, both of them studying the cards in their hands.
“Do you have any…sixes?” Waverley asked.
“Go fish!” the boy of around seven with light brown hair shouted in excitement.
Waverley smiled at him, and he would bet she knew exactly what cards the kid had and didn’t have and was making sure to request something with that exact response.
The kid barely paused before asking, “Do you have any queens?”
Waverley made a show of looking put out before dramatically dropping two such cards on the table.
“Thank you,” the boy said and grinned at her, his front teeth absent. He added his last card to the two she offered and slammed them down. “I win again!”
“No way. How did you get to be so good?” she asked, still unaware of Reynolds’s presence as he reached the table.
“Do you want to play another game?” the kid asked.
“If you don’t mind putting up with someone as terrible as I am.”
“I don’t mind. You’ll get better.”
“What do we have here?” Reynolds asked, enjoying the look of surprise followed by joy that crossed Waverley’s face as she turned to see him.
