Seven years before, come July, he’d turned off the pumps at the Qwik Mart, and had taken the added precaution of locking Coach Moser in a cell. He’d never known, not for certain, if he’d saved his friends’ lives by those actions, or if the dream had been just a dream.

But he’d played the odds.

He continued to play the odds, Gage supposed as he grabbed a pair of boxers in case he wasn’t alone in the house. He was back, as he was every seventh year. And this time he’d thrown his lot in with the three women who’d turned his, Fox’s, and Cal ’s trio into a team of six.

With Cal engaged to Quinn Black-blond bombshell and paranormal writer-she often spent the night at Cal ’s. Hence the inadvisability of wandering downstairs naked to make coffee. But Cal ’s attractive house in the woods felt empty to Gage, of people, of ghosts, of Cal ’s big, lazy dog, Lump. And that was all to the good, as Gage preferred solitude, at least until after coffee.

He assumed Cal had spent the night at the house the three women rented in town. As Fox had done the headfirst into love with the sexy brunette Layla Darnell, they might’ve bunked at the house, or Fox’s apartment over his law offices. Either way, they’d stay close, and with Fox’s talent for pushing into thoughts, they had ways of communicating that didn’t require phones.

Gage put coffee on, then went out to stand on the deck while it brewed.

Leave it to Cal, he thought, to build his home on the edge of the woods where their lives had turned inside out. But that was Cal for you-he was the type who took a stand, kept right on standing. And the fact was, if country charm rang your bell, this was the spot for it. The green woods with the last of the spring’s wild dogwoods and mountain laurel gleaming in slants of sunlight offered a picture of tranquility-if you didn’t know any better. The terraced slope in front of the house exploded with color from shrubs and ornamental trees, while at the base the winding creek bubbled along.