Looking For You All My Life Part 137

How's it going with Clyde anyway?" She glanced over to

watch as Cindy now seated Jed and Leah in the opposite

corner with Jed's back now facing her so he wouldn't be able

to see when Clyde returned to sit down. Well, she'd just have

to make a point of walking by Jed's table with Clyde at her 4214Melody Carison

side after they finished their meal. Why did this keep hap-

pening? She thought about what her mother had suggested

about Jed's insecurity with relationships. Well, this certainly

wouldn't help anything!

"There you are," said Clyde as he eased himself into the

chair next to her. "Thought maybe you'd skipped out on

us."

"I'm sorry, Clyde. I was working on an article and totally

forgot the time."

"It's okay." A faint smile played upon his timeworn fea-

tures. "Gavin and I have been having us a real interesting

little chat."

Her brows raised with curiosity. Clyde sounded surpris-

ingly congenial. "What's up?" she asked. Just then the wait-

ress approached to take their orders, forcing Maggie to wait

to hear what was going on between the two men.

"Why don't you tell her about your idea, Gavin," said

Clyde as soon as the waitress got it all straight and left.

"Well, this whole darn thing with TS Development has

really got me irked," began Gavin. "I've read all your arti-

cles in the back papers about it, and I've talked to various

folks in town as I'm selling ad s.p.a.ce to them. And I just kept

wishing there was some way to put a stop to all their non-

sense."

Clyde grinned and rubbed his hands together. "Come on,

boy, now let's get to the good part."

"Anyway, as I just told Uncle Clyde," Gavin smiled

across the table at his uncle, "I was out walking the dogs on

your property the other day, just before dark. And as we

were heading north, through the open meadow, it suddenly

occurred to me that this wasn't all your property. I remem-

bered how you'd mentioned one time that you only pur-

chased twenty acres with the old homestead. Well, I figure

that leaves about another three hundred acres still sitting to

the north of you."

"That's a pretty close estimate," said Clyde. "I had the

land divided by the county last spring in order to sell the old Looking for YouAllMy Life215

house as an enticement to get a certain L.A. reporter out here

to run the Pine Cone for me."

"I didn't know you owned more acreage out there," said

Maggie. "I just a.s.sumed that twenty acres was all the land

that had been left. I knew that you'd sold a lot of timber land

way back."

Clyde chuckled. "My parents used to own almost every-

thing out there, clear into town. Like Arnold Westerly's