brown hair and tattoos. Two eyes. One nose with a mouth just below. Have you seen him?”—or, like the baby’s name, seemed creepy and wrong to google.
But, because I was me, of course I couldn’t let the incident go either. The man had seen me at my know-it-all worst, and I couldn’t say why it bothered me so much that he’d have a negative opinion of me, but it did. The desire to find him and explain myself had swelled all out of proportion, and I couldn’t seem to focus on real stuff—important stuff, like my job—until I did it.
So, I’d spent the last couple of days looking for the tattooed man’s face in every store and coffee shop to no avail. I’d even debated asking my friendly landlady at the bed-and-breakfast if she knew him, since she seemed to be acquainted with everyone between here and Nashville, but I’d held back because I didn’t want to confess why I wanted to find the guy.
It was starting to get ridiculous.
I cleared my throat and turned toward Mal.
“I hadn’t seen much of your work before today other than the tables at the restaurants, but I love it,” I offered kinda lamely, “I could use a piece like this for my office.” I picked up a random cow sculpture from the table of artwork for sale, but when I actually looked at it, I grinned. It was kind of adorable. It was even wearing a tiny football jersey.
Mal’s eyes widened, and he rushed toward me with his hands outstretched.
“Oh, no, wait! Not that one!”
I instinctively took a step back and collided with something behind me—something so huge, that for a second I thought the tent had come down on me. It wasn’t until it started talking that I realized I’d knocked over a person.
Jeez. Definitely less than half my brain present and accounted for.
“Shit,” the guy said. “Sorry, man.” He pushed to his feet and held out a hand.
“Nah, don’t even worry,” I said, letting him help me up and brush halfheartedly at the dust on the back of my shirt. “It was totally my—”
I broke off the second I saw the guy’s face and stared at him in shock. It was the man from the courthouse—same golden-brown hair, same gorgeous tattoos, same stunning eyes—and he looked almost as horrified as I felt.
“I—” I began, ready to launch into my apology right then and there, but before I could utter another syllable, the man turned on his heel and left. Clearly, he didn’t want to hear another word out of my mouth, and I couldn’t really blame him.
The next few minutes were kind of a blur—I knocked over a bunch of shit at Mal’s table, I kept replaying the look on the man’s face, and I very definitely didn’t make eye contact with anyone, ’cause I knew they’d all ask me what was wrong. Instead, I waited as long as I could, then made my escape from the booth and started looking for a particular head bobbing a foot above the crowd.
Of course, as soon as I started looking for him again, the guy had disappeared. I plowed through the throng of people anyway.
“Parrish, son, are you alright?” Uncle Beau hurried to catch up to me, his cane hitting the ground with every other step.
“Yes. Sure. Perfectly perfect. Why do you ask?” I said brightly, like I hadn’t acted like a total idiot. “Just give me a minute to check something out, alright? Then we’ll get some biscuits and we can talk about staffing for the store!”
Beau grabbed my elbow and yanked me to a stop. “We already went over the staffing, remember? When you picked Marnie ’n’ me up in Nashville this morning? Your aunt asked if you’d heard the news about Payne, and you said yes, and I asked how you were feelin’ about that, and you said you were perfectly perfect. And then you launched into a whole spiel about staffing, followed by you recounting all the new thingamajibbers you installed on that jalopy you’ve got parked out in the lot, and somehow that explanation took exactly as long as the ride to the Thicket, so I couldn’t ask you any more questions about your reaction to Payne being a giant, enormous jerk.”
“Convenient how that worked out.”
“Wasn’t it, though?” He looped his arm through mine. “A little too convenient. So, help your old uncle around for just a minute, why don’t you, since Marnie’s off looking at the craft