Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,107

things to the next level, careerwise.”

No. This wasn’t happening. “Holden, you made a commitment. You can’t just bail on me!”

“I know, I know. But this offer…”

“We signed a contract.” Dread took root in her gut. This whole thing with Holden had seemed too good to be true—and look, it had been.

“You have to understand,” he said. “You’ve got a real cute theater company here.”

Okay, no. The dread that had been growing in her gut was pulled out by the roots and replaced with anger. “A cute theater company?”

“And I have to thank you for this opportunity,” he went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “My agent said Ryan was really impressed I was doing live theater. He said Ryan said the movie is going to have the same kind of battle-of-the sexes vibe as Much Ado.”

Oh, hell no. “Don’t you dare compare my play to anything Ryan fucking Alexander is touching.”

His eyes widened. It was true that she didn’t swear a lot. If you believed Ben, she was known for her hooboys. But honestly. She might not be a big, fancy Hollywood director, but she didn’t want to be. And more to the point, she wasn’t an asshole. And her theater company might not be powerful and prestigious, but it sure as hell wasn’t cute. At least not in the condescending way Holden meant.

“You don’t have to get all pissy about it,” he grumbled. “I was doing you a favor anyway.”

“No, Holden, you were doing a job. A job I hired you for that you are now apparently bailing on.”

He stopped staring at the floor, stopped fidgeting, and looked her in the eye. “I’m sorry.”

Maya flattered herself that she was a pretty decent actor. She’d had good training, anyway. One of her main teachers had said actors use themselves as vessels for emotion. Talked about cultivating an emotion and letting it in—but then letting it out. That last part, he’d said, was key to not taking the emotions of a character home with you.

She had done that here, to a point. She’d cycled through bewilderment, disbelief, dread, and anger pretty quickly, one emotion sliding away to make room for the next so fast she almost didn’t feel them.

Until Holden left.

Everything poured out of her to make room for a wave of despair. She was going to have to cancel the last two shows—and lose the exposure the Globe and Mail article would have provided.

She’d had a huge opportunity handed to her today, and now it was being snatched away.

“Everything okay?” Eve popped her head in. “Holden took off like a bat out of hell.”

“He’s leaving.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s going to LA. He’s bailing on the rest of the run.”

“Oh, honey. You want me to—”

No. She didn’t want Eve to do anything. She didn’t want Eve at all, surprisingly.

She wanted Ben.

It was a quiet Monday afternoon at the bar. Things were always quiet early in the week before festival weekends. It was like people were saving up their party mojo. There were only a handful of customers in the bar, and they were all looked after, so Law was using the opportunity to forge ballots in favor of Pearl for mermaid queen. Not having been successful in his quest to find a willing volunteer, he’d decided to resort to fraud. The old folks stopped at nothing to get what they wanted, so what was one little detour to the dark side on his part?

He had a stack of ballots and a bunch of different kinds of pens and pencils, and he was huddling next to the cash register. PEARL, he wrote in red ink using block letters. Pearl B, he wrote in pencil in what he hoped were kid-like bubble letters. Then, in blue cursive: Perl Bruneda—this particular imaginary person was a bad speller.

He wasn’t exactly sure how he was going to sneak his pile of fake ballots into the ballot box, which was kept under Karl’s watchful eye at the hardware store, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Karl was being weird, anyway. Usually he and Pearl and Eiko made a big deal of announcing the king and queen the weekend before the parade, but for some reason this year they’d decided to keep the voting open to the last minute—which suited Law and his scheming ways just fine.

He was so immersed in his subterfuge that he was startled when his phone buzzed with a text from Eve, which was a bit unusual. They were