Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,108

friendly enough but didn’t have much occasion to text each other directly. Holden is bailing on the play. There was a shouting match. He left, and Maya ran off.

Law: What? But the Globe guy is coming on Saturday.

Eve: Exactly.

Oh shit. He clattered to standing, but then he didn’t know what to do. His limbs were vibrating with the need to move, to find her, but he wasn’t sure where she would have gone. If Holden had really left town, maybe to her apartment?

He was still frozen, mind racing, when the door opened. It was Maya. Standing there in all her mermaid queen glory—in all her Maya vulnerability.

He looked at her, and suddenly he knew that whatever else happened, she was his.

If he could talk her into having him.

That feeling of rightness that he’d had trouble making sense of? He knew what it was now. He understood what Sawyer and Jake had been trying to say.

She came right to the bar, right to him. She looked so sad.

“Holden’s leaving,” she said, her voice quavering. “I have to cancel the last two shows.” Her eyes started to fill.

“Aww, sweetheart.” He had no one to cover the bar, but he did not give one flying fuck. He fished out his apartment keys, handed them to her, and stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out an ear-piercing whistle. “Sorry, folks,” he shouted, “bar’s closing.”

There was a murmur of disbelief and, as people started realizing he was serious, grumbling.

“Ben!” Maya exclaimed. “Don’t close the bar.”

He shot her a quelling look and made a shooing motion toward the back. “Go on ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”

The line echoed in his head. I’ll be right behind you. He wanted to say more. I’ll help you. I’ll hold you up. Or maybe even, more pragmatically, I will go to wherever Holden fucking Hampshire is, and I will drag him back here by his sorry little ass. But this was not the time for that.

This was the time to get these people out of his goddamn bar. He clapped his hands to move them along. “Take your drinks with you. On the house if you haven’t settled your checks.”

Carol Dyson, who owned Curl Up and Dye, the beauty salon that functioned as a kind of satellite gossip node in town, secondary to the hardware store, eyed him as she gathered her things. This was going to be all over town in a matter of minutes. Interestingly, that was another thing that should have bothered him but about which he could not currently find a single fuck to give.

Five minutes later, he was locking the bar and bounding up the stairs. He paused outside his apartment and fished his wallet out of his pocket.

A person of words and not deeds is a garden full of weeds.

He’d kept the fortune from the night Maya first kissed him—well, from the night she first kissed him and didn’t claim she’d thought he was someone else. He looked at it for a long moment before shoving it back in among his credit cards and pushing the door open.

She was sitting on the sofa staring into space—and she was crying.

“Oh, hey now.” He crossed the room quickly.

She remained slumped on the sofa, looking up at him as she spoke. She didn’t even bother to try to hide her tears, which, frankly, alarmed him. She was usually so unflappable. And if she had any weaknesses or vulnerabilities, she didn’t show them, especially to him.

Although she was here, wasn’t she? She’d come to him instead of Eve or Nora or her family.

“Holden’s leaving.”

“I heard.”

“I don’t know why I’m so upset,” she said. “It’s not like I had to cancel the entire run. It was a longer run than usual, and I did really well on the shows he was here for.”

“I think you’re so upset because—” He stopped himself. She didn’t need him telling her why she was upset.

“Because of the guy from the Globe,” she finished.

“Yes, but…” That wasn’t what he’d been thinking.

“What?” she said quietly. “What were you going to say?”

He paused for a moment and searched her face. He still wasn’t used to this new Maya who wanted his opinion. He lowered himself to sit, but as always when they sat together on this sofa, he kept some distance between them. He mirrored her position, letting his head fall back and looking at the ceiling, so they weren’t looking at each other. He didn’t know if that move was to protect