Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,121

one who’d told her not to cancel tomorrow’s show, he hadn’t really allowed himself to think beyond his wild attempt to save the play and get the girl. But now that he had done both those things, he was gonna have to get up onstage and do it all again tomorrow, wasn’t he?

“You know what they say?” Maya said, looking like she was trying not to laugh.

“Um, I think they say, ‘Thanks for saving the show the big fancy theater critic was at, but you’re off the hook now’?”

“No. They say the show must go on.”

He reached over and grabbed her hand. “And so it must.”

“Are you ready for my notes?”

“Bring it.”

Epilogue

A year later

Bang, bang, bang.

Law rolled over and checked the time on his phone. Seven a.m. “Are you kidding me?”

“Whaaa?”

“Shh,” he soothed the befuddled Maya—they had only gone to sleep three hours ago. She’d had a show last night and then, well…He had heard the phrase honeymoon phase to describe new relationships, and if that was a real thing, they were still in it. Maybe the length of the honeymoon phase was proportional to the number of years the couple had spent picking at each other? “Go back to sleep,” he murmured, resting his hand momentarily on her cheek as he got out of bed.

Their visitor must be Jake, though they had not been the recipient of an early-morning visit since last summer. Now that Law and Maya were together and shacked up at his place—their place, now—his friends had calmed down on that front.

He threw on some clothing and hustled out to yank open the door before whoever it was knocked again and further disturbed Maya. “What?”

There was no one there. Just a newspaper lying on the ground next to a tray from Lawson’s Lunch holding two cups of coffee. He stooped down to grab it all. It was the Globe and Mail, and it was open to a random— Oh, hang on. It was open to a review of Titus Andronicus, Maya’s play that was opening tonight. Holy shit!

Her shows were popular enough now that she staged a preview the night before opening. He used the occasion, too, to test-run the accompanying food. They only sold preview tickets to locals, though—it functioned like a dress rehearsal of both food and theater in front of a friendly audience. But it looked like someone had tipped off the same Globe and Mail critic who had come to Much Ado about Nothing a year ago. That review had been mixed, praising the staging but lamenting the “underwhelming last-minute stand-in for the promised big-name Benedick.” Apparently saving a show and locking down the love of a lifetime looked “underwhelming” from the outside. Whatever.

But this review…He jogged back to the bedroom, leaped onto the bed, and shook her.

“Stop it.” She rolled over.

“You’ll want to see this.”

“What happened to ‘Go back to sleep’?”

Instead of answering, he started reading the review. “‘One could be forgiven for assuming that Titus Andronicus as staged by the mighty-but-small Moonflower Bay Theater Company would be an overreach. One would be wrong.’”

That woke her up. She bolted to sitting. “What?”

She was not wearing a shirt, and he could not help but stare. He still wasn’t used to this. The idea that she was here, after all those— “Ow!” She had slugged his shoulder.

She did it again. “Read!”

“Okay, okay! ‘The bloody tale of mortal enemies culminates in Roman general Titus murdering the children of Tamora, queen of the Goths, and serving them to her in a pie, so as one might imagine, in lesser hands the resulting production could tend toward the overwrought. In the steady, nuanced hands of director Maya Mehta, though, it does not. There’s no melodrama here, just theater that is smart, bracing, and exhilarating.’”

“Ahhhhh!” she screamed.

He smirked. “I think maybe that’s the first time anyone’s ever called you subtle.”

“Ahhhhh!” she repeated, as if to illustrate his point.

He went back to the review. “‘I’m not sure the same can be said about the dinner half of the optional dinner-theater package.’”

“What?” She was indignant on his behalf. She grabbed the paper and read silently. “Oh, this is actually okay. He says, ‘Because, really, there’s nothing subtle about the meat pie—or mushroom, should your own personal vision of revenge be less carnivorous—served before the show at the new and punching-above-its-weight Lawson’s Lunch. (A boxed version of the same dinner can also be preordered and picked up at the theater after the show—not a bad option considering the town’s two