Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,13
fashion, had been adamant she was done with men for a long while.
“I do think.” His brow knit. “Hmm.”
Maya didn’t have time to stand here gossiping about her friends. She had several decades left before she became one of those types. It was almost a new year, and she had a list of resolutions a mile long. She had a theater to save. “Thanks for…” She gestured back toward the living room.
“Anytime,” he said.
“Really?”
He didn’t answer, just opened the door. “Come on. I’ll make sure the coast is clear.”
It was, and as she was leaving, he said, “You coming in for New Year’s Eve tonight?”
She usually did, but she wasn’t in the mood this year. “So I can stand there and be the only one without someone to kiss at the end of the countdown? No thanks.”
Something flared in his stupid green eyes. He was probably about to say something mean, so she turned to go before he could. As she made her way down the stairs, the most absurd image popped into her mind: kissing him at the stroke of midnight tonight. She shook the ridiculous idea out of her head. Her brain was on the fritz. She needed to get more sleep—at her own apartment.
Chapter Four
Six months later
Law was accustomed to Maya staggering into his bar all bloody and dirty, but the tourists weren’t.
You could use the approach of Maya as a catalogue of who in Lawson’s Lager House was local and who wasn’t. For example, the old folks sitting at a table near the front door merely waved as she passed, unmoved by the poufy, baby-blue formal gown she wore and by the dramatic trail of blood down its front.
But when she pulled out a stool at the bar next to a woman nursing a White Claw, the woman screamed bloody murder. “Oh my stars!” She shot off her stool. “What happened? Someone call 911!”
Law chuckled. If the woman’s reaction to Maya hadn’t given her away as an outsider, her American southern drawl would have.
Maya held up her hands like there was a gun and Miss I Have Bad Taste in Booze was holding it. “It’s fake! It’s a costume!”
“Oh my stars!” the woman said again, pressing a hand to her chest.
“Sorry to alarm you.”
Law bent down to grab Maya’s Riesling from a fridge under the bar, set a wineglass in front of her, and started pouring.
“We’re in the middle of a run of a murder mystery play,” Maya explained to the woman, “and I’m the victim. Also the director. Also the playwright.”
The tourist was delighted. “I have to say, your dress reminds me of the formal I wore when I was crowned Miss Louisiana Teen USA in 1989.”
“Louisiana!” Maya exclaimed. “You’re far from home!”
“It’s a long story.”
Law could practically see the pleasure centers in Maya’s brain firing. Maya loved stories, the longer and more riddled with twists and turns the better.
Someone farther down the bar hailed him, and after he’d served that customer and ambled back over, Maya was deep into telling the tourist about her current production.
“The show is called Dancing in the Dark—and it’s set during a prom in 1985, so you were right on track with your Miss Louisiana Teen USA 1989 observation. It’s about a girl named Heather who goes to the prom, and during the first song the lights go out. When they come back on…” She crossed her palms over her throat and made a melodramatic choking sound as she collapsed on the bar. But then she reversed course and popped back up, her wide smile at odds with her “murder.” Law twisted his torso a little, trying to put himself into the line of that smile—he still had never seen one full-on—but he wasn’t successful.
The tourist laughed, and when she spotted him, said, “May I have another White Claw, please?”
“I’m all out.”
“No he’s not.” Maya snapped her fingers at him. Snapped her fingers at him. He enjoyed sparring with Maya, but it genuinely riled him when she did that. “Give the lady another White Claw.”
Law tried not to be a booze snob, he really did, but White Claw was a bridge too far. Maya knew how he felt about the alcoholic seltzer. He’d decided to stock it because people kept asking for it, but White Claw did not belong on his menu next to the carefully sourced local craft beers and the cocktails he made from the best spirits he could get his hands on.