Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,18

code of ethics about protecting sources?”

“Sources who are breaking news stories,” Sawyer said. “Not ‘sources’ who want to open new restaurants in town. You tell her, and that’s it: the whole town will know. Anyway, I think her journalistic ethics are probably more situational than fixed.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” He’d been foolish to consider it. “I’ll have to find someplace else. Anyway, I don’t need the hassle of being next door to the theater.” Maya already gave him enough trouble with a building between them as a buffer.

“What about that vacant place out on Oak Road?” Jake asked. “The old laundromat that went out?”

“In the strip mall with Sadie’s?”

“Yeah.”

“No way. Sadie’s is fantastic. I don’t want to compete that directly with her.”

“Yeah, don’t do that,” Sawyer said. “You set up shop there, and before you know it you’ll be in a rom-com directed by the old folks, and you and Sadie will have pancake wars, but then you’ll end up married.”

Jake snort-laughed, but that was exactly what Law had meant about the old folks getting up in everyone’s business.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with Sadie,” Sawyer added. “You could do a hell of a lot worse.”

“Except he’s already at war with Maya,” Jake said. “And really, how many wars that might end in marriage can one man have going at a time?”

“It’s not a war.” War implied a massive marshaling of resources, required a near obsession with one’s enemy. “She’s just always on my case about parking and the smoke from the oven and, you know, the fact that I exist in this world.” But his bickering with Maya wasn’t a war. It was more like…a hobby.

His friends looked at him like they were trying not to laugh.

“And even if it was a war,” he went on, “which it’s not, it would never be the kind of war that would end in marriage.”

Sawyer smirked. “You know what they say.”

“No, I do not know what they say. Please enlighten me.”

“All’s fair in love and war.”

He wasn’t in a damn war. But if he protested too much, they would interpret it as evidence in support of their take on things. So he went with evasive maneuvers. “I actually dated Sadie briefly.”

“You did?” Sawyer’s jaw literally dropped.

Law chuckled. Evasive technique: successful. “For less than a month, maybe twelve years ago. If you blinked, you missed it.”

Law was a bit older than Jake and Sawyer, and though they’d always known each other, it had only been in passing until they’d gotten older and evolved into their Friday-night hangouts. Jake and Sawyer would have been teenagers during his brief flirtation with Sadie.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Sawyer said. “What happened?”

“Nothing. We had some fun.” He smiled, thinking back to that weekend in Toronto.

“How come you never told us?”

Law shrugged. “It was years ago. Nothing came of it.”

“That’s your answer every time you’ve hooked up with anyone in the time I’ve known you,” Sawyer said.

“Oh, so since you two are all settled and besotted now, I have to be, too?” Law was happy for his buddies, he really was, but he sometimes missed the days when they were all contentedly single.

“No,” Sawyer said. “I just wonder why nothing ever sticks. What happened to that woman who was here last summer?”

Sawyer was talking about a tourist who’d been in town for a month. She’d hung out at the bar a lot and eventually asked him to go on a hike. She’d been friendly and pretty and smart, so he’d made himself accept her invitation. They’d had some fun. But when she left pledging to keep in touch, he’d known he wouldn’t keep up his end of the bargain.

Dating had always felt like a diversion to Law. A pleasant enough way to pass the time when presented with the opportunity, but not important enough to keep him from other stuff. And since he’d gotten going on restaurant planning, “other stuff” was expanding to fill all the time he had. He shrugged and answered Sawyer’s question. “Nothing came of it.”

“I rest my case,” Sawyer said.

“I don’t have time for women right now. I work here way more than full-time, and if all goes well, I’m about to open a second place. The only woman I care about at the moment is Shirley Kenner, who’s supposed to be delivering a cord of firewood for the oven.” He wanted to see if, hypothetically, he could double his order. If he wasn’t getting the building next door for the restaurant, he’d need a second