Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,2

off the grid than it already was. Shane was the opposite of Carter in that he was 100 percent reliable—he’d be in today at four thirty on the dot to get the fire started—but he lived so far away he couldn’t be called to come in last minute. Normally Law’s retired dad would help out in a pinch, but his parents were already at the parade and he could hardly ask his dad to switch places with him.

Law picked up his phone to text Carter for the third time this afternoon. Dude, where are you? The parade is underway and we’re about to be overrun. We gotta set up the outdoor bar. He tried to tell himself that he wasn’t missing anything. You’ve seen one Mermaid Parade—or thirty-three—you’ve seen them all.

As evidenced by the fact that he knew the whoop-whoop of the sirens on his buddy Sawyer’s police cruiser marked the halfway point.

He tried to distract himself by chopping citrus for garnishes, but something was happening beneath his skin. It felt like that soda he’d just poured was fizzing through his veins.

“You okay?”

He glanced up.

“You’re all jumpy,” Ms. Extra Lemon said. “Like you’re waiting for bad news or something.”

“I’m fine. Just…” About to miss the king-and-queen float. It wasn’t a triumph if he wasn’t there to witness it.

“Oh, okay. I was going to sympathize. I mean, you don’t sit in a bar by yourself on a beautiful summer day in a beach town unless you’ve got problems.” She gave a self-deprecating snort.

This was the part where he was supposed to do his bartender duty and ask about her troubles. It was the role people expected him to play, and usually he didn’t mind it. Enjoyed it, even. He’d grown up in this bar, and when the time had come for him to take over its day-to-day operations so his dad could retire, he’d been happy to do so. But right now, he could hear the distant strains of the Gorgons, the town’s women’s choir. They usually walked in front of the king-and-queen float.

Which meant she was coming.

Law’s customer performed an overly loud sigh that was meant to be another cue. Instead of asking her what was up, he wondered if another free drink could convince her to watch the bar in his absence.

But no. He couldn’t. Lawson’s Lager House had been founded by his grandfather in 1943 and had been a town institution ever since. It had almost closed in the recession of the early 1990s, but his parents had pulled it back from the brink. It was his family’s legacy, in other words, and you didn’t just leave your family legacy unattended so you could go watch a parade.

Anyway, it wasn’t like he didn’t know exactly how it would go. The Gorgons would be singing something from the Spice Girls, and the same old float would come rolling down Main Street hitched to Art Ramsey’s pickup. Then the band, which would be waiting at the end of the route, would back up the Gorgons for “Kiss the Girl” from The Little Mermaid, which was the big finale.

There would be no actual kissing of the girl, though, because the king was usually Karl, who had four decades on his queen. But also because the queen would be scowling, lips pursed in displeasure. He grinned just thinking about it.

Although the king this year was Jordan Riley.

Did that mean there might actually be kissing? A ceremonial kiss? Law vaguely remembered one year, long before the Maya Dynasty, when Allison Andersen and Charles Braithwaite had been king and queen and had shocked everyone by laughingly kissing—but, like, a real, drawn-out kiss—at the end of the song. And hadn’t they gone on to date for a while? Allison was married to someone else now, but Law kind of thought so.

The carbonation in his veins was becoming unendurable. He had to get out there. Ms. Extra Lemon it was. You tended bar enough years, you became a decent judge of character. He’d come back and listen to her talk about her problems for as long as she liked. “Listen. I’m wondering if you can do me a—”

The bells on the door jingled. Ah! Saved by the only townsperson who wouldn’t be at the parade. “Jake!”

His friend paused in the doorway. Yeah, that greeting had probably sounded way too enthusiastic, given that they saw each other all the time.

He tried again without the exclamation mark. “Jake. What are you doing here?” The town curmudgeon usually spent