Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,37
in the air, too. He didn’t look as ragey as he had a moment ago. He looked determined.
She had been so shocked when she’d seen his plans yesterday. A bit taken aback, too. Here she was struggling to keep her first and only business afloat and he was just casually planning to open a second.
It was funny how many different ways there were to stare at someone. She and Benjamin had their usual showdown way of staring at each other. And as she’d so recently learned, there was also a death stare.
This was yet another type. It reminded her of last night, when they’d stared at each other as they shook hands. They’d both been oddly vulnerable at different points in the evening. Maya when she’d come to her senses after reflexively snuggling up to Benjamin and kissing him. But Benjamin, too, she thought, when she’d seen his loan paperwork. He so clearly hadn’t wanted her to, yet he hadn’t lashed out. He’d just held her hand and asked her to keep his secret.
It was all very confusing.
Animosity was easier.
So she narrowed her eyes at him, steering them back to the more familiar territory of plain old antagonism.
He did the same.
It was like looking in a mirror.
Except not, because when she looked in a mirror, she didn’t see moss-green eyes topped by absurdly long lashes. It wasn’t fair. Someone with such a sour personality shouldn’t be allowed to be so good-looking.
Her face heated, and she wanted to look away. But she couldn’t.
“You want one of these?” It was Pearl, trying to hand her an application packet. This was her out. It was okay to look away when she was being interrupted by someone else.
Listen to her: “It was okay”? Like there were defined rules of engagement? She needed to calm down. Interacting with the town bartender did not require her to adhere to the Geneva Conventions.
She flipped through the packet and tried to get her face to chill out. It looked like a standard grant application. No problem. She’d applied for a million grants in her life. Not successfully last time, but still. She could do this in her sleep.
You know who could not do this in his sleep? Who had zero experience applying for grants?
Ha. She flipped the page. She totally had this in the bag. Benjamin Lawson was going down.
Except, hang on.
She waved her hand in the air.
Karl called on her. “Maya? Yes?”
“What’s this about decisions being made based on the application and on a ‘demonstrated devotion to the well-being of the town of Moonflower Bay’?”
“We want to make sure the money goes to a person who really cares about this town.”
Okay, then! She had this even more in the bag. Who cared more than the girl who had come back to her hometown with the express purpose of bringing drama and culture to it?
“How do you measure that?” Benjamin piped up.
Crap. Benjamin cared about this town, too. He might be a jerk, but he was a jerk who cared about this town. He was always looking in on Pearl, in her bakery next door to his bar. And you could hardly make your way through a Raspberry or Anti-Festival event without someone making a speech about “the generous support of Lawson’s Lager House.”
But it was important to remember that he would be using the grant to open a restaurant. A commercial establishment. She, on the other hand, would be using it for a nonprofit. For the arts.
“We’ll be scoring each application based on the viability of your project and the financial and business data you provide—that’s all set out in your packets,” Karl said in answer to Benjamin’s question. “We’ll also be assigning a ‘community-mindedness’ score. We’ll add the two up, and that will produce our winner.”
“A community-mindedness score?” Maya asked, not waiting to be called on. “So that’s like a loyalty test judged by you guys subjectively?”
Karl stared evenly at her. “Yes. It’s a loyalty test judged by us subjectively.”
“Oh, come on.” Eiko edged Karl out of the way to speak into the microphone. “A community-mindedness score is a way to make sure the money benefits the town. For example, what if someone won a grant for a business located in town, but they didn’t live in town themselves, and the profits got spent elsewhere? We just want to make sure the winning applicant benefits, but that the town does, too.”
“And who is doing the judging?” Jenna asked. Uh-oh. Did Jenna have secret entrepreneurial ambitions, too?