Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,39
you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” he countered. He should confront her now.
“Pearl apparently left her gaming…thingy up here and she asked me to come get it.”
“Nintendo Switch,” he said. In addition to being an excellent baker, Pearl was a championship gamer.
Maya looked around. She walked toward the purse. “Is this hers? Maybe it’s in here.”
They were just going to have a normal conversation? Here on the roof after she’d blabbed his business around town? What was the matter with him? He was mad at her. He opened his mouth to say something to that effect, to let her have it, but what came out instead was, “Nope, that’s Eiko’s. She sent me up for it.”
He was losing his momentum. Losing his anger. He’d been so pissed the night of the town meeting, and now he was…not that pissed.
“Hmm.” She scanned the rooftop, and he scanned her. She was wearing her red Hamilton T-shirt, red Cons, and skinny jeans. Her hair was in its usual topknot. And she was gilded in the glowing orange light of the sunset. Dammit. “Ah,” she said, pointing toward a ledge that, upon further inspection, was home to Pearl’s Switch. “I wonder why Pearl is gaming up here.”
He shook his head. He needed to start paying attention to what was actually happening—beyond the ridiculous sunset making Maya even prettier than she usually was. “Maybe she was helping Eiko, who was up here doing some measuring because she’s thinking of putting in a green roof. Seems oddly forward-thinking of her. I wonder how she got that idea into her head.”
Maya shrugged. “The less known about what the old folks are up to, the better, don’t you find?”
“I do find.” It seemed odd that Eiko and Pearl—they were both old, but sharp—had left their things up here, but Maya was right. It was better not to ask why. He picked up the purse. “Shall we?”
“We shall.”
He pulled on the door. Nothing happened.
He yanked again.
Nothing.
He pushed instead of pulled, in case he was being an idiot.
“Hooboy,” Maya said from behind him.
Well, shit. He turned. “You have a phone, right?”
“Don’t you?”
“No. It’s behind the bar.”
“What kind of person leaves their phone behind a bar?”
“The kind of person who works at a bar and is just running next door for a second. Where’s your phone?”
She winced. “In my room at the Mermaid.”
Huh? “Your room at the Mermaid?”
“I’m staying at the Mermaid until after Much Ado about Nothing.”
“Why?” Although that explained why her place had been dark.
“Holden Hampshire is going to stay in my apartment while he’s in town.”
“Why?”
“Because I promised him housing as part of his contract, and if he stays at my place I don’t have to pay for that housing.”
“But he’s not here yet.”
“Right, but I’m doing a bunch of work on the place to class it up.”
He found himself bristling at the idea. Surely Maya’s apartment was good enough for this boy-band poseur.
She must have seen the disapproval in his expression. “Have you seen my place?”
“How would I have seen your place?” All those times she’d invited him over for tea parties?
“Well, it’s a dump. You probably forget that Harold Burgess owns the building.”
He had not forgotten that Harold Burgess owned the building. It was why Maya always had so much trouble with the lock. He had also not forgotten that another property owned by Harold Burgess, a house Nora had rented when she’d first come to town, had turned out to have black mold in it. He’d wondered about the building across the street but hadn’t found a way to say, Hey, I know you hate me, but I’m concerned about your long-term respiratory health.
But none of this mattered. What mattered was…“We’re stuck up here with no way to call for help.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” She walked over to the front of the building, leaned over the ledge, and shouted, “Can anyone hear me?”
“Be careful!” He rushed over and physically grabbed the back of her T-shirt. The ledge came up to her waist, but still.
He nudged her back and took her place, scanning what he could see of the street—the building was so tall that he could only see the sidewalk on the other side, and it was devoid of pedestrian traffic at the moment. He was a fair bit taller than Maya, so he suspected she could see none of the street and had merely been shouting blindly over the edge.