Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,56

Carter not showing up. Maybe he’s stuck.” Eve elbowed Maya. “In which case, you totally have this in the bag.”

“But…” Winning by default wouldn’t be the same. Winning the sandcastle competition was not the same as beating Benjamin at the sandcastle competition. But she wasn’t going to say that. “Right.”

Jake smirked. “He’ll be here.”

“Oh, are you working for the enemy?” Nora asked. This was her first Raspberry Festival, so she probably didn’t know the extent of her husband’s usual involvement.

“He always does,” Maya said, motioning for Eve and Nora to scooch in. It was kind of funny how her two best friends had hooked up with Benjamin’s two best friends. And not funny ha ha, funny irritating as heck. “Jake, I love you, but I can’t trust you not to sell me out to Benjamin, so I’m gonna need you to skedaddle. No offense.”

Jake chuckled. “None taken.” He looked at Nora. “I’ll catch you later.” It still sort of amazed Maya that quiet, sad Jake was married to Nora. That they were going to have a baby.

Something twinged inside Maya. It was jealousy, but not in the specific sense. She didn’t want a baby, but the way Jake looked at Nora. She just…wanted that, too. Someday.

But whatever. Rome wasn’t built in a day. She had a theater to save first.

You know what was built in a day, though? A winning sandcastle. She could almost feel the heft of the trophy in her hand, returned to its rightful owner after two summers of injustice. She set the girls to doing their jobs—Nora on turrets and Eve on trenches.

When Benjamin finally showed up with Jake and Sawyer in tow—and carrying several buckets of something she couldn’t see—he set up a perimeter around his work space with what looked like those road closure thingies the town used to block off Main Street for the Mermaid Parade.

She craned her neck to try to see what was going on. He must have felt her attention because he paused, standing, holding one of his mystery buckets. “What are you doing?” she yelled, then mouthed, “Sorry” at her neighbor, Dennis Bates, who had been working on a replica of the lift bridge he operated but was now holding his ears.

“I’m building a sandcastle. What are you doing?” Benjamin shouted back.

“Excuse me!” Maya swiveled her head around. “I need a judge here!”

Eiko, who had been huddled with Art and Pearl, came jogging over. “What’s up, hon?”

“Is that legal?” She pointed to Benjamin’s barricades.

“We were just talking about that. There’s nothing in the rules that prohibits it.”

Maya harrumphed. “It doesn’t seem very in the spirit of a public competition.”

“I don’t disagree,” Eiko said, “and you can expect to see an amendment to the rules for next year.”

“I can just go over there and see what’s happening,” Eve said. “If you stand right next to the barriers, you can see down to what they’re doing.”

It was true. There was a stream of spectators doing just that, so clearly the barriers were meant to block her view specifically. “Nah, it’s okay. It’s not like it actually matters.” She didn’t need to see what Benjamin had up his sleeve. She just needed to keep her eyes on her own paper and crush him.

Two hours later, she was sweaty and had sand in places where sand did not belong. But she was also surveying a huge, precisely designed and constructed classic sandcastle. There was no way he could beat this. It was—

A collective “Ooh” from the crowd drew her attention. The guys were taking their barriers away.

“Uh-oh,” Nora said.

“No way,” Eve said.

Maya followed her friends over there and was struck dumb. He’d made a replica of the Palace of Versailles, which was amazing on its own, but the kicker was that he had used an astounding array of dried seaweed in different colors to create its formal gardens.

It looked amazing.

And there was her answer to what was left to collect on the beach. He had done sea glass and driftwood. Leave it to Benjamin to turn a gross nuisance—seaweed, for heaven’s sake—into a thing of beauty.

He stood up all of a sudden from where he’d been squatting next to his stupid buckets—which had been full of seaweed, no doubt.

Welcome to National See Benjamin’s Chest Day. Except this was the second day running this year.

He made eye contact with her right away and winked and did a stupid little finger-wagging “gotcha” kind of gesture.

He so clearly had, she couldn’t even be mad. Pearl confirmed