Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,79
I understand that we live in modern times, where some of us are so evolved that we never feel a speck of jealousy. But do you honestly want your brand-new girlfriend to not care that you spend a suspicious amount of time cozied up with me on your couch partaking in an activity she isn’t part of?”
“My girlfriend? What are you talking about? Who’s my girlfriend?”
“Uh, hello? Brie? The one who’s moving here to be with you? The one you’re strolling Main Street and making wishes with?”
Holy hell.
“The one you were huddled with in the corner of the bar?” she went on.
He wanted to point out that she was huddled with Holden at the bar all the time. But he couldn’t, because he was laughing. Throwing his head back and letting it shake through his chest. He tried to stop when he caught a glimpse of Maya’s continuing confusion, but he was powerless against the tide of laughter. Until her confusion started to shade into hurt. That sobered him right up.
“Maya. Brie is moving here—‘here’ being Moonflower Bay, not this apartment—to become the manager of the bar. I hired her. She’s my employee.”
Her mouth rounded into an O, but no sound came out. She was doing the gears-turning thinking face, and eventually the sound caught up with the shape. “Ohhhhh.”
He could see how this had all happened. Brie hadn’t introduced herself with anything other than her name at the shop yesterday. He’d been so disconcerted to find Holden there not running lines. Which meant he was just hanging out. And then Brie hadn’t said anything about the job because she’d been overinterpreting his directive to keep the restaurant stuff quiet.
Maya started laughing, which somehow functioned as permission for him to start again. It was strange to be laughing together. Good strange, though. It made him imagine—
“How’s the mermaid queen thing going?” she asked, jolting him back to reality.
“What?” He stopped laughing but could not quite extinguish the residual smile.
“You know, your pledge to get someone else elected?”
Right. That killed the smile. Back to business as usual. “Okay, well, I told you I thought I’d try Sadie, but I decided that if I’m opening a restaurant that’s going to compete with hers, I should leave that alone.”
Maya snorted. “Yeah, maybe don’t start playing pranks on your closest rival.”
“So I tried to find someone who would be up for it. I asked Eiko, but she said no.” Karl was often elected king, and Law had suddenly thought, hey, why not Eiko as queen? The town old folks were already the de facto monarchs in town.
“Whoa, whoa, rewind. You’re asking people if they want you to get them elected?”
“Uh, yes?”
“You’re getting consent? What about me? Where was my consent?”
He was pretty sure she was kidding. His smile had died on the vine earlier, but hers hadn’t. Still…“Yeah, I’m, uh, sorry about that.”
He was sorry about a lot of things, it turned out. He had almost apologized earlier, for Romeo and Juliet, but he’d stopped himself. Chickened out. He’d been so looking forward to watching the match, and he was afraid if he apologized for that, they’d have a huge fight and she would leave. Maybe forever—and that was…not something he could live with.
But he could apologize for this instead. “It just seemed…funny? I don’t know. In keeping with our…” He couldn’t find the words. He waved his hand back and forth between them. Feud, the word everyone else used, didn’t seem right. At least not anymore.
“‘Thing’?” she supplied.
“Yeah.” Thing was suitably vague.
“And honestly, I really only did it actively that first time. After that, everyone started asking me for ballots. I think it’s because you’re, uh, really good at it. You sort of seem like you are the mermaid queen, which I know sounds dumb, but…Anyway, I didn’t realize you hated it so much. I thought you were just…” Ugh. Words. Hard. “Anyway, no more. I don’t have it locked down yet, but I’m going to figure it out. I promise you won’t be mermaid queen this year.” He would go up there and sit on that damn throne himself if he had to.
Something happened to her face then, something subtle, but he was looking closely enough to notice. It was a slight furrowing of her brow, but it was almost immediately erased. He didn’t have time to puzzle out what it might mean, because Crystal Palace scored and she was up on her feet, arms extended over her head.