“Not yet,” Maggie said. “I’m scouting locations.”
“Hm,” Dorcas said. “Found anything, yet?”
Maggie glanced at Sean. “There’s a piece of property I’m very interested in. In fact, if you’ll all excuse me, I need to go check with Denise at the real estate office.” She stood and took her coat and purse off the back of her chair. “I’ll settle the check on the way out. I can also make arrangements with Madeline about using her guest room.”
Sean stood. “I’ll take care of the check. After all, I invited you.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m on an expense account. Thanks for bringing me over here, by the way. The food was great.” Her tone made it clear that their cozy little interlude was over.
Sean wanted to know what Denise had to say about the ownership of the property, but Denise had already said she wouldn’t share that information with him so there was no point in walking Maggie back over there. He needed another excuse to see her, though. He couldn’t very well talk her out of buying the property unless they became closer…a whole lot closer.
“I have to get to work, myself,” he said. “I’ll walk you out.” Then he planned to walk right back in and have a talk with Dorcas and Ambrose. Now that they saw the problem, they had to help him out with it, somehow.
Maggie turned to Dorcas and Ambrose. “Nice meeting you.”
“Same here,” Dorcas said.
Ambrose pulled something out of his pocket. “In case you need anything while you’re in town, here’s our card.”
“Thanks.” Maggie looked at the card and quickly shoved it in her pocket.
Sean remembered he still didn’t have a phone number for Dorcas and Ambrose. He could get it off his cell phone, but he’d never quite trusted that option. “I wouldn’t mind having one of your cards,” he said.
“Sure thing.” Ambrose produced another one and handed it to him.
Sean expected to find only their names and contact points, but no, they had a company name and a logo along with their current address. Suddenly they didn’t look so much on sabbatical, or whatever the hell they’d called it.
The company was called Hot Prospects, Inc., and the logo was two intertwined gold rings. If Sean hadn’t known better, he’d say they were in the matchmaking business. But that couldn’t be right. They’d fixed it so that he was no longer attractive to women, so that was moving in the opposite direction from matchmaking, wasn’t it? Nothing made sense.
As he glanced up, Dorcas mouthed silently We have to talk. No shit. He was beginning to wonder if he’d been hustled. What if they had some scam going where they made people ugly and then charged them a fortune to find them a match? He only had Ambrose’s word for it that he’d revert to his former studliness in two weeks. What if this change was permanent?
But he couldn’t stand around worrying about it and let Maggie get away. He hurried over to the cash register where she was signing the credit card slip and discussing her rooming arrangements with Madeline.
“Come up to the house anytime you want,” Madeline said. “I already called Abe and told him you would be staying with us. Supper’s at five-thirty.”
“Oh, you don’t have to feed me,” Maggie said. “That’s asking way too much.”
“Abe and I would like the company,” Madeline said. “Sean, you’re welcome to come, too, now that I know you’ll behave yourself and not be doing God-knows what with a girl under the tablecloth. I’m fixing your favorite, meatloaf.”
Sean sent Madeline a grateful smile. She’d just set him up with a semi-date, one he needed desperately. “Thanks. I’d love to have some of your homemade meatloaf.”
Maggie had a trapped animal expression in her eyes, but she smiled at both of them. “Dinner sounds great. Well, I need to be going.” She started toward the door.
Sean caught up with her. “Before you leave, I wondered if you’d like to set up a time today to tour the old house.”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind, which most likely he had. Going through that dusty, dirty place was the lamest romantic idea he’d ever had. He couldn’t even say why he’d thought of it, unless he now had a nerd brain to go along with his nerd looks.
“Why would I want to do that?” she asked.
He thought fast. “By going through it, you’ll have specific information about the place—number of rooms, location of any plumbing fixtures, etc. I’m sure the demolition crew would appreciate having your notes.”
“Well…you might have a point. This is the first time I’ve considered a property with a building on it. The other times have been undeveloped land.” She paused. “I guess I should take a look. Is it open? Can anyone just walk in?”
“No.” He’d made sure of that. Whenever a window was broken, he’d repaired it. And the lock on the front door worked as well as ever.
“Then what? We get a key from Denise? Because if that’s the case, she and I can just—”
“Denise doesn’t have a key. So far as she knows, or anyone in town, for that matter, there isn’t one.”
Maggie gazed at him. “But there is one, and you have it.”
“Yep. How does one o’clock sound? I could pick you up if you want.”
“That’s okay.” She kept her voice businesslike. “I’ll meet you there.”
Once she’d walked out the door, Sean pulled out his cell phone and called Calvin Gilmore. He was scheduled to spend the morning there working, but that wouldn’t be happening.
First he had to have a chat with Dorcas and Ambrose and find out what their game was. And then he would spend the rest of the morning cleaning the old house. Inviting Maggie there might not have been the most brilliant idea he’d ever had, but maybe he could turn it to his advantage.
* * *
Maggie left the Hob Knob with the distinct impression that Sean was putting the moves on her. Of course he would try, because he didn’t want her buying the property out from under him. Maybe he imagined he could seduce her so thoroughly that she’d agree to do whatever he wanted. If he imagined that, he must have incredible confidence in his sexual powers.
Damn it, now she was getting curious about those powers, which was not good. At least she wouldn’t be tempted during the tour of that wreck of a house, and at dinner she’d be chaperoned by the ever-vigilant Madeline, who didn’t allow any goings-on under her tablecloth.
Maggie had never been fondled under the table by any man. She projected the sort of no-nonsense attitude that discouraged groping, and she’d always been pleased about that. But hearing about Sean’s checkered past gave her the feeling she’d been missing out.
As she crossed the street, her Phone played the first few bars of Yellow Rose of Texas, H.G.’s assigned ring. She stepped up on the curb before answering it. “Hello, H.G.”
“Grady, you’re pushing it, taking off without telling me where you were goin’!”
“I wanted to surprise you with a really great location.”
“And where is that?” Static crackled, disturbing the connection.
“I’ll tell you soon, I promise.”
“What’s that? You’re cutting out on me, Grady.”
“I’ll tell you soon!”
“Damnation, woman, why won’t you tell me right now? Are you working for me or not?”
Maggie’s heart rate picked up. She hadn’t wanted to accuse anyone of anything, but now she had little choice. “I am working for you. But I think you have someone on the payroll who’s working for MegaMart.”
“What are you saying? I can’t hear you worth a damn.”
“Three times I’ve lost out to MegaMart, and each time they seemed to know all about SaveALot’s plans to secure a particular location. That gave them an advantage.”
“Say that again. I didn’t catch it all.”
“I think you have a spy!”
“The hell I do!” He sounded furious. “That could be a fancy way to cover up your ineptitude, young lady.”
“It
could be, but it’s not. Please let me work out this location on my own without anybody in the company knowing about it. I need the chance to prove myself.”
The static crackled again, creating spaces in the transmission. “…tell…where…are.”
She didn’t want to. His son Kyle worked for the company, and H.G. told his son everything. Maggie had strong suspicions about Kyle, who smiled all the time but had the hardest eyes Maggie had ever seen on a human being. She thought Kyle resented his highly successful, workaholic father.
“I’ll tell you soon,” she said to H.G.
The reception cleared. “Tell me now if you value your job.”
Maggie gulped. “Whoops! Gotta go! I’m late.” And she hung up on her boss. Worse yet, she hit the off switch, blocking all calls. Well, he couldn’t fire her if he couldn’t get in touch with her. By the time she turned on her phone, she’d have a location that would make H.G. drool, and he couldn’t very well fire her then, could he?
Slipping the phone into a pocket in her purse, she walked into Denise’s office to find Denise on her hands and knees under the desk.
Maggie cleared her throat. “Uh, Denise? Anything wrong?”
“Stupid computer! Stupid electricity! I was on the Internet, looking for that email, and then I guess there was a power surge and the screen went blank. I’ve been trying everything, and just now I plugged into a different outlet, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference. That’s why I didn’t call you.”
About that time, the lights went out.
Denise groaned and crawled out from under the desk. “What next, a pipe giving way?”
“Believe me, I know about old buildings.” Maggie was determined not let this glitch hold her up. “I’ll get my laptop out of the car. It has a good battery in it.”
“Great.”
As Maggie headed back out to her car, the office lights came on again. Good. She’d hate to depend entirely on her laptop battery. But at first, just to get the necessary email, she wouldn’t plug into the building’s dicey wiring.
Back in the office, she took her laptop out of its case, opened it and pushed the power button.
“Here, use my desk.” Denise gestured toward it. “I’m sure glad you brought a computer. I could have borrowed one from somewhere, I guess, although there aren’t as many computers in Big Knob as you might think.”
Maggie was beginning to get the picture that Big Knob was a decade or so behind the rest of the country. “Just hook me up to your WiFi and we’ll be good to go.”
“I don’t have WiFi.”
Maggie sighed. Keeping a positive attitude was becoming tougher by the minute. “Then who does?”
“Nobody. We just haven’t felt the need for it in Big Knob. Cable hookup works fine for us.”
Maggie fought the urge to scream. She didn’t have an Ethernet port on her laptop, so it was useless. H.G. was in a firing mood, and she needed to work fast to get back in his good graces. She pulled her phone out of her purse. “Then we’ll use this.”
Ten minutes later, she gave up on the phone. Although she could get her phone calls, for some bizarre reason she couldn’t establish an Internet connection., It was obvious she wasn’t going to access email with her phone while she was in Big Knob. “How about looking for someone else with a working computer?”
“Let me think who has one we could borrow temporarily.” As Denise stood tapping her finger against her mouth, the lights went out again.
Maggie groaned. “Denise, you need an electrician.”
Denise glanced out the window. “It’s not just me. The Hob Knob’s lights are out, too.”
A quick look confirmed that Denise was right. Maggie’s tummy clenched. This was not going well. “What do you think is wrong?”
“There could be a line down somewhere. If the electricity’s getting squirrelly, nobody is going to want to turn on their computer and risk frying it.”
“So I guess you call the electric company.”
“I will, but if there’s a line down, it could take a while to get it fixed. We’re off the beaten path here.”
The lights came on again.
Maggie glanced across the street, and the lights were back on at the Hob Knob, too. “I don’t get it. How can the lights go on and off like that?”
“I’m no electrician, so I have no idea. Maybe the power line is making a connection only part of the time.”
Although Maggie tried not to panic, her tummy felt like a cement mixer. “Let’s call the electric company and tell them it’s really, really important.”
“We can try.” Denise picked up her cordless phone and put it to her ear. Then she pushed the connect button a few times. “Something’s wrong with the phone, too. I’m not getting a dial tone.”
“Use my cell.” Maggie grabbed her phone out of her purse. There was a voicemail from H.G., but she didn’t plan to respond. He wouldn’t call again. Men like H.G. didn’t go running after people.
Denise punched in a number and put the phone to her ear. “Voicemail.” She left a message detailing the problem and handed the phone back to Maggie. “Sorry. It’s the best I can do.”
“We need to regroup.” Maggie took a deep breath. “Is there anyone who could work on your computer, so that when the electricity is stable you could be ready to use it?”
“Jeremy’s the guy. He’s a techno-wizard.”
Maggie brought out her phone again and gave it to Denise. “How long before you could get him here?”
“Maybe ten minutes.”
“That’s not bad.” Maggie’s shoulders relaxed a little. At least someone could be summoned.
“Oh, wait. He drove to Evansville today to pick up a bunch of cups.”
“Cups? Drinking cups?” Maggie felt as if she’d fallen down the rabbit hole. Any minute the Queen of Hearts would come screaming down the street yelling Off with his head!
“He’s buying athletic protectors for the Knob Lobbers, our slow-pitch softball team. The team’s on a budget, so when somebody heard about the sale in Evansville, he volunteered to pick them up today. I’m sure he’s left by now.”
Naturally they’d play slow pitch in Big Knob. Maggie sighed. Apparently nothing happened fast in this town. “And he’s the only person in town who knows computers?” Frustration had prompted the question. Maggie knew the answer. She was probably lucky that anyone in town was tech-savvy, even if he had left to pick up a box of athletic protectors and wouldn’t be back for hours.
“He’s the only one,” Denise said. “But if you want, I can call his cell and see how soon he’ll be home again.”
At least he had a cell phone, Maggie thought. That was something. But the call to Jeremy confirmed that he wouldn’t be back in Big Knob until late in the afternoon because he planned to stop and see his sister and her new baby while he was in Evansville.
Maggie was stuck with nothing to do until then. Taking another look at Denise, she evaluated her haircut. Not bad. Not bad at all. “Where do you get your hair done?”
“Right over at the Bob and Weave. Francine Edgerton is the owner, and she’s pretty good with a pair of scissors.”
“Think I could get an appointment this morning?”
“Shoot, yeah. The ladies who have weekly standing appointments all go in on Saturday morning, so it’s slow on weekday mornings. Of course, they might be having electrical problems, too.”
“I think I’ll chance it. If everything magically fixes itself somehow and you’re able to get on the Internet, you can call my cell.”
“I’ll let you know if anything changes, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
Maggie wouldn’t, either. Readjusting the clip holding her hair, she reached for her coat. “Then I might as well try to get a haircut. When it’s humid like this, the frizz drives me nuts.”
“Francine can help you. But be sure and ask for her. She’s good and not too weird. The other operator, Sylvia Hepplewaite, is kind of a sex fiend, and she’ll want to ta
lk about her orgasms the whole time she’s cutting your hair.”
Chapter Seven
After saying goodbye to Maggie, Sean had watched her walk across the street to the real estate office. The rain had stopped for a minute, and one ray of sunshine had fallen on her hair, making her look like a model in a shampoo commercial. If only she’d come to town for some other reason than to buy the property he wanted. If only she’d shown up yesterday, when he was at full power.
Thinking of that had reminded him of Dorcas and Ambrose, so he’d reluctantly stopped staring at Maggie through the window and had returned to the table where they sat munching happily on cinnamon rolls.
“Okay.” He grabbed his chair from the other table, spun it around and straddled it. He needed something to grip so his frustration wouldn’t get the better of him, and hugging the chair back helped. “What exactly is Hot Prospects, Inc.?”
Ambrose beamed at him. “Our new business name. Catchy, huh?”
“What happened to your sabbatical?”
Dorcas wiped a blob of frosting from the corner of her mouth. “Handling your case made us realize how much we’d missed working, so we’ve decided to run a little business out of our home.”
Sean held up the card. “Matchmaking?”
“Something along those lines,” Ambrose said. “We didn’t want to put it so baldly on the card, but that’s the general idea. With our experience in relationships, we’re fully qualified to—”
“Wait a minute.” Sean became more agitated by the minute. “You said my case inspired you to start working again. But mine is not a matchmaking case. In fact, the idea was to make me less appealing to the opposite sex. What’s up with that?”
Dorcas swallowed another bite of cinnamon roll. “Sometimes you need a different perspective in order to be ready for the perfect partner.”
Sean thought about that. “All right. I admit that I have a whole new perspective on what it feels like to look nerdy. I appreciate what I had before, and I’m ready to change back to being the way I was. ASAP.”
Over Hexed: The Hex Series Page 7
