by Ellen Mint
Cars crammed full of dry and properly cooled people blared their horns at the wet sop pumping his weary legs. Yes, how dare I slow them down. They might suffer the unending agony of sitting in place for an extra ten seconds. The horror!
Another honk sent him ramping upright, the fishing rod nearly falling from his hands. While it was in the usual protective plastic case, he doubted it’d survive long against Philly drivers with vengeance in mind. Their mother had been hinting at wanting a new pole for months, less than subtly ‘accidentally’ texting them links to this fiber-weight something or other, then apologizing for it.
Marty had joked they should get her a cookie bouquet, but Eldon had given him a sour look and insisted they do as their mother sort-of asked. Locking the wobbly pole under his arm, he risked wiping his eyes and caught a beautiful sight.
Giving a jolly ring of the bell he’d bought Brandy for her birthday, Marty raised his hand to signal, then pedaled as fast as possible to make the turn. A car nearly clipped his ass for his troubles, but he ramped up onto the sidewalk and down a back alley. As long as no angry cops, or the ghost of one, were walking the area, he should be fine.
The buildings untouched by the sweeping hand of gentrification leered closer to him, their faces cracked. Marty hunkered deeper into the low collar of his polo, which he kept flat on principle. He stared directly ahead, the bike bobbing below him as each grind of his leg grew longer and slower.
How the hell does she do this every day? Brandy must have thighs that could crush a bowling ball. Hm… He might have to check when he got back.
“Stop blubbering!” a voice shot out from the dark. It came from a twisted, narrow alley that led to a cul-de-sac of dumpsters. Shadows flickered amongst the garbage, easy to dismiss as nothing more than flotsam in the storm—until lightning cracked overhead.
A man with a black hood cinched tight around his meaty face had a hand gripped around the thin wrist of a thin woman. Even at this distance, it looked as if he could snap her bird-like bones with a single squeeze. She cried out, which caused the man to fold his hand into a fist.
Anger surged through Marty, which overrode common sense in an instant. He rammed the bike to top speed, his feet flying. The pole shifted to the left, his sights burning through the man prepared to hurt a defenseless woman.
“Unhand her,” Marty shouted above the rush of rain and traffic. He raised his helmetless head high, his armor drenched instead of shining. But the trusty ten-speed steed didn’t let him down. The man turned away from her, his bug eyes widening as he took the full momentum of a grown man at top speed wielding a fishing pole turned into a lance straight to the gut.
The attacker flew back, falling ass over end. Marty and the bike kept rolling. A wall was coming up fast, and he slammed a foot down. Shaking under him, the bike came to a palm-grinding stop. Steam hissed off the tires, which squealed their last as Marty watched the man rise to his ham hocks.
He stared at the woman left quivering by the brick wall, then glared at Marty. Raising his finger, Marty jangled the bell thrice, then aimed the bicycle as if he was a bull about to gore the man again. That must have been enough, as the attacker turned on his heel and ran like the coward he was.
“Run all you like, I’ll still… Oh, he’s gone.” Marty tried to shout after the man and dug for his phone to call the police when a gasp reminded him of why he’d turned into a jousting knight.
Leaping off the bike, making the handlebars crash to the ground, he ran for the poor woman. “Here, miss,” he said, holding out a hand to her. She was slow to take it, barely laying her long baby-pink-painted fingernails against his palm. Marty didn’t tug her up, but waited. Her white-blonde hair was drenched to her forehead, obscuring most of her features. But as she turned, raising her chin, she beamed a pair of ice-blue eyes on him, and all the breath was knocked from Marty.
“Janeth. Janeth Willows,” she whispered on the wind as Marty raised her to her feet. For a moment she buckled, her fragile body falling into his arms.
She blinked her big eyes at him, her pale lips quivering from the chill.
“Dashwood. Uh, Marty. Martin Dashwood is my name,” Marty stumbled.
“Pleased to meet you.” Janeth smiled so sweetly Marty’s heart went into cardiac arrest. When she wrapped her hand around his, the jolt restarted his heart. As she raised and lowered their conjoined hands, she said, “My hero.”
* * * *
A mountain of steam erupted from the bronze contraption, and Marty stared in wonder, clogging up the counter space quickly cramming with rabid business people. He waited until the last two poofs of tiny clouds popped free from the ancient espresso maker before he let the zombie denizens re-caffeinate themselves.
“Eldon, it happened!” he said, settling down at the table.
“You got that bunion removed?” Eldon asked with a soft sigh.
“Ha, as if you’re one to talk, Witchy Feet.”
That got him a glare, Eldon’s sharp eyes shooting lasers through his glasses. Marty waved it off. “So many warts, wooo! Does Elena know about them?”
“She is…” Eldon paused and shook his head. “You said something happened.”
Marty sighed. “I met her. The one.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Eldon said in his crystal-clear ‘I don’t care and am ignoring you’ voice. Marty frowned deeply.
He’d been preparing for this moment since last night, when the pair of them had run through the rain to a shop where she could call a friend. With his polo shirt extended above her head, he’d kept her safe from the rain and stared in rapture at her. The woman he was destined to be with.
“I did,” Marty thundered, trying to slide around to catch his brother’s eye. “Last night, I rode in like a shining knight in a Renaissance painting and rescued her.”
“From an insane man on a bicycle?”
“No! From a mugger.”
That caught Eldon, who finally laid his phone down, though the dubious eyebrow was still in play. “You stopped a mugger for a random woman on the street. Did he have a gun?” The nonchalance snapped to ‘concerned brother’ in an instant.
Marty shook his head. “I mean, I didn’t see one on him. There may have been a knife? That isn’t the point! It finally happened, I found her. My…my one-to-be.”
The great eye roll made it clear where Eldon sat on matters of kismet and love. For him, kismet was a simple matter of the brain piecing together two coincidences, and love was a score in tennis. He wasn’t incapable of emotion—Marty knew how to push just the right buttons to get that Dashwood blood to boil. But Eldon was the biggest wet blanket when it came to romance.
Which was why it didn’t surprise Marty in the slightest when his elder brother plucked off his glasses and pinched the marks on his nose. “What about this woman you’ve known for…what? Twelve hours?”
“Probably more like ten,” he admitted, checking his old watch from their abuelo.
“And from that long courtship, what in her manner has made you declare her the one?”
“Did you not hear me? I saved her from a mugger. I rescued her from who knows what, took her hand, and she…she called me her hero.” He’d been walking on air since that moment, his lips mouthing her name when she wasn’t staring at him. A hero. “Come on, there’s no better love story.”
“What are you on about?”
“The story you tell your grandkids. How pop-pop and meemaw met. You know it’s an eternal match when your story is full of drama and romance.”
Sure enough, Eldon scowled at the mention of romance. “You can’t be serious? Eternal match? For fu…fudge’s sake, Martin.”
“I’m sorry if we can’t all ‘Bump into our long-term steady girlfriend while trying to turn in a paper about goat milk’ as our meet-cute,” he said. “Us mere mortals simply have to make do.”
“It wasn’t goat milk—it was the acidity of bacteria strains in cheeses.”
“My mistake. You’re a regular ol’ C
asanova.”
Eldon practically puffed up like a cat in the rain at that comparison. It was a mystery how he’d wound up in a relationship at all, never mind with someone as patient as Elena. Four years and they’d gotten as far as moving in together. Even pointing at the word wedding caused him to break out into hives and run for the bathroom.
Diving back into his daily news from around the world, Eldon turned away from his brother. Marty thought that was the end of it, when a soft voice said, “Tell me about her.”
“What?”
“If she is your supposed soulmate picked by God Himself, then I should know something of her.”
His grin rising, Marty was unable to stop shimmying in his chair. He popped up onto a knee to lean higher over the table. “Her name is Janeth. Rather exotic, right? Tight body that says ‘I work out but only use those little pink weights.’”
“And…?” The eyebrow quirk was back.
“And she’s got hair that metal-blonde color.”
“Platinum?”
Marty nodded hard, remembering the smooth locks wafting back and forth against her jacket. Well, he assumed they were smooth. They’d looked it. “And her eyes are this unforgettable aquamarine. Catching her gaze is like looking into a snow globe.”
“Snow globes contain numerous…never mind. What else?”
“What do you mean?” She was gorgeous, vulnerable, tender, hot. What else does he need?
“What does she do for a living? Where is she from? What is her family like? You’ve declared her your soulmate and all you know about her is what you’d find on a driver’s license. Even less than that, unless the status of her organ donor registration came up while you rescued her.”
Marty frowned. He could always count on his brother to turn a molehill into a massive mountain. “We didn’t talk much. She was in shock, from the attack. But she was so kind…”
“To the man that saved her from a would-be mugging.”
“And sweet, and did I mention blonde? Like, long-long blonde.” Marty passed his hand over his head and down to the small of his back.
Eldon slammed an elbow on the table, then cupped his chin in his hand. Telltale condescension rose in Eldon’s face as he glared at Marty. “So your soulmate could be a dressmaker’s mannequin with a blonde wig for all you care.”
“Don’t be a dumbass. I know there’s more there, okay? We just didn’t have the chance to connect because she had to get home to calm down and file a police report.”
“Martin, do you have plans to see each other again?”
“Uh…” Things got rather hectic when this guy she said was her friend arrived. “She’s got my number,” he said, hope gleaming in his heart.
His brother gave one last withering look before resuming his reading. “Watch out, Romeo and Juliet, step away, Heloise and Abelard, beware, Cleopatra and Marc Antony. We have a true romance of the ages here.”
The sarcasm wasn’t lost on Marty, but he dragged his chair closer to say, “You know those were all doomed relationships, right?”
Eldon caught his look and, in his bitchiest voice, answered, “You don’t say.”
“Morning,” a far too cheery and friendly voice announced, keeping the brothers from tearing each other apart. “I’ve got a black tea here.” The barista eyed the cups in her hands.
“That would be mine.” Eldon pointed at the table before him.
“And a”—she turned the cup around to read the receipt below—“fluffy unicorn latte.”
Marty raised his hand and took the mug overflowing with pink foam. “Thanks,” he said.
After Eldon returned the gratitude, the barista left the two alone to glare across their morning beverages. It was the eldest who waved the first white flag. Raising his mug of plain black tea in the air, he said, “Here’s to love.”
Marty bounced his latte against it, declaring, “To love.” In doing so, a dollop of pink cotton candy foam fell directly into the tea, and Eldon sighed while drinking both down.
Chapter Three
“Brenda!” The shrill, nasal call of her boss came from the front of the store. Sighing, Brandy put down her home-brewed coffee and slipped out of the break room. The summer sun lanced directly through the windows, burning in her eyes and casting long shadows against the back wall.
“Yes, Mr. Fensin?” she asked sweetly, stopping before both the withered gaze of the store owner and the display they’d put up last night.
“What is this?” Their boss stabbed a finger at the setup that’d been Marty’s idea.
Her coworker had lit up with mischief the second they’d unboxed the latest summer thriller with a cover of a bikinied woman swimming in the ocean. Now, that book swung from fishing line he’d tied around the ceiling pipes, and below, nestled on a pedestal covered in a blue tablecloth, sat all the books on sharks they had in the store.
It was obvious to anyone with a passing knowledge of pop culture what Marty was referencing. But seeing as Mr. Fensin had climbed out of a Colonial crypt, wandered down the road until he found a store front and opened a bookstore, it went above his head. Literally.
“It’s a summer display. For sharks. Lots of people are interested in sharks,” Brandy said as diplomatically as possible. She could almost hear the indignant huff rattling in Fensin’s ribcage.
“This is bullcock,” Fensin said. A year and a half on and she didn’t flinch at his conflation of two different nonsense words into one. Good thing Martin wasn’t here yet, or he’d be saying ‘bullcock’ all day.
“Do you want me to get rid of it?” she asked, standing in place and not moving.
“Yes!” Fensin ranted, his arms flailing above his head in the most dramatic fashion possible.
Brandy reached a hand out, as if about to dismantle the whole thing, when she paused. “What should I replace it with?”
“Eh…?”
“We’ll need a new summer display. What do you think would go best?”
In an instant, the big bad wolf deflated to a yapping lapdog. Fensin clawed at his ear, his crusted eyes glaring out of the window at the sticky morning. “Do whatever you want.” For someone who owned a bookstore, Fensin had little use for the written word and even less for creativity.
But he couldn’t deny the impact Marty’s unfocused brilliance and Brandy’s more subdued innovation could have on the bottom line. With a smile, she eased around the old man to stand guard over the cash register as if the store was crammed with customers instead of no one.
Usually, that was the end of it, but Fensin’s beady eyes dashed around the stacks before he homed in on the only one there to browbeat. “Whose idea was that?”
Marty’s.
“A collaboration between us,” Brandy said to a deeper scowl. He couldn’t single them out if they took the blame together.
“Dunno why I have two of you anyway. Times being what they are, everyone’s buying their books with these.” He pulled from his suit coat a flip phone which could only be on the internet if it was set on top of a modem.
Brandy ignored the familiar threat unleashed whenever it was approaching payday. But Fensin wasn’t done yet. “Where’s the other one? In the back making box snowmen again?”
“No,” she said as if the very idea was silly. It was June, after all. Marty only did that in winter.
Fensin rounded on her, no doubt about to press the question, when the man of the hour arrived. He swept in through the front, his polo fully unbuttoned and a bakery bag in his hand. Ah.
“Morning, dear.” Marty called his familiar greeting. He walked closer, his gaze fully on Brandy, when Fensin stepped in the way. Eyes wide, Marty slipped back but an inch before he smiled bigger. “And it’s nice to see you too, Brandy.”
Oh, that wasn’t good. Brandy hustled around the desk, prepared to stand between the two, when the door opened.
“See we got a customer. Do your damn job,” Fensin ordered Marty before turning and snorting once at Brandy. With that, the old owner
stomped out of the door and back to whatever mausoleum he called home.
Brandy cast a look to make certain it was Eldon on Marty’s heel before returning to her vigil behind the counter. “You’re late,” she said, punching in her employee code. The number was zero-zero-two.
Flipping around his wrist, Marty stared at the watch. “Says I’ve got another two minutes till my shift starts. Oh, got you a cronut.” He deposited the bag on the counter.
Brandy couldn’t even pretend to be angry as she peered inside at the poor-man’s cronut, a croissant dipped in frosting. Still, she hadn’t had breakfast yet. “It’s nearly the end of the month, remember.”
“Damn it, how could I forget? Culling time. I keep thinking one of these days I should wear a pig costume so Mr. Fensin can just chop my head off right then and there.”
Brandy cast a single look up from the brown bag. “I’d like to see that.”
“Me as a cute little piggy, or with my head on a stump?” Marty asked while sidling around the counter. The space was crammed tight thanks to stacks of milk crates full of books. To fit, he had to slide his hand around her back, the palm splayed to the wall as he leaned closer.
“If you don’t mind, I have a book I put on hold,” Eldon said to his brother, who glanced over.
“Let me guess—How To Be Even More Boring in a Boring Recession?” Marty turned to dig through the stacks as if he knew right where it was.
That left Eldon standing in front of the counter watching Brandy trying to eat a sloppy breakfast pastry. The man who dressed like he was due at Wall Street at any second hovered around a woman praying she didn’t cover her green polo in frosting.
“How are…how’s Elena?” she asked, clinging to one of three safe facts she knew about Eldon—there was a stack of dirty laundry Marty revealed whenever he had a chance, all of which she tried to banish from her mind while watching the gray-eyed man scrub at his glasses.
“She’s well,” he said and blinked at her through the smudge-less lenses. “Brandy, you will be attending our mother’s birthday party, yes?”
