Max jogged to catch up with her. She’d been motionless in her jeans and long-sleeve brown sweater, as though she couldn’t decide which way to go. “I’ve got a long drive home. Was thinking of getting something to eat.” Join me? was on the tip of his tongue, but something about the way she held her bag between them stopped him. “Any recommendations?”
She lowered the bag and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Are you looking for normal food, or did staring into the eyes of the devil make you hungry for a human sacrifice?”
“You got me. I’m really looking for a bodyguard,” he joked.
She squinted at him for a moment before her lips spread in a full, dimple-popping smile that had Max Jr. sitting up, and not for the first time this afternoon. “Spencer McGraw scared the big linebacker?”
“I think he memorized my face to use as a victim in his next novel.” Max probably could’ve left off mentioning to McGraw that the books were for his grandfather. As soon as Max had said Harvey Gregory, McGraw had tilted his head back to peer up at Max through his sunglasses, and despite the thick beard and mustache, Max was almost positive McGraw smiled.
And not in a comforting way.
Not that he’d share anything about his connection to McGraw with Merry.
No need to ruin the illusion of her being a funny, smart girl who might hang out with him for him rather than because his family was in the jewelry business.
“Do you like cheese?” Merry said.
“Cheese? Sure.”
“Because there’s this fabulous bistro with the most amazing cheese plate right around the corner. If you need a bodyguard that badly, you can join me. But I’m paying for myself.”
“And Spike?” Max said.
“They let me tie him to the bike rack. I’ll feed him when we get home.”
“Then I’m in.”
How could he not be?
She was on the odd side, but he wouldn’t have wanted her to be conventionally normal. Her dry delivery when she talked about her imaginary dragon was amusing as hell, and there was something about the shimmer in her eyes when she looked around, her random sideways comments, and the way she fidgeted that intrigued him.
It was as though she saw a completely different world than he did.
And he wanted to know what her world looked like.
Two minutes later, they were on their way to an early dinner.
As new friends.
Not because he would admit to any romantic interest in her.
But, man, when she smiled, he felt as though his engine had been given a tune-up he hadn’t realized it had needed. After two years of the increasing demands that came with living with his rapidly declining grandparents, he appreciated the freedom to enjoy an impromptu dinner with a fun woman.
“Did you grow up here?” he asked while they ate.
Her left eye crinkled, but she ducked her head over her French onion soup and pulled out a cheesy spoonful. “I’m Midwestern,” she said. “We moved around a lot when I was growing up.”
“Military?”
“No, more like chasing better jobs. What about you?”
He twisted a goofy grin at her. “You heard of Bliss? Our welcome-to-town signs tell people we’re the Most Married-est Town on Earth because all the bridal shops on our main street have been run by married couples since the dawn of time, but we actually have a few single people and one divorced woman working there now.” He took her lifted brows and semi-slack jaw as the usual You know this is the twenty-first century, right? that he’d gotten from friends and dates during his college days at the University of Illinois.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he stage-whispered, “but we’re overthrowing our anti-divorce dictator and joining the new millennium.”
“You want to get divorced?” Merry said, straight-faced.
He put a hand to his heart. “And most women wait until the third date to pop the question.”
She laughed, a twinkling sound that fit her name, and then changed the subject to the Blackhawks’ chances this season.
At the end of the meal, she again insisted on paying for herself, and he let her, because it hadn’t been a date.
Still, on the way out, his mouth opened, and he asked if she liked baseball. He had two tickets to a late-season Cubs game, and his usual buddies were tied up and couldn’t make it.
Taking her to a Cubs game wasn’t a date.
It was an afternoon out with a friend.
A friend who happened to be funny, intriguing, and blessed with long legs and perfect breasts.
What could go wrong?
Chapter 5
“Phoebe Moon, how could you?” Sister Mary Elvira said. “We needed those eggs and that milk to feed all you children.”
Phoebe Moon peered at the hungry eyes of her fellow orphans. “But it wasn’t me!”
—Phoebe Moon and the Secret Sister
* * *
Present Day…
Sunday morning, while most of Bliss was still asleep, Max bundled up and took Scout, his golden retriever, for a walk to With This Ring. He hadn’t slept so poorly since Merry disappeared last year.
Last year, he’d been up all night, sick to his stomach, combing through his house, through Gran’s jewelry box, through With This Ring, making sure nothing had been stolen.
Last night, he’d been up all night, wondering why she came back.
And why he still cared.
Her father’s a goddamn abomination, Gramps had said last year when Max had confided in his grandparents. Couldn’t bring himself to tell anyone else.
Language, Gran had chided. She’d been fighting a fever, one of many following her broken hip, but despite her grimaces of pain, her wobbly voice, and the way her eyes kept drifting closed, her words had been classic Gran. Max, if the lady was on a mission from her father, we’d be at least a jewel poorer and a lesson richer. My grandfather was a snake oil salesman, but that doesn’t mean my father was too.
“And none of it means I need to make the same mistake twice,” he muttered to Scout as they turned the corner and headed into the alleyway behind With This Ring. “But the woman is a mystery. I’ll give her that.”
Scout grinned her goofy grin at him, tongue lolling, breath coming out in white puffs in the cold morning.
Goofball pup had missed Merry too.
He needed to put the staff on alert. Beef up security. Again. Mention Merry being in the alley to the cops. He was the friggin’ manager at With This Ring. It was his job.
But the Merry he’d known—
He sighed.
She was right. He hadn’t known her at all.
Scout bounced alongside him until he stopped in the middle of the alley. She sniffed the ground right about where Merry had flipped Max last night, then sank to her haunches and rolled all over Max’s invisible body print.
In the soft light of dawn, the scene in the alley last night almost felt like a dream. But Max had a bruise or two to attest to how real it had been.
He studied the back door of With This Ring.
No scratch marks on the lock or the doorframe. Merry had been wearing gloves. All the better not to leave fingerprints. He’d called the security company, who had reviewed the tapes and confirmed she hadn’t done anything more than turn a circle in the alley, and she hadn’t returned. But that glower—she’d been expecting someone.
Why here?
The back door of As You Wish opened, and Zoe Scott stepped out. Her family had owned the wedding planning business next door to With This Ring as long as Max could remember. Her short, curly blond hair shone in the morning light and her black skirt twirled below her knees while she headed toward the dumpster between them with a sack of trash.
Scout leapt to her feet and barked a joyful greeting.
“Morning,” Zoe said with a bright smile.
Scout lunged for her, but Max tightened his grip on her leash. “Early appointments?”
“All day with an eloper,” she confi
rmed.
“Courthouse at noon?” Most popular place and time for last-minute Sunday weddings.
“Lilac Mills Chapel on Friday.”
“Nice.” Max ordered Scout to sit, then took Zoe’s trash and tossed it up for her. “They need rings?”
“Came in with one from Tiffany’s. Sorry.” Zoe started to turn, but paused with one of those classic looks women got when they wanted to gossip. “So…how about that owl, huh? Good thing it was Kimmie’s wedding. She’s already talking about the stories she’ll tell her grandchildren. And hey, speaking of Kimmie, I heard this crazy rumor.”
“Her mother caught the owl and roasted it as payback for what it did to the wedding and the festival?” Max suggested.
“No, she’d be more likely to put a curse on it. Actually, I give it two days before the Bridal Retailers Association calls for a hunt for the white owl. Don’t go looking for that one too, okay? You’ve got enough hexes already.”
Max pinned her with a dark stare. “There is no hex.”
“You have to say that since your family keeps a cursed diamond on display.”
“There’s no such thing as a cursed diamond.” But the Mrs. Claus diamond ring was the most notorious, if not the most valuable, item inside With This Ring, which made it the item most likely to have caught Merry’s fancy.
If burglary played into her motives in being in the alley last night.
“Speaking of curses,” Zoe said.
Max held up a hand. “Nope. Not going there.”
“But I heard Kimmie saw your last ex-girlfriend last night.” She offered a small smile. “Thought you should know. You know. So you don’t run into her without warning.”
Twelve hours too late for that.
“Oh! You saw her too!”
He pulled his phone out and hit his photo app, then scrolled back to a selfie he should’ve deleted months ago. If his hometown had to have a well-oiled gossip machine, he might as well use it to his advantage. He flipped the phone around and held the picture up for Zoe. “You see her, let me know?”
“Oh, boy,” she murmured. She flashed him a pained smile. “Merry. I forgot her name was Merry.”
And she apparently got around. “You’ve seen her?”
“I’m planning her mother’s wedding. It’s Friday. At Lilac Mills.” She stomped a foot. “And she seemed so nice.”
“She was nice,” Max muttered.
“You’re not thinking of getting back together with her, are you?”
“Do I look like an idiot?”
The wind picked up, ruffling Scout’s fur and sending an errant curl into Zoe’s eyes. She brushed it back and glared at him. “Max, she just left. Without a word. I can be professional with her and her mother, but she broke your heart. So yes, I’m going to see her, but no, I’m not going to tell you.”
“Thanks for that vote of confidence.”
“You still have at least two years left on your curse. It’s not your fault.”
“There is no curse.”
“Bliss has a psychic matchmaker, but curses don’t exist?”
“There’s no such thing as a psychic matchmaker either.”
Zoe huffed. “You men are impossible. I’m calling Rachel.”
Max bit back a word inappropriate for Scout’s ears. “You don’t have to—”
“It’s for your own good, Max. If you won’t protect yourself from the curse, we’ll have to do it for you.”
Zoe turned and marched back into As You Wish.
“Women,” Max muttered.
Scout huffed at him, then sneezed on his pants.
Max took one last look at the back door of With This Ring.
Zoe was right. He needed to keep his distance from Merry.
But keeping his distance wouldn’t get him any answers.
He rubbed Scout’s head, then turned around, pulling his dog along with him.
He had a sudden need for some Sunday morning waffles.
* * *
Merry cut into an out-of-season strawberry on a china plate, almost awake after a half cup of coffee. She was halfheartedly listening to Mom explain to Patrick the necessity of handcrafted ornaments as favors for the small wedding party when her inner Phoebe Moon went on full alert.
She didn’t lift her head, but she shifted her gaze to glance about the room, using the ornamental mirrors near the Christmas tree in her subtle surveillance.
And what she saw was a disaster in the making.
If it were possible for a heart to drop to one’s toes at the same time it leapt into one’s throat, that was exactly what happened to her. That pesky organ just up and stretched like Silly Putty, hitting all the high and low and in-between points at once.
Max in an elf costume in a dark alley was adorably sexy.
Max in clothes of the night, lit by only the glow of a Christmas tree, was dangerously sexy.
Max in faded straight-leg jeans, a leather jacket, and windblown dark hair, in full morning daylight, was potently sexy.
And curious.
He hadn’t called the cops on her.
But he apparently had no plans to let her out of sight either.
She gave fleeting thought to shrieking “Owl!” and upending a table as a distraction, but while that would work for Phoebe Moon with charmingly hilarious effects, it would likely result in Merry being put on B&B dish duty at best, and in Mom having hysterics that threatened the likelihood of her impending wedding being as perfect as every one of her other weddings had been.
But then, letting Max any closer to Mom was dangerous in its own right.
She could fake a stomach bug. Or convince Mom she had a stomach bug. Or Patrick.
“Excuse me,” Max said, “is this seat taken?”
“Yes,” Merry said.
Mom tilted an odd look in her direction.
“By my imaginary friend Raoul. He’s a unicorn.”
Patrick coughed half-chewed eggs onto the table. His face went the color of the strawberry. Mom’s bride-to-be glow dimmed, replaced with a classic Mom frown that actually moved some of the muscles in her upper face.
There had been a time when my imaginary friend Raoul was code for the nice police officers who come around to ask about Daddy every few months.
Either Mom didn’t remember, or she didn’t buy it. “Meredith, you’ll never attract a man until you quit talking about your imaginary unicorns and pet clowns.”
“You must be Merry’s mom.” Max claimed the fourth seat at their table, reaching across to shake Mom’s hand at the same time. “Max Gregory. I had the pleasure of dating your daughter a year ago.”
Despite her Botox, the corners of Mom’s eyes went tight. “A year ago?”
“A year ago.”
“A year ago,” Merry agreed. “We had some fun, then it was over. End of story. Excuse us, Max, we have shopping to do.”
Max kicked back in his seat and made himself comfortable. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
Mom gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Thank you. Tell me, Max, why did you and my daughter break up?”
“I wouldn’t actually say we broke up. More like we went our separate ways.”
“Mom, we’ll be late—”
“You live here in Bliss?” Mom said.
“My family runs one of the jewelry shops.”
“And now we all know each other, so we can be on our way.” Merry tossed her napkin on her plate.
Mom’s eyes had gone harder than diamonds. “Meredith, stay.”
Patrick’s shoulders hunched in.
Apparently Mom hadn’t introduced him to the Displeased and Suspicious Mom Voice yet.
“Mom, I’m not giving you grandchildren with Max,” Merry said. “We’re incompatible. There’s no reason for an inquisition.”
“Patrick, dear,” Mom said, “I need a second bagel.”
Huh. There was an idea.
Let Mom handle Max. She’d have their wedding planned within six minutes. If that didn�
�t scare him, nothing would.
“I’ll get it,” Merry said.
“You’ll stay.” Mom took a dainty sip of her coffee, still eyeing Max. “I so rarely get the chance to see what my daughter looks for in a man. She hardly had the best examples growing up.”
Max didn’t flinch. “So I’ve gathered.”
“Patrick, while you’re getting the bagel, could you check the hours on the chocolate shop again too?”
“Noon to six on Sundays,” Max said.
“Patrick, be a dear and double-check Matt’s information.”
Patrick’s watery eyes shifted from Mom to Merry to Max, then back again. “Vicky, honey, if you need me here—”
“You sweet, sweet man. I always need you, schmoopsie, but this is one of those things a mother has to handle on her own.” Her lashes batted.
Merry again considered faking throwing up.
“All right, but you call me if you need anything.” He gave Max a stern finger shake. “I don’t tolerate my girls being mistreated.”
“Looking forward to the day I can threaten my niece’s suitors,” Max said. “Don’t plan on messing up my chances of living long enough to do it. Your girls are safe with me.”
“Merry knows karate,” Patrick said.
“Duly noted.” Smoky amusement flashed in Max’s eyes—a deep aquamarine today—and Merry’s feminine parts stirred to life again.
She’d known few men who considered strength and agility as attractive as Max seemed to.
She’d known fewer men she’d let close enough to honestly find her attractive. But for two glorious months, she’d felt it. A reluctant attachment. Both sexual attraction and intellectual attraction. With an underlying affection. From a man who hadn’t needed to be generous with physical gifts because he’d satisfied emotional needs she hadn’t known she had.
“Tell me, Matt,” Mom said, “how did you meet my daughter?”
“Well, Nicky—”
“Victoria. Or Ms. Silver, if you please.”
Patrick left the room. Merry’s thighs squeezed, ready to bolt. Max stole the last piece of bacon from her plate. “Mrs. Silver,” he said, “we met over a shared love of fine literature.”
Merried Page 5
