She couldn’t help her clients make that leap. No hired person could. Because at its core, love was a mystery for each and every couple. Only they knew where the abyss was in their relationship.
So she was like a tour guide dropping these hopeful people off at a canyon and telling them that somehow they, on their own, had to make their way across. They had to find their own ladders, parachutes, bridges, whatever.
For the first time in Macy’s career as a matchmaker, she felt some doubts about the importance of what she was doing. Maybe she should have gotten the message when she’d set up Celia and her almost-fiancé and he’d obviously not been willing to commit to Celia at a deep soul level.
That terrible situation was a clear indicator that Macy couldn’t control what happened in her clients’ world. Only they could.
So she wasn’t doing much, really. Positioning people on a giant chessboard, advising them as to the first couple of moves. But in the end, they’d have to take over. She’d have to retreat.
And watch.
I’m useless.
She knew that was a stupid thought, but at that moment she believed it.
Not only was she having a crisis of confidence about her job—her passion—she’d been walking around with blinders on about her own feelings.
About her feelings and her fate.
And she thought she knew herself pretty damned well.
She needed to get out of there, so she headed as fast as she could to an exit. All around her was noise, flashes of color. But she was separate. Inside, she felt like a swirling snowflake in a blizzard, tossed on the winds.
She was scared, unable to think straight.
She’d go home and text Fran from the comfort of her kitchen that she felt sick and had to depart the party abruptly. It wouldn’t be far from the truth. Her stomach had butterflies in it. Her head felt light.
But a solid pillar of tuxedoed man stood in her way.
“Hey, you.” It was Trent Gillingham, the star of Bless Your Heart, the one Fran had a crush on. His eyes were bloodshot, and his mouth hung open a little. He looked drunk. No surprise there. Almost every time Macy saw him out and about, he was.
“Hi, Trent.” She flashed him a plastic smile. “I wish I could stay and chat. But I don’t feel well. I’ve got to go.”
He immediately grabbed her elbow. “Lemme help you. I’ll get you home.”
She shook her head and pulled her arm gently away from his grip. “No, thank you. I’d like to go alone.”
“Tha’s not right.”
“I’m fine.” She slipped past him. The exit was only a few feet away.
For a drunk guy, he moved pretty fast. He stood directly in the doorway. “Come on now, Macy. Let’s party.”
Without speaking another word to him, she did a one-eighty and headed to an alternate door. A crowd stood in her way. Inhaling a silent breath, she prepared to move through them somehow without stopping to chat.
That was tough in Charleston. You couldn’t walk a few steps without someone asking you how you were doing. Or catching you up on what they were doing.
Her chest constricted. Trent came up to her and took her arm.
Again.
This time, she had no patience. “Please leave me alone.” Maybe she said it too loudly, because a few people in front of her stopped talking and stared.
Trent’s face got redder, and he held her arm harder. “She doesn’t feel well,” he explained. “Please excuse us.” And he pulled her forward.
“No,” Macy told him in as firm a voice as she could muster without making a scene. Like a stubborn donkey, she dug in her heels. Luckily, she was standing on a plush carpet.
“You okay, Macy?” a friendly older woman from the mayor’s office asked.
Macy sent her a pained smile. “I’d like to go home, is all.”
“I’ll take you.” Deacon appeared to her right, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at Trent. “You may think you can steal someone’s Christmas tree in a church parking lot,” he said in his highly noticeable New York accent, “but you sure as hell aren’t going to remove this woman from the mayor’s house.”
Hearing him come to her defense like that in his sleek, sophisticated tuxedo, and seeing his face like that—scary and hard, on her behalf—plucked at every needy place within her.
“I’m okay,” she said. “Really.”
But she had to admit, she was feeling a little out of it. The quick rush of champagne, combined with the day’s fatigue and the new revelations she’d only just had, served to throw her off her game.
Deacon sensed this. And she knew why. Because he was her soulmate.
Tears nearly welled up in Macy’s eyes, but she blinked once and pushed them back down. “I am fine,” she said for the last time.
“Of course you are,” Deacon said.
He wasn’t talking about that moment. He was saying she mattered in general, that her place in the universe was assured. And she only had to trust herself to believe it, the way he did.
How did she know this?
Because they were soulmates.
Did he know yet?
She still didn’t think so. He lived on the surface. Not that that was a bad thing. She’d obviously been doing it herself. Look at how she’d been sleepwalking. Here was her actual soulmate right in front of her eyes.
Maybe the sleeping together part had actually gotten in the way of figuring it out. She might have put up some barriers afterward, the old defense mechanisms. You didn’t want to get rejected after baring your entire naked body and—let’s face it—at least part of your soul to another human being.
It was a natural reaction.
“Get the hell outta my way,” she heard Trent say from a distance.
She heard a crack then—a sharp sound like bone against bone.
Then everything went black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Deacon knew Trent was a lame adversary—he hated wasting a punch on him—but sometimes bugs must be squashed. Or taught a lesson. Or both.
This was one of those times.
The reality TV star might learn to become a halfway decent guy, but right now his selfish, boozy exterior dominated. He was vain as hell and couldn’t handle his liquor.
Over the years Deacon had learned—with very little mentorship from a father figure—that a gentleman was modest about his superior skills, whether in the bedroom or the boardroom, around the poker table, on a football field or golf course, or when hunting or fishing.
And a gentleman sure as hell knew when to stop drinking. The only exceptions to that rule were when he’d been presented with divorce papers or lost a beloved family member or friend. Apart from that, no excuses for alcohol-fueled bad choices were acceptable, especially when a lady was involved.
A lady was involved.
Not only that, that lady was Macy, whom Deacon had great neighborly fondness for and a serious sexual attraction to, one that he couldn’t shake no matter how many alluring women he met in Charleston.
“Why’d you do that?” someone asked him.
“You knocked him out,” another person said.
Duh.
The whole party stopped. Even the music. Deacon rubbed his knuckles and was pushed out of the way by an older man.
“I’m the chief of police here in Charleston,” the guy said. “I expect the truth ASAP.”
Deacon grimaced. “He was harassing Miss Frost, sir. Dragging her toward the door while she was saying no. I saw the whole thing. So did several other witnesses.”
The chief looked around. “I don’t see any.”
Deacon was disappointed but not surprised. Trent was from an A-list family.
Macy finally sat up, surrounded by Miss Thing and her two colleagues at Two Love Lane. She looked groggy but okay. Deacon felt relief, but it wasn’t warm and sustaining, like brandy on a polar-arctic day, the way he imagined it was for most people. It weakened him.
He hated being v
ulnerable.
He hated turning into Gumby.
“Oh boy,” Macy whispered, and looked up at him with worried, sad eyes.
“I punched Trent,” he said. Like a dork. Like a kid hoping someone would give him a big fat reward. He’d take a kiss, a real one, from the woman who’d just fainted.
But she’d fainted. That wasn’t good. Worry descended once more. It made him want to punch Trent again for making Macy so upset. It was a guy thing, but he suppressed the thought and focused on those sad eyes of hers. She was okay. That was all that mattered at this point.
Trent groaned. The loser. Okay, the loser who might be redeemable if he had decent friends and family, which apparently he had. They just needed to get to work teaching him some lessons. Maybe tonight would give them a little push in the right direction.
And then Macy saw Trent. She audibly gasped. It was such a feminine thing to do. “What happened to him?”
Several accusing stares were leveled Deacon’s way, but he wasn’t going to apologize to anyone. “He needed a warning from a policeman,” he explained to Macy. “Since I had no idea there was one nearby—sorry, Chief—I took it upon myself to provide it before he took you outside.”
“I’m sorry you hurt your hand,” Macy said. “But glad you—you stopped him. He wouldn’t listen to me.”
Their eyes locked. Something passed between them. Some kind of awareness that they’d come close to when they’d slept together—it had been a moment when he’d looked in her eyes and she’d smiled back with some kind of affection and … tenderness. And he had lost his breath.
Tenderness.
He wasn’t used to getting that. To feeling that.
Aunt Fran loved him, but she was brisk. The few moments of tenderness they’d shared over his lifetime he completely remembered. The time he’d had appendicitis when he was eleven. She’d gently fed him scrambled eggs and brushed a lock of hair out of his eye. The hug she’d given him the day he’d graduated high school. Her tears, and the way she couldn’t speak, when he showed her his diploma right after his college graduation, and she’d laid trembling fingers on his arm, almost as if she needed help to remain standing.
Could Macy see what he was feeling now? That he was proud he’d protected her? That he was worried? That he cared—a lot? He wanted to get on the ground next to her and hug her close.
And be tender with her. The opposite of what Trent had been.
Mrs. Gillingham came running up in silver high heels and a scarlet-red cocktail dress. She looked at Trent, now groaning on the ground, his hand over his right cheekbone.
“Do you want to press charges, Mr. Gillingham?” the police chief asked Trent. “Technically, you can. I wouldn’t recommend it, but I need to let you know you can.”
“Hell, yes, I’ll press charges.” Trent stood, his nostrils flared, and stared through slitted eyes at Deacon.
Good. One of those eyes was slitted because it was swelling up and turning yellow. Soon it would be green.
“You will not press charges,” said Trent’s mother. She was a fine-looking woman. Trent got a lot of his good looks from her. “You deserved it, son, I’m sure.” She looked at the police chief. “He’s a real ass sometimes, and it’s gotten worse since that damned reality show took off in the ratings. He needed a comeuppance.”
“Mom?” Trent’s face reddened. “Are you kidding me? You haven’t even heard what happened!”
“I don’t need to hear,” she said low. “Leave before you make more of a fool of yourself.”
“Wait a minute,” said the chief. “Miss Frost, would you like to press charges against Mr. Gillingham? I understand he tried to forcibly remove you from the party.”
Her face paled. “No, thank you. I hope his black eye will wake him up.”
Trent said nothing.
“Say you’re sorry,” Deacon told him.
“Sorry,” Trent said sulkily to Macy. “I like you, okay? You’re the only girl in town who doesn’t suck up to me to get on the show. And in high school, you never put up with my rude comments. You might have been a wild child with nerdy scholar parents, but you turned out like my mom. Classy. I want to be classy. Geez.”
“Oh.” Macy shot him a tremulous smile. “Thank you, Trent. That means a lot to me.”
He shook his head. “I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to pull so hard on your arm. I need to lay off the bourbon.”
“I know you won’t do it again, right?” Macy asked. “With me or anyone else?”
“Right.” Trent let out a big sigh. “I’m done with that asinine show too. Someone call the network. I’m pulling out.” Everyone moved out of his way as he walked with bowed shoulders to the door, his hand cradling his eye.
It would be on social media within the hour, Deacon knew. Hashtag bohunkbooboo. Or something similar.
Macy wiped away a tear. “I need to go,” she said, and looked around. “Greer? Ella? Miss Thing?”
“I can take you home,” Deacon volunteered.
But Miss Thing was already at Macy’s side. “We’ve got her,” she said in comforting tones.
And then Macy was gone, being led toward another door by Miss Thing on one side and Greer on the other.
Deacon wanted to be the one to take her home. He wanted to carry her out of the mayor’s house in his arms, walk the couple of blocks to the Battery with her arms around his neck and her legs swinging in time with his stride, put her in his bed, and tuck her in.
But that was another impossible daydream—not when the Two Love Lane ladies were guarding her so assiduously and when he had an aunt watching him like a hawk, as well as a cook/housekeeper doing the same thing. Not to mention Corgis breathing and yapping everywhere.
Damn, he missed his bachelor freedoms.
Ella appeared at his shoulder. “Thanks for taking care of Trent. Maybe he’ll get the message now.”
“I hope so.”
“And don’t worry.” Ella’s gaze was soft and caring, which he appreciated. “Macy’s going to be fine. She’s been working too hard and drank her champagne too fast. She’s a lightweight, you know. She’ll never admit it. The most she can tolerate are those wine punches at Fast and French.”
He felt a jolt of warm memory thinking of her drinking those wine punches. They needed to go back and get more of those—and that soup, too.
“Your aunt told me to tell you she left,” Ella said. “It was before all this happened. She didn’t have time to cross the room and let you know. She and the colonel seemed in an awful hurry.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. But she said not to worry. She’s fine. She just had somewhere to be.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“My pleasure.” Ella shot him a parting smile and left the party.
Deacon said his good-byes to the mayor—apologized to him and his wife and again to the chief of police—and left the party too.
He texted George. Because of course Aunt Fran didn’t know how to text, even though she carried a sleek smartphone.
Aunt Fran home? he typed.
Nope, George texted back.
Damn.
She’s not there? George added.
She left with the colonel 20 min ago, Deacon wrote back.
My, oh, my, texted George. And then he added an emoji of bright red kissy lips.
Oh, no. That thought had never occurred to Deacon. Come on, now. Maybe they stopped to get a drink somewhere, he texted.
Operation Boot Camp, George wrote, and now the old folks are showing us up.
Deacon couldn’t believe the sexy scenario George was implying, but hey—he should be happy for Aunt Fran. This was why he was here in Charleston, to help her get settled, to feel at home. And if that involved her finding a boyfriend faster than anticipated, then Deacon would be okay with that.
Meanwhile, his own love life was going nowhere. Was he getting old? A different girl each night didn’t appeal anymore. Neither did a different girl each week. Or each m
onth for that matter. He was tired of having a revolving bed. It was too much work. Not enough payoff.
Fooling around was great, but dare he say it? There was more to life than sex, sports, drinking with his buddies, and making those especially shiny start-up deals that left his competitors in the dust.
What was happening to him? He couldn’t let any of his guy friends hear him say any of that out loud. Or his team at work.
“Hey, you!” It was Penelope. “How are the knuckles?”
“Just fine.” At the moment, he couldn’t work up a grin.
Her smile faded. “I won’t waste your time talking about what happened. Only to say that if you punched Trent, I know he deserved it.”
“Thanks. He did. But hopefully, it’s blue skies from here on out. Hey, you look beautiful.” And she did. She was also brainy, kind, and fun to be around. But not for him.
“Thanks.” Her cheeks turned pink. “Go after Macy, Deacon. I know she cares.”
And before he could answer her, she walked away and disappeared into the crowd.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Knock, knock, knock.
It was the mystery sound from Ella’s office.
The day after Macy fainted at the mayor’s Christmas party—the day after she finally embraced her feelings for Deacon—she leaned against Ella’s door at Two Love Lane. Knock. Knock. Long silence. Knock, knock. She tapped on the door. “Ella?”
“Yes?”
“May I come in?”
There was a long pause. “Sorry. Not right now.”
Macy jetted a breath. “Ella, please tell us what’s going on in there.”
“Everyone has a right to privacy.” Knock, knock.
“I know that, but we’re a team here. And this is our office. Quite frankly, you’re driving us all a little batty. Don’t you trust us?” Macy stood and waited.
Ten seconds passed, and Ella opened the door a crack. “I’m wrapping Christmas presents.”
“No, you’re not.” Macy knew she was risking Ella’s wrath, which was rare, but when it showed up, it was very Italian, involving lots of hand gestures and many Mio Dios. “Miss Thing said you were doing this last summer too.”
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