A Very Merry Match--Includes a Bonus Novella Read online

  “Fine, but I’m taking back my flip phone.” In case she ever needed to disappear, it’d make a good burner phone. “Are you sure you don’t want to buy a quad?”

  “I keep telling you.” Gasp-wheeze. “I’ve got no floor space.” Gasp-gasp. “Maybe Santa needs one.”

  She walked out of the thrift store with shoulders slumped. Where was she going to find ninety-eight thousand, eight hundred dollars?

  With the hundred-year-old brick buildings blanketed in snow, downtown Sunshine looked charming, challenging Mary Margaret to find some holiday spirit.

  “Watch out!”

  The Bodine twins ran past her on the covered sidewalk toward a cluster of teenage girls at the movie theater. The teens wore Santa hats and sang snatches of Christmas carols as they joined the girls in line for the latest Disney cartoon feature.

  Bah, humbug.

  Mary Margaret hurried to her car. The wind was picking up as the sun was setting. She wanted nothing more than to go home, cuddle up in front of the television, and wait for the holidays to end. She passed the three-story brick shopping mall, which had once been an apartment building with an atrium. They were behind on their holiday prep. Eighties pop boomed from their speakers.

  The dark of night. Music that moved people. Show time!

  Her steps slowed. She could dance her way out of this. A grand a night at a big club. Ninety-nine nights. It would take her three months—four, max—and she’d be free and clear. If the thugs were patient.

  Her gut clenched.

  Laurel and Hardy didn’t strike her as patient types. Besides, she couldn’t risk moonlighting as an exotic dancer. If anyone in Sunshine found out, she’d lose her teaching job. There was a morals clause in her contract.

  “Ms. Sneed!” Tad Hadley burst out of the town hall and ran over to Mary Margaret with the awkward steps of a growing boy. He hugged her leg and beamed up at her. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, honey.” She smoothed his brown curls. “Did you have a good Thanksgiving?” Tad was in her kindergarten class and a rascal, like Becky Taylor had been last year. Mary Margaret was partial to rascals.

  Tad patted his stomach. “I ate so much pumpkin pie, I almost burst!” His jacket was unzipped, ends flapping in the wind.

  Mary Margaret kneeled to zip him up.

  “When you rack up calories one day, you pay for it the next.” Barbara Hadley appeared behind Tad, catalogued Mary Margaret’s outfit and sniffed her reluctant approval. She was a stuck-up pill but she was Mary Margaret’s room mother this year, not to mention her beautician and the town’s queen bee, a position not lessened by her recent divorce from the mayor.

  “Calories?” Mary Margaret couldn’t leave Tad undefended. “Pumpkin pie has no calories.” She tweaked Tad’s nose. Kids his age shouldn’t worry about things like that. “Hey, Barbara, I don’t suppose you’d be interested in buying someone a quad for Christmas.”

  Tad gasped. “Is it Tad-sized?”

  It wasn’t. Mary Margaret shook her head.

  “You asked me that already, Mary Margaret. The answer is still no.” Barbara managed to look disapproving without frowning. Plus, her hair didn’t move much in the wind, making her appear above mundane emotions, like worry and grief. Barbara took Tad’s hand. “Come along, Tad. We’ve got to find your grandparents.”

  “And then we can go to the Saddle Horn?” Tad asked hopefully.

  “We’ll see.”

  Mary Margaret walked with them around the corner, wishing them a Merry Christmas when she reached her car. The pair continued around the next corner in the direction of the pet store.

  Mary Margaret opened her car door just as her phone buzzed with a text message from Lola Taylor, asking if she wanted to meet at Shaw’s for a drink. The answer was an immediate yes and included the wine glass emoji. When creating her payment plan, Mary Margaret had budgeted for two wine glasses a week because kindergarten teachers needed to unwind.

  A few minutes later, Mary Margaret was sitting in a booth at the back of Shaw’s with her friends Lola, Darcy Harper, and Avery Blackstone. When she was in Shaw’s with her besties, she could pretend that her life was normal and that terms like “interest compounded daily” didn’t scare her.

  Shaw’s had a big stage and a dance floor on one end with padded booths and large wooden tables on the other. A long, narrow bar sat in the middle of Shaw’s with stools on both sides. There were license plates on the walls instead of photos or mirrors. Old saddles were mounted on the high rafters. And on Saturday nights, the shells from free peanuts littered the floor.

  Classy, it was not.

  Mary Margaret and her friends occupied a booth near the pool table.

  “I’m so tired of studying for the bar.” Blond hair in a bun at her nape, Darcy clutched her beer stein, her single karat wedding ring glinting in the dim fluorescent light. “I took the test weeks ago and George still grills me at every opportunity during the day and every night after dinner. I feel like I’m in law school all over again.”

  “Trouble in paradise?” Avery tossed her straight black hair off the movie theater logo on her navy polo, narrowly missing Mary Margaret. “Is the honeymoon over?”

  There was an uncomfortable silence. Avery had broken the unwritten rule of the group. They weren’t supposed to ask Darcy intimate details about her unorthodox marriage.

  Darcy was too young to have married the nearly eighty-year-old judge on a whim last spring. He seemed more determined to help Darcy pass the bar than to make her happy. Plus the judge had purged Darcy’s wardrobe of anything too feminine or fun.

  Mary Margaret’s chest ached at the robbing of Darcy’s independence. But what could she say?

  “I can tell you how a newlywed sounds.” Lola picked up the thread of conversation with a purr and a satisfied smile. Her thick brown hair was braided with strands of tinsel, most likely a product of her stepdaughter’s whimsy. “I’ve never been happier.”

  Darcy chugged her beer.

  “You’ve never been happier?” Avery teased, elbowing Mary Margaret. “Even when Drew works on Saturday nights?”

  “He doesn’t work on Sunday mornings.” Lola hugged Darcy. “Oh, sweetie, don’t worry. You’ll work it out with the judge. How could you not? It’s practically Christmas.”

  Avery and Mary Margaret were quick to support that sentiment.

  “The holiday can’t fly by fast enough.” Noah Shaw, the bar owner, was taping sparkly red garland around the edge of the pool table. “My business is down during the holiday season.”

  He had a point. Other than Mary Margaret and her friends, the only other person in the bar was Kevin Hadley, the town’s recently divorced, gorgeous-as-sin mayor. His thick, dark hair was longish on top, tousled as if a woman had tangled her hands in it. Since his divorce, he’d been sporting a stubbled beard. Just the thought of it scraping across her neck was delicious.

  Since when do I look at Tad’s father and feel delicious?

  Mary Margaret felt a blush coming on. She looked away and drank her wine.

  “If business is so bad, why bother decorating?” Avery managed her family’s movie theater and had spent all last weekend decorating the lobby.

  “Because if I don’t decorate, I’ll get a visit from the Widows Club.” Noah stood, looking one hundred percent Colorado cowboy bachelor with his checked shirt, blue jeans, and boots. “And I like being a bachelor operating under their radar.”

  The Widows Club. Mary Margaret had forgotten about them. They’d visited her after Derek died, asking if she needed anything, telling her they’d extend a formal invitation to join their ranks six months after Derek’s death, but she’d put them off another six months. They were a well-intentioned organization, and she shouldn’t care that the average age of their membership was sixty.

  But she did care. “I feel old.” Mary Margaret’s shoulders drooped lower than Darcy’s.

  “What’s wrong, Mary Margaret?” Lola reached across the table
to give her hand a squeeze. “Oh, I know. It’s your one-year widow-versary, isn’t it? I completely freaked out when mine rolled around.”

  “That was the day you discovered Randy had been cheating on you.” Avery chuckled. “The day we found your husband’s blow-up dolls and put them on display in your window.”

  “That display drove Drew crazy.” Lola’s smile turned wicked.

  Those blow-up dolls had caused an uproar. Small town Sunshine had freaked out over what would essentially have been a ho-hum window display in Denver. That’s why Mary Margaret couldn’t dance her way out of trouble this time. This wasn’t Denver.

  “Rest assured…” Mary Margaret held up her wine glass for a toast. “My widow-versary will pass quietly. I’m one of the most invisible residents in town.” She’d learned long before she moved to Sunshine that a quiet life was the way to go.

  Thank you, Dad.

  They clinked their glasses.

  “But you seem distracted.” Newlywed Lola wanted everyone to be as happy as she was. “You aren’t thinking of Derek, are you?”

  “No. I’m not still grieving, if that’s what you mean.” Thinking about Derek separate from his debt created a dull ache in her chest and the threat of tears in her eyes. Unfortunately, she was more likely to think about him and his debt than just him. “I just…” Mary Margaret swallowed back the unsettling feeling of trouble on the horizon. “I suppose I can tell you…” A little of the truth, at least. “I received a new collection notice today.”

  Her friends sat back in shock.

  “Almost a year after he died?” Avery frowned.

  On a positive note, Darcy looked less glum. “Derek shouldn’t have opened so many lines of credit in your names.”

  “Do you want to head out to the cemetery and rail at him?” Lola raised her wine glass. “If you do, I’m riding shotgun.”

  “Thanks but…” Mary Margaret was touched by their support. “Every time I think I’ve made peace…Every time I think I’ve finally laid Derek to rest…”

  “What did he buy this time?” Avery was intrigued. “A fancy gun? A timeshare?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She didn’t want to draw them into her Laurel and Hardy nightmare. “I just need to make extra cash.”

  The club in Greeley came to mind once more.

  Widows don’t dance in clubs.

  Three weeks ago, Barbara had plucked a gray hair from Mary Margaret’s head as she sat in her salon chair. Mary Margaret’s shoulders hunched once more.

  Across from her, Darcy’s gaze drifted to a cowboy on crutches coming in the door. Her features closed down tighter than a summer cabin’s shutters in winter. It was her ex-boyfriend, rodeo star Jason Petrie. A bull had busted his leg, which was fitting since his womanizing had busted Darcy’s heart and propelled her into matrimony with the elderly judge.

  “Let’s finish these drinks and get out of here.” Mary Margaret slurped her wine.

  “No. Not yet.” Darcy caught Mary Margaret’s gaze. “I heard through the grapevine that Jason’s stud business is looking for part-time help while Jason recovers.”

  “Manure and bull semen?” Lola drained her chardonnay. “Ugh.”

  Darcy rolled her eyes. “This from the woman who does hair and makeup at the mortuary.” Her expression turned speculative as she looked at Mary Margaret. “I know you have a full schedule with teaching but your nights and weekends are free. And I heard through the grapevine—”

  Truly, Sunshine had the best grapevine ever, as long as the gossip wasn’t about you.

  “—that Jason’s business partner Iggy needs someone in the late afternoon and evenings.”

  “I don’t know.” Mary Margaret had promised to help with the elementary school’s Christmas pageant, not to mention she had to watch out for Grandma Edith, who’d been taking Grandpa Charlie’s death pretty hard.

  “Go on,” Lola encouraged. She waved her empty wine glass in the direction of Jason, who was hobbling toward a seat at the bar next to Kevin. “Ask Jason for a job. What have you got to lose?”

  * * *

  Kevin sat in Shaw’s watching a college football game on television. He’d played quarterback in high school and college. He enjoyed the strategy of the game. What he didn’t enjoy was being outwitted.

  Blindsided, the quarterback on TV missed a defensive read and was sacked. Kevin may have been blindsided by Barb’s infidelity but he was going to be bulletproof when he ran for state office. That is, if the distribution center lived up to expectations and raised Sunshine’s standard of living.

  A memory of his grandfather returned: the summer Grandpa had run for governor. They’d stopped in a poor suburb outside Denver and barbecued hot dogs during a meet-and-greet. The line had been down the block. And it had been a long block.

  “Why are there so many people in line?” eight-year-old Kevin had asked. “It’s just a hot dog.”

  “For some of these people, that hot dog is all they’ll get to eat today.” His grandfather had knelt in front of Kevin. “Those of us lucky enough to have a full fridge need to help those who aren’t so lucky. It’s a responsibility, just like you being Vanessa’s older brother and watching out for her.”

  Those words and their meaning had stuck with Kevin—the more you had, the bigger the responsibility to give back. Now that Grandpa was gone, it was more important than ever to carry on his legacy.

  The stool next to him listed to one side as Jason Petrie tried to belly up to the bar with his broken leg. A clatter of crutches, a scrape of stool footings, and the blond, blue-eyed cowboy had half his butt on the seat. His casted leg rested gracelessly to the side.

  Noah had a beer in front of Jason before the cowboy released a put-upon sigh or had time to glance over his shoulder at his ex-girlfriend Darcy.

  “Before you start off with your smarmy metaphors and clichés, Kev.” Jason paused to sample his beer. “Remember that I’m the only guy in town who shows up to drink with you.”

  And wasn’t that a sad state of affairs?

  Kevin signaled Noah for another whiskey. He’d been nursing his first for thirty minutes, and he was walking home. “I have no life.”

  “Good mayors rarely do.” Jason drank some more beer. “You’re like priests. Nobody trusts priests who get out there and have a life either.”

  Kevin scowled at him, annoyed that Jason’s opinion mirrored his ex-wife’s, doubly so when he realized they were both right.

  If he was ever going to re-activate his social life, he needed a steady girlfriend, someone as boring as he was, someone who was never the talk of the town, someone who wouldn’t ruin his political chances.

  “Excuse me.” Mary Margaret Sneed picked up Jason’s crutches and leaned them against the bar. She wore blue jeans, tall black boots, and a chunky fisherman’s sweater that hinted at her curves. She had a full mane of red hair, a pair of tender blue eyes, and was like the Pied Piper when it came to making children behave. “I hate to interrupt, Jason, but…I heard you might be hiring part-time workers.”

  “Yep.” Jason patted his walking cast beyond the fringe where he’d cut off one leg of his blue jeans. “The logistics of bull semen collection, storage, and order fulfillment are not what the doctor ordered for another few weeks.”

  “Whereas drinking beer is,” Kevin murmured.

  Mary Margaret and Jason both paused to look at him. Kevin stared into his whiskey glass.

  “I’m looking for a part-time gig,” Mary Margaret continued in that church-girl voice of hers. “But I can’t work until after school during the week.”

  “Ahhh.” Jason gave her another once-over. “Didn’t you know? Iggy is a vampire. He and the bulls do all their best work after happy hour.” While Jason explained the horrors of collecting bull semen, storing it with proper labeling in cryogenic units, and shipping it out, Kevin studied Mary Margaret out of the corner of his eye.

  She was the complete opposite of his ex-wife. Soft-spoken. Openly kind. Stable.
The type of woman a man who was one step from the priesthood would date. It didn’t hurt that she was beautiful or that she knew how to dress well enough to fit in but not loud enough to stand out. He’d seen her circulate in a crowd and not steal the limelight from anyone. She checked a lot of boxes.

  And if he looked at the soft bow of her mouth, he could imagine kissing her. And if he imagined kissing her, he could imagine pressing the length of that long, tall body of hers against his. And if he could imagine that…

  Kevin sipped his drink, unused to envisioning getting physical with one of his constituents, especially his son’s kindergarten teacher.

  He snuck another glance at her. At that thick curtain of red hair, at her creamy skin, at the delicate way her fingers interlocked and squeezed intermittently as she listened to Jason.

  Kevin swallowed thickly. With all this talk of the priesthood, a switch had been flipped inside him. It’d been months since he’d burned the sheets with a woman. He could probably look at any single woman and imagine…

  He glanced over his shoulder at Avery. She was single and his age. Mary Margaret’s conservative work clothes didn’t vary much from the outfits she wore to Shaw’s. When Avery wasn’t wearing her theater uniform, she chose clothes that showcased curves and skin. But as much as he stared, he couldn’t imagine getting busy with Avery.

  His attention shifted back to Mary Margaret, to intelligent blue eyes and a soft laugh. She shifted her feet, and then he couldn’t stop thinking about her long legs.

  “Noah,” he croaked, a dying man in need of a sanity-leveling drink. He held up his empty glass.

  What was taking Noah so long?

  Maybe this awareness of Mary Margaret was a good thing. She was a conservative member of the community, never any trouble to anyone. Dating her would be better than drinking at Shaw’s with Jason.

  Noah topped off his drink.

  Kevin took a sip, forcing his gaze to the football game on television.