Matchpoint (32 page)

“Did you hear?” she asked me over the sound of my engine. “We won! We won! They scrammed this morning!”

“How did you do it?” I envisioned a D-Day attack, plotted and planned at Herbie’s Hoagies and Pies the night before. “Did you pull out the big guns last night?”

“No, we had the night off. They just ran off. They finally got the picture. The mayor says he told them, ‘This mountain isn’t big enough for the both of us.’ You understand?”

“I understand.”

“Now the mayor is a shoo-in for reelection in November. You hear the latest about Holly Firestone?”

“Is she doing better?”

“Yep, breathing on her own. Came out of the coma with a cockamamie story about Nathan Smith and the dentist’s face.”

I didn’t have the heart or the energy to tell Meryl that Holly was telling the truth. Besides, it would all come out in a day or two. She could read it in the paper.

“That’s not the craziest thing,” Meryl added. “They
found out at the hospital that Holly is six months pregnant. Six months! She had no clue. She almost stopped breathing when they told her.”

“Who’s the father?”

“No idea, but there’s good money on the bartender at Bar None. Although I’ve heard whispers that the old dentist was the father.”

Gosh, I hoped not. If it was the bartender, Holly could get free drinks.

I said goodbye to Meryl and made it to Trouble’s house by ten o’clock. The wedding wasn’t half bad. Calamity wore a huge wedding gown with a hooped skirt and parasol. Trouble had made a wedding canopy out of pure milk chocolate.

Calamity’s husband turned out to be Josh White, a gorgeous stockbroker who had made so much money on Wall Street, he retired at twenty-five and moved to Cannes, into one of the McMansions just outside of town.

He never stopped talking, which seemed all right to Calamity, who never stopped listening to him with a smile on her face. Never saying a word.

After eating a big slice of Trouble’s chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling and chocolate fudge icing, I headed home. I planned to cut myself out of the dress, take a hot shower, and sleep until the next day.

My plans were derailed, however, when I drove into my driveway and saw Holden’s truck parked next door. I ran into the house, up the stairs to the attic, and spied on him through the window. He threw a duffel bag in the back of his truck. He sensed my gaze, looked up at me, and waved.

Sometimes it’s better to throw caution to the wind, to stop analyzing life and just live it. Either because of exhaustion or common sense, I got to that point that morning.

I ran downstairs and out the door.

I RANG the doorbell, and he opened the door. He was relaxed, wearing jeans and a sweater. He ran a hand through his hair when he saw me, and arched an eyebrow. Surprised.

“The cult’s gone,” I announced. “The mayor got rid of them.”

“Is that so?” He arched his eyebrow again.

“Why? Do you know something I don’t?” I asked.

“Maybe I got rid of the cult, not the mayor. Maybe it was my gift to the town. So it wouldn’t have any more fires or flying donkeys. Anyway, Mr. Steve is wanted on five felony counts of grand larceny. His real name is Fred Lewiston. When he found out I was onto him, he left in a hurry.”

“Crazy week, huh?” I said.

“I think you make people go crazy, Pinkie. Lots of people, not just me.”

“You make a lot of people go crazy, too, Spencer.”

“So, to what do I owe this honor?” he asked.

I took a deep breath, but no words came out. Our eyes locked, and my body grew warm.

“I just came over to see what you think,” I said.

“Oh, yeah? This is a first.”

“So, what do you think?”

Spencer studied me a moment and then leaned in close to me. “My dear disco Scarlett,” he said, caressing my cheek. “I think you should be kissed and often and by a man who knows how.”

“Fiddle-dee-dee,” I said. “Sounds good. You got any scissors?”

I walked into his house, and he closed the door behind us.

The author gratefully acknowledges the following people for their assistance: Junessa Viloria, my wonderful, patient editor, who knows all the juicy details; all the editors at Ballantine; godsend associate publisher Gina Wachtel; Random House art director Pablo Picasso … I mean, Lynn Andreozzi; production editor Beth Pearson; Alex Glass, the agent of my dreams, and everyone at Trident Media; my beta reader Maria Sanminiatelli, who read the whole thing at the beach; my boys … again; Ruth Aguilar, for trying to straighten my hair; and my father, who wasn’t Citizen Pain. A special acknowledgment to Stephanie Newton, who walked with me through the cancer book. Finally, thank you to the poor unfortunate donkey, who really did fly.

An Affair to Dismember
Matchpoint
Love Game

E
LISE
S
AX
writes hot and hilarious happy endings. She worked as a journalist, mostly in Paris, France, for many years but always wanted to write fiction. Finally she decided to go for her dream and write a novel. She was thrilled when
An Affair to Dismember
, the first in the Matchmaker Series, was sold to Ballantine.

Elise is an overwhelmed single mother of two boys in Southern California. She’s an avid traveler, a beginner dancer, an occasional piano player, and an online shopping junkie.

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I SCREAMED and threw a bucket into the corner of the shed. I heard Grandma’s designer heels
click-clack
on the stone walk toward me.

“Don’t worry, there’s nothing poisonous in there,” she called in my direction. “Not since the end of rattlesnake season.”

I didn’t know there was a rattlesnake season in Cannes, California. I had moved to the small mountain village only five months ago to live with my grandmother and work in her matchmaking business. If I had
known there was a rattlesnake season, I might have stayed in Denver to work on the cap line at the plastic bottle factory for more than the six weeks I was there.

I raised the can of bug spray above my head as a warning to all the creepy crawlies in Grandma’s shed. There were a lot of them.

“Are you sure rattlesnake season is over?” I asked as she opened the door wider and peeked her head inside. She was decked out in what I suspected was a Badgley Mischka wedding dress, two sizes too small, her flesh threatening to burst out of the seams.

“Normally it’s over by the beginning of October,” she said, adjusting her lace bodice. Grandma was a lot of woman, but she had style and was never caught out of her house without full makeup and at least a fake designer ensemble. Not that she ever got past her property lines. She was a homebody—what people uncharitably described as a shut-in. It didn’t matter, though—the town came to Grandma, as she was the indispensable matchmaker and all-around yenta. And she knew things that couldn’t be known.

“
Normally
it’s over?” I asked, peering into the corners of the shed.

“The last one slithered out of here at least a week ago,” she said, certain of herself.

I screamed and sprayed the wall. “There’s spiders the size of Rhode Island in here.”

“If you don’t like spiders, don’t open your red suitcase, dolly,” she told me, shaking her head. “There’s some nasty ones in there.”

My sweaters were also in the red suitcase. And my good coat. The weather in Cannes had turned cold with the arrival of apple season, and I had been wearing the same Cleveland Browns sweatshirt every day for the past week and a half. It was time to unpack my winter
clothes, but I didn’t know if I was brave enough to fight off nasty spiders for a wool coat.

“You could borrow something of mine,” Grandma told me, seemingly reading my mind. “I have a lovely velour jacket with feather detailing that’s very warm, and it’s just attracting moths in my closet.”

“Hold your breath, Grandma,” I said. “I’m going in.” I took a gulp of fresh air and started spraying. I made it to the red suitcase, doused it with the last of the poison, grabbed the bag by the handle, and shot out of the shed like a bullet.

Grandma looked down at the dripping suitcase. “Yep, there are some nasty ones in there,” she said.

I TOSSED the suitcase in the trunk of my Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and closed it successfully after three tries. The rust had overtaken my old silver car, making it look two-tone, with large red rusty patches. I had never minded the rust, but now it had infected the lock on the trunk, making it nearly impossible to close.

“I’ll have Dave open the suitcase,” I told Grandma. Dave was the owner and operator of Dave’s Dry Cleaners and Tackle Shop. He was both fastidious and a lover of bugs. My suitcase was right up his alley, and I would have my winter clothes back clean and pressed within twenty-four hours.

But Grandma wasn’t paying attention to me. She stood in the driveway, ramrod-straight, her head raised up and her eyes closed. A cool breeze blew against her bouffant hairdo, making it stir ever so slightly.

“Something wrong?” I asked her.

“The wind has shifted,” she said.

“Don’t I know it. What a relief.” September had been chaos. The whole town had gone crazy. But now we were a week into October, and it was calm and relaxed.
Cannes had settled into its Apple Days events, and apple cider and apple pie were being sold at just about every store in the historic district. Everyone was in a good mood, including me.

In fact, I was in the best mood I had been in since my three days as a cashier at a medical marijuana dispensary in Monterey. My bank account was finally in the black, and I was starting to think I might have the hang of the matchmaking business. My last match was working like gangbusters. Even though it had been years since I’d settled down in one place for more than a couple of months, Cannes was starting to grow on me. It was starting to feel like home.

“An ill wind,” Grandma muttered.

I turned my face to the breeze. I could smell the fires coming from the neighbors’ fireplaces, nothing else. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“Isn’t it time for the Dating Do’s and Don’ts class?” I asked.

“Nobody’s coming.”

“What?” Grandma’s house was usually Grand Central, with no end to singles coming to her in their journey to find love.

“Not today. Nobody.”

“Did you cancel it?” I asked. “Are you feeling all right?”

Grandma ignored me and walked up the driveway to the front door. I could hear the rustle of her pantyhose as she walked, her thighs rubbing against each other. It was unusual behavior for my grandmother, and I was following her into the house when I heard a car horn.

The sound got louder until finally the most beautiful Mercedes I had ever seen barreled around the corner and up onto the curb at the bottom of the driveway. Without turning off the motor, my friend Lucy Smythe hopped out.