LITMIR.BIZ

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internal smirk-itude. “Oh, don’t go getting a big head over Cosette’s comments.”

      “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Do please pour.” He nodded toward the teacups.

      “There was no smoke, no fire. We weren’t looking at you.” Jade leaned over to pour out the tea, then handed him a cup. “You can get your own petit four if you want it.”

      He laughed. “I do, in fact, want to try Phillipe’s favorite treat. What is it about these tiny things you ladies find so irresistible?”

      She hoped to get him off the topic of his handsomeness—which she had said nothing about to Cosette, though she had, in fact, been thinking that he was extraordinarily hunky—and the topic of tiny frosted cakes was as safe as any. “It’s the art involved in a petit four.”

      “So in other words, you really don’t want me to bring up that Cosette gave you away?” He winked, bit into a cake. “Whatever you want, doll.”

      Jade sent him a sour look. “What did Daisy want?”

      “This is good,” Ty said, his tone surprised. “Sugary, sweet, delicate. Couldn’t eat a lot, far too rich for that, but tasty all the same. If you eat too many of these, you’ll have to watch that sexy figure of yours.”

      “Back to Daisy. Quit avoiding the fact that you were conversing with the enemy.”

      “Oh, that.” He put his plate down, picked up his tea and sipped. It looked quite ridiculous, she thought, a big man holding a fragile cup and saucer—and yet, somehow, she wanted so badly to kiss him she didn’t know what to do.

      Which was such a bad thought to have she wished it right out of her brain. “Yes, that. I’m going to bug you until you tell, so get on with it.”

      “Nothing important. And on that note, I should depart—”

      “I’ll ask Daisy myself, and whatever she wanted, she’ll embellish,” Jade warned.

      “She wants me to escort her to the grand opening of the Haunted H,” Ty said, his tone reluctant, his expression even more so.

      Jade blinked. “But why? She and her father got up a petition to keep the Haunted H from starting again. They were violently opposed, and part of the reason we waited was to make sure folks in Bridesmaids Creek supported it.”

      “Daisy says it’ll show everyone that bygones are bygones. She doesn’t want to go by herself, and being escorted by—”

      “By the man who brought the bachelors to Bridesmaids Creek will make her look like the belle of the ball,” Jade interrupted.

      Ty seemed confused. “I don’t think that was what she’s after. Granted, Daisy’s no innocent flower, but she really sounded sincere.”

      Jade raised a brow. “Really, really sincere. Daisy, sincere.” Surely that wasn’t jealousy in her tone. But then she realized by the reappearance of his smirk that he was thinking the same thing.

      “You know you’re a special girl, Jade,” he began.

      She hopped to her feet. “Ty, you bigheaded oaf, don’t you take that tone with me. I don’t care if you go with Daisy. I just think you’re a traitor. It’s not fair to Mackenzie and Justin, because Daisy’s done everything she can to destroy the Hanging H getting its haunting back. You know that.”

      “Yeah.” Ty sounded momentarily confused again. “You have a point.”

      “And you know what Daisy’s father said about your own father,” Jade stated, warming to her subject, wanting badly for Ty to see for himself that he’d fallen prey to Daisy’s charms, as every man in BC seemed to do eventually. “Robert Donovan said your father bungled the investigation of the murder out at the Hanging H—”

      “Daisy said us going to the opening together would let everyone know that those days were past,” Ty said. “I really thought it was in the Haunted H’s—and Bridesmaids Creek’s—best interests that I escort her. I’m leaving in less than two weeks. What I want more than anything is to leave behind a town with a secure future, with everyone on the same page.”

      He looked distressed. Jade felt sorry for him, so sorry her heart hurt. Maybe she was beating him up because she was jealous. I am jealous, she admitted to herself. But nothing good ever came of associating with Daisy Donovan and her land-grabbing father. “I’ve got to go.”

      “Hang on a sec—” Ty said, but Jade couldn’t stay any longer. She hated all of it—hated that Ty was leaving most of all. What if she never saw him again?

      She hurried out the door and jumped into her truck, vaguely aware that Daisy stood on the pavement outside Madame Matchmaker’s shop, smiling her infamous bad-girl smile.

      * * *

      TY WAS THUNDERSTRUCK, and could not have been more shell-shocked, when Jade left in a hurry. He’d been this close to her—in the same room, and kindly left alone by Madame Matchmaker—and he’d blown it. Big mouth, big feet into big mouth, bad combo.

      “Crap,” he said, when Cosette hurried back into the room, her eyes distressed and her pink-tinted hair slightly mussed from her rush. “I think I just blew that.”

      “Oh, dear.” She handed him a small plate of homemade lasagna, steam rising from the cheesy top. “Eat for strength. Eat for intuition.”

      He looked at the lasagna, a four-by-four piece he would have devoured under any other circumstances, say, had Jade not ditched him, leaving him with a guilty conscience and a terrible case of buyer’s remorse where Daisy was concerned. “Will it help?”

      “Oh, lasagna always helps,” Cosette assured him. “A big man like yourself doesn’t do well on an empty stomach.”

      He thought that sounded like the first sane advice he’d had all day, and dug in with the silver fork she’d put on his plate.

      He actually felt a little stronger, and perhaps a bit of clarity come over him—it was too soon for intuition—as the warm food hit his stomach. “I’m in the doghouse with Jade.”

      “Yes.” Cosette nodded. “Probably so.”

      “Trying to do the right thing isn’t always easy.”

      “Indeed it’s not. But doing a dumb thing is very easy.”

      He gazed at her. “Were you just subtly trying to prod me into self-discovery mode?”

      “Not so wordy, dear. Just trying to help you pull your head out of your keister, as you young folks put it.”

      “Ah.” He ate some more lasagna. “Does Jade like me?”

      “A little,” Cosette said. “You did spend a lot of time being raised by her mother, if you recall. She got used to you.”

      “Yeah. Jade was an awesome little sister.” Only he hadn’t felt sisterly toward her in a long, long time.

      “Things change,” Cosette observed.

      “Daisy might have changed.”

      “And some things don’t ever change.”

      Ty nodded. “You think there’s no way to leave the past behind and move on with our lives? The Donovans can’t mean it when they say they want to be part of BC?”

      “Some things are just habit.” Cosette shrugged. “No, I don’t think the Donovans are being any more forthright than they’ve ever been.”

      Why was he training to be a SEAL if he didn’t believe in the greater good? “Eventually this town has to move on.”

      “I’m impressed that you want to forgive the Donovans, given how your father was treated by them when he was sheriff.”

      Ty’s blood hit low boil, began to simmer at the old, painful memories. He put his plate

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