Burned in Broken Hearts Junction: A Cozy Matchmaker Mystery (Cozy Matchmaker Mystery Series) (19 page)

Flashes of the day before started coming back to me like the shards of a shattered mirror.

The stranger had driven me home, helped me change, tucked me into bed, and drew all the shades.

He didn’t have to do any of it.

But he had.

My God
. He had even read to me from one of the cheap romance novels I kept on my nightstand. About the escapades of Lady Elizabeth and her southern suitor, Remy Martin.

I felt my cheeks flush bright red at that memory.

Jesus.

“Uh, no, of course I don’t mind that you stayed,” I stammered. “You were a real gentleman. I just can’t believe I passed out that long.”

I looked away, wholly embarrassed.

“I’ve never had anything close to an episode like that,” I said.  

“Growing up, my mama used to get really bad migraines,” he said, turning off the burner and sliding the bacon and eggs onto two plates. “An attack could put her out of commission for days. But when it was all over, she’d always come out with an appetite bigger than a wolf’s in early spring.”

He placed the plate and a fork in front of me.

I realized then that I’d been salivating from the savory smell, almost as bad as Hank did when you cracked open a can of his dog food.

“Sounds like you’re a good son,” I said.

“I have my moments.”

I dug into the eggs, trying to retain some air of sophistication, but failing miserably as my hunger took over.

The meal was perfect. The eggs were over-easy, so that a little of the yolk spilled out when you punctured it with the fork. The bacon was perfectly crispy.  

I was in heaven.

“So, you got any plans today, Bluebird?” he asked.

“I notice that you keep calling me that,” I said.

“I think it suits you better than
Bitters
,” he said. “But if it aggravates you, I’ll stop doing it.”

I shook my head.

It didn’t aggravate me.

In fact, it kind of made my heart do that pitter-patter thing.

“So, what about those plans?”

I thought about it as I took a bite of the bacon, each morsel melting in my mouth like chocolate.

“Well, I was planning to—”

Then I remembered.

Oh
no
.

I glanced at the clock I kept on the wall.

“Because,” he continued. “I was thinking that if you didn’t have any plans, then there’s somewhere I’d like to take you. I’ve got a surpris—”

“Oh, Jesus,” I said, standing up abruptly.  

I ran into my room, closing the door over while I changed quickly into a pair of jeans and a long-sleeve top. There was no time for a shower. I threw my hair up into a ponytail, and took a quick glance in my bedroom mirror.

I looked like a hot mess. A hot mess in all caps. The bruise on my face from the bar fight Saturday had faded and turned a sickly shade of yellow overnight, only adding to my “look.” 

But I was too short on time to improve any of it.

I grabbed my purse and phone off of the nightstand. There were already five text messages from Beth Lynn, all with varying degrees of exclamation marks.

I burst out of my bedroom and headed back to the kitchen.

“Jeez,” he said. “My cooking can’t be
that
bad.”

I shook my head.

“No, no,” I said. “It was really… you’re really…”

I didn’t have time to figure out a word that best summed up how I felt.

I was suddenly overcome with an urge to kiss him.

But I knew it was no good.

So I ran out instead.

“I’m… I’m sorry, Fletcher,” I said. “There’s somewhere I have to be.”

I ran out of the house and bolted down the steps.

It was for my own good anyway, I told myself. If I stayed in that house with him for another minute, who knows what sort of reckless things I’d be tempted to do. Things that I might regret one day when Jacob came back home.

I got into the chilly truck and started the engine, pulling quickly away from the warm and cozy house.

Chapter 55

Beth Lynn’s eyes bulged as big as a cow’s when she caught sight of me walking through The Cupid’s front doors.  

The place was just about empty, save for Dry Hack Jones at the counter in his usual seat, sipping on his usual drink.  

It seemed as though Courtney had given Dry Hack a key to the place, despite her outburst toward him the day before.

“I’ve been waiting nearly
forty-five
minutes for you,” Beth Lynn said to me between gritted teeth. “I was scared as hell that he might walk in here any minute and I wouldn’t know what to do.”

She looked about as angry as I’d ever seen her. Her face was bright red, and her temples throbbed as she gritted her teeth.  

But when I took a closer look, I realized that she’d just been heavy handed with her blush today.

“You mean he still hasn’t come?” I said, out of breath.  

I’d really put my foot to the pedal on the way over here and had run across the parking lot, thinking I’d blown a big opportunity. But maybe I hadn’t at all.

“I’m beginning to get my feelings hurt,” Beth Lynn said, checking her lipstick in a compact mirror she pulled from her purse. “You know, I took off work today for this. I could have made a spa appointment instead, Bitters.”

She primped her blond curls into place with nervous and jerky motions.

“Imagine that. Me getting stood up by some Hobbit character in a bar at mid-day. I can’t imagine anything more embarras—”

The front door swung open and a cold rush of air swept through the room.

I knew right away it was him.

I let out a deep sigh of relief.

Thank goodness.

It might seem easy to fix two people up. Especially when they live in the same small town.

But I knew from nearly two decades of doing this that it wasn’t as easy as it might seem.

Timing was everything. The wrong situation, the wrong mood, the wrong day… and it might take weeks of “chance” encounters to make both parties finally see that they were meant for each other.

Beth Lynn’s mystery man walked in, not seeing me at first as his eyes adjusted to the low lights of the bar. Beth Lynn gave me a dirty look, as if she was saying ‘
This
is the guy? Are you serious?’

“Hi, Robert,” I said, giving him a half wave.

He noticed me and walked over hurriedly.

“I’m so sorry that I’m late,” he said, out of breath like he’d just run across the parking lot too. “I had this interview earlier that went on longer than it was supposed to. It was this old bag lady who wouldn’t stop talking about the genealogy of all her cats.”

I smiled and glanced over at Beth Lynn, as if to say ‘See? Look at the sense of humor on this guy.’ But she didn’t seem to find him all that funny, and that steely expression on her face remained unchanged.

“It’s perfectly okay,” I said, walking around behind the bar and taking off my jacket. “I just got here myself.”

He let out a sigh of relief and brushed his hand across his forehead, wiping away a few drops of sweat.

I glanced over at Beth Lynn. Her interest level in Robert was one step away from chewing gum and filing her nails.

His interest in her might have been about equal. He hadn’t even so much looked in her direction.

“Take a seat,” I said, nodding to a stool a few down from Beth Lynn. It was far enough from her so that it wouldn’t be obvious what I was doing, but close enough so that she could hear what we were saying.

He did, waddling up to the stool and plopping himself down. He pulled out his notebook from his messenger bag, and flipped it to a fresh page. He was still out of breath.

“Now, what can I get for you from our bar?” I said.

“Nothing for me,” he said. “It’s early.”

“Aw, c’mon,” I said. “Here you have one of the finest bartenders in town offering you a finely made cocktail on the house. I thought writers liked to drink.”

“I’m afraid I’m not one of them,” he said. “I drink very rarely these days.”

I saw Beth Lynn’s eyebrows fly up a little when she heard that.

Now this was a type of man she hadn’t ever dated before.

“Well, I’ll get you a lemonade then. What about you Beth Lynn?” I said, turning toward her.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll have a diet coke, if you wouldn’t mind.”

I was pretty certain that Beth Lynn would have ordered herself a Cosmo normally, but she was following Robert’s lead.

I added ice to two glasses, filling one with diet soda and one with lemonade. I caught my reflection in the bar mirror, and looked away quickly.

I wasn’t looking my personal best this afternoon.

Hell, that was the biggest understatement of the year.

“So Loretta, what can you tell me about Dale Dixon?” he said, holding his pen to the pad of paper in a ready stance.  

I shrugged.

Believe it or not, I hadn’t thought much about what I was going to say to him. I’d kind of hoped he and Beth Lynn would hit it off right away, and I’d be spared the interview.

But I’d been very wrong about both of those things.

“He was a good guy,” I said. “He gave me a job here. Everybody liked him. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

A lot of that was a fib, but the way I saw it, telling a reporter that Dale was a tough son of a gun to work for, and that he mismanaged the saloon nearly constantly, and that he lacked quite a bit in his manners wasn’t going to do any good.

Robert scribbled all that down in his notebook, and was in the middle of asking another question when I interrupted him.

“Oh, goodness,” I said. “Dry Hack over there’s done with that drink. Wait here just a minute, Mr. Reese. Beth Lynn, could you be a dear and keep my friend here company for a few minutes?”

She cleared her throat and nodded.

“Of course,” she said.

That’s when Robert looked over at her for the first time, and their eyes met.  

Usually, that first look, that first real look when two soulmates gaze into one another’s eyes, can be positively magical. There have been instances when I swear that I heard fireworks going off in a moment like that. Where the whole room falls under a hush, as if everyone around knows too that something momentous and life changing has just occurred.  

But this wasn’t one of those moments.

Robert looked back down at his notepad, and started writing something, practically ignoring Beth Lynn.

She looked up at me with a surprised expression that quickly changed into a pissed-off one.

With all her charms and beauty queen good-looks, she just wasn’t used to being rejected like that. 

“You know, Beth Lynn grew up here in Broken Hearts Junction,” I said. “She knows a lot about the area. She could be a good source for you in the future.”

Beth Lynn cleared her throat.

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “My family goes way back here. I could tell you a whole lot.”

Robert tilted his head slightly, his hair bouncing a little.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”   

I cringed.

The way he said it, he clearly wasn’t interested.

Beth Lynn gave me another sharp look.

Dammit.

The seeds of doubt started creeping in. Maybe I had lost my touch. Maybe Robert wasn’t the man I’d seen in my vision.

Maybe I’d made a mistake. 

I went over to the other side of the bar where Dry Hack was sitting. He was still working on his gin and tonic, but I made him a fresh one anyway. I noticed that he was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing the day before when he’d been in here, trying to console and inconsolable Courtney.

“How’s life treating you today, Dry Hack?” I asked.

“Not very good.”

I was talking to him, but I was straining to hear what was being said at the other end of the bar between Robert and Beth Lynn.

From what I could hear, she had asked what it was like being a reporter. He was telling her about it, in a rather unenthusiastic and bored tone that people used when they were talking to someone they would rather not be talking to, but had to so as not to be completely rude.

“Sorry to hear that,” I said to Dry Hack. “How come?”  

He sipped the remainder of his first cocktail until there was nothing left in the glass. He pushed it aside and started on the fresh one.

“Are you doing what I think you’re doing over there?” he said, nodding to the other end of the bar.

“What’s that?”

“You’re fixing those two up, aren’t you?”

“Trying to,” I said. “Doesn’t seem like they’re taking much to each other yet.”

“You oughta just stop,” Dry Hack said. “Those folks will be better off not starting a damn thing. Love is hell, Bitters.”   

He closed his eyes and rubbed them.

“You ever regret anything before, Bitters?” he asked.

“Sure I have,” I said, thinking about how I’d let Jacob go. About that morning when I found his note and the empty driveway. About how I should have seen it coming.

“Well, I regret something,” he said, glancing up at me, his eyes full of sadness. “I did something…”

He trailed off.

I stopped listening to Beth Lynn and Robert’s dull conversation and turned toward Dry Hack.

I furrowed my brow, not understanding what he was talking about exactly.

He noticed my confused and worried expression.

“Aw, don’t pay attention to me, Bitters,” he said. “I’m just rambling. I didn’t sleep last night. Kind of makes me feel like I’m living a waking nightmare, you know? I get that sometimes, ever since the desert.”

He forced a smile. But there was something strange in that smile. Like there was a secret behind it. A secret that I got the impression he wanted to tell, but couldn’t.

And there was something about it that suddenly scared me, though I didn’t know why.

He downed the rest of his gin and tonic, and then stood up.

“Well, I’ve got some things to do today for once,” he said, pulling out some money and leaving it on the counter.

He hummed a sad tune as he walked away, out the saloon door.

I watched, wondering about him.

Wondering about him and Courtney.