Chapter Four
One Year Later
Matchmaker, Matchmaker—when the community members in a romance band together to try to create a love match between the protagonists by meddling in their lives.
It’s 123 degrees. The kind of record-breaking heat where dry won’t save you. Where the idea of your AC going out is terrifying because it could actually be fatal.
I didn’t choose it.
I keep remembering what Nathan told me last summer. He didn’t choose this. So why is he here? In the dead armpit of July.
I chose this. I chose this life and I like it. I like it, dammit, even while sweltering.
That’s one reason I decide not to continue keeping his secret. Well, I tell Elise, which isn’t really not keeping the secret. In the last eighteen months she has gone from a new friend to my best friend. It just doesn’t feel right to not share with her that Nathan is in fact a famous bestselling author.
“No way,” she says, staring at me from behind the reception desk.
I’m leaning over it, procrastinating, because I should be making use of the free afternoon to hide away in my place and do some real editing. I can peck away at a draft while I’m working. I need some actual uninterrupted time for revisions.
“Yes,” I say. “Plus, he’s a snob. I had a fight with him about romance. He said it wasn’t realistic .”
I feel a little bit guilty about that because the conversation did have more nuance than that. Though I found it annoying, and I’m still ... A whole year later, I’m still off-kilter. With the whole did-we-almost-kiss thing.
He certainly didn’t acknowledge it after it happened. He hasn’t acknowledged anything since he came back.
“What a dick,” she says.
“Yes. But I knew that. I don’t know why I expected anything different from him.”
“He’s nice to me,” she says.
I don’t know whether to be annoyed or flattered by that. I must be projecting that conflicting feeling, because Elise gives me a strange look.
“I’m trying to figure out why he’s mean to me,” I say.
She shrugs. “I can’t help you with that. Unless he’s attracted to you.”
That was kind of what I was hoping she would say. Though, also, it’s not great.
“I don’t have any space in my life for that kind of thing,” I say.
“No,” Elise says. “ I don’t have any space in my life for that kind of thing. I share a one-room unit with an eight-year-old.”
I refuse to accept this from her. “You can’t make it work? You, who always manages to have your nails done, have your daughter’s homework finished, work your shifts, and make the best baked goods on earth? You could squeeze it in if you wanted. No pun intended. Or maybe pun intended.”
Elise shakes her head, her gold hoop earrings chiming in time with the movements. “Ugh. Do you want to know a secret, Amelia?”
“You’re always angry?” I ask, tongue in cheek.
“No, I’m always exhausted,” Elise replies. I look at my friend and her perfectly done makeup, her hair in a neat ponytail. “I feel like I have to be everything. I don’t ever want Emma to struggle, you know? Just because I chose to be an idiot who had unprotected sex with a loser, that’s not her fault. It’s not her fault her dad sucks.”
“It’s not yours either,” I point out.
Elise pulls a face. “Thank you for saying that.”
I don’t want to be too pushy, but I sort of do. “You know, if you and Ben ever hooked up, it would be the perfect friends-to-lovers romance.”
In my opinion, friends to lovers is much more realistic than enemies to lovers. Mostly, if a man is mean to you, odds are he’s going to keep being mean to you. Mr. Darcy excluded. Not that I don’t enjoy reading a good enemies to lovers. I just don’t think ...
It’s realistic?
I hear that in Nathan’s voice, and I find it irritating.
“No,” she says, waving a hand. “I can’t. He’s too important to me.”
Ben Martinez is the mechanic at the local garage, and I think he would be perfect for Elise. Honestly, he’s a great surrogate father to Emma, and he treats Elise like the sun rises and sets on her.
“Why not?”
“Baggage,” she says. “Which I thought you understood.”
“Right.” Elise knows about Christopher. Mostly. There were things about my life in LA that I just wasn’t willing to share. The part where Christopher was a cheater? That I’d been more than willing to share.
“You seem to be a hopeless romantic for other people, just not for yourself.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Do as I say and not as I do?”
“Really, really no offense, Amelia, but you don’t know what it’s like to try to navigate dating when you have a child. She’s already been hurt by her dad.”
I ignore the way that gouges me right underneath my ribs. She’s right. I don’t have to think about a child. That wounds me. Right in the most unhealed part of myself. But I know what she means, so I choose not to be hurt by it.
“I get it. It’s complicated.”
“You, on the other hand, could pursue whatever this thing is that you’re obsessing about with Nathan.”
“I’m not obsessing.”
“Excuse me, miss,” Elise says in her best Mom Voice. “Have the last four heroes you’ve written in the last year all had green eyes and slightly disheveled dark hair?”
I sputter, “So?”
“You write him. Over and over. As a billionaire. As a prince. As the boss your heroine calls Daddy ...”
“I do not!”
I do. Dammit. She’s right. I do.
“No one calls anyone Daddy,” I mutter.
“Maybe that was just my overactive imagination,” Elise says, grinning widely at me.
“I can’t ... I’m not a fling sort of person,” I say. “I tried it once when I was in college. It didn’t work. I ended up crying over a guy who didn’t give me his number or an orgasm. There’s no benefit there for me. Anyway, he works on his books here. Someday I’m going to have that put on a plaque in the Hemingway Suite. Jacob Coulter wrote many novels here. ”
Elise reaches up to pat my head, and one of the jewels on her nails snags in my hair. It’s so specific to her that I find it endearing. “I admire your aspirations. Maybe if that tourism boom Sylvia promised when she got elected mayor ever eventuates, it will really pay off.”
Rancho Encanto is small, but it’s charming. There are quite a lot of people who choose to stay here instead of in the thick of Palm Springs when they want a desert vacation. We offer something quaint, a little bit kitschy. Or, in the case of the Pink Flamingo Motel, a lot kitschy. But I like to think we know who we are and that we know who we cater to.
“Well, a boom would be nice,” I say.
Our main tourist season is during the cooler months. That’s why Rancho Encanto’s main drawcard is A Very Desert Christmas, an event we have every year, with a parade, food trucks, craft booths, and Christmas pageantry. Just last night I found out I’m going to be on the committee. I’m thrilled to be included in planning something that’s so vital to the health of my new community.
Everyone is nice enough in town, but it’s just the way with small towns. People are new for years and years. I’m lucky I’m being accepted into the fold this quickly.
Maybe they started believing I’d stay at around the time I started believing it.
The trouble with Nathan being in residence is that when he’s here it seems like the entire motel sits up and takes notice. For all that the man keeps to himself, he can’t reach out the door to grab his takeout without earning sly comments from my older ladies or wide-eyed looks of fascination from Emma and her friends.
Albert pretends not to notice the shenanigans, and yet I note that he does. I’m quite certain Jonathan and his husband are running a bet on something to do with Nathan, though I haven’t figured out what yet.
I sit in my room and go over expense reports and tell myself I’ll open my manuscript revisions at any moment.
At least, that’s what’s supposed to be happening, when I hear what might be an actual ruckus outside my door.
“Heavens above.”
I open the door to see Wilma standing there with a hand dramatically pressed to her bosom. Today she’s wearing a gold lamé top with angled shoulder pads and a large piece of costume jewelry around her neck that glints with every movement. I don’t expect restraint from her, but this is more dramatic than a typical Tuesday.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“I’m having issues with the washing machine, but I expected you to be at the front desk.” She clasps her fingers beneath her chin and stares at me too intently.
“I wasn’t,” I say. “Because Elise is working today.”
“It’s very difficult to get used to,” Wilma says, shifting her body and looking at me out of the corner of her eye, and I really can’t say why she cares so much.
“It’s hard to get used to after a year?”
“Darlin’,” she says, planting a hand on her hip. “I am eighty-four years old. One year is nothing .”
“What exactly is happening?”
“I’ve caused a flood,” she says. “It’s just a big ol’ mess.”
As soon as the word flood exits her mouth, I’m halfway out the door, because I’m iffy on whether my insurance will cover water damage. That’s one of those things I know gets contentious.
“How did you cause a flood?” I’m following her quickly to the laundry room.
“I don’t know. I’m not a mechanic or a washer person.”
“A washer person ?”
“I’m being gender inclusive.”
“Right.”
Grandly, she opens the door to the laundry room, and it hits Nathan in his broad right shoulder.
“Sorry,” I say.
He turns around, and his green eyes crash into mine.
I wasn’t prepared for him. I like to tell myself I’ve gotten used to him. The impact of him. The perfect arrangement of his features.
That’s a lie, and I know how much of a lie it is when my heart jumps up my throat and makes a play to escape through my mouth.
“He just happened to be walking by,” Wilma says, “when the washing machine started to flood.”
“Oh?” I ask, suddenly suspicious.
“Yes,” Wilma says.
“She thought I could fix it,” Nathan says. “Because I’m a man.”
“What happened to gender inclusivity?” I direct the question to Wilma.
“I’m eighty-four,” she says, waving her hand in the air. “It comes and goes.”
I look up at Nathan. “Sorry about this. Obviously, you don’t have to fix the washing machine.”
“He said he might know how,” Wilma says.
“Oh, did he?” I ask.
I definitely smell a rat. A rat in gold lamé.
“I’ll get some towels, and I’ll start to clean this up. But I’ll call a repairman.”
“I’m sure you don’t need to do that,” Wilma says.
“I’m not,” I say. “No offense to Nathan’s undoubtedly handy skills, but I’m going to need some evidence that he actually knows how to fix something.”
“I’ll just be right back,” Wilma says, and then she leaves. Sweeps right out of the little laundry area, leaving me in this enclosed pink box with the man himself.
“No offense,” I say. “But you’re a writer, I’m a writer, and there’s no evidence that either of us can fix this.”
“Does this seem odd to you?” he asks.
Just then, Lydia comes in, with Wilma close behind. Lydia in her pastel-blue tank top, her hair all curled up, her blue eyes wide and innocent. “I thought perhaps you might need these,” she says, dropping a handful of flat metal circles on top of the washing machine. “I must’ve accidentally taken them by mistake.”
I stare at the pile of hardware. “You took bolts and washers by mistake.”
Wilma looks between Nathan and me, and then the two of them melt out of the room again.
I shake my head.
“If she sabotaged the washing machine, putting it back together shouldn’t be that difficult,” he says.
“I don’t know that she sabotaged the washing machine,” I say.
“I think so. I think it’s the same thing they were doing when they had me adjust the lights last summer. Oh, and when there was that minor disaster with the necklace in the pool drain. And just maybe they had something to do with the power strip.”
“No,” I say. “I can’t believe it.” I can believe it, but that many incidents ... It feels over the top, even for them.
“You don’t believe that they’re ...”
“I don’t believe they’re that committed to ogling you.”
“I don’t think they’re ogling me. I think they’re trying to throw the two of us together.”
Him saying it like that, outright and too plain, makes me feel warm. He took the quiet thing and said it out loud. He’s looking at me with those electric-green eyes, and I’m just standing here in a laundry room. Dressed in ... I didn’t even give my clothes a second thought.
I’m wearing a short pink sundress that exists to keep me as cool as possible in these hellish temperatures. It also covers very little of my body, though I can’t claim that my body is an instrument of seduction. It has, for these past couple of years, been nothing more than an instrument to get me from one place to another. To fix up my motel. To make friends. To sit and write books, enjoy good food and conversation.
Not to seduce .
For good reason too. But I suddenly wonder what he thinks about my looks. About my body.
For one brief moment, his eyes get hotter. But then he looks away.
“They’re harmless,” I say.
“Why do you think that?”
“They’re old ladies,” I say.
“Why would you think a person would get less dangerous with time? It seems to me that their life experience and the willingness of others to underestimate them only makes them more dangerous.”
I can’t dispute that.
He picks up the washers and angles his head around behind the washing machine. “For God’s sake.”
“What?”
“She just popped the closest bolts and washers off and loosened a hose, which is where the water is coming from. But she didn’t use her hands. She had to get tools.”
My mouth drops open.
“What a fraud,” I say. “She plays so innocent ...”
“I’m telling you. It’s the experience that makes them deadly.”
“And I really do mean that you don’t need to fix this.”
“I’ve got it,” he says.
“Do you need tools?”
“That would help.”
I have a whole tool kit, in fact. I haven’t used it, but I got it in case it might be useful. All I wanted when I bought this place was to be as self-sufficient as possible. Though I’m comfortable now with the fact that calling a repairman is its own kind of self-sufficiency. Just like hiring Elise was its own form of self-sufficiency. Freeing certain aspects of my life up so that I can do more than just live behind the desk at the motel.
That’s when I realize what Nathan said is true. Elise working at the front desk sabotaged Wilma and Lydia because they were hoping it would make sense to get me over here at the same time Nathan was here, right as they made a disaster.
I’m going to have to have words with them.
I run to the motel office, where the tool kit is in the closet behind the desk. Elise sees me coming toward her, and I look right past her over to where Wilma and Lydia are huddled up in the corner. “You poor little dears,” I say. “Don’t know how to run a washing machine. So wise in your old age and can’t figure out that you shouldn’t go pulling hardware out of it.”
They both tut and flutter and act as if I’m casting aspersions unfairly. Elise looks over at me, her ponytail swinging wildly with the motion. “What?”
“They are meddling in my life,” I say.
“It’s just light meddling,” Lydia says.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means,” Wilma says, straightening her shoulders indignantly, “that nothing we’re doing would have any effect if there wasn’t a little bit of electricity between you and the handsome man.”
“Oh, there’s electricity all right,” I say. “The kind that’s liable to electrocute us both.”
“The best kind,” Wilma says, absolutely glowing in delight.
I move behind the counter and open the closet, starting my hunt for the toolbox.
“I’m going to need the whole story later,” Elise says.
“I plan on giving it to you, but you might have to provide me with an alibi.”
“As nefarious plots go,” Elise says, “this one is fairly harmless.”
“Unless I die of embarrassment,” I say.
When I find the toolbox and march back into the laundry room, I realize that the real issue is there’s some truth to what Wilma says. I’m attracted to him, and that makes me feel exposed by these machinations. I feel raw from the last time he was here.
From that encounter, and the near kiss.
“Just ignore them,” I say, setting the toolbox down next to him.
He looks like he wants to say something. There’s a heaviness to the set of his shoulders. The corner of his mouth tilts downward. Not a frown, but there’s a hint of sadness there I can’t quite read.
“I’m not worried about them.”
Something about that feels a little bit insulting, but I decide not to interrogate it.
He looks at the toolbox and takes out a wrench, and then he crouches down, the hardware cupped in his large hand. There’s a spot of sweat between his shoulder blades, darkening the fabric of his white T-shirt, and I realize I probably shouldn’t find that sexy. I do, though.
I can see the muscles on his back through the fabric of that T-shirt. The way his biceps move as he maneuvers the hardware into position, as he tightens it with the wrench. Nothing is going to happen between us. I’m certain of that. I would have to be a totally different kind of woman. One who wanted to ride a man into wild oblivion for the sake of it.
As I have that thought, my internal muscles pulse slightly and beg the question: Are you not that kind of woman?
I ache right then. To feel pretty. To feel desired. To feel his hands working me as expertly as they are the nuts and bolts of the washing machine. How sad is that?
I catch myself bending over just slightly, trying to see what he’s doing, and right then he looks up.
If there was no chemistry between us ... then this wouldn’t do anything.
I feel it, like a band tightening between us, growing tighter and tighter, making it harder and harder for me to breathe. I want to touch him. I want to reach out and smooth the lines on his forehead, run my thumb down past the creases next to those green eyes. I want him with a kind of visceral need that shocks me.
In my laundry room. In my motel.
I’m the one who pulls away this time. I take a step back, and only then do I start to breathe again.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say.
“It was really not a big deal.”
“Tell me if they rope you into anything else like this.”
“I probably won’t,” he says. “Because I don’t mind. And also ... it was good to get out of my room for a minute.”
“Tough scene?” I ask.
“Something like that,” he says.
He has no reason to linger. I have no reason to keep staring at him.
“Well. I have to go. I have to ... take my shift at the front desk.”
I don’t have to take my shift at the front desk. I’m a liar. But still, I grab the toolbox, forget the wrench, and sprint to the front office. I grip the neck of my dress and fan it a few times, trying to alleviate some of the heat coursing through my body.
To my chagrin, Wilma is still sitting there, and she laughs. “Hot flash, dear?”
“I’m thirty-one!”
“Hot flashes can be caused by more than just menopause. Though, usually there are hormones involved.”
I look at Elise, who is determinedly examining her manicure and trying not to laugh.
“I should evict all of you,” I say.
They care about me, though. That’s the thing I can’t ignore. That all of this, all the meddling and the antics, comes from a place of love.
Even on a 123-degree day, it’s the kind of warming that actually makes me feel good.