Well Met(54)

Simon didn’t continue our conversation. Instead he put on his hat and swept his arm in front of him in a gesture that was part bow, part ushering me to my station for the day. “Your tavern awaits, milady.” The accent was back on, and he had changed personas again. Our heart-to-heart was over and he was gone, striding down the lane, without a care in the world.

“What were you and Simon talking about?” Stacey fished her pewter pendant out of her belt pouch and tied the black cord around her neck.

“Not much.” I checked the wine bottles that had already been set up by the volunteer staff and tried to come up with something else unnecessary to do. “We ran into each other on the way.” Technically this was true.

“Well, you weren’t yelling at each other, so that’s progress. You might even like the guy by the end of the summer.”

“Maybe.” I forced a laugh I didn’t quite feel. “I wouldn’t count on it. You know Simon.” She apparently knew him a hell of a lot better than I did. Everyone knew him better than I did.

Mitch and I look good together? What the hell did that mean? I glowered at a bottle of chardonnay. Just when I was changing my mind about Simon being an insufferable dickhead, he had to all but dismiss me and toss me in Mitch’s direction like an unwanted basketball.

I was so annoyed that it didn’t hit me until an hour or two later, in the middle of opening a beer and handing it to a patron with a smile. I’d first signed on to Faire because of Mitch. I had made vague but firm plans of getting under that kilt before the summer was over.

When had I forgotten about that? When had my daydreams drifted away from the beefcake in a kilt and toward the slim pirate in black leather, with dark moods and perplexing smiles?

I made change for the patron as quickly as I could. Nothing about this summer was going the way I’d intended.





Fourteen




There she is. The girl in blue.”

I heard a giggle behind me as I cleared off one of the tables in the back, but I ignored it as part of the day’s chatter. The band behind us had started their next set on the nearby stage, and I listened for my favorite song. Our third weekend was coming to an end. Halfway through Faire and I still hadn’t made it to the show, but certain sounds filtered their way to me from the stage. While I’d never heard a song in its entirety, I always listened for favorite beats and moments that had developed into the soundtrack of my summer. A soundtrack that included the clash of steel on steel as the chess match played out, as well as cheers from the various shows around us.

Giggles like the one I just heard were also part of that soundtrack, so I didn’t pay much attention as I gathered up the empties and tossed them in the trash. But when I turned to make my way back to the bar, there were three women eyeing me. I stopped moving for a second. Was I having a wardrobe malfunction? I felt as strapped in as ever, but had my bodice shifted and revealed more than it should?

A quick glance down confirmed I was intact, so I bobbed a quick in-character curtsy in their direction. “Miladies. What can I get for you this fine Sunday?”

“Ooh, wine.” One of them caught sight of the bottle of white zinfandel on the bar. The other two nodded in agreement, and Janet started pouring for them while I moved back behind the bar to take their money.

“But we’re here to ask you about Marcus.” The tallest of the three leaned over toward me conspiratorially.

My brow furrowed. “Marcus?” They must mean Mitch, who was the only Marcus I knew. But why would they be asking me about him? I wasn’t wearing a badge reading Flirt with the shirtless guy in a kilt! Ask me how! But I took a chance. “Do you mean Marcus MacGregor? Tall, muscled . . . ?”

“Kilt.” She sighed with a smile. Yep, we were talking about the same guy.

I made change for their wine, then picked up a towel to do a quick wipe-down of the bar. “What would you like to know?”

“You know him pretty well, right? I mean, he was talking about you.”

I dropped the towel. “He what?” From the other side of the bar, Stacey laughed in surprise.

“Oh, I need to hear this.”

“Well, we were at the chess match, over there?” She pointed and we nodded, as though we had no idea where the chess match was located. “And Amber here was flirting with him—”

“I was not!” But the shortest of them, a blonde, blushed a little, making her protest invalid. “I was making conversation. Being friendly. I’m a friendly person.”

“Mmm-hmm.” The third one said this to her wine with a small smile.

“Anyway,” Tall Girl continued. “He said he was glad we had come to the match, because not enough people were there to cheer him on. And then he mentioned you.”

“Me?” I looked over at Stacey, who shrugged.

“He said his tavern girls hadn’t been to see him fight in ages. And we should come here, get a drink, and ask you when you were coming back to see him. He said to look for the girl in blue.”

“Did he.” My eyes narrowed. It was impressive the way Mitch could flirt through third parties. Shameless.

“He has a point, though, doesn’t he?” Stacey leaned on the bar and turned her full attention toward me.

“He does not,” I said. “We were there last weekend; we saw the fighting then.”