The Devine Doughnut Shop(26)

“This is Mr. Anderson, the hotel manager.” Sarah scrolled up through the employees and found his picture with a long list of his credentials. “I saw him talking with Neal at the hotel.”

“But that would mean Neal lied to me.” Macy frowned. “We’re always honest with each other. I’ll ask him about it. I bet he wanted me to think of him as something better because I have a lot of money. Bless his heart—he doesn’t understand that I don’t care about money. It can’t buy love.”

“Just how honest were you with him?” Grace asked.

“I told him that . . .” The frown deepened.

“Macy, what did you tell him?” Grace asked again.

“Everything,” Macy said. “From our second date, he’s known that we are wealthy from our inheritance from our parents, and that we run the doughnut shop because we love working together and, besides, that way we don’t touch the capital. He laughed and said that folks in Devine probably didn’t know they were living in the same town with millionaires.”

“Since he’s a tech expert, he had probably figured all that out before he even walked into the shop that first day,” Sarah said.

“That would mean”—Macy’s blue eyes floated in tears—“that all of this wasn’t real, but there could still be an explanation. I need to talk to him and give him a chance to explain. He has that right. He’s innocent until proven guilty, isn’t he?” She put her hands over her face and began to sob.

“There’s more,” Grace said and nodded toward Sarah. “I got a text this morning from Travis Butler, and I’ve talked to him on the phone this afternoon. Neal offered to broker a deal with him on your behalf to sell half of our land and the shop to him. He would have our recipe, and that would give him the right to build a housing development right next door to us.”

“But I haven’t signed any papers for him to have that kind of power,” Macy said. “And I wouldn’t sell half of it—just a third, and only to you and Sarah, not to a stranger.” She hiccuped. “Is he really just scamming me?”

Sarah began to weep with her. “He is, darlin’. Believe me, he is.” She told her cousin the story of how, the previous Saturday night, she had been with a married man and ended up seeing Darla Jo and Neal coming out of a hotel room next to theirs.

“And Darla Jo mentioned this morning that she and her Edward”—Grace threw up air quotes—“had been working on buying their house on an island for ten years. This has been what they call a long con.”



“I just can’t believe all this. Maybe there’s an explanation for . . .” Macy tried to justify and yet, at the same time, make sense of the bomb that had been dropped on her. Everything around her seemed to stand still and move at warp speed simultaneously. She felt like she might faint, but the one thing that was positive was that she was going to have another migraine. The aura that preceded her headaches had already begun. “I want to go there and see for myself. It’s the only way I’ll believe this horrible story. He said that he was leaving early this morning and wouldn’t be back until Saturday night, late. Why would he be at the hotel this afternoon? He sent me a text that he had landed in San Diego.” She pulled her phone from her shirt pocket and handed it to Grace. “See for yourself.”

Raelene brought a tray with three glasses of sweet tea and a plate of cookies out to the porch. “Is everything all right? Why are y’all all crying? Did something happen to Audrey?”

Macy closed her eyes and covered her wet face with her hands. “No, darlin’. It’s possible that I’ve been living a fool’s dream, and I gave my heart to the wrong man. And I’ve got another headache coming on.”

“Don’t they say something about it being better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?” Raelene asked. “I can bring the oil to rub on your temples, if that thing really hits.”

“I’d rather to have never been loved if it was all fake,” Macy sniffled. “If all this is true, and I hope it’s not, I wish I’d never met Neal Monroe.”

“Want me to make him disappear?” Raelene asked without a smile. “I’ve watched Criminal Minds with my grandmother and taken enough chemistry classes that I can do it.”

“No, because there is an explanation. No one could be as . . . ,” Macy stammered, “as loving and sweet as he’s been and have it not be real. Whoever this Edward is, he has to be a doppelg?nger. We’re going to look at houses on Sunday, go by the bank to get our joint checking account and his power of attorney set up on Monday morning so I don’t have to worry with finances, and then get married that afternoon.” When she heard herself say “so I don’t have to worry with finances,” her stomach dropped even further.

“Why the rush on houses?” Grace asked.

Macy rubbed her forehead. “It’s my idea. I told him that getting to have a new home and being with him would be his birthday gift that Monday.”

“That’s probably what he and Darla Jo are waiting for. They would wipe you out completely if he got his hands on your accounts, and he wouldn’t show up at the courthouse at all. With what she’s gotten from Henry and Wesley and all your money, they would probably have enough to buy that island she keeps talking about, not just live on it,” Grace said through gritted teeth.