Happy Hour

by Anina Collins

  A blank expression settled into his features. “No, I didn’t see any picture but the ones on the walls.”

  I wanted to celebrate that I’d seen something he hadn’t, but I didn’t. Alex wouldn’t have minded, but I kept my rejoicing to myself.

  “Oh yeah. And it was a picture of Angela and our victim looking as happy as two peas in a pod.”

  He stopped the car at a red light and smiled. “Good job, Poppy. So a woman who called the cops on a man for hitting her eight months ago and claims she hasn’t seen him in six months keeps a picture of her with him out in the open in her living room?”

  “Exactly. I checked the bathroom for any signs of a man living there before I was able to get a good look at who was in that picture and I found nothing to say Angela either lives with a man or has a man over regularly. I mean, what man would be okay with dating a woman who keeps a picture of her with someone else out for anyone to see?”

  Alex pulled the squad car up to in front of the police station and put it in park. “I had a feeling that was what the sudden need to use the bathroom was all about.”

  “I’ll go even further,” I said. “Women who don’t still feel something for a man don’t keep their picture up after the relationship is finished.”

  He turned off the car and sat back against the seat. Running his hands along the steering wheel, he said, “Well, I’m beginning to think you may have been right thinking Angela Touring could be our first suspect.”

  Thrilled at my success on the case so far, I said, “How about we head over to The Grounds and talk about it over a cup of coffee? And we can discuss our trip too.”

  Alex’s eyes lit up at the mention of our trip to the Outer Banks we had planned for the third week of July. We hadn’t chosen a hotel yet, and if we expected to get a room for that week, we needed to within the next few days.

  “Sounds like a good idea. I just want to see if Stephen is still around and if he found out whose car Marcus Tyne was found in, so let’s go in and then we can head across the street.”

  The thought of being on the receiving end of another of Stephen’s nasty glares made my stomach clench, so I begged off joining him in the station. “I’ll grab us a table and our coffees while you deal with him. See you in a few?”

  Alex gave me a knowing smile which made me wonder if he had any idea why Stephen had a problem with me, but I didn’t care enough to ask again. My day was going great so far, and I wasn’t going to let some guy and whatever issue he had with me ruin it.

  “I’ll be there in a couple, but you better make my coffee black this time. Lack of sleep is catching up with me.”

  I got out and leaned against the side of the car as he closed his door. “Black it is. See you in a few, and this time we have to decide on a hotel, Alex. No more dragging our feet.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Everything else might be dragging on me today, but I promise no dragging my feet. I still say the one with the jetted tub sounds good.”

  “And I say the private bungalow sounds good. So you see, we’re still at an impasse. That’s why we have to talk about it and decide today.”

  Alex began walking toward the station, nodding. “Then that’s what we’ll do. Just give me five and I’ll be there ready to fight for that tub.”

  I watched him until he entered the building as I imagined how incredible it would be to enjoy that jetted tub with him. Seated behind me with his strong arms around my shoulders as I rested my head on his chest and those jets pulsed warm water against our bodies.

  Walking across the street to The Grounds, I had to admit he might not have to fight very hard at all for his choice.

  Chapter Four

  The lull between the early birds and the crowd getting their coffee on their way to their nine-to-five jobs gave me the chance to snag our usual table at the back of The Grounds, and after getting my usual dark roast and Alex’s black coffee, I took a seat facing the door to wait for him. As I stared off into space, the noise of fellow customers chatting at nearby tables faded away until I became lost in my own head about our upcoming vacation to the Outer Banks.

  Our first official trip together as a couple.

  In some ways, it wasn’t that big a deal. We’d been dating for months and spent time together nearly every day, but we’d never gone away from Sunset Ridge for longer than a few hours and never for anything but investigating a case.

  When I gingerly brought up the subject of us possibly taking a trip a few weeks ago, I hadn’t actually expected him to say yes, to be honest. A true homebody, Alex liked spending time at his house or mine, and even though he rarely denied me dinner at Diamanti’s or one of his old favorite restaurants in Baltimore, the fact remained he preferred to stay in rather than going out.

  Taking a trip couldn’t have been more out of the house, so I had expected to have to plead my case, but he surprised me by saying yes before I’d even gotten the entire question out of my mouth.

  Now we just had to choose a hotel so I could make the reservations, but despite giving him a hard time about his choice, I had to admit now that I thought about the two of us in that jetted tub maybe that wasn’t a windmill worth tilting at. A private bungalow certainly could be nice, but the room he wanted wasn’t going to exactly be roughing it.

  And what we could do in that tub definitely made me more amenable to the idea.

  “Poppy McGuire, as I live and breathe.”

  A familiar voice from not long enough ago tore me out of the fantasy my mind had been busy constructing of Alex, me, and that jetted tub, and I looked up to see none other than the man who had been my fiancé before he cheated on me with a grocery checkout girl from Savings King while he was supposed to be looking at the bed and breakfast we wanted to honeymoon in.

  Jared. My ex. The man who had humiliated me and would forever be on my list of people I hoped Karma would exact swift and painful retribution on.

  I craned my neck to look up at his face, and to my disappointment, I saw he still looked as good as he always had. Tall with light brown hair and blue eyes, he’d been the hot jock in high school, and even now in his thirties, he still hadn’t shaken that look. My gaze drifted downward, and I noticed he was just as tan as he’d always been. Jared looked like he had just returned from a week in the tropics where he did nothing but lay out on the beach and down umbrella drinks.

  Why did he have to be standing there in the coffee shop I liked to think of as my turf in the town he’d run away from with Cicely, that mousey checkout girl?

  “Jared, what are you doing here?” I asked, not even feigning an attempt at being polite. He’d lost the chance to have me be gracious when he cheated on me.

  “It’s nice to see you too, Poppy. I’m back in town now. I see you’re still the same girl you’ve always been.”

  I knew what he meant by that. Small. A nobody. Someone who would always be from Sunset Ridge and nothing more.

  “Yes, I’m the same woman I’ve been for years,” I said, correcting him. Girl? What was this? The 1950s? Would he be smacking my behind when I walked away too and making some comment about how he’d like to get with that, like I was some inanimate object?

  My terse response didn’t deter him from continuing the conversation, and he sat down in Alex’s seat. “I was hoping we could call a truce. Do you think that’s possible? I mean, we are grown adults and we’re going to have to live in the same town, so can’t we be civil to one another at least?”

  Live in the same town? Was he planning on staying in Sunset Ridge? Why?

  Determined to make it look like it still didn’t bother me that he’d basically left me at the altar for another woman, I shrugged off the idea of a truce. “It’s not necessary. I hold no grudge against you, Jared. I wish you all the happiness you deserve.”

  And scorpions to stalk you like prey wherever you go.

  He smiled, showing his perfectly white teeth made even brighter by the color of his sun-kissed skin. “I’m happy to he
ar that. I think it might make you happy to know that Cicely left me a few months ago.”

  I nodded and struggled not to grin like I so desperately wanted to. Karma inflicting its painful justice had always been my fondest wish for Jared, and to hear that wish had actually come true made me want to celebrate.

  But I didn’t because no matter how much I still wished those scorpions would nest in his shorts and torture him, I wasn’t cruel. At least not outwardly.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, not meaning a single word.

  He smiled again and stared across the table at me. “You always were too good for me, Poppy. I know that now. I guess you can say I was a fool back then.”

  For a moment I wondered if I was supposed to disagree with him. I had a feeling only a saint would be able to do that, and I was no saint.

  The nice person who I wished could go away at that moment so the person with the snappy comebacks could show her face took over my brain, though, and I said, “Well, it’s all water under the bridge now. I wish you nothing but happiness, Jared.”

  Perhaps if I said that for another hundred years I might be able to convince myself I actually believed a word of it.

  “You’re too sweet, you know that?” he said in a voice that had something underneath it. Was he flirting with me?

  I took a sip of my coffee and moved Alex’s in front of me. I didn’t know why, but I needed Jared to know I was waiting for someone.

  He looked around at the people filing into The Grounds and chuckled. “This town never changes. Look at these people.”

  I scanned the room and saw exactly what he saw, but to me, it wasn’t something to be laughed at or scorned. The Grounds’ customers were small town people just like me, and while they drove me crazy sometimes, at the end of the day, I was one of them.

  Explaining to him just how wrong he was to discount us ran through my mind, but what would be the use?

  So I said nothing. Jared wasn’t worth the effort.

  We sat in silence as the coffee shop filled up with the nine-to-fivers grabbing their morning coffee on their way to work, and I saw more than one woman eye him up and then look at me like I was some lucky girl to be sitting there with such a good looking man. At one time in my life, that would have been important to me. Jared’s boyish charm and athletic look had initially attracted me to him, and even after I realized he wasn’t much more than those traits, I still liked how it felt to be with him.

  Now it meant nothing that those women thought I had snagged myself a hot guy because I had something better. I had a hot guy who was even more than just what the world saw.

  “So I guess you’re not going to ask me what I’m going to do now that I’m back in good old Sunset Ridge,” he said, tearing me from my thoughts of the past.

  “I can’t imagine you’d be here for very long since you don’t like much about the town or the people who live here.”

  My indictment of his opinions surprised him, and he quickly moved to defend himself. “That’s not true. Well, not entirely. I like some people here. You, my parents, Derek. In fact, I hung out with him last night. It was like old times. Remember those days?”

  So that was why Derek had been acting so strangely earlier.

  What I remembered about those days and the old times Jared referred to amounted to very little I wanted to think about. He and Derek had been drinking buddies since high school, and that never stopped, even when he and I began dating. Too many times I’d sat waiting for him when we were supposed to go out because he’d been out carousing with the current chief of police. Not exactly my fondest memories.

  “Derek’s the chief of police now, so I can’t imagine it was really like old times.”

  Jared laughed like I had said something amusing. “You don’t know Derek as well as you think you do. Trust me. We had a good time.”

  I looked toward the front door of The Grounds hoping to see Alex but only saw the steady stream of people coming in for breakfast.

  Beginning to feel like I was trapped in a conversation that would never end, I mumbled, “I’m sure you did.”

  “We ended up at the Madison last night, and I heard something very interesting about you,” he said in a singsong voice, making me cringe at what he could have heard. Late night drunk talk at the local diner never amounted to anything good.

  Trying to ignore him, I said, “Oh yeah?” and hoped he’d get the hint I didn’t give a damn about what he’d heard about me. He didn’t.

  “Yeah. I heard you’re helping the police solve crimes these days. I couldn’t believe it. My Poppy doing the amateur sleuth thing. I told the woman who said it there was no way, but she swore up and down it was true, and even Derek said you were.”

  I took a sip of my coffee and wished for this whole thing with Jared to end. “How nice that I’m the talk of the Madison in the middle of the night.”

  “She also said you were an old maid in training, but I know that’s not true. Not you, Poppy.”

  His smirk told me he was mocking me, but as much as I wanted to smack that stupid expression right off his face, I kept my cool and shrugged again, feigning disinterest. “I wouldn’t put much stock in what anyone has to say about anyone in this town, Jared. You know how it’s a hotbed of gossip. I’m sure once everyone finds out Cicely dumped you for another man that’s all the busybodies around here will want to talk about.”

  My arrow hit its mark, and he winced like he was in pain. He hadn’t mentioned anything about why that checkout girl had left him, but I assumed if she was the type to run off with someone else’s fiancé, then she was the type to cheat on that same guy. Once a villain, always a villain.

  And I wasn’t an old maid in training, thank you. If Alex would finally get to The Grounds, I’d be able to show Jared that.

  Since he hadn’t, though, I had to defend my own honor. “I have been working with the police on cases. I’m pretty good at it too. My partner says I have natural detective instincts.”

  That I hadn’t been able to figure out that Jared was a two-timing bastard who was cheating on me until he ran off with another woman seemed to show otherwise, but I’d take Alex’s word for it that I had some skill at investigating crimes.

  “Partner?” Jared squinted like he didn’t understand the meaning of the word. “Do you mean like a life partner? Have you changed teams, Poppy?”

  God, what had I ever seen in this guy? How had I ever been able to overlook the fact that he was as dumb as a bag of hair? Had I truly been so shallow that his looks had blinded me to how stupid he was?

  I opened my mouth to explain exactly what I meant by partner, but thankfully, I saw Alex walking toward us, saving me from having to bother. He cocked one eyebrow when he noticed someone sitting in his seat and strode confidently through the crowd of people to stand next to the table.

  Alex normally looked attractive, but I secretly loved that he was wearing his police uniform, which made him look downright incredible. The women who had been admiring Jared forgot all about him and focused their attention on the gorgeous cop glaring down at my ex.

  Jared looked him up and down before a worried expression settled into his features, probably because he was guilty of some crime he thought he’d been clever enough to cover up. “Can I do something for you, officer?”

  “You can get out of my chair,” Alex said in the authoritative voice he only used with suspects who chose to give him a hard time. The tone of it resonated in the air around us, music to my ears.

  “Jared, this is my partner, Alex,” I explained as he looked over at me for some help with what had quickly become an awkward situation, thanks to Alex’s almost rudeness.

  From above us, Alex added, “And I’m her boyfriend. Now get out of my seat.”

  I loved how he didn’t ask who Jared was, as if that information didn’t matter to him at all. I suspected it did, if his behavior was any indication, but Alex had a way of masking his feelings better than anyone I’d ever met. Usually tha
t trait of his bothered me, but at that moment, I loved him even more for it.

  Jared practically jumped up from the chair, explaining as he did how he was just leaving anyway. “Nice meeting you, and Poppy, it was nice seeing you again.” Then he flashed me a smile and added, “I hope we can catch up more next time.”

  He made a beeline for the door as Alex sat down and silently began to drink his coffee. I couldn’t tell if he was angry, as his knitted eyebrows suggested, or just being his usual quiet self, so I began to make small talk about the crowd thinning out around us, to which he only smiled occasionally or nodded.

  At least I got a smile.

  After a few minutes of listening to the conversations of people around us about the weather forecast and if traffic would be detoured yet again that day because of road work on Main Street, I couldn’t stand the silence between Alex and me anymore.

  “So I guess you’re probably wondering who that was?” I blurted out, the words tumbling out like wild animals sprung from cages.

  He didn’t respond but simply looked across the table at me with those dark brown eyes that seemed devoid of any reaction at all.

  “That was Jared Cooke. My ex. Fiancé. My ex-fiancé. The one I told you about who cheated on me with the checkout girl at Savings King when he was supposed to be checking out the bed and breakfast we were considering for our honeymoon and then ran off with her.”

  The words all came out so roughly, as if some couldn’t wait to find their way out of my body and others had to be ripped out, clinging to my tongue to avoid being said.

  “I know who he is. Derek pointed him when he saw him come in here as he was keeping me in front of the station to talk about the Tyne case,” Alex said calmly, almost like he didn’t care, which seemed at odds with how he’d acted when he first saw Jared sitting there with me.

  “Oh. Well, I didn’t ask him to sit with me. He invited himself over. If it was up to me, I’d never speak to him again. He’s the last person I’d want to see, to be honest.”