phone him after all. Good grief, but she hated phoning. Or…wait. She could send him a text message. Perfect. A text message. She could ask him if he was still planning to meet with her.
Yes, that would give him a chance to save face in case he’d forgotten the appointment. Why it was her job to save his face was another matter entirely.
Taking out her mobile phone, she remembered the nophone rule in the bakery. There was a sign just inside the door, depicting a symbol of a phone with a slash through it. Did that include sending a text message? Maureen was new to sending text messages, so she wasn’t sure.
Just to be safe, she stepped outside, feeling almost furtive. Frowning down at the keypad, she composed a text message with too much care. “Come on,” she muttered under her breath. “It’s not as if this is going to be chiseled in stone.” Yet she agonized over the greeting. Did she even need a greeting? Or should she just plunge into the body of the message itself? And what about a sign-off? BEST WISHES? SEE YOU SOON? Was she MAUREEN? M.D.? No, that was weird. Okay. M. DAVENPORT. There.
She hit Send.
At that precise second, she noticed a little flashing icon on her screen, indicating she had a message. Strange. She almost never got text messages.
This one was from—whoops—Eddie Haven, sent about an hour ago.
RUNNING 15 MIN LATE. SORRY. SEE U 6:15.
So now she would look like a neurotic psycho stalker, nagging him over a fifteen-minute delay and too much of a ninny to check her messages.
Staring down at the tiny screen, she stood on the edge of the curb, wishing the pavement would crack open and swallow her up, sparing her this awkward meeting. Lost in thought, she didn’t notice the white, windowless van careening toward her until it was almost too late. She jumped away from the curb just as it angled into a parking spot a few feet away, nearly flattening her against the brick building. Rock music thumped from the scratched and dented vehicle for a couple of seconds before the engine rattled to a halt.
Clutching the mobile phone with frozen fingers, Maureen choked on a puff of exhaust. She heard the thud of a door, footsteps on pavement.
A man in black appeared, glaring at her. She looked him up and down. He had the shaggy blond hair of an old-school California surfer. He wore ripped jeans and black high-top sneakers, and a jacket with a ski pass hanging from the zipper tag, open to reveal a formfitting black T-shirt. Eddie Haven had arrived. Wonderful. He was going to think the world of her.
“Jesus Christ, lady. I didn’t see you there. I nearly ran you down,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Yes, you did.”
“I didn’t see you,” he repeated.
Of course he hadn’t. And it wouldn’t be the first time. “You should’ve been watching.”
“I was, I—” He raked a hand through his long, wheat-colored hair. “Christ, you scared the shit out of me.”
“There’s no need to take the Lord’s name in vain,” she said, then cringed at her own words. When had she turned into such a marm?
“It wasn’t in vain,” he replied. “I totally meant it.”
She sniffed, filling her senses with winter cold, tinged with exhaust. “It’s just so…unimaginative. Not to mention disrespectful.”
“And self-righteous to boot,” he said with a grin, handsome as a prom king. “It’s been real, but I gotta bounce.” He nodded in the direction of the bakery. “I’m meeting someone.”
A soft burble of sound came from…it seemed to be coming from his jeans. He dug in his pocket and extracted a cell phone.
Maureen glanced down at her own phone’s screen to see that it said Message Sent.
Then she looked back at Eddie Haven. Despite his easy dismissal of polite speech, there was no denying the man had presence. Although he was almost inhumanly good-looking, the strange appeal went deeper than looks alone. He had some kind of aura, a powerful magnetism that seemed to suck all the light and energy toward him. And he wasn’t even doing anything, just standing there checking his messages.
I am in such trouble, she thought.
With a bemused expression, he touched a button. A second later her phone rang. Startled, she dropped it on the ground.
He bent and scooped it up, holding it out to her. “Maureen, right? Maureen Davenport.”
“That’s me.” She turned her ringer off and slipped the phone into her pocket.
“What, you’re hanging up on me already?” he said.
“I suppose that would be a first for you. A woman, hanging up on you.”
“Shit, no, are you kidding?”
She winced. “Don’t tell me you’re going to talk like that the whole time.”
“Great,” he said, “so you’re one of those holier-than-thou types.”
“I’ll bet a convicted felon would be holier than you are,” she retorted.
“I’ve met quite a few felons who were holier than me. Wait a minute, I am a convicted felon.” He touched the heel of his hand to his forehead. “Does that mean I’m holier than me? Jesus, lady, way to mess with a guy’s head.”
“I’m sure I don’t mean to mess with your head or any other part of you,” she said.
He started walking toward the bakery. “So…Maureen Davenport.” He pronounced her name as though tasting it. “From the library.”
“That’s me.” She couldn’t tell if he was surprised, disappointed or just resigned.
He paused, frowned at her. “Have we met before?” Without waiting for a reply, he said, “It’s weird that our paths haven’t crossed, in a town like this. I guess we just move in different circles, eh?”
She considered telling him their paths had crossed, but he simply hadn’t deigned to notice her. Instead, she simply nodded. “I guess.”
“This is going to be fun,” he said, clapping his hands together, then blowing on his fingers. “And fun is good, right?”
She didn’t think he expected an answer to his question.
“I’m Eddie Haven,” he said.
“I know who you are,” she said. Good grief, who didn’t know who Eddie Haven was? Especially now, with his anniversary DVD topping the charts. She knew it topped the charts because the library currently owned a dozen copies, and each of those had more than a hundred patron holds. She wondered what it was like for him to see his own flickering image on the small screen, year in and year out, all hours of the night and day.
She’d have plenty of opportunities to ask him, because this holiday season, she was stuck with him. The two of them had been charged with codirecting the annual Christmas pageant for the town of Avalon. She had taken on the job because
