“So he dumped you? But he’s the reason you dropped out in the first place.” He put a hand to the ground like he was going to push to his feet, maybe go find Jake and give him a little talking-to. Maybe one that involved his fists. “He can’t just . . .”

I reached out, put my hand over his but didn’t let it linger. I couldn’t bear it if he pulled away from me again. “It’s okay.” I considered that. “I mean, it’s not okay, obviously. It was a shit thing to do. But I’m okay. At least I’m better than I was this spring.” I remembered the girl who’d arrived in Willow Creek with everything she owned packed in the back of a white Jeep. I’d been worried then about my sister, sure. But I’d been worried about me too. “I was pretty lost then.”

A clang of metal in the distance got our attention, and it brought us back to ourselves and to Faire. Time to start the day. Simon hopped easily to his feet and held a hand down to me. I gratefully took it, since getting up from the ground while strapped into this outfit was not a graceful endeavor.

Once we were both on our feet we made our way back to the main lane. I lingered at a jeweler’s booth to examine a hanging display of crystal pendants. They caught the light and made rainbows on the tree behind the booth. When I glanced back again I saw Simon was waiting for me when I’d expected him to walk on ahead. But instead he was watching me watch the crystals, a thoughtful look on his face.

“How did you know?” he asked as I fell into step next to him again.

“Hmm?”

“How did you know I’m twenty-seven? I don’t remember that coming up before.”

“Oh. Mitch told me.”

Simon’s step faltered for a second, but he recovered smoothly. “Mitch,” he repeated. All the life had gone out of his voice. “Right, yeah. Mitch.”

“I’m sorry. Are you two not friends?” Had I said something wrong? I was getting that feeling again—like I was stepping into a web of long-term, intertwined relationships without a scorecard, and I was blundering around making mistakes. “He said you’d known each other a long time.”

“Oh, yeah. Since we were kids. I’ve known him forever.” But his mouth twisted like he’d sucked on a lemon. “You two look good together.”

“What?” I blinked at the non sequitur, but before I could ask what he meant we’d arrived at the tavern, where Stacey was setting up for the day with Jamie and the other red-shirted volunteers.

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.”

“But not this weekend. We should make our way there later today, what d’you think?”

Somehow the accent made it worse. Stacey’s eyes were pleading, like I was some kind of fun police that never let us leave the bar. Like I was turning into Simon.

Well, screw that. “All right, then. The next match is at half past two, aye?” I picked up my towel and finished wiping down the bar. “We can go then.”

Mitch and Stacey weren’t wrong. I hadn’t been by to see the chess match all weekend. I didn’t want to see Simon any more than I had to. Since our talk in front of his brother’s memorial the day before, things had been . . . weird. At the time, I’d thought something was happening between us, something that had sparked the previous week when he’d kissed me at the tavern. Our talk had been so frank, so open, more open than I’d been with anyone in a long time, and I’d thought that spark had been kindled into something more. Something I wanted to explore.

But it turned out to be nothing. Worse than nothing, Simon seemed to go out of his way to not see me. This Faire wasn’t that big; it was hard to avoid someone around here. But since he’d walked me to the tavern on Saturday morning I hadn’t seen him the rest of the day. He’d stayed on the other side of the stage as the group got ready this morning, and I hadn’t seen him all day today, either. He was definitely avoiding me.