Molly’s knees suddenly felt weak. She looked around for somewhere to sit, but as they were out on the beach, there was nowhere to sit except on the ground, and she didn’t want to get sand in Joanne’s beautiful sequined dress (which had been too loose on Joanne and was subsequently a little too tight on Molly, especially now that she’d had so many crab claws).
“May I?” asked a voice to her right, and Molly turned to see Patrick—also known as Lady Patricia, the drag queen who volunteered at the library to read at Story Time—offering to lay his tuxedo jacket down upon the sand for her to sit on.
“Oh, I couldn’t!” Molly was mortified.
“Please do.” Patrick took a seat on the sand beside the folded jacket. “I was broiling in that thing, anyway. And I’d hate for you to ruin that lovely frock.”
“Well . . .” Molly looked down at the tempting folded jacket. In front of her, the sheriff was loosening his tie and undoing the first few buttons of his shirt. It was a white button-down short-sleeved shirt. She could see how closely the darkly tanned curves of his biceps filled those short sleeves.
Molly sat with a thump, spilling a little of her champagne.
Patrick glanced at her with amusement. “See something over there—or should I say someone—that interests you?”
“Not at all,” Molly replied, more firmly than she meant to. She took a restorative sip of her champagne and then asked, hoping to change the subject, “What game is it exactly that they’re about to play?”
Patrick had been taking a sip of the martini he’d brought along with him, which he now nearly spat out in surprise. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of cornhole.”
“Of course I have.” Had she? It was hard for her to remember anything when John Hartwell was standing just a few yards away, looking so tall and attractive in the waning light of the sun. “It’s, uh . . .”
“I can see that you’ve led a very sheltered life, tucked away behind all those books, Molly Montgomery.”
Molly didn’t feel like correcting him. People always thought this about librarians—that they were introverts who only wanted to stay indoors and read. Of course, this was true of some of them.
But Molly had always had a very active social life. Even when she’d been studying for her degrees, then working, she’d still made time for fun. That’s how she’d met her ex, Eric, a dark-eyed radiologist with whom she’d been teamed up at a local brewery’s trivia night, and with whom she’d always trounced the competition. He’d known everything about sports and science, and she’d known everything about pop culture and literature. All their friends had been sure they were made for each other.
It was only after they’d gotten engaged and begun discussing their future that she’d realized a talent for trivia was the only thing they had in common.
“Of course, this is charity cornhole,” Patrick was saying, “not regular cornhole. The object of this particular version of the game is to toss as many beanbags as you can into the hole. Whoever gets the kitty wins the pot, which our generous donor—in this case, the Little Bridge State Bank—then matches. The winner traditionally then donates their winnings back to the Red Cross, or some other charity of their choice. But on one or two occasions”—he sent a dark look in the direction of the men to whom the sheriff was talking—“players have been known to keep it.”
Shocked, Molly raised her eyebrows. “Really? Someone’s kept money meant to be donated for charity? Who would do such a thing?”
“Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but our city planner.” He pointed at one of the men to whom the sheriff was speaking, and Molly realized she recognized him because of the frequency with which his name and photo appeared in The Gazette’s “Cheers and Jeers” section—Randy Jamison, who was well known for delaying or even denying building permits for no good reason, including many the new library had needed. For this he often received “jeers.”
“Hmmm,” she said. “That doesn’t sound very sporting.”
“No, but there isn’t much we can do about it, except get in there and beat him. And I’ve never had much of a pitching arm—have you?”
“Oh, God, no.”
“I didn’t think so. No offense. I feel like this sort of thing is best left to the athletes, like our good sheriff there. Did you know he was all-state in baseball when he was in high school?”
Molly shook her head, though she wasn’t surprised, given how strong and sinewy his arms looked. She wondered idly what arms like that would feel like around her. . . .
She had definitely had too much champagne.
“Oh, yes,” Patrick went on. “Right here in Little Bridge. From what I understand, he would have gone to the pros if he hadn’t gotten his high school sweetheart pregnant and chosen instead to marry her, stay here on the island, help raise his daughter, and become a police officer. He was a good one, too, until he got a criminal justice degree at the local community college and eventually applied for and made detective up in Miami.”
Molly dug her free hand into the sand and found a pretty seashell with which she pretended to be fascinated. “Why did he move back?”
“The sheriff? Oh, well, the island needed him, after what happened with the last sheriff. And I think he missed it here and wanted a change. He was working homicide in Miami, which I can’t imagine would be very pleasant.”
She sipped her champagne, silently agreeing. She’d seen a few news broadcasts from Miami. Some of the murders there had been horrifyingly violent, even from a crime junkie viewpoint. “But his wife . . . ?”
“Oh, his wife—now ex-wife—has quite a flourishing home-design business up there. So when he came back to Little Bridge to take the sheriff’s position, she stayed up north. I heard the split was perfectly amicable—no hard feelings.”
Molly considered this delicately put answer while pretending not to watch the sheriff’s every move. He was stuffing a wad of bills into the kitty, a large crystal vase being passed around by one of the Red Cross volunteers, whom Molly recognized as the nurse Daniella—she’d done multiple blood drives at the library. Bubbly and outgoing, Nurse Dani had also been appointed the game referee, if the shiny silver whistle around her neck was any indication. It complemented the short silver cocktail dress she wore.
Abruptly, Molly turned and handed Patrick two twenty-dollar bills she’d drawn from her clutch. “Here.”
He looked down at the bills with puzzled surprise. “Don’t tell me you’re going to play?”
“Oh, no. But I want to contribute. Would you mind slipping those into the kitty for me, please? They can be from both of us. I’m much too comfortable here on the sand to get up.”
He gave her a knowing look as he rose to his feet. “Oh, of course. That’s why you don’t want to get up. You’re too comfortable. Not that you’re too shy to speak to a certain someone.”
“I’m simply enjoying this lovely moment on the beach,” she said, and after delicately placing her champagne glass on the sand, drew her cell phone from her clutch to snap a photo of the sun as it sank behind a mangrove in the distance—and also to hide her face and the fact that she was blushing.
While Patrick smirked and strode through the sand toward Nurse Dani with Molly’s offering, she willed herself not to look in his direction, in case he exchanged words with the sheriff and the latter ended up glancing her way. She told herself she was still recovering from all the champagne and crab claws and that it was wiser for her not to speak to handsome men in uniform.
Instead, she concentrated on how nearly all of the guests from inside the dining room had come out onto the beach to observe the game alongside her, most with drinks in their hand. Quite a few more people had lined up to play, many of whom Molly knew, not necessarily from their library usage but from around town. There was the pink-haired waitress, Bree, and her boyfriend, Drew, whom Molly often saw at the Mermaid Café when she popped in to grab a quick lunch. Several of Mrs. Tifton’s guests—Robbie and her fiancé, Ryan—were also in line to play, as was Patrick’s husband, Bill, and even Meschelle. The competition was starting to look a bit fierce.
Which Molly told herself was good. So long as Randy Jamison didn’t win and keep all the money to himself. That’s all that mattered.
That’s what Molly thought, anyway, until the game finally started. Then, as she watched the sheriff play and saw just how truly good he was—how gentlemanly and sportsmanlike, giving others friendly advice on their throws that could help them beat him—she realized how badly she was rooting for him, and him alone, to win, especially as player after player except the sheriff and the insufferable Mr. Jamison failed to propel their beanbag even remotely close to the nearest hole. Most throws landed in the sand. Those players were immediately disqualified by Nurse Dani, who turned out to be quite the tyrannical referee. (Not that anyone seemed to mind. It was a good-natured game, with quite a lot of joking and laughter.)
As the sky turned from pale lavender to dark blue, and they actually needed the light from the tiki flames to see by, the sheriff’s and the city planner’s beanbags were the only ones seeming to go into the holes.