Meeting Miss Mystic (3 page)

Sandy reached out to put a hand on Zoë’s cheek, over the scar. “How about we lay low for the rest of the week? Häagen Dazs? Bad reality TV? No more benders?”

Zoë nodded, blinking back tears.

Sandy smiled gently and turned to leave, but stopped as she got to Zoë’s bedroom door.

“By the way…what’s this sudden obsession with guys from Montana?”

Zoë felt the heat in her cheeks and turned away from her aunt, heading to the bathroom.

“Probably just the beer talking,” she said over her shoulder, closing the bathroom door behind her as Sandy headed back downstairs.

***

The sun streaming in through Paul’s bedroom window woke him up bright and early. He glanced at the clock on his bedside table. 6:35 a.m. His body didn’t seem to realize that high school principals didn’t need to be up at the crack of dawn in the middle of the summer. Whether it was the peak of the school year or the last week in July, he was up at the same time every day, but this morning he was extra tired. He’d ended up staying at the Prairie Dawn until almost midnight last night.

Luckily, he had nowhere to be for hours. He had promised to keep Lars company as he scouted out some Yellowstone locations for an upcoming fashion shoot, but otherwise his day was empty. He rolled over, bunching the pillow under his head, an unexpected feeling of anticipation—of excitement and promise—making his heart feel lighter than it had in ages.

As soon as Maggie had turned her laptop around, Paul’s heart had skipped a beat and he’d been unable to pull himself away. Miss Mystic, aka Holly Morgan, was everything Paul Johansson was looking for.

In her picture, she was wearing a white sundress with a v-neck that managed to be innocently tasteful, while highlighting her full breasts and small waist. Her skin was very light, even with a subtle tan, and she was holding a hot pink flowered purse over her shoulder. She was petite, no more than five-foot-five, if that, with long, wavy, blonde hair and rosy lips that smiled into the camera. He’d have to take Maggie’s word for it when she said those eyes were blue because Holly wore Jackie-O style sunglasses, which covered a good bit of her face but lent a little glamour to the simplicity of her outfit. Her legs were long and shapely for someone so small and she wore hot pink shoes on her feet. God’s honest truth, she was the prettiest thing Paul had ever seen, and that included Jenny Lindstrom
and
Princess Buttercup.

He must have stared at her for twenty minutes as Maggie upended chairs on table tops and started sweeping the wooden floor of the café. She finally called to him, resting her chin on the broomstick.

“There’s more to the lass than a bonnie photo, Paul!”

He turned around, looking at Maggie in a daze, straightening his tortoiseshell glasses. “Her profile won’t come up.”

“She took it down, along with a close-up of her pretty face. Said she was gettin’ too many…er,
fresh
e-mails. But, I saw the profile and the picture before she did. She’s an art teacher. She’s smart, and nice too.” Maggie walked over to him with her broom trailing behind. “I felt bad after settin’ you up with Ms. Phillips. I made sure that I screened Miss Mystic first. We’ve written back and forth a few times over e-mail.”

“Where…? Where are the e-mails, Maggie?”

She chuckled at his impatience, shaking her head at him as he hunched over Holly’s picture. “Still mad at me? And here I thought I was daft.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you and called you crazy. Will you please show me the e-mails?”

“No,” said Maggie, saucily. “Waitin’ makes the heart grow fonder, wee lamb.”

“Maggie,” Paul said, doing his best to keep his voice controlled and even. “I was a bastard for yelling at you. You and Nils are very complicated and I have no right to judge. I trust you implicitly and thank God every day for your sisterly pushiness in my quiet life. Now, please. Show. Me. The. E-mails.”

“Well, since you asked me so sweetly…” She closed the browser and clicked on an icon on her desktop titled “Miss Mystic.” A grouping of three e-mails suddenly opened and Maggie clicked on the first one.

Paul spent the next half hour reading the three e-mails, smiling and laughing, reading bits out loud to Maggie, who rolled her eyes more than once, even though Paul could tell she was pleased with his reaction.

Holly Morgan was a twenty-four-year-old middle school art teacher, never married, devoted to her sister and young nephew after losing their parents years before. She lived in the same town as her sister and aunt, who had stepped in as her guardian after the loss of their parents. In fact, the picture of Holly in her white sundress had been taken at her aunt’s wedding. She liked Chinese food, painting with acrylics and Colbie Callait. She drank way too much coffee, like most of the teachers he knew, and had her favorite students, though she said she tried not to let it show.

Paul’s breath caught when he read that her favorite vacation spot was Moosehead Lake in Maine, because it was the very place he had spent many summers as a child. What were the chances that a girl from Montana would have spent summers in Maine? But it was Holly’s answer to Maggie’s final question that had made Paul’s heart stop for a second: Holly’s favorite movie was
The Princess Bride
.

That was the moment Paul fell in love with Holly Morgan.

He ended up re-reading all three e-mails twice more before he finally figured out that Maggie was ready to say good-night.

“So?” she asked, sidling up to the bar in the dim light of the café, her bag over her shoulder.

He smiled at her, his hopeful heart full of gratitude for his meddling friend. “Miss
Mystic
is right. She’s magical, Maggie. Do you know where she is? I’m assuming somewhere up around Mystic Lake in Custer? That’s not such a bad drive. I mean, we can definitely exchange a few more e-mails to be sure she’s comfortable meeting face to face, but I’d be ready tomorrow. The sooner, the better. We’re both teachers, so maybe we could even get in a few summer dates before the start of the school yea—”

Maggie fidgeted nervously with her keys as her face progressively turned as red as her hair.

“Maggie? What’s wrong?”

“I’ll forward the e-mails and log-in information tomorrow mornin’. You can take over from here.”

She turned away, putting away the broom and shutting off the last light.

“Maggie. Is there anything you’re not telling me? Any more confessions?”

She shrugged sheepishly. “Distance is nothin’ if you really like someone.”

“What
exactly
does that mean?”

“Well, there might be one wee, tiny snag. It’s um, it’s just that I misread the question. Where, um, where you
live
. I clicked on where you’re
from
instead.”

“What are you talking about?”

She grimaced, backing away from him, toward the back door that led upstairs to her apartment, as though making an escape.

“I should have clicked on Montana, but I clicked on Maine. The website sorted the girls regionally so Holly’s not from Montana. She’s actually from…New England. Miss Mystic isn’t about her bein’ magical or livin’ up near Custer. It’s about her livin’ in Mystic, Connecticut.”

He watched as she slipped through the door, bolting it behind her, and he heard a muffled “Sorry!” through the door as her footsteps sprinted around the corner and up the stairs to the relative safety of her apartment.

“Connecticut!” he exclaimed to the empty cafe. “Aw, Maggie, COME ON!”

She was long gone. Paul headed out the front door, pulling it closed behind him and listening for the lock to catch, his head spinning on the short walk home. No wonder she vacationed in Maine. She was from Connecticut. His previous elation mixed with deep disappointment and later, at home, sleep certainly hadn’t come easily or lasted very long.

Paul rolled over and glanced back at the clock. 6:47 a.m.

He flipped onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Unbidden, the picture of Holly Morgan flashed before his eyes and he growled, clenching his eyes shut. What was the point of pursuing a woman who lived in Connecticut, for heaven’s sake? He lived in Montana and had no intention of returning east for anything but an occasional visit. From what he had learned about Holly, she was deeply attached to her aunt, devoted to her sister and adored her nephew. That sort of woman wasn’t going to consider a move out to Montana!

The smart thing to do would be to forget he’d ever seen the photo of Holly Morgan, forget he’d ever read her smart, funny words, forget he’d ever found out that the prettiest woman in the world with the sweetest smile, most luscious body and most impeccable taste in movies actually existed somewhere on the earth. The smart thing to do would be to delete the e-mails and forget that Holly Morgan existed.

But the thing about principals in the summertime?

They don’t have to set an example for anyone. And they don’t have to be smart if they don’t want to be.

Chapter 2

Zoë’s phone buzzed and she glanced down at it on her desk, wishing she could keep the inevitable butterflies at bay. No luck. At the sight of his handle,
PrincipalPaul
, on the notification banner, her heart leapt, sending a wave of anticipation and excitement throughout her body and making goose bumps pop up all along her arms.

PrincipalPaul has sent you a message.

She took a deep breath, staring at the notification. Would this message be from his friend Maggie again or finally from him? It was only eleven o’clock but she couldn’t wait to find out and she certainly didn’t want to pore over every detail of the message with Stanley staring over her shoulders.

“Going on my lunch break, Stan,” she said to her boss, who worked at the desk beside her.

“A little early for lunch,” he said in the same dry tone he used for every boring, utilitarian website he created.

“Just means I’ll be here working all afternoon without a break.”

“I took a chance hiring a quirky kid, Zoë. Don’t make me regret it. You were supposed to bring an artistic angle to the business, which is all well and good, but that doesn’t mean we’re flimsy with our deadlines. I need that website for Patterson Pools finished by the end of the day.”

Zoë nodded. “And it’ll be gorgeous. And artistic. Don’t worry. I’ll stay late if I need to.”

His droopy, watery eyes regarded her sullenly. “Well? Go to lunch then. Be back in forty-five minutes.”

Zoë grabbed her bag from the back of her chair, heading first to the lobby kiosk for a cup of iced coffee, then to the outdoor plaza to the left of her building that had a fountain and several bistro tables and chairs. It was already sweltering out even though it was only mid-morning, so she shrugged off the cardigan she’d been wearing in the air conditioning and took a deep breath of the slow, brackish breeze blowing in lazily off the Atlantic.

She settled herself at an empty table and took out her phone, keeping it face down as she sipped her coffee. It’s not that she wanted to prolong the torture of reading the message, but it had been so long since she’d felt this sort of giddy anticipation, she wanted to savor it for a few minutes. The two years since the accident had been fairly void of happy times, so connecting with Paul, through Maggie, was a bit of unexpected—and, as it turned out, welcome—sunshine in an otherwise bleak life.

A quick bolt of shame launched itself through Zoë’s body as she reviewed the deception she was perpetuating by letting Maggie—and now Paul—think that they were communicating with the girl in the picture, when Zoë felt like she was a million miles away from the sunny, hopeful girl she had once been.

Honestly, she hadn’t meant to deceive anyone. She’d forgotten about the profile she’d set up as a dare two years ago on MeetTheOne.com a few days before the accident. Drinking wine with a girlfriend one night, commiserating about the lack of quality men in their lives, they’d both set up profiles and then promptly forgotten about them. When she’d received an e-mail last week about her account expiring, she decided to check out her long lost Meet the One inbox one last time before letting the account lapse. There had been a lot of really jerky, disgusting e-mails from guys asking totally inappropriate questions or offering her hot, anonymous sex.
As if!

Zoë may have let her morals loosen up over the past couple of years, but the odd hickey notwithstanding, she wasn’t stupid and she certainly didn’t have sex with total strangers.

Not that it was really an issue since her once active, if unfulfilling, dating life was nonexistent at this point. After the accident left her face and leg disfigured, and her heart heavier than she could bear, Zoë had pretty much cut off contact with her old friends and eventually they stopped calling. And what man, exactly, wanted to date a girl with scars like Zoë’s? Not that she was looking, but she’d basically given up on meeting someone anyway.

But just as Zoë was about to exit the website—and good riddance!—she’d noticed the subject line of the most recent e-mail
: I can personally vouch for this amazing guy!
She was intrigued by the subject line that she suspected was written by a woman and didn’t use any of the more disgusting euphemisms for genitals as a come-on. She tentatively clicked on the e-mail.

Right away she could tell this e-mail was different from the rest. The woman writing it introduced herself right away, explaining that one of her best friends, a high school principal, was a wonderful guy who just couldn’t seem to catch a break with the right woman. He had the biggest heart in Montana and deserved true love more than anyone she’d ever known. Zoë had been captivated by Maggie’s description of the handsome, young principal: six feet, two inches, with a toned body, dirty blond hair and blue eyes. She said he was in above-average shape and wore tortoiseshell glasses. Zoë loved that detail. Only another woman would have supplied such a specific description.

Maggie said she’d chosen to write to Zoë because, after checking out Zoë’s erstwhile profile, Maggie thought she might be a good fit for her friend, Paul. They seemed to have interests in common and she wondered if Zoë was still interested in meeting a nice guy. If she was, could she please write back?