CHAPTER 4

C HAPTER 4

"I don't have three man things," Hank Byers, aka the Easter Bunny, whispered to Zack. Hank pointed to his nether region in case Zack hadn't gotten the point.

He had.

Along with Hank's denial that he'd ever married any woman but his late wife, Dorothy, he refused to claim an extra testicle either.

"But I do have a birthmark on my right butt cheek," Hank went on, his tone as if he were discussing the weather. "Of course, it looks nothing like a man thing. It's more like that pile of cartoon poop that people put in their texts, but . . ." He stopped, his wrinkled forehead bunching up. "Can't remember why I thought you should know that."

Zack was figuring the same thing and so wished Hank hadn't put the image in his head of the Easter Bunny sporting a poop emoji. He stood and glanced at Reese, who had discreetly moved to the other side of the room so that Zack could ask the delicate question about balls. Now that Zack had his answer, he gave her the nod so she could rejoin him at the table in Hank's kitchen.

"Hank isn't Happy Harry," Zack relayed to her.

Hank gave an apologetic shake of his head. "I sure wish I could help."

"You did," Reese said, "by eliminating yourself. Now we can take you off the list."

True, but during the course of their pre-balls conversation, Hank had given them two more names of possible candidates. At this rate, it might be Valentine's Day before they got through them all.

And that caused Zack to smile.

It wasn't a hardship to spend time with Reese, and spending time was exactly what they'd been doing for the past two days. He'd managed to spend all those hours with her by using some of his vacation days. That hadn't stopped work calls though, but thankfully his deputies were keeping them to a minimum. No doubt because word had gotten around about the Happy Harry search and Zack being joined at the hip with the PI.

Joined at the hip had been necessary since it had taken a full day to track down the four brothers—Buddy, Buck, Jinx and Butch—and to check their names off as well. Zack hadn't detected any deceit whatsoever in any of their comments or body language. Ditto for another candidate, Harry Johnson, who'd been on Reese's original list.

They said their goodbyes to Hank and stepped back out into the cold. "Where to next?" she asked, looking over her list.

He tipped his head toward Main Street. "To Seasonal Delights."

She eyed him with caution. "Is this an accelerated date or a potential Happy Harry interview?"

"Both." He gave her red scarf an adjustment and stood shoulder to shoulder with her so his body heat would stave off some of the cold.

Zack dismissed the idea of putting his arm around her since their mere presence in the center of town would fuel enough gossip without adding PDA. He didn't mind the gossip and had accepted it was inevitable in a small town, but he figured Reese probably wouldn't want said gossip getting back to her great-aunt.

"By my calculations, this is our fifteenth date," he said as they strolled away from Hank's.

"Fifteenth?" she questioned.

He nodded. "I'm counting all meals, all Happy Harry interviews, and dreams," he tacked on.

Her gaze flew to his, and Zack figured she was about to say something about dreams not counting, but Reese nodded. He could see she was fighting a smile, too. "Any chance I showed up in your dreams?"

She lost the fight with a smile but then regained her straight face. "Things just seem so intense."

"Not for a fifteenth date," he pointed out.

"It's still forty-eight hours, plus the thirty seconds or so when I kissed you at the masquerade party." She paused, waiting for someone to walk by before she continued. "Aren't you bothered by it?"

"Some," he admitted. "But I've been thinking about you a long time, so I guess that's numbed any objections the logical part of my brain might dish up." He shrugged. "Added to that, there's no pressure here. At the end of the interviews, you can just walk away."

He was hoping like the devil she wouldn't do that, but he was already working out a contingency, just in case.

"You live only an hour away in San Antonio," he continued to spell out. "So, if accelerated dating doesn't work for you, then we can maybe try things the old-fashioned way."

A whole lot of tension faded from her expression, leaving only that beautiful face. Of course, Reese was beautiful with or without tension, but it was much more fun seeing her gazing at him as if he were the fix to a problem instead of the problem itself.

Zack felt a kick of heat. Tried to rein it in, and he figured Reese was doing some reining as well. Both of them failed, because at the same moment, they ducked into a narrow alley, and their mouths met.

Instant hunger. Instant pleasure.

And there was probably that whole added element of doing something a tad bit forbidden. Of course, their entire kissing history had that element to it. First, at the masquerade party and then when her great-aunt had walked in on their lip-lock.

Despite his body urging him to take this particular kiss so much deeper, Zack held back. Good thing, too, because he suddenly became aware of the absence of chatter coming from Main Street. From the corner of his eye, he saw they once again had an audience. This time it was one of his deputies, Brenna O'Sullivan, and her fiancé, Theo Cameron, who just happened to be Zack's good friend.

Both Brenna and Theo seemed plenty surprised, probably because Zack was doing that whole PDA thing, but then Brenna grinned. "Shouldn't you be saving that for the Christmas Eve Kiss Ball?" she joked.

Zack scowled, his only response because he had no intention of explaining that a hot spontaneous kiss was one thing but a staged one just didn't feel right. He wanted to get lost in a kiss, didn't want to think of photographers, angles of the shots and the hundred and sixty-six other couples who'd be kissing around him.

"By the way, your great-aunt Sylvia just played the take one, give one and found gold," Brenna said, shifting her attention to Reese. Obviously, there was no need for Zack to make introductions, but judging from Reese's blank look, there was a need to explain.

"One of the shops has a big window display of wrapped Christmas gifts, and anyone can take one from the mix as long as they add one. That way, everyone who wants a Christmas surprise can have it."

"What a nice tradition," Reese concluded but then shook her head. "How'd my aunt win gold?"

It was Brenna who picked up this part of the explanation. "Harrison Harvey, who owns Seasonal Delights, always puts some extra special gifts into the mix. Your aunt just pulled out a fourteen karat gold necklace."

No way had Reese missed the part about Harrison, especially since they were on their way to see the man. "Uh, did my aunt happen to meet the owner?" Reese asked.

"Maybe," Brenna muttered, and because she was a good cop, she no doubt picked up on the concern that had landed in Reese's eyes. Because if Sylvia had indeed come face to face with her bigamist husband, then things might not be all merry and bright.

Zack muttered a goodbye that was almost as quick as the one Reese doled out, and together they hurried out of the alley and toward the shop. They were still a good ten yards away when Zack heard a strange sound—maybe a moan, maybe a sob.

That got them moving even faster, and when they broke through the crowd that had gathered, he spotted Sylvia in the doorway of Seasonal Delights, and she was staring at something in her hand. The other two wives were staring as well, but Harrison couldn't have been the center of attention because he was nowhere in sight.

"Oh, Reese," Sylvia said when she saw her great-niece. The woman's face was lit up as if it were, well, Christmas. "Isn't it beautiful?"

The tightness eased in Zack's chest when he realized the sounds they'd heard were of the happy variety, and that Sylvia and her companions were ooh-ing and ahh-ing over a gold angel necklace.

"It is," Reese assured her, taking in both the necklace and the shop itself.

Just inside the door was a large red Santa's bag sitting on a table. It was stuffed to the top with wrapped gifts. To the left of it was a box of prewrapped presents that people could purchase if they wanted to do a gift exchange and didn't want to bring one they'd bought elsewhere. Because Zack knew how this worked; he was aware there'd be discreet price stickers on the bottom of those presents, ready for purchase, but the buyer wouldn't know exactly what they were purchasing. The presents in the Santa bag had small stickers, too, so that the person could opt for something more suitable for a man, woman, boy, or girl.

"I got this," Maeve said, showing off a thin silver chain bracelet.

"And I got this." Arabella turned to the side to show them the colorful butterfly barrette in her hair.

Reese did some brief ooh-ing and ahh-ing and then followed it up with a quick question. "Any chance you've seen the shop owner?" she asked Sylvia, Maeve, and Arabella.

All three women shook their heads, and Sylvia's expression grew serious. "Why? Is he possibly Happy Harry?" she asked in a whisper.

"We're here to interview him," Zack settled for saying. He, too, responded in a whisper, though he was certain that by now everyone in town knew what Reese and he were up to.

Sylvia opened her mouth as if she might want to be in on that interview, but then she gave her head a little shake and looked at the other two women. "While they're talking to him, why don't we go ahead and pop down to the civic center and get our names on the Christmas Eve Kiss Ball board?"

Zack noticed Reese's blank look. "The board?" she asked.

It was the tall, willowy Arabella who answered, and she began to show just as much enthusiasm as Sylvia had for the necklace. "If you want a kiss partner for the big photo being taken at the ball, you add your name to the board, and the mayor's assistant will find you a match. The number's up to one hundred seventy-four, and it just keeps on growing. Isn't that wonderful?"

Reese's blank look continued. "Are you saying the three of you are going to participate in the Christmas Eve Kiss Ball?"

The three women nodded in unison. There was plenty of glee in those gestures, too.

"But the ball isn't for three days," Reese pointed out. "We could be done with the interviews before then. We might have found Happy Harry."

That caused some of the merriment to fade, and Zack wished he could read minds, because it seemed to him these three women weren't so hellbent on finding the man they'd all married. Then again, maybe they'd just hit the pause button on those particular feelings so they could have a little fun. This seemed like an unexpected Christmas adventure to them.

"I'm guessing once the interviews are done, you'll be going back home?" Sylvia asked Reese, but then the woman glanced at Zack. "Or will you stay and spend time with Zack?"

"I'll be going home," Reese muttered, but then she tempered her words by adding, "That's the plan anyway. I need to get back to work on a couple of other cases."

"The ones you've been doing on the internet?" Sylvia pressed, and she looked at Zack again. "Reese does a lot of work online."

He'd guessed as much, but he didn't want to put Reese in a corner. If she wanted to leave, she should go.

Not permanently though.

Well, not if he had a say about it, anyway. He'd let Reese get away once before, and he didn't want it to happen again.

Zack was about to suggest they just get through the interviews and then they'd cross the bridge of "what will Reese do next?" when he spotted a man coming out of the office behind the checkout counter.

"That's Harrison Harvey," Zack said, tipping his head in the man's direction. He frowned, though, when he saw that Harrison wasn't alone. Zack's granddad and one of their other ruled-out interviewees, Hal Franklin, were with him. It wasn't a shock to see the three together since they were lifelong friends, but Zack would have preferred this chat with Harrison to be audience-free.

"Zack," his granddad greeted, and the moment seemed to freeze when his attention and Harrison's landed on Sylvia, Arabella, and Maeve. Worse, the women seemed to have frozen as well.

Hell.

Was this it? Was Harrison actually Happy Harry? Or had Reese and he been wrong to cross Hal off the list?

Harrison, Hal, and his granddad snaked their way through the jam of Christmas shoppers and made their way to the wives. None of the six was sparing Reese or Zack a glance. Nope. It was as if the rest of Loveland had disappeared except for those six octogenarians.

"You're Reese's aunt?" his granddad asked, and once Sylvia had nodded, he extended his hand. "I'm Harry Miller, Zack's grandfather."

Sylvia flushed a little. She started to say something, stumbled over her words, flushed some more, and then managed to make introductions. "This is Maeve Hopkins and Arabella Simon."

"Harrison Harvey," the man interjected, and he was flushing, too, while he fixed his gaze on Arabella. Hal was doing some gaze fixing of his own on Maeve.

Even though Zack considered himself to be plenty smart, it still took a couple of seconds for this to sink in. All the flushing and freezing wasn't because Happy Harry had been outed. This was attraction. It could hit out of the blue and had miserable timing, but here it was.

"Uh, how's it going with the project you're working on?" his granddad asked Zack. The man was obviously trying to be discreet, probably in case the wives hadn't known the reason for this trip to the shop, but they clearly did.

"None of these men is Happy Harry," Sylvia assured Zack.

"Yeah, I got that," he said, taking out his copy of the list so he could strike out Harrison's name.

As he did that, Harrison cleared his throat and glanced around. He must have decided what he had to say required more privacy than the forty or so customers who were milling around because he motioned the group to follow him to his office. They did, all of them, and Harrison didn't utter a word until they were behind closed doors.

"Your granddad told me about this Happy Harry search," Harrison explained, "and I think I might know someone who could, well . . . fit the description." He went behind his desk and jotted down a name that didn't ring any bells for Zack.

Harry Floyd.

"Harry was born here in Loveland, and we played football together when we were in junior high," Harrison went on. "He lived out on Sawmill Road, but his family moved away when he was around sixteen or so."

"And what makes you think this guy could be Happy Harry?" Zack asked.

Harrison winced, stalled, and then stalled some more. And that's when Zack knew what Harrison was hesitant to say. They finally had the name of their three-balled man.