“If I hadn’t been there, you would’ve been with your mother, no?”
“Well, yes, but she is so desperate for a couple of grandchildren, I’m not convinced she wouldn’t have offered me up to Hughie.”
He laughed way out loud. “No way. Your mother loves you way too much to put you in that mess.”
“I don’t know. Shereallywants grandkids.”
He smiled, nodding. Of course, most mothers did want to eventually be grandmothers, but he didn’t really understand the rush Jade’s mother was in. Her daughter was still fairly young, and it wasn’t like the dating pool in Half Moon Key was all that impressive.
“So she’ll be the one leading the attack when we’re seen in public together at Beach Day,” he guessed.
“Oh, absolutely.”
“Got it. The way she totally manipulated me into working with you on this day made it pretty damn obvious she has plans.”
Jade rolled back into Half Moon Key, and the car started to sputter just as she did. “Oh, no!” she gasped. “This can’t be happening.”
Of course, Parker wasn’t too sure what she was talking about. The car came to a stop just as Jade pulled onto the side of the road. There was no more juice in the car as if it was out of gas, and all of the controls had been frozen.
“What’s going on? Is this normal behavior for Elizabeth?”
She shook her head. “No. This is normal behavior for Half Moon Key.”
His eyes went wide with shock. “I’m sorry. Are you trying to tell me that not only does the internet and the electricity go out and on the fritz, but whatever happens in this town also has an impact oncars?”
“Oh, yes! Cars, coffee machines, ovens, and stoves. It affects everything.”
He frowned. “You do know that there is not one single natural phenomenon that can explain that, right?”
“I know. We all know, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t affect our lives too much.”
He pointed to the dead car. “You sure about that? What if we had an important errand to run for Beach Day, but we were hindered by this strange power surge thing?”
“We would make do without, and besides, everyone in town would be in the same position as us. They would understand.”
“Uh-huh. This is really weird.”
“Don’t go all security guru on us and try to fix it.”
He pursed his lips at her. “Are you sure you don’t want me to at the very least look into it?”
She shook her head. “Nope. The elders would be so pissed. You’ve already started looking into it, haven’t you?”
He blushed. “Guilty as charged, yeah.”
“And what did you find?”
“As I said, there isn’t anything out there that would cause such a strange occurrence. Unless you believe in UFOs or whatever, but I don’t think that aliens have infiltrated your small town.”
She giggled and got out of the car. “Help me put the top up. I’ll have to leave her here until the power gets back up and running in town.”
He left the car and helped her. “I’m honestly shocked that you don’t mind leaving your precious Elizabeth out here without any protection.”
“She’s gonna be fine. Everyone in town knows she belongs to me. If anyone messed with her, they would have to answer to me.”
He grinned. “Noted. Now, what do we do? Don’t we have more planning to do?”
“Yup. We’ve got that tasting at Moony’s. I hope those shoes are comfortable because we arewalking.”