“That doesn’t count as a date,” Owen said.
Jack, one of the best-looking men in the county, leaned forward. “What about blind dates? Do they count?”
“If you asked her out, put on a clean shirt and took her somewhere,” Owen repeated.
“Nope.” Jack spread his hands out. “Got nothing.”
“It’s not like there’s a lot to choose from,” Les said. “I mean, I live with my grandparents.”
“Which helps them out a lot,” Meg assured him. “They’re always telling me what a blessing you are to them.”
“Well, blessings don’t get dates. If it wasn’t for Mexican Train dominoes and satellite TV, I’d go crazy.”
Owen felt his pain.
“For heaven’s sake,” she muttered. “Iron your clothes and go out once in a while.”
“Go where?”
“The Dahl? Church? Billings?”
“Yeah,” he grumbled. “With who?”
“This brings me to my next issue,” Jerry interjected. “We all know there are very few single women in this town.” He held up his pad. “I’ve made a list.”
Meg rolled her eyes. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
He looked down and read aloud. “In no particular order. Deb Walker, divorced. Lucia Swallow, widowed. Joanie Parker, divorced. I’m not counting anyone collecting Social Security or using a walker. For now I’d like to just concentrate on the under-forty age group.”
“Under forty,” Meg repeated. “That leaves Deb out.”
“I’ll cross her out, but she sure doesn’t look forty,” he said, studying his notes again. “Lucia, Joanie, Patsy Parrish, Aurora and—”
“Joanie is with Cam,” Joey said.
“Nope. Broke up. I checked.”
Joey brightened. “Really?”
“You’re an efficient guy.” Meg looked impressed. Owen wasn’t. He figured Jerry Thompson was too damn nosy. Despite the gloom-and-doom population study and the lack of social events, hosting a television show was just about the strangest idea he’d ever heard.
Jerry looked up from his papers. “Cam drank himself into a stupor last night and Aurora had to take him home when she closed up.”
“If Cam stopped drinking, he might still have a girlfriend,” Meg declared. “The guy needs help.”
“What’s in it for you?” Owen asked the mayor. “You must have known when you moved here there wasn’t much going on.”
“Uh, yeah.” He flushed, fiddled with his pen and avoided making eye contact with Owen. “I thought it was a great real-estate opportunity.”
“Uh-oh,” Meg said. “Broken heart?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “Tracy—the producer. We, uh, had a thing. About five years ago. She wouldn’t leave Los Angeles and I was having a really bad asthma problem. Smog,” he added. “I thought, well, never mind what I thought. We still text.” He glanced toward Owen. “Hey, it’s a start.”
He shrugged. “You do what you have to do.”
“She’ll be here in three weeks,” he said. “She’s coming for the weekend, before Halloween. She’ll get a taste of our picturesque Western town, meet the guys, see the sights and check out the festivities.”
“Festivities?” Owen remembered parties for the kids at the elementary school, teachers dressed as witches and decorations on a few houses, but he wouldn’t have described them as particularly festive.
“Big party at the Dahl the Saturday night before Halloween,” Jerry said. “There’s a raffle to see who gets to decorate the bear.”
“Your grandfather’s bear,” Les explained, in case Owen had forgotten. “It’s a big deal.”
Owen tried to picture the massive stuffed grizzly in a costume but couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He wondered if that was another one of the mayor’s crazy ideas.
“The base is cracked,” Jerry said. “We’re going to have to raise money to repair it soon.” He gave Owen a pointed look. “Unless you’d like to take care of that yourself.”
“Back to the list,” Meg said. “Who else do you have?”
“Maxine, rents a place out of town, has all those dogs. And then there’s you, of course.”
“Keep me off your lists.” Meg frowned. “Wait a minute. Why is there a list?”
“Because I needed to point out to the council—and to the preproduction team—that we have a lack of women to, uh, you know, get together with.”
“Like we didn’t know?” Les, who might have been bucked off one too many bulls, looked confused.
“They wanted to make sure we were legitimately short of women. To keep things accurate, I also have a list of all the single men in the county,” Jerry said, flipping through the notebook until he found the page he wanted. “I starred the ones who are between twenty-one and forty-five.”
“This gets better and better.” Meg leaned forward to peer at the names. “How many?”
“Forty-eight.” He glanced at Owen. “I didn’t put your name on here because, ah, it’s not like you really live here.”
“True.”
“But I can pencil you in,” he offered. “Have you ever wanted to be on television?”
“About as much as I want to sit naked in a pit of rattlesnakes,” Owen replied.
“Well,” said Meg, pushing back her chair, “that’s an appealing vision. I’m going to go back to work now and let you future reality stars work out the minor details.”
“Leave me out of this,” Owen said, but Meg ignored him. Again. He watched her head toward the counter, where one lonely patron sat nursing his coffee and reading People magazine.
“Damn.” Jerry closed his notebook and grimaced. “I wasn’t finished.”
“She used to be shy,” Owen said. “Quiet. Sweet.”
“No way,” one of the kids said. “She’s tough.”
“Hard-hearted,” another agreed. “Not like her mother. Loralee was always smiling and happy.”
“And not the brightest light on the porch.” Owen assumed Loralee, who was something of an airhead in the marriage department, had a lot to do with her daughter’s lack of enthusiasm for the men around here. He dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the counter and scooped up the Styrofoam container of bacon for Boo.
“Gentlemen,” he said, settling his hat on his head. “It’s been a pleasure, but I’m heading home.”
“I’ll be in touch when I get this thing going.” Jerry stood and shook Owen’s hand, as did the other three.
“I’m afraid I’m not going to be much help.” Because I don’t want to be on television, I don’t want to help turn the town into a dating game and I think you’re all pretty much insane.
CHAPTER THREE
MEG STOOD BEHIND the counter and fiddled with the money in the cash register as if it was the most important thing she’d done all morning.
She ignored the ringing phone, the clatter of dishes, the chatter between customers, and took a few moments