Make Me Love You

by Elizabeth Bright

  She had known of Kate, of course—gossip travelled fast between the two schools, so everyone knew about the pregnant senior. Kate had married her boyfriend, Georgef, right after graduation, the day after her eighteenth birthday. Ethan had joined the Army and was immediately deployed to the Middle East. Four years later he was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, leaving her to raise their daughter, Jessica, alone.

  “Fair enough,” Suzie said hastily.

  “Sorry,” Emma muttered. “See? I’m too self-centered to be mayor.”

  Kate snorted. “Right. Because the news shows us so many humble, generous politicians as examples.”

  “You make a good point.”

  “So back to Eli Carter. What’s the story?”

  “Well, you already know that eight years ago, after her mom died and her dad got laid off, Emma’s dad was arrested for making meth with the intention to distribute it.”

  Emma gritted her teeth. That was the charge, and it was technically accurate. Technically. But it wasn’t the truth, in her opinion. It wasn’t like her dad was hanging on street corners, making deals. He was the dealer’s source. Like...like a marijuana farmer, except he was a meth cooker. That was how she explained it to herself.

  Kate nodded. “Go on.”

  “Back then, Emma and Eli were...” Suzie hesitated. She looked at Emma. “Do you want to tell it?”

  Emma shook her head. “I really, really don’t.”

  “Okay. So back then, Emma and Eli were really close. They had been friends since, like, kindergarten. All three of us, and Luke, were friends in high school, but they were practically married.”

  “We were not!” Emma yelled. “We never even went on a date. We were just friends.”

  “Sure, whatever,” Suzie said in a tone that implied the opposite. “Anyway, after high school, Emma went to UNC and Eli joined the police force. When she came home for the summer, she discovered what her dad was up to. She confided in Eli, and he betrayed her. He arrested her dad.”

  “Oh my God.” Kate’s eyes went wide as she digested this. “It’s like a soap opera. But holy crap, Emma, why did you tell a police officer your dad was cooking meth?”

  “We were friends. Best friends,” Emma protested. “I didn’t know who else to turn to and he was...he was Eli. He was always the person I went to. I thought maybe he could help, because helping was what he did. Always. It’s not like I walked into the police station and filed a report. He wasn’t even on duty. I never thought he would arrest my dad.”

  Emma bit her lip. That was true, wasn’t it? She hadn’t thought he would arrest her dad? It didn’t feel like a lie, exactly. Just...wrong, somehow. It was the truth, but maybe not the whole truth. The whole truth was buried in a deep, dark corner of her soul. If she shined a light there, what would she find? She didn’t want to know. Couldn’t bear to know.

  She knew this much was true, at least: She loved her dad. When he was sentenced to ten years in prison, her life was turned upside down. That was Eli’s fault. And she would never forgive him for it.

  “So what now?” Kate asked. “How are you two going to run this town together when we hate his guts?”

  We. Emma appreciated that. Kate might enjoy a nice set of muscles, but she was nothing if not loyal.

  “We made a deal. Communication will be one-hundred percent virtual. Texting, email, phone calls if we absolutely have to. Nothing face-to-face.” Emma lifted her fist, Scarlett O’Hara style.

  “As God is my witness, I will never see Eli Carter again.”

  ***

  The problem with making plans, Eli reflected, was that the universe had no qualms with breaking them for you.

  He had been so sure that they could do this, that between modern technology and sheer stubbornness they could make this crazy arrangement work. So when Mrs. Whittaker called him early the next morning and asked him to meet her at City Hall, of course he had said yes. They needed to go over the basic housekeeping matters, such as getting him a badge and key to the building, passwords for the computer systems, and that sort of thing. Not to mention what the job of deputy mayor actually entailed, because Eli didn’t have a clue. As far as he knew, Mrs. Whittaker shook a lot of hands, kissed some babies, and...baked pies? There had to be more to it than that.

  He hoped so, anyway. He wasn’t really the baby-kissing type. Although he did make a damn good apple pie.

  He had figured he would meet with Mrs. Whittaker, get everything squared away, and text Emma after to give her the rundown. He was completely unprepared to hear Mrs. Whittaker say, “We’ll just wait for Emma and Thomas so we can get started.”

  Eli blinked. “Come again?” he said, just to be sure.

  “Emma and Thomas. He’s getting her badge taken care of right now, but they should be back any minute. No point in going over everything twice, is there?”

  “I figured you would get me set up, and Mr. Whittaker would take care of Emma. Separately.”

  Mrs. Whittaker laughed. “Don’t be silly. You will be working together, won’t you? Might as well start now. Anyway, it makes sense to do you both in one go.”

  “I—”

  “Yes?” Mrs. Whittaker looked at him expectantly.

  Eli looked at her kind face and just couldn’t. He couldn’t tell her that Emma regarded him as a mortal enemy, and that she would rather shave her head than be in the same room with him. He couldn’t tell her they had made a deal to conduct all their business dealings virtually. If he told her all that, Mrs. Whittaker might decide they couldn’t leave after all, and the grandkids would have to wait another few years—if they lived that long. The Whittakers weren’t exactly young, and Mr. Whittaker had a minor heart attack a year ago.

  Eli couldn’t have that on his conscience. His conscience had taken enough of a beating as it was.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” he finished lamely. “We’ll do it together.”

  Mrs. Whittaker beamed. “Wonderful.”

  He doubted Emma would agree. No, Emma was going to kill him. Physically, none of this emotional warfare she had employed yesterday. She didn’t like firearms, but she struck him as the type to always have a pocketknife handy. She would have to get close enough to him to use it, though. Maybe even touch him. She might put her hand on his shoulder, catch him off guard. He didn’t want to be stabbed, so he’d have to find a way to disarm her without hurting her. They might have to wrestle...

  “Are you all right, Eli?” Mrs. Whittaker asked. “You look a little flushed.”

  He jerked to attention. What the hell was the matter with him? He was sitting in the deputy mayor’s office, half hard, fantasizing about a wrestling match with his ex-best friend. He was sick in the head. If Emma ever knew the turn his thoughts took, she would kill him twice.

  The trouble was, there had been a distinct lack of sex in his life for far too long. Of good sex, that is. He and Claire managed to get naked usually twice a month, but it had been...well, the word placid came to mind, and that wasn’t a word that should have anything to do with sex. Placid rhymed with flaccid.

  He was pretty sure Claire agreed with him on that, because when he had called her up last night to suggest they meet for coffee, she had sighed. He knew the sigh meant things were truly over between them, but she had followed it up with asking if maybe they could just break up over the phone, no hard feelings, because it was such a long drive. He was both relieved and a little insulted that she didn’t want to see him one last time, but he agreed. The whole thing was over in three minutes—a new record for him.

  So it wasn’t that he needed to wrestle Emma. He needed sex—and he instinctively knew that sex with Emma wouldn’t be placid. It couldn’t be, because nothing about the way they felt for each other was calm or quiet.

  He shifted uncomfortably on the vinyl-padded chair. “It’s a little warm in here.”

  Mrs. Whittaker nodded apologetically. “It’s an old building. No air conditioning, but the ceiling fans work and the w
indows open. Still, you’re bound to feel the heat when temperatures get into the nineties, like today. Fortunately we don’t have many of those days.” She frowned, giving him an accusing stare as though he were personally responsible. “More than we had in my day, though.”

  “Right.”

  “There’s never enough money for those kinds of projects, it seems. We—oh, here they are now. Goodness, what happened to you?” Mrs. Whittaker exclaimed. “Thomas, you’re a mess.”

  Eli turned in his chair to see what she was referring to. Mr. Whittaker was, in fact, a mess. His suit jacket was slung over one arm, and his face was red and dripping sweat.

  “Elevators are out. Had to walk...six flights of stairs,” Mr. Whittaker panted. He made a beeline for the fan in the corner of the office, revealing Emma behind him. “Oof, that’s better. The stairwell was hot as Hades.”

  “You should have gone slower, Thomas,” Mrs. Whittaker scolded, her forehead knit in a worried frown. “Doctor O’Hare warned you not to overexert yourself. Should I call her?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Mr. Whittaker said, waving her off.

  Watching them, Eli was more sure than ever that they were doing the right thing. Mr. Whittaker needed to retire for the sake of his health. He glanced at Emma, wondering if she’d come to the same realization.

  Emma didn’t look messy—she looked mussed. Like...like she had been wrestling for control of a pocketknife. Her cheeks were glowing pink and her skin was glistening. Tiny blonde whisps had escaped her bun to frame her face like a halo. A bolt of lust socked him in the gut, followed quickly by annoyance. It wasn’t fair. How was he supposed to keep from touching her when she kept looking so...touchable?

  He growled and everyone turned to look at him.

  “It’s—it’s not right that City Hall is in such bad shape,” he said. “It’s one of the oldest buildings in Hart’s Ridge. It should be a source of pride.”

  Mrs. Whittaker gave him a bemused look. “It’s wonderful to see you so...erm...passionate about our historical buildings, Eli. I’m sure you’ll think of some way to help during your tenure as deputy mayor. I feel so much better leaving the town in your hands, now that I see how strongly you feel about Hart’s Ridge.”

  “Don’t know how you’ll fix up the place, seeing as we’re short on funds,” Mr. Whittaker broke in. “We’re always short on funds. You’ll learn to say no a lot in the next two months.”

  Mrs. Whittaker glared at him briefly, then smiled again at Eli and Emma. “He’s not wrong. There’s never enough money for anything, it seems. Perhaps you could hold a bake sale,” she added brightly.

  “A...a bake sale,” Eli repeated, dumbfounded. If the financial future of Hart’s Ridge rested on his ability to convince neighbors to buy baked goods, they were screwed. He glanced sideways at Emma, who was looking everywhere but at him. He sighed. “Sure, why not.”

  “And there’s always the Fourth of July celebration. Maybe you could hold a raffle to raise the funds to renovate City Hall,” Mrs. Whittaker said.

  At the mention of the Fourth of July celebration, Emma’s head snapped up. “The celebration?”

  “You know about the celebration, Emma,” Mrs. Whittaker said, frowning slightly. “It happens every year. Fireworks, a Ferris wheel, food. This year is extra special because it’s the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Hart’s Ridge.”

  “I mentioned it to you yesterday, remember?” Mr. Whittaker interjected. “Permits and such.”

  “Yes, but—” Emma looked at him for the first time since entering the room, her gray eyes full of panic. “But I thought...”

  Aw, hell.

  Eli cleared his throat. “I feel like this was maybe a bit downplayed when we agreed to take on these positions.”

  The Whittakers exchanged guilty looks.

  “The thing is, we would love to stay. The Fourth of July celebration is one of our favorite events. But Thomas’s health won’t allow it.” Mrs. Whittaker shook her head firmly. “The stress of planning an event like this is simply too much. Our house sold much faster than we thought it would, and we took that for a sign. It’s time for us to go.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. The chair squeaked as he stood. “Will you excuse us for a moment? Ms. Andrews, step into the hallway with me for a minute, if you don’t mind.”

  Judging from the look she shot him, she minded a whole lot, but she nodded and followed him out of the office. The moment the door shut behind them, she whirled on her toes to confront him.

  “You said we wouldn’t have to see each other!” she hissed in a loud whisper. “It’s not even twenty-four hours later and here we are, seeing each other.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “We might have to amend our arrangement. There’s no way we can put together this kind of event without spending some time in the same room.”

  She crossed her arms, eyes narrowed. “How much time?”

  All the time. He wanted all the time. But she wasn’t going to give him that.

  “An hour. Let’s say we meet for an hour every Wednesday. That’s it.”

  “An hour? That’s it?”

  “An hour. Not a second longer, I promise. We might not even need to keep meeting after the first few times. We just need to hit the ground running.”

  “An hour on Wednesdays.” She pursed her lips. “Tomorrow is Wednesday.”

  “Right.” He held his breath, waiting.

  “Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Chapter Four

  Emma woke up feeling unsettled. No surprise, when her life had gone topsy-turvy in the space of forty-eight hours. The realization that her income was drying up, the new and entirely unwanted responsibility of being mayor of Hart’s Ridge, and the abrupt end of eight years of giving her best-friend-turned-enemy the silent treatment—any one of those things on its own was enough to knock her on her backside, but the onslaught of everything all at once was too much.

  She had told Eli that she was used to bad luck. Hell, she was even good at it. She was a worrier by nature, and she found that if she worried long enough and hard enough, the solution was bound to appear.

  But this...this was different. And it was all Eli’s fault. She could worry about her food truck, and maybe she would figure something out, as Cesar had said. She could worry about being mayor, and maybe she could find her way out of that, too. But Eli...she could worry about Eli until the sun imploded, and it wouldn’t make one bit of difference. He would still exist. He would still make her insides churn and her heart beat faster and her body lean closer, as if those eight years hadn’t been more than eight seconds.

  And that was unsettling.

  So she did what she always did when she felt unsettled, which was to visit her father in the Asheville Prison.

  The guard looked slightly surprised to see her when she arrived. She gave him a reassuring nod. Her normal visiting hours were every other Saturday, five p.m., and of course Christmas and his birthday. It was unlike her to show up on a Wednesday morning, because most mornings she would be slammed with customers. Not a problem, right now. Cesar was once again covering the shift and probably reading a book out of sheer boredom.

  The guard showed her to the visiting room, where there was a small table and a chair on either side. The first few times she had visited, there had been a glass partition separating them and they communicated by phone. Since then, her dad had earned privileges for good behavior. They couldn’t hold hands, but they could hug hello and goodbye.

  A minute later her dad appeared—without handcuffs, because he had been deemed nonviolent—looking much better than he ever had before his arrest. Back then, he had lost too much weight from worry and there had been dark puffy pouches beneath his eyes from lack of sleep. Now he looked rested and healthy. He liked to say that there were only two things to do in prison: work out and read books, and he did both of those in spades.

  After a quick hug, they sat down opposite
each other, hands clasped politely on the table in front of them, not touching. Her dad was always so careful to follow the rules. In his lifetime, he had only ever broken the one. A major one, but still. Just one. That was all it took, apparently. The system was unforgiving that way.

  “It’s Wednesday. You never come on Wednesdays. What’s going on, Emma-bear?” he asked, using his old nickname for her. It had come about when she was a toddler, not because she was as cute and cuddly as a teddy bear, but because when she didn’t get her way, she would shake her fists and growl as ferociously as a toddler could.

  Oh no, my baby is a bear! What will I dooooo? her mother would mock wail.

  Good times, in retrospect.

  “Everything, Dad. Everything is going on.” She swallowed hard. Of course he knew about the processing plant closing, but when she had seen him last, there had still been hope—and customers. Maybe a senator would step in, or the governor. But that hadn’t happened and it was clear now that no miracle was coming. Lord knew the mayor wasn’t going to produce a last-minute Hail Mary.

  The mayor being her was a solid guarantee on that.

  “Tell me about it,” he said, in that Dad way he had, the way that made her want to do exactly that.

  The whole story came pouring out. That she hadn’t had more than a dozen customers all week. That her last hope was hightailing it out of town and leaving her in charge. That she somehow had to find a way to save her food truck, save the town, and plan the Fourth of July celebration. That Eli—

  And there she stopped short.

  Her dad’s eyebrows shot up to his slightly receding hairline. “Eli Carter? What about Eli?”

  Emma bit her lip. She didn’t want to tell her dad about Eli. As a rule, she didn’t talk about him at all, and she definitely didn’t talk about him with her dad.

  “He’s acting deputy mayor,” she said finally.

  “Is he? Kind of an odd choice, given his profession.” He tilted his head, considering. “Well, it could be worse. Eli’s a good kid.”

  Not a kid. Kids didn’t have scruffy jaws that made her wonder...things...and shoulders that stretched tee shirts to their limits. Kids didn’t—she gave herself a mental slap. Bad Emma.