Like everyone else had. The unspoken words hung in the air. Her chest tightened. It would be easier if they didn’t know each other so well. If she hadn’t known where all his scars were, and where to stick the knife to cause the most pain.
She took his chin between her index finger and thumb, turning his face toward hers. “Look at me, Eli. I will never leave without telling you. Okay?”
He swallowed, the lines of his throat moving. “Okay.” He pushed her hand away and glanced at the clock. “You should get going. It’s past five.”
She let out a little yelp. She was going to be late. Hastily, she shoved her feet into her sneakers, not bothering to tie them. “So, we have a deal? We’re doing this?”
He grinned. “Hell yeah. We’re doing this.”
***
Eli collapsed backward on the bed. His heart was pounding, his hands shaking with adrenaline, as though he had wrestled one of the black bears that populated the mountains surrounding Hart’s Ridge instead of simply telling Emma Andrews that yes, he wanted some sort of twisted enemies-with-benefits relationship with her. He was fucked. He was so fucked, but at least he was also going to get fucked, which eased some of the sting a little.
And now she was gone. She had let herself out, telling him to go back to sleep since he didn’t have to be at work for another three hours or so. As if sleep was even possible, after that.
His stomach growled, reminding him that he had skipped dinner last night. First, because she had stormed into his house demanding sex. And secondly, because after receiving the requested sex, she had rolled onto her side, trapping his arm underneath her, and promptly fallen asleep. He could have woken her up, but if he had done that, she would have left. He hadn’t wanted her to leave. He hadn’t wanted to be alone with his thoughts and What It All Meant.
Hell no.
So he had stayed still, mostly awake, hungry for food and hungry for her. He had lied to himself last night, telling himself that once was enough. It had to be enough, because it was all he could have. But he had wanted her for too long to be satisfied with just once. Too long, and too quietly. He hadn’t let himself be truly aware of the longing since the moment eight years ago when she told him she never wanted to see him again. He had buried it deep. Until last night.
It hadn’t been enough. It was like giving a man a single potato chip after years of starving in a desert. All it had done was make him hungrier. The hunger was so much a part of him now that he didn’t think he could ever be satiated.
But it would be a hell of a lot of fun trying.
If it didn’t kill him.
It could go either way.
He would think about that later. Or, better yet, never. Right now he needed breakfast.
Breakfast, fortunately, was something Eli excelled at. He might not have the energy or the capacity to take care of himself after a long shift, but he always started the day off right. Back when feeding himself had been a simple matter of self-preservation, after his mom had finally left for the last time and his dad was either too hung over or too drunk, depending on the time of day, breakfast had consisted of cold cereal or frozen waffles. As a seven-year-old, he hadn’t known how to crack an egg, much less operate a stove.
But that had changed after his dad died. That was when it really hit home that Eli was on his own. No one was ever going to take care of him again, but then, it had been such a long time since anyone had that it didn’t really matter. He could take care of himself, and dammit, he would do it well.
After last night’s activities, he was craving something hearty. Quiche, with a side of fruit, and maybe some bacon, too. Quiche was usually something he reserved for days off, since between the prep work and baking, it was a time-consuming endeavor. There were perks to waking up before dawn to make sure Emma got where she needed to go. Today, he had the time.
He briefly considered ham and spinach before settling on bacon, white cheddar, and scallion, which meant that he was doubling up on bacon, but dammit, he didn’t care. Last night he had slept with Emma. Been inside her. Let her rip out a piece of his soul to take with her as she went on her merry way. A little comfort food was in order. For Eli, there was nothing more comforting than bacon.
Eli grabbed the pre-made piecrust and package of shredded cheese from the fridge. He fed himself well, but he wasn’t above cutting corners. For breakfast quiche, anyway. When it came time for the Fourth of July Pie Baking Contest, he would be making a lard-and-butter crust from scratch guaranteed to melt in even the coldest mouth.
The crust was blind baking, the scallions chopped, and the bacon sizzling in his cast-iron pan when his phone rang. He glanced at the screen and sighed. He didn’t recognize the number other than noting the local area code, but as the only full-time officer assigned to Hart’s Ridge, he didn’t have the luxury of screening calls. Half the town called his personal number rather than the police number, anyway.
Still, calling his personal cell about police business before working hours wasn’t something he wanted to encourage, either. He hit accept and then speaker. “Yeah?”
“Officer Carter, this is Jacob Bronson.” When Eli didn’t respond, because he thought it more pertinent to tend to the bacon, he continued dryly, “You remember, the man financing your campaign for mayor?”
Eli rolled his eyes, grateful that Bronson hadn’t made this a video call. “Right. What can I do for you?”
“We need to rethink our strategy. This election might not be as easy to win as we thought.”
We. The word made his skin crawl. He didn’t want to be part of any we that involved Jacob Bronson. The man was slime.
“Emma is doing a better job as acting mayor than I expected. She was running all over town yesterday, buttering up the business owners, making promises. I’m thinking we’re going to need to change tactics a bit.”
As far as Eli was concerned, his only tactic was to lose. He’d be damned if he let Bronson get in the way of that. “What did you have in mind?”
“New posters, to start with. A catchy slogan that reminds the good people of Hart’s Ridge what you stand for. The rest...well, doing a bit more hand-shaking wouldn’t hurt.”
“Posters. Yeah, okay.” He cracked four eggs into a large bowl and whisked them into a golden yellow froth, then added milk, cheese, scallions, and spices. All the posters in the world wouldn’t change the fact that Emma was damn good at her new job. “What’s the slogan?”
“Still working that out,” Bronson said vaguely.
“Okay, well, you let me know.” Then, not for any real reason other than a desperate need to end the phone call, he added, “Hate to cut this short, but duty calls.”
“Right,” Bronson said. “We’ll talk later.”
Eli hung up the phone and squinted at it questioningly. Those last words sounded like a threat, but maybe that was because the thought of spending even five minutes in Bronson’s company was unpleasant. He shrugged and tossed the phone aside.
Last night he had had amazing sex, this morning he was going to have amazing quiche, and he wasn’t going to let Bronson ruin any of that. It didn’t matter, anyway.
Not even Jacob Bronson could stop Emma from winning this election.
Chapter Twelve
Emma watched the red wand make its inexorable sweep around the clock face, counting down the seconds to nine a.m., with a growing sense of doom.
Mistakes had been made. She had slept with Eli last night, that was mistake number one. Agreeing to make a regular thing of it this morning, that was mistake number two. Right now it didn’t feel like a mistake, but that was because her body was still humming happily from the orgasms. Once that wore off, she would see the error of her ways. It was always a mistake to sleep with your ex-best-friend who arrested your dad. That was just common sense.
But more relevant to the nauseous feeling in her stomach was mistake number three: Agreeing to be mayor.
It was her first day as official Acting Mayor without Mr. Wh
ittaker right there next to her, making sure she didn’t fuck anything up too badly. Last week she had shadowed him, attending office hours in between serving up burritos, scrubbing the iron lamp posts, and turning her home into a bed and breakfast. It was a lot to take in, and not a lot of time to learn it.
Mostly she had stayed quiet, listening intently as Mr. Whittaker resolved one neighbor dispute after another—and there were a lot. Each time, Mr. Whittaker would grab one of the thick volumes that lined the bookshelf, miraculously open it to the exact page he needed, and proclaim, “The regulation is clear as day.” Boom, problem solved.
But Emma couldn’t solve problems by pointing at a law or regulation—and there was, in fact, a difference, according to Mr. Whittaker—because she didn’t have any idea what the law actually was. Mr. Whittaker had assured her there was a regulation for everything, but that hadn’t made her feel any better about it. In fact, it made her feel worse.
“The solution to every problem is right here,” Mr. Whittaker had said, giving the bookshelf a fond pat like it was an old friend. “Some folks might not be too happy with it, but the law is finite. It’s not personal. Just look to the regulations, Emma. You’ll be all right.”
The growing panic in her stomach had told her she wouldn’t be all right at all. Unlike Mr. Whittaker, Emma didn’t have a decade of experience as mayor, and if being a good mayor meant reading all those books...well, Emma had never met a textbook that didn’t put her to sleep. If her mediocrity at school had taught her one thing, it was that her brain simply refused to process boring words. Hart’s Ridge was screwed.
The minute hand hit the two. It was now 9:10. Emma let out a slow, unsteady breath. Maybe no one would show up? Maybe—
The knock on the door crushed her hopes and sent a spike of anxiety up her spine. “Come in,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as nervous as she felt.
The door opened, and Emma breathed a sigh of relief at seeing two familiar faces. Mr. McKinley and Mrs. López were neighbors on Applewood Lane, only a block off Main Street, and both had been frequent customers of her Airstream. They had always seemed like perfectly nice and reasonable people, not the kind who would pitch a screaming fit over how frequently a neighbor mowed his lawn, like Mrs. Gracen had last week. Emma’s mouth had dropped open at the sight of a fifty-year-old woman throwing a tantrum like a four-year-old, but Mr. Whittaker had calmly pointed to the ordinance requiring lawns to be less than eight inches in height and sent her on her way.
“Good morning, Emma,” Mrs. López said cheerfully. “Or should I call you Mayor Andrews?”
Emma straightened. If she was going to convince people that she could do the job, she needed to act the part. Eli exuded authority. People believed in him. People needed to believe in her, too, even if she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt instead of a uniform.
“Mayor Andrews is fine,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“You can tell Greg here to stop being an ornery old jackass and mind his business,” Mrs. López said, her pleasant tone at odds with her words. “I would appreciate it.”
Emma blinked.
“Or how about you tell Alexis that the eyesore she’s building in her backyard is my business, and affects my property as much as hers,” Mr. McKinley snapped. “Seeing as I have to look at it.”
Emma blinked again.
“Have you tried looking somewhere else?” Mrs. López’s voice now dripped with fake sweetness.
Mr. McKinley’s face turned so red Emma was worried he would explode. “Why don’t we start from the beginning?” she asked hastily. “Mrs. López, what are you building, exactly?”
“A treehouse. In a tree that happens to be in my backyard, which means he has no say in it.”
“The trunk is in your yard, by no more than an inch, but half the branches hang on my side of the fence, and you know damn well the roots have spread onto my property. I think that means I have some say in it, and I say it has to go.” He tilted his head in the direction of the bookcase. “I don’t recall seeing a permit for building the treehouse. How about you tell us what the law says about that. That’s what Mayor Whittaker would do.”
He was right about that. Of course there was a law or ordinance to regulate treehouses, and of course Mr. Whittaker would have found the it in no time. But Emma didn’t even know where to begin. A bead of sweat ran down her neck. There had to be another way.
Not just another way. A better way.
Because the law would decide that either Mrs. López was right or Mr. McKinley, and if one of them was right, then one of them had to be wrong. That didn’t seem like it would really solve anything, to Emma’s way of thinking. A treehouse should make people happy.
Anyway, she had the feeling something else was going on here. She had on more than one occasion witnessed Mr. McKinley playing tea party with his granddaughter, Ava, on his wraparound front porch. Men who willingly wore pink feather boas in public just to make their granddaughters happy were not the kind to crusade against a frickin’ treehouse, for heaven’s sake.
“Mrs. López, isn’t Daniel around the same age as Ava?” Emma asked.
She nodded. “They were in the same class in preschool last year. I’m sure he would love to have Ava over to play in the treehouse when it’s done,” she added with a sideways glance at Mr. McKinley.
Mr. McKinley frowned.
“Wouldn’t Ava like that?” Emma prodded. “She’s with you a lot during the summer, isn’t she?” Schools were closed for the summer, and Emma knew Ava spent many of her days with her grandfather while her parents worked.
“Well, I would have thought so,” he admitted. “But she’s upset about the whole thing. It’s her favorite tree, and she’s always thought of it as hers. There’s a fence separating our properties, but as the tree grew, we had to take out that section of the fence to give it more space, so it looks like it’s no-man’s-land, though as I said, it’s on their property by an inch. With a tree house on their side of the fence, it won’t be her tree anymore.”
“Por Dios!” Mrs. López said. “You are telling me that you are doing the bidding of a child?”
“She cried,” Mr. McKinley said.
“She’s five. She will stop crying once she sees how fun it is to play in the treehouse.”
Emma’s gaze darted back and forth as they argued. She was enjoying herself now. It reminded her of her favorite part of running the food truck: Talking to people, hearing about the minutia of their lives. She leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. There wasn’t a fan, but it wasn’t a very difficult problem, now that she understood the heart of it.
“Hmm,” she said.
They stopped squabbling and looked at her expectantly.
“Maybe the solution isn’t no treehouse. Maybe it’s a bigger treehouse. A treehouse that encompasses branches on both properties, and can be accessed from either side of the fence. It’s not Ava’s tree, Mr. McKinley, but maybe it can still feel like her tree if she’s willing to share it.” Emma turned to Mrs. López. “Would that be agreeable to you, Mrs. López?”
She smiled. “I think Daniel and Ava would like that solution. What do you think, Greg?”
“It’s a deal. Hell, I’ll even help Adam build it.” He stood. “Thank you for your time, Mayor Andrews.”
“It was a pleasure.”
She walked them to the door and watched them walk down the hallway together. Once they turned the corner, she did a celebratory hip shimmy. She had done it! Her first official day as mayor was a success. She—
“Ma’am.”
Emma let out a surprised shriek and spun on her toes. “Sorry, Mr. Billings. I didn’t see you there. I was just—”
He held up a sheet of paper, cutting her off. “I’m being fined two hundred and fifty dollars for my lawn being over eight inches. Two hundred and fifty dollars! Now, if I had that kind of money, don’t you think I’d have had someone out to cut my damn lawn? How am I supposed to pay this?”
Emma stared at the notice he was waving in her face and swallowed hard. She had the feeling this was the result of Mrs. Gracen’s tantrum last week. As Mr. McKinley had pointed out, the law was very clearly on her side of things. Which meant poor Mr. Billings was in the wrong to the tune of two hundred and fifty dollars.
“I can’t mow it myself on account of the heart attack I had last year,” he went on, driving home the guilt with every word. “I live on social security, and the monthly check isn’t enough to cover a luxury like lawn mowing. Not if I want to eat and keep a roof over my head. What am I supposed to do? And before you suggest I lean on the kindness of neighbors, let me remind you that my neighbor is Bunny Gracen.”
“I—I don’t know.” But that wasn’t good enough, and she knew it. A mayor had to know. She squared her shoulders. “I’ll mow your lawn myself. Tomorrow. And I’ll have the fine canceled.” She could cancel town fines as mayor, couldn’t she? The answer was probably in one of those damned books Mr. Whittaker was so fond of.
His face softened. “That’s kind of you to offer, but it isn’t a real solution. You think I’m the only one in Hart’s Ridge with a wrecked body and worrisome bank account? The high school kids take care of us in the winter, but we’re on our own in the summer, and there’s at least a few dozen of us. What are you gonna do, mow all our lawns? Not even you, Emma.”
She didn’t know what he meant by that, but she wasn’t going to waste time worrying it through. The gears were already turning in her brain. The high school kids. She had a wonderful, horrible feeling that the solution had been right there in front of them for years, and it wasn’t Ordinance 2014-199.
Back when she attended John Hart High School, there had been a requirement of ten hours of community service to graduate. To help facilitate that, a school club had formed to shovel snow off sidewalks and driveways for Hart’s Ridge citizens who met certain income and need requirements.
“Why don’t you come in and have a seat?” she said. “I think I might have an idea.”
Make Me Love You Page 12
