by Lucy Score
Their food arrived, and they talked between bites. He watched her closely, finding it interesting that she seemed determined to get to know him while keeping him in the dark about her.
“Why do you do that?” he asked when she brushed off a question about childhood.
“Do what?” This time, he could tell she wasn’t pretending to misunderstand.
“Why are you so interested in learning about me but dodge all questions about you?”
She flushed, light pink high on her cheeks, and picked up a soup spoon.
“Old habit, I suppose.”
“See, like that. What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Why do you want to know, Sheriff? Am I under investigation?”
“Say my name.” He gave the order quietly.
“What?”
“I want to hear you say my name. Not Sheriff. Not Cardona. My name.”
“Donovan.” Her voice was silky soft.
The blush on her cheeks deepened. But her eyes. Oh, those eyes. They delivered a message. Interest, trust, heat. That had been a mistake, but he wasn’t going to waste time regretting it.
“How old were you when your mother left?” He shifted gears fast enough that she didn’t have time to put her walls up.
“Eight.” She blinked as if surprised that she’d answered the question.
“I bet you got tired of having everyone ask you if you were okay all the time back then.”
She was studying him now. “You’re an interesting man, Donovan.”
“You interest me, Eva.”
“I do? In what way? Am I a puzzle to solve? A victim to save?”
He sidestepped her questions. He wasn’t sure how she’d react to the blunt honest answer. That he wanted to take her to bed and then learn everything there was to know about her before potentially marching her down the aisle. There was something here. Something in her that called to him. Despite her evasive answers, despite her veneer of mystery, he recognized something inside her. And he wanted it. He just needed to find the key.
“I want to know what goes on in that dizzying mind of yours,” he confessed.
She grinned at him and lit up the room with the smile. Honest, genuine, sweet. “You wouldn’t survive an hour in there,” she predicted.
He leaned in. “Try me.”
She bit her lower lip, considering. And he felt his eyes narrow. Despite the food on the table in front of him, Donovan Cardona was hungry.
CHAPTER TEN
Eva was enjoying herself and not just because of the background she was collecting. Donovan was charming, smart, and his heart of gold—as shiny as that sheriff’s badge—shone through in the stories he shared.
The man had climbed into the sewer to rescue Mr. Garcia’s ferrets for God’s sake. If that didn’t say “good guy” Eva didn’t know what did. With a few hours of work in front of her, she’d switched to water, and he’d done the same. Responsible, sensible, practical. It shouldn’t be sexy, but damn it, everything Donovan Cardona did was hot.
She did her best to dance around his dogged attempts to draw her out. She couldn’t understand them. Usually when she told people she was a technical writer who lived in her sister’s backyard, they immediately changed the subject. Not Donovan. He worked every subject back around to her, and she found herself revealing more than she usually did.
He was the fascinating one and unexpectedly candid, too. He spoke of his parents with affection and admitted he never felt like an only child growing up. Not with the Pierces just down the road.
“Blue Moon must have been an interesting place with all four of you single,” Eva smiled at the idea. She could just imagine the women fanning themselves when the infamous Pierces and their sheriff friend walked in the door. “Were you surprised that they all settled down and got married?”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Not with knowing their parents. Phoebe and John and my parents, too. They had something. They made marriage look not just easy but fun. I think we all grew up expecting to find that.”
“Three for four,” Eva said, tapping his ring finger. “Are you lining up a Mrs. Sheriff?”
When he lifted his gaze to hers, she felt something sweep through her like a hot summer breeze. She swallowed hard and sat up a little straighter. “I mean, is the Beautification Committee chomping at the bit to get you married off?”
“I’m off limits to the B.C. It’s a long-standing understanding. They can’t mess with town officials.”
She laughed. “I hate to point this out to you, but Beckett Pierce is mayor… and married off.”
“Yeah, but I have a gun and handcuffs. I’m much scarier than Mr. Mayor.”
Now that he mentioned it, she was feeling a few nerves with him looking at her like that.
“Donovan!”
Eva leaned back, breaking their gaze as Ellery rushed up to their table.
Her usually pale face flushed with rage. Her black cardigan had batwing buttons and a scythe embroidered onto the chest. She wore a checked, pleated miniskirt and black lace tights. Her lips were painted a deep purple. “I need you to arrest someone,” she announced breathlessly.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” Donovan asked, laying a hand on her shoulder.
Ellery closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I need you to arrest the Beautification Committee,” she said.
“The entire committee?” Donovan clarified.
“They kicked me off the committee!” Her voice rose two octaves.
“Oh, boy,” Lila said, coming onto the scene. “Sounds like you could use a drink.”
“Can you bring me the usual, Li?” Ellery asked, her dark eyes watering now. Eva patted Ellery’s shoulder.
“One corpse reviver coming up,” Lila said.
“You can put that on my check,” Eva told her. “I’ll take care of it when you come back.”
“Hang on,” Donovan argued. “You’re not paying.”
“I asked you here, remember?” Eva reminded him.
“Guys, can we please talk about who we’re going to arrest first?”
“Why don’t we talk about why you want them arrested first?” Donovan suggested amicably.
Eva loved seeing him slide into his sheriff’s pants—though she’d prefer to see him slide out of them…
Ellery grabbed Eva’s napkin and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
When Donovan looked at her, Eva mouthed “Uranus?”
He shrugged and sighed.
“Let’s start at the beginning. Did you have a meeting tonight?” he asked.
“Yeah. And they kicked me off the committee! I am the literal mastermind behind every match we’ve made since I joined, and they think they can do better without me?” She sniffled dramatically.
“Why would they kick you out?” Eva asked.
“Because of some dumb rule about single B.C. members needing their marital partners to be fully vetted.”
“Wait. What?” Donovan asked.
Lila arrived with a dark purple drink and the bill. Ellery snatched the drink off her tray while Eva jumped on the check.
“No, hang on a second—” Donovan reached for the check.
Ellery knocked back the drink and slammed the glass on the table, narrowly missing Donovan’s hand.
That’s when Eva spotted it. The black diamond twinkling on Ellery’s left hand. “Oh, my God!” She grabbed her hand to examine the ring. “You’re engaged!”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Ellery wailed. “Mason proposed, and we’re getting married on Halloween. And when I told my friends tonight, they said I could either postpone the wedding until they made sure we were compatible or I could resign.”
Eva slipped her arm around Ellery’s shoulders. “That doesn’t seem fair.” She wondered what Emma would say about finding out that her ex-boyfriend, the nice, normal accountant from California, was marrying Ellery, Blue Moon’s swe
et queen of goth.
“That’s what I said. So, I told them the wedding is on and I’m staying on the committee. And then they took a vote and kicked me out!”
Lila appeared at her side with a fresh drink. “This one’s on me, honey. If you want to hang out until after my shift, we can go throw goat shit at their houses—”
“There will be no throwing goat shit at anyone’s house,” Donovan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Ellery’s purple lower lip protruded in a pout. “What’s wrong with them all of the sudden? Why would they go crazy like this? I thought they were my friends.”
Donovan took a slow breath. “Were any of you at the town meeting tonight?”
Ellery shook her head, her pigtails dancing. “No, we were at the library in our meeting.”
“There might be a reason why everyone is acting out of character,” Donovan began.
“Excuse me, Cardona,” Bill Fitzsimmons, in all his skinny, hippie glory wiggled in next to Ellery. “Do you think I need to stock my bunker with more than a month’s worth of supplies? I’m worried that someone might set fire to the whole town and I’d need to be underground for longer than this Uranus thing.”
“Fitz, we’re going to need a minute here,” Donovan said, trying to be polite.
Eva grinned across the table at him. She pushed her stool back. “I don’t want to take you away from town business,” she told him. He reached out and grabbed her wrist, holding her in place. “Uh-uh. You’re staying. Fitz, you don’t need to lock yourself in a bunker. We’re going to be just fine.”
“Maybe you are,” Ellery said, draining her second drink. “My life is ruined. My friends abandoned me. I’m getting married to the man of my dreams, and they kick me off the Beautification Committee.”
“They kicked you out?” Fitz gasped, bringing his skinny fingers to his mouth. “It’s starting,” he whispered.
“What’s starting?” Ellery demanded.
“The apocalypse! It’s happening!” Fitz was shouting now. “Everyone get in your bunkers! The apocalypse is starting!”
The din in the bar quieted for a second and then exploded as people started shouting questions.
“Will the liquor store stay open during the apocalypse?”
“How much toilet paper should I stockpile?”
“What’s happening with Uranus?”
“Ah, hell, Fitz,” Donovan muttered. He held up his hands to address the crowd. “Everyone calm down.”
Ellery slammed her empty glass down on the table and stared out the dark windows. “This means war,” she murmured. Eva was the only one who heard her. She slapped cash on the table over the bill and wiggled her way through the crowd that was gathering around the fearless sheriff. As she headed toward the door, Eva felt the weight of his gaze on her. She turned and mouthed “thank you” over her shoulder. His eyes narrowed, and he shook his head.
She was in trouble with Sheriff Sexy. And she didn’t mind one bit.
--------
Eva dialed her sister the second she was in her car. Emma had moved to Blue Moon a year and a half ago, ending things with her boyfriend Mason and leaving him on the west coast. She’d never given him a second thought until he’d shown up in town with an out-of-the-blue marriage proposal orchestrated entirely by the Beautification Committee. Mason’s proposal finally made Emma confront what she really wanted.
And what her heart had demanded was Nikolai Vulkov. He wasn’t the 401(k) and mortgage kind of man. No, he was a whisk a woman away for a week of shopping and sinfully hot sex in Paris kind of man.
They’d eloped—to Paris, of course—just a few months before and Eva was thrilled to note she’d never seen her sister happier.
“Mason and Ellery are getting married,” Eva said, cutting off Emma’s greeting.
Emma laughed. “I know. They came to me this afternoon at the brewery. It was very sweet and completely unnecessary. I’m happy for them, and we’re all invited to the wedding.”
“Well, here’s something you probably didn’t know. Ellery broke the news to the B.C., and they kicked her out.”
“What? Shut up!” Emma screeched. Her screech turned into a giggle and a whispered “Stop it!”
“Oh, geez. Is Niko there?”
“I’m here, and I’m distracting your sister, Eva,” Niko said into the phone. “If you want to call back in an hour, you can have her all to yourself.”
“Gross. Carry on. Em, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Yoga with Gia?” Emma offered.
“Sounds good. Bye, Niko.”
“Bye, Eva.”
She hung up before she had to hear more naughty bedtime giggles out of her sister and pulled into Beckett and Gia’s driveway. She jogged around to the backyard, shoved her keys in her front door, and hurried inside. She didn’t bother with the lights and, instead, went straight to her laptop.
She’d been itching to take notes at the brewery. The man was walking, talking inspiration. She was afraid she’d forget a piece of the Donovan Cardona puzzle, and then, when she recreated the man, he’d fall flat on the page. But if she pulled out her notebook, he’d make her explain what it was for. And she wasn’t willing to go that far with him… at least not honesty-wise.
Coming here, meeting him. It was fate. He was exactly what she needed professionally. And, if she stared into those denim blue eyes a second longer, it would be personally too. It was embarrassing to think that she couldn’t look at him without launching into a thousand fantasies while he probably saw her as just another citizen to protect. She didn’t want to be protected. Her sisters and father had done enough of that in the years after their mother left.
No, Eva didn’t need another protector. She needed a man who would forget to be careful with her. One who made her feel lusted after, loved, craved, adored.
Unfortunately, no matter how many times she waded into the dating pool, she waded right back out feeling alone and unsatisfied.
Maybe that’s why romance novels had appealed to her. That heat, that knowing, when heart and body recognizes what they’ve been waiting for. She had written her first love story in college, and was embarrassed at the thought of her dual business management and finance major roommate finding it, hiding it in a folder on her hard drive labeled Warranties and Manuals.
Then she’d written another. And another.
By the time she’d graduated with her freshly minted creative writing degree, she’d had a few dozen short stories and a sketchy outline for a novel. She’d written it, poorly, and told no one as she’d queried agent after agent, imagining the moment she would finally find her own book on a shelf somewhere.
After her twenty-first rejection, Eva scrapped the book and vowed to become a disillusioned adult. She landed a job as a technical writer, a “good” job in terms of money and benefits. But it was sucking the soul out of her.
One night, after too many glasses of wine out with friends, Eva had walked past a book store that drew her in with its glossy book covers and exciting titles on display. She’d decided then and there that she wasn’t done with writing regardless of what any gatekeeper told her. Eva knew in her blood that this is what she wanted to do.
At night, between disastrous dates, she started fiddling with a new story. She worked on it for a year and between working and writing, she researched every tiny detail of indie publishing. If the big publishers didn’t want to give her a chance, then she’d make her own.
To pay for a cover designer and professional editing, Eva saved every penny she could, living in crappy apartments with lukewarm water and stained ceilings. And in that year, she’d moved three times trying to outrun the past. But the past wasn’t done with her yet. When her sisters asked about her vagabond lifestyle, she told them she was experiencing wanderlust. They applauded her independence… and then offered her money.
She knew they were coming from a place of sisterly love, but Eva was going
to solve her problems and run down her goals on her own. She’d prove to everyone—herself included—that she was good enough. And then she would finally be the woman she’d always planned to be.
Her first novel, written under a pen name, found a tiny following that had grown with each successive release. Her modest living began to inch its way toward respectable, and when her monthly sales report hit the number she was looking for, she’d given her two-week’s notice at the firm she where she worked.
Her last book had caught fire, slowly at first and then each passing week drew more readers to her. She’d been inspired by Blue Moon when she arrived for Gia’s wedding to Beckett. The zany antics of well-meaning gossip mongers? It was irresistible. As were the delectable Pierce brothers and, of course, Sheriff Sexy.
Her E-book sales had exploded as had her Facebook following and newsletter list. She was finally making it happen. Readers were begging for more. They wanted a series, and Eva felt she could make that happen. Here in Blue Moon, she was practically smothered in inspiration.
And once she’d nailed her next goal—a bestseller—she’d break the news to her family. There’d be champagne and cake, and she’d give each one of them a signed copy. And everyone would finally know that she was okay, better than okay. She would be whole and worthy and pretty damn awesome.
Eva stared at the soft glow of her screen and flexed her fingers over the keyboard.
Her phone signaled a new text. She spotted Donovan’s name and frowned. She hadn’t given him her number, and she certainly hadn’t programmed him into her phone.
Donovan: “You abandoned me to a mob.”
She chewed on her lip and typed out a response.
Eva: “I know better than to get between a rock star and his rabid fans.”
Donovan: “Very funny.”
Eva: “How did you get in my phone?”
Donovan: “I found it in your pants.”
His follow-up message came a second later.
