by Lucy Score
And then she opened for him. And he lost his damn mind.
He lifted her up, dropping her on the kitchen island and changing the angle of the kiss. His tongue swept into her mouth, and she moaned against him, into him. He needed to find his control before they went too far, before he was stripping her naked right here and—
“Hey, Aunt Eva can I borrow—” Evan’s strangled cry tore them apart. Eva nearly fell off the island, but Donovan steadied her and helped her down.
“Sorry, Ev,” Eva said, fanning her flushed cheeks.
“What is with all you adults? Everyone’s always making out all the time. I’m starting to get emotionally scarred. Don’t you have anything better to do?”
Donovan grinned at her nephew. “In another year or two, you won’t be able to think of anything better to do,” he promised.
“Oceana and I have an intellectual relationship,” Evan lectured them on his junior high girlfriend. “Sure. We kiss and stuff, but man, not all the time and not where you make food.”
Eva wrapped him in a headlock despite the two inches he had on her. “Awh, poor Evan being surrounded by people who like each other.”
“You sound like my mom!”
“Not cool, man! Not cool,” Eva said, tightening her grip on him. “I’m the fun, awesome aunt.”
“Fine. If you’re so fun and awesome, can I borrow your zombie apocalypse game?”
“Schooling Beckett tonight?” she guessed.
“Yeah, he’s been stressed with all this planetary crossing crap and trying to find Reva and Caleb’s mom. I thought I’d distract him with some blood and guts.”
She ruffled his hair. “You’re a good kid, Ev.”
“Yeah. I know. I don’t know why everyone feels like they need to keep reminding me all the time. Why doesn’t anyone tell me I’m tall or I smell okay?”
“You’re a thirteen-year-old boy. You don’t smell okay.”
“Ha. Game please.”
Eva excused herself to dig through a stack of games and movies in the living room.
“So, you and my aunt,” Evan said, trying to appear taller.
Donovan grinned and held up his hands. “I remember your ass-kicking talk with Niko when he started dating Emma. You don’t have to warn me again.”
Evan sighed. “I knew this was going to happen. You always got that sappy puppy-dog look when she was around.”
“Yeah, but it was a manly sappy puppy-dog, right?”
“Oh, sure. Definitely. But you carry a gun, so that helps.”
The kid was placating him. No wonder the whole town called him Mini Mayor. He may not have been Beckett’s by blood, but they were destined to be father and son.
“Aha!” Eva wielded a case triumphantly. “Found it. Don’t scratch it, and don’t beat my high score or I’ll—”
“Yeah, yeah. You’ll pelt me with pumpkin pies. Got it.” Evan snatched the game out of her hand. “Thanks Aunt Eva. Don’t cross any lines tonight, Sheriff.”
“You smell okay, Evan,” Eva called after him.
He grinned and ducked out the door.
“I love that kid so much I want to hug him until his head pops off,” Eva sighed. “Is that murder?”
--------
“Where are we going?” Eva asked as Donovan eased down Beckett’s driveway. He’d traded the cruiser for his SUV. Eva couldn’t help but shoot a glance over her shoulder at the big backseat. Her blood was still pumping from that kiss. She wasn’t sure what had come over her, but it had been worth it to feel that heat. And so much better than worrying about it until the end of the date.
After Evan’s hasty entrance and exit, neither of them had mentioned the kiss or attempted to reenact it. But Eva was fairly certain she wasn’t the only one thinking about it right now.
“I made us reservations at a restaurant in Cleary,” Donovan told her, heading east.
“Fewer distractions in Cleary?” Eva asked.
He glanced at her, his smile crooked, dimple winking, and took her hand in his. “Maybe.”
She was holding hands with Donovan Cardona. He brought her flowers, let her kiss the hell out of him, and now he was holding her hand. What alternate universe had she stepped into? Eva wondered.
“Oh, no,” she breathed, her dreams and fantasies collapsing in on themselves in a black hole of reality.
“Oh, no, what?” Donovan asked, squeezing her hand.
“Uranus.”
“Excuse me?”
“The crossing. The stupid stellar apocalypse. This is all because of that, isn’t it? You asked me out because you’re going crazy,” Eva wailed, covering her face with her free hand. “I knew this was too good to be true.”
“Eva.”
But she was too busy lamenting her cruel fate. “Why does this always happen to me? I’m not a terrible person. I shouldn’t have all this bad karma—”
“Eva. Shut up!” he ordered.
Eva snapped her mouth shut.
“This has nothing to do with any kind of planetary alignment. I’ve wanted you from the first second I laid eyes on you.”
“Great. Now I know you’re crazy.”
He squeezed her hand hard, and Eva yelped.
“Don’t tell me what I do or don’t feel, Evangelina,” he said evenly. “These feelings didn’t start up just this week or last or even last month. They’ve been around for a while.”
“You’re being very… honest,” Eva told him. Honesty made her a bit squeamish.
“It’s the only way to be in a relationship.”
“So, we’re in a relationship?” her voice squeaked up an octave.
“We are if that’s what you want. I want to give you what you want.”
Her laugh was nervous and sounded borderline hysterical to her own ears. What she wanted at this exact moment was a naked Donovan Cardona cavorting around in her bed. “This is overwhelming… I thought we were just going to dinner. Not planning a future.”
“I want to be upfront with you. No surprises, no secrets. I want you Eva. And I think you might be it for me.”
She had definitely hit her head at some point today and was hallucinating all of this. The handsome sheriff that she’d lusted after from afar was telling her she was it for him? Concussion for sure. Possibly an aneurysm.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. And now she was mute. Awesome. Mute and concussed. She felt nervous and excited and horrified and—dare she think it? —hopeful.
Donovan’s phone buzzed from the tray in the dashboard.
He swore darkly.
He grabbed it and stabbed a button. “I thought I told you not to call—”
Donovan stopped, listened. “Are you puking right now?” He pulled the phone away from his ear, and Eva could hear retching.
“Where’s Layla?” Donovan demanded. “Fuck. Okay. I’ll be there in ten.”
He hung up and tossed the phone back in the tray. “A little rain delay,” he told Eva.
“What’s going on?”
“Layla’s on a call, and Colby’s got some kind of stomach bug or food poisoning and can’t stop puking. I have to go check on Fitz at the bookstore. Some customer called 911.”
Eva was not about to let the evening end like this. Not without another kiss and a concussion check. “Can I come with you?” she asked.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There was a crowd in front of the used book store when Donovan pulled into the parking lot. A ragtag band of hippies were pressing their faces against the front windows. Through the open front door, Eva could hear shouting and a sporadic thwacking noise.
“Stay here,” Donovan said. He made it as far as getting his seatbelt off before he reconsidered. “On second thought, come with me. I want to keep an eye on you.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” she complained but got out of the SUV anyway. She was dying to know what was happening inside.
“Oh, than
k goodness, Sheriff!” A woman in flared jeans with peace sign patches on both the knees flagged down Donovan. “I don’t know what happened. One second Aretha was browsing the clearance section, and the next she and Fitz are screaming and throwing books at each other.”
“Thanks, Xanna. I’ll talk to them.”
Eva wasn’t sure if anyone else noticed it, but she caught the straightening of Donovan’s broad shoulders, the tightening of his jaw. He was making the shift from friend and neighbor to authority figure. It was sexy as hell.
“You stay behind me. Don’t touch anything. Don’t say anything,” he ordered. “Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it. Let’s get in there before someone throws a chair or a body through the window.”
Inside, Eva was met with the musty perfume of old books. The shop looked a lot bigger inside than it had from the exterior. Rows and rows of mismatched shelves ran the length of the store. They were neatly organized by genre and author. In the center of the shop was a seating area with a few ratty couches and some beat up tables and chairs. Behind the furniture was the empty register.
“It was in clearance!” A woman who Eva assumed was Aretha—though she’d pictured more of an Aretha Franklin than the skinny white lady in her fifties—popped out of an aisle jack-in-the-box style and hurled a paper back at the desk.
Fitz’s head popped up like a prairie dog from behind the register. “I said it was an accident! It was a hardcover! Hardcovers don’t go in the paperback clearance!”
He dodged the magazine that Aretha chucked in his direction.
“It was in clearance!”
“I’m not selling you a Sylvia Day book for a buck! The sex scenes alone are worth at least five! How would I survive on prices like that?”
“You don’t expect me to believe you make a living off used books, do you?” Aretha sent two paperbacks flying at once. “The entire town knows you sell weed out the back door!”
“I haven’t done that since the nineties,” Fitz argued, ducking the next literary volley.
Books were piling up in front of the register in a discarded monument. Aretha sent a hardcover flying and it knocked over the register monitor.
Fitz’s head popped up again. “Hey! Don’t you dare break that!”
“Enough!” Donovan’s voice cut through the screaming and book throwing, and there was one second of absolute silence. And then Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in hardcover flew out of the stacks and caught Donovan on the forehead.
“Oh, shit,” Eva gasped, clapping a hand to her mouth. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer her. “Aretha, you come out here right now,” Donovan ordered.
Eva noticed he’d unclipped the clasp on his stun gun but wasn’t making any moves toward it. He had more restraint than she did. That lady would have been flat on her back seizing on the floor if Eva had been in charge.
“Not until he gives me the sale price!” she hollered back.
“Goddammit,” Donovan muttered to himself. He yanked the handcuffs off his belt. “Stay,” he warned Eva and hustled back the aisle. There was a high-pitched scream, a thud, and then Donovan was marching Aretha out from the stacks with her hands cuffed behind her back.
She was swearing up a blue streak when Donovan shoved her down on one of the worn arm chairs. “Now, sit there and be quiet so I don’t tase a Sunday school teacher in front of half the town,” he told her. “I’ll do it, and I won’t feel bad about it, Aretha.”
The woman shut up and sat, pouting.
“Fitz, what the hell is going on?” Donovan demanded.
“Dude, I don’t know! It’s the planets, man. I knew I should have gotten in my bunker! She was just in here shopping with the book club and all the sudden starts screaming about clearance prices.”
“The book was in clearance!” Aretha shouted, kicking her feet against the floor.
“For the love of God, woman. Keep quiet until it’s your turn.” Donovan rubbed a hand over the goose egg that was rising on his forehead.
Sensing the primary danger was over, Eva busied herself with picking up the books that had fallen victim to Aretha’s rant. She stacked them neatly on the counter, piling up the damaged ones in the corner.
She was just pulling a cart over when a paperback she’d missed caught her eye behind the couch. Eva bent to pick it up and gasped.
It had happened. The very first time she found one of her books in a bookstore, and it was in Blue Moon’s used book shop, and someone had thrown it in a tirade. It was even better than seeing it in the window of a Barnes and Noble, she decided.
Although being in a second-hand store meant someone hadn’t loved it enough to keep it. But at least they’d read it.
“What’s wrong?” Donovan asked looking over her shoulder.
“Jesus. I need to put a cat collar on you,” Eva gasped, clutching the book to her chest.
There was a knock at the front door. “Is it okay to come back in, Sheriff?” Mrs. Nordemann, the world’s longest mourning widow and busiest busybody asked from the doorway.
“I could really use the money,” Fitz whispered to Donovan. “The stripping has really slowed down this month.”
Donovan rolled his eyes. “Everyone can come in if they help Fitz clean this up and answer my questions. One more outburst, and I’m dragging you all into the station.”
Eva didn’t know what to do with her book. She tried to slide it onto a shelf, but Donovan was watching her. She smiled and waved.
She scuttled behind the desk to help pick up the book shrapnel that had made it over the counter, and when she put her book down for one second next to Fitz’s ancient fax machine, Donovan snatched it up.
“What’s this?” he asked.
She reached for it, but he held it over her head out of her reach.
“Fated Fools by Ava Franklin.”
Eva stopped fighting and squeezed her eyes shut as Donovan turned the book over.
“Holy shit. This is you?”
Why in the ever-living hell had she put her picture on the back of her books when she revamped the covers last spring? Eva lamented. She wrote under a pen name. Why didn’t she have a pen picture or whatever the hell it was called.
“Don’t say—”
“You’re Ava Franklin?” Mrs. Nordemann gasped.
When Donovan dropped his arm, the woman pounced, wrestling the book out of his grasp.
“I can’t believe it!” she squealed.
Donovan’s eyes widened. Eva knew Mrs. Nordemann was not a squealer. She was a schemer.
Mrs. Nordemann held up the book to Eva’s face. “I can’t believe Ava Franklin lives in my town!” She was drawing a crowd. “You need to speak at Book Club,” she decided, yanking out her phone and opening her calendar.
“Now, we were Skyping with Thalia Price this month, but we can reschedule her.”
The woman wanted to reschedule a New York Times bestselling author who had three of her books made into movies for her? Eva felt dizzy.
Donovan took the book back from Mrs. Nordemann. “Evidence,” he explained.
“Oh, of course. I have a copy at home.” She waved her friends over. “Ava Franklin is a Mooner, and she’s going to speak this month!”
Amidst the excited chatter, Donovan leaned in. “If you have anyone who doesn’t know, you’d better tell them immediately.”
“Oh, for the love of—” Eva dug through her bag and pulled her phone out. She scrolled through her contacts frantically and pushed Call.
“Dad? Yeah. Hey, listen. I’m a romance novelist. I quit my job a year ago and have been writing books for a living. I gotta go. Bye!” She disconnected, scrolled, dialed.
“Emma? Where are you? Is Gia with you? Great. Put me on speaker. Can you guys hear me? Awesome. I’m a romance novelist, and I quit my job. Bye!”
She fired off a group text to Summer and Joey to fill them in and then silenced her phone and shove
d it back in her bag.
“Eva—or should I say Ava?” Mrs. Nordemann asked coyly. “Can we get a picture with you? We’re your biggest fans!”
Donovan was roped into taking a group picture with Eva sitting next to a handcuffed Aretha and a grinning group of Mooners. Approximately forty seconds after that, the picture and announcement of Blue Moon’s famous author-in-residence was uploaded to Facebook. Within five minutes it had two dozen comments and Eva’s phone hadn’t stopped buzzing. She turned it off and went in search of her date.
Donovan was taking notes on property damage when she approached. She tapped him on the shoulder. “I think I’m going to take a raincheck on dinner tonight,” she said, her smile wavering.
“Don’t even think about sneaking off. We have some talking to do,” he began. His radio cut him off.
“Hey Sheriff, we got a problem…”
He swore.
“I think we’ve given each other a lot to think about tonight. So I’m going to go home and… think,” she said, pointing toward the door.
“Let me drive you.”
She shook her head. “It’s two blocks. I could use the fresh air and it looks like you’re going to be a while.”
They looked around the store. The dozen people in the store had doubled in number. Entire shelves had been swept clean, and Fitz was arguing with Aretha again.
“This isn’t over, Eva,” he warned her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Eva snuck like a thief into the backyard. They’d be waiting to pounce and she was in no shape to answer the millions of questions they’d throw at her. And the novelist outing was only one of her worries. Donovan had kissed her until her heart needed a restart and then calmly announced that she was it for him. Was it some stupid planets wreaking havoc, or could there be a thread of legitimate love there?
Shouldn’t a romance novelist be an expert on these things? she wondered.
Eva let herself into the cottage and locked the door behind her.
She’d just buy herself some time to think things through. Without turning on any lights, she grabbed her laptop and trudged upstairs. She’d write in bed, her phone off, until she fell asleep. A temporary escape from the chaos.
