Holding on to Chaos: A Small Town Love Story (Blue Moon Book 5)

by Lucy Score

  There was an older gentleman that Eva didn’t recognize, which was unusual for Blue Moon. He had thinning hair and wore a carnation in the lapel of his suit jacket. “Who’s that?” she asked Gia, nodding in the man’s direction.

  “Wilson Abramovich,” Gia told her, flashing her wedding ring. “He’s the jeweler on the square.”

  “He must have made a fortune off the Pierce family recently,” Eva teased. Wilson waved at Gia from across the room and raised his glass of punch in a toast.

  “If everyone could take their seats, we’ll get started,” Bruce said from the front of the room.

  Everyone scrambled for seats like a daycare game of musical chairs.

  Bobby proceeded to pass out glasses of champagne.

  “For those of you who are new,” Bruce said, as if there were dozens of newbies present rather than just the pair, “we start each meeting with a toast. Amethyst, my dear, if you’d be so kind.”

  Amethyst rose, glass held aloft. “To true love and our responsibility to mold it.”

  “Cheers,” the residents around the table called out.

  “Cheers,” Eva and Gia echoed.

  “Now, let’s get down to business. I presume the committee has had a chance to review both Gia and Eva’s membership applications?”

  Heads nodded around the table.

  “Wonderful. Let the interview and testing process begin,” Bruce said, clapping his hands together.

  “Gia, if you’ll come with me, please?” Willa said, her voice breathy and sweet.

  “You’ll take the written exam while we interview your sister and then we’ll swap,” Bruce explained.

  “Written exam?” Gia asked, her eyes wide like a deer in headlights.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Bruce assured her. “It’s merely a formality. The interview is much more intense.”

  Oh goodie, Eva thought to herself. She pasted on a bright smile and waved her sister out of the room. They were being separated. That was never a good sign. This was starting to feel like an interrogation. While the rest of the committee opened their pink binders in front of them, she fired off a quick text from her lap.

  Eva: “What the hell did you get me into, El?”

  She heard the distinct “ding” of a cell phone in the air duct and a muffled thunk.

  Bruce looked up and frowned at the committee members. “All cell phones should be silenced per B.C. Rule #319.”

  Dutifully, everyone around the table pulled out their phones and double checked them.

  Eva’s phone vibrated in her lap.

  Ellery: “Don’t panic. Just answer truthfully… unless they ask you if you’re working with me to take them down. You can lie about that. Oh, and don’t mention swinging, orgies, or open marriages.”

  “Eva, what we like to do here with potential members is really try to get to know them and make sure they’re a good fit for our committee,” Bruce explained. “If you’re ready, we’ll just start our interview. Anyone can ask a question at any time. If it’s something you’re not comfortable answering you are free to pass on answering it.”

  “Oh, good. Okay,” Eva nodded, relieved.

  “Of course, if you do that, we’ll have no choice but to deny your application.” Bruce chuckled, and the rest of the table joined him.

  “Okaaaaay,” Eva said through the gritted teeth of her terrified smile.

  Amethyst raised her hand. “Eva, if you could, please tell us do you think happy relationships strengthen or weaken a community?”

  Whew. Okay, a softball. Maybe they were all like this? “Happy relationships strengthen the communities they exist within,” she said with confidence.

  Everyone bent over their notebooks and began to scribble.

  “When did you first realize the value of true love?” Wilson Abramovich asked, pointing his pen in her direction.

  “How much time do I have for answers?” Eva asked, stalling.

  “Take all the time you need,” Bruce said jovially. “Of course, if you need more than say, thirty seconds to answer, we’ll most likely be forced to deny your application.”

  “I guess it was at my father’s wedding to Phoebe,” Eva blurted out. “Here is a man I’ve loved my entire life who is finally happy. It’s like Phoebe’s love erased all those hard years for him or at least made them worthwhile.”

  The pens scratched over paper again, and Willa ducked back into the room. She paused to whisper in Bruce’s ear and Eva thought she heard “essay.”

  Poor Gia.

  “When did you lose your virginity, and what are your thoughts on premarital sex?” Bobby asked as if she was wondering what time it was.

  “Uh, well, that’s rather personal,” Eva squeaked.

  “You’re more than welcome to pass,” Bruce reminded her.

  “I was seventeen, and I think people should do what works best for themselves and their relationships. Personally, I would find it hard to commit my life to a man when I didn’t know how… uh, compatible we were in that specific area.” She blurted the words out as her cheeks flamed.

  “Has anyone ever told you to mind your own business, and what was your response?” Bruce asked.

  She was doing this for Donovan and Ellery, Eva reminded herself. A Beautification Committee member had to be nosy by nature, but they prided themselves on their romantic ninja skills.

  “No,” she said. Everyone stopped writing and looked at her and then each other. “Because my prying is so stealthy people never know I’m doing it.”

  There was a collective sigh of relief that went up around the table and Bruce nodded his approval.

  “Are you currently romantically involved with anyone?” Rainbow demanded.

  Uh-oh. They’d thrown Ellery out for getting engaged to someone they hadn’t set her up with. Maybe they wouldn’t let her in? But she wasn’t going to lie. Not with half the town seeing Donovan’s police cruiser parked overnight in Beckett’s driveway. The rumors had to already be flying.

  “I’m seeing Donovan Cardona,” she said. They probably had a dossier on Donovan since he grew up here.

  The committee members exchanged a look and then began to flip through their binders.

  “Is that a problem?” Eva asked.

  “Got it. Potential Match fifty-nine on page thirty-eight,” Willa, announced triumphantly.

  Everyone furiously turned pages.

  “I guess technically we haven’t had our first date yet,” Eva said, her fingers digging into her knees under the table. “We’ve been trying, but he keeps getting called away. I mean, we’ve kissed. And wow, can that guy kiss. I mean, fireworks every time. But that’s all. And really all this could just be because of the planetary crossing.” She was blabbering like a raving lunatic and couldn’t shut herself up.

  She heard another thunk from the air vent, and her phone vibrated in her lap. Eva glanced down.

  Ellery: “Stop talking!”

  She did as she was told and bit her lip until everyone was done reading from their binders.

  Bruce spoke first, pulling off his reading glasses. “Well, you and our esteemed sheriff are indeed on our list of approved matches.”

  “Oh good,” Eva said, relieved. “Wait. What?”

  “Yes, it says here that we were going to tackle you two in the spring. That would give you a little more time to settle in here,” Rainbow said through bites of a pink frosted pastry.

  “Spring?”

  “And it looks like the main area of concern we’ve identified is your potential abandonment issues caused by your mother leaving the family,” Wilson noted.

  “My abandonment issues?” Eva felt like an incredulous parrot.

  “Yes, dear,” Gordon, spoke up, wiping crumbs off his vintage Jerry Garcia t-shirt. “Your sister Emma gave us quite a headache with hers.”

  “I don’t have abandonment issues,” she squeaked.

  The Beautification Committee chuckl
ed as if she’d made a joke, and Eva’s phone buzzed again.

  Ellery: “You totally do.”

  “My, my. This is an interesting situation. We’ve never had a potential member claim her partner without our help before,” Bruce said, twirling his glasses. “I think we’re going to need to put some stipulations on this.”

  “I agree,” Rainbow said, all business.

  “Let’s put it to a vote,” Bobby announced. “Eva and Donovan are free to continue dating if she can make headway with her abandonment issues. If she isn’t able to handle it on her own, she and the sheriff must wait until spring when we can give them our full attention.”

  “All in favor?” Bruce called out.

  They raised their hands unanimously.

  “Good. The matter is settled. Eva, you can get to work on your issues right away, and once we start to see a resolution, you’ll be permitted to resume your relationship with Sheriff Cardona.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The exam was one-hundred questions long. All were multiple choice except for two essays at the end. Gia had looked shell-shocked when Bobby led her back into the conference room. But to Eva, the test was still better than facing the inquisition. She felt stripped bare and scrutinized. They’d grilled her on everything from family to birth control to favorite romantic couples of stage, screen, and page.

  Eva dove into her test while cursing Ellery under her breath. She was on question forty-two when her phone buzzed on the table.

  Donovan: “How’s the meeting? Any bloodshed? Any weird rituals involving chickens?”

  Eva: “I need you to steal a fire truck, drive it onto the library’s sidewalk, and raise the ladder to Conference Room 203. I’ll be the redhead hanging out of the window.”

  Donovan: “What kind of gratitude can I expect for such dangerous heroics?”

  Eva: “Spaghetti dinner complete with antipasto, salad, and dessert.”

  Donovan: “Sold. Be there in five. I’ll be the knight on the flashy red steed with sirens.”

  He made it so easy to like him, Eva thought. Donovan kept things simple. He liked her—a lot—and he told her so. There was no hiding feelings or keeping secrets, at least, not on his end. She hadn’t realized just how much she wanted all of this to be real. Eva wanted him to like her and she wanted to loosen up and let herself like him back.

  Donovan was a genuinely good man. Smart, kind, protective, solid, dependable. Not to mention gorgeous and sixty steps beyond sexy. And she wanted him with a fierceness that scared her.

  What if it’s real? What if it’s all real? Eva wondered. And why did that scare her more than the thought that it wasn’t?

  She sighed and picked up her pencil again. She needed to get through the next thirty-eight questions and the rest of the meeting and then she could start thinking about the what ifs.

  --------

  By the time Eva was led back into the meeting room, Gia looked as though she’d been steam cleaned and hung up to dry.

  “They asked me about birth control,” Gia hissed when Eva sank into the seat next to her.

  Eva snorted and tried to cover it up with a cough.

  Amethyst turned out half of the lights, throwing the room into shadows.

  “We’ve come to a decision,” Bruce said gravely from the front of the room. “And unfortunately, we can only allow one of you to join our ranks.”

  Eva felt oddly disappointed, but Gia looked crestfallen.

  “You two must choose,” Bobby announced, her demeanor calm and distant like that of a priestess.

  “We have to decide which one of us gets to stay?” Eva squeaked.

  The committee members nodded.

  “It should be you,” Eva said to Gia. “You’ve wanted to be a member since you were matched. I think you’d be a wonderful, stable addition to the committee.”

  Gia squeezed Eva’s hand. “I really want to join, but Eva I think you could benefit more from this.”

  “What?”

  “I already found my happily ever after thanks to the B.C. It’s your turn, and I think with this committee steering you, you’ll end up happier than you ever imagined.”

  Eva felt her eyes go damp. “But you want it so much,” she argued. “I want you to have this.”

  “I’d rather see you happy,” Gia sniffled.

  “I’m not taking something that you want away from you,” Eva said. “It should be Gia.”

  “It should be Eva,” Gia countered.

  Amethyst flipped the light switches chasing away the shadows, and Bruce beamed at them.

  “Excellent work, ladies. Allow me to be the first to welcome you both to the Beautification Committee.”

  The other members applauded. Someone pressed another glass of champagne into Eva’s hand.

  “I don’t understand,” Eva began.

  “The most valuable quality a Beautification Committee member can have is selflessness,” Willa explained grandly. “We do what we do, not for personal gain or notoriety but to truly make the lives of our neighbors better.”

  “You two just proved that you would give up something important to you to make the other happy. That’s exactly what we’re looking for,” Bobby told them.

  Gia squealed and grabbed Eva in a hug that was closer to a headlock.

  “Thank you all,” Eva said through the strangulation.

  “Let’s get down to business,” Bruce announced.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “I would like to propose to the committee that we revisit a declined pairing,” Bruce announced to the room. “Since the original resistance to this pairing is no longer a decision maker, I would like to finally pair up Eden Moody and Davis Gates.”

  A collective gasp worked its way through the entire Beautification Committee except Eva. She had no idea what was gasp-able but had a feeling that Ellery was the “original resistance” to which Bruce was referring.

  “Their feud has gone on for far too long, and it’s clear to us all that they would make an ideal match,” Bruce continued.

  Eva blinked, remembering Eden flinch at the mention of Blue Moon Winery. Her phone buzzed quietly in her lap.

  Ellery: No! No! No! Nope! Abort! Abort!

  Eva nudged Gia under the table and turned her phone toward her sister. Gia read and frowned.

  Gia cleared her throat. “Question. What was their feud about?”

  Bruce waved both hands. “Oh, it was a tiny, practically insignificant misunderstanding.”

  “How insignificant?” Eva pressed.

  The other members around the table shared guilty glances.

  “Technically it was a feud between their fathers,” Bobby said vaguely. “It carried through to the next generation.”

  “Now, I know that some people felt that they needed more time to cool off,” Bruce began. There was a loud clang from the air duct. Eva refused to look in the direction of the vent. Her phone buzzed.

  Ellery: “Sorry. Leg cramp.”

  “However, I see this as an opportunity to really spread our wings,” Bruce pressed on. “Not only would we be matching up excellent candidates for soulmate-hood, but we’d also be ridding our town of the negativity their feud has caused.”

  Eva: “Keep it together up there!”

  A hand raised and Bruce pointed at his wife. “Yes, Amethyst, my pearl?”

  Ellery: “If I don’t get out of here soon I’m going to enter the beginning stages of rigor mortis. Make them wrap it up!

  Amethyst blushed prettily at her husband’s nickname for her. “What would we do with our Team Eden Team Davis signs?” She asked the question as if she was reading the question from a cue card.

  Oh sweet Jesus, this town, Eva thought.

  Bruce clapped his hands. “I’m so glad you asked. We could have a celebratory bonfire when the engagement is announced and use the signs as kindling.”

  Eva’s phone vibrated.

  Eller
y: “This is bad. Real bad.”

  Donovan: “Where should we go on our honeymoon?”

  “All in favor of committing to Eden and Davis for our next match?” Bruce called for the vote.

  Eva held Gia’s hand down just in case her sister got swept up in the crowd mentality. Everyone else except Bobby raised their hands in favor.

  “I don’t feel comfortable voting when I don’t have any background information on the couple,” Eva said hastily when Bruce frowned in her direction.

  “We still have a majority,” he said, glaring at Bobby who remained unfazed under his scrutiny. “I suggest, before our next meeting, you review the couple biography in your binders and be prepared to offer suggestions on the best approach.”

  “I’m sure they’ll make a lovely couple,” Gia placated when Bruce handed over their pretty pink binders.

  Eva wasn’t so certain. If Ellery had been the brains behind the B.C.’s operations, they were practically flying blind without her.

  “Now, I’ll need you both to sign the nondisclosure agreements at the front of the binder and return them to me before the next meeting,” Bruce announced, tapping a finger on the table.

  Eva made a mental note to have Beckett review the NDAs before she signed anything. It wouldn’t do to get sued by the B.C. If she upset them, she could just imagine the chaos they could wreak on her life.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when the meeting let out and towed Gia into the hallway. They ducked into the darkened conference room on the other side of the hall, and Gia held the desk while Eva climbed up to help unwedge Ellery.

  She came out sneezing and swearing, platform boots first followed by black and white striped tights and then her corduroy romper.