“Deputy sheriff,” Eli muttered.
“See, and that makes a difference,” Mayor Whittaker said. “The mayor can’t be otherwise employed by the town, on account of it being a conflict of interest, since the mayor approves the budget and salaries. But Eli isn’t directly employed by Hart’s Ridge. Technically, he’s employed by the county sheriff’s office and assigned to Hart’s Ridge. We don’t even pay his full salary. Thirty grand a year gets us Eli and additional backup as needed.”
Emma frowned. Five years ago Hart’s Ridge had struck the bargain with the county. At the time, the Hart’s Ridge Police Department had cost the town over half a million dollars annually and was by far the biggest line item on the budget. It was a little absurd for a town that averaged three burglaries and zero murders per year. A health clinic and increased spending on education better served the needs of the community than an bloated police force and expanded jail. Emma whole heartedly supported that decision.
“Secondly,” Mayor Whittaker continued, “that requirement is only for mayor. There’s no such mandate for the deputy mayor.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Emma protested. “He’s a police officer—”
“Sheriff’s deputy,” Eli corrected again, earning himself an extra glare.
“A sheriff’s deputy can’t be deputy mayor,” she said firmly. “It’s too much power.”
“You are a smart cookie, Emma, I always thought so,” Mayor Whittaker said. “It’s a good point you’re making, but facts are facts. I am bound by the ordinances that govern Hart’s Ridge and it says right here, in Article I, section two, that the only requirement for deputy mayor is he or she must be at least twenty-five. Could be an oversight; who’s to say? Maybe you should look into that, as acting mayor.”
Her shoulders started vibrating, a sure sign that her short fuse had reached its limit. Eli grinned. That hadn’t changed, either.
As though she felt his smile, she whipped her head around to glare at him. It was a mistake on her part. Their gazes locked and held. A jolt of longing hit him in the gut, stealing his breath. He was still trying to take in oxygen when she remembered she was ignoring his existence and turned away again.
It made his insides ache. He hated that. Was he really going to do this, put himself in a position where he had to interact with her daily when she made his insides ache? Hell no.
“Ms. Andrews is right,” he said. “It should be someone else. Not me.”
Ms. Andrews. He had never called her that, not once in her whole life. They had grown up together, for Chrissake. All he knew was that he couldn’t say her name. Much as he liked to pretend he wasn’t scared of anything, he knew that wasn’t true. He was terrified of the spitfire woman sitting right in front of him. Terrified of what would come out of his mouth if he let himself say her name. Terrified of what she would say in response.
“That’s not an option.” Mayor Whittaker frowned, first at Eli, then at Emma. “I’ll be honest here. You weren’t my first choice, either, Eli, for the very reasons Emma gave. It was pure luck that I happened to look up the ordinance and found the loophole. Times are tough right now, and no one’s in a hurry to do free labor. The only thing worse than being an unpaid mayor is being an unpaid deputy mayor. At least the mayor gets to boss people around a bit.”
“Then I’ll ask again, what makes you think anyone will be eager to take these positions off our hands come July?” she demanded. “What’s going to change between now and then?”
“People can’t help themselves. It’s a human condition. Someone is going to want the power and authority this position holds, even if it doesn’t come with a salary. They’re going to see you mucking things up and say they can do better.”
There was a long pause.
“So you’re saying I’m going to muck things up,” she said slowly.
Something in her voice made him ache again, but he stayed quiet. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
Mayor Whittaker threw back his head and laughed. “Emma Andrews, I’ve known you since you were nothing but a baby. You can do anything you set your mind to, maybe not extending to geometry. But here’s the truth about being mayor. It doesn’t matter how good you do, someone is going to think you’re not doing it right, and they can do better. You could do a great job, if you wanted to. But mediocre will do just fine, too.”
“Mediocre.” Her mouth twisted. “Well, we all know I can do that. Okay. I’ll be the temporary mayor. But not with him as deputy. Find someone else or I’m out.”
She was on her feet now, ready to leave. She turned toward him, and in a moment of weakness Eli considered standing his ground. He wanted her to run into him, bump his shoulder with her own, force him to get out of her way. At the very least tell him to move.
Something.
Anything.
But she didn’t want to speak to him or touch him. He knew that, and he was a grown-ass man. He wasn’t going to pull her pigtails to get her attention.
He stepped aside.
Then she was gone. And just like before, she didn’t look back.
Chapter Two
Somewhere between Emma’s arrival and subsequent departure from Mayor Whittaker’s office, the clouds had unified into a single dark mass. Shooting a wary glance upward, she stepped onto the sidewalk...just in time for the sky to unleash a torrential downpour.
Emma yelped and jumped back under the portico. She stared in dismay at the rain falling in heavy sheets, so thick she could barely see two feet in front of her face. Now what was she going to do? She had her cell phone with her, of course. She could call Cesar and ask him to come get her. He’d do it, but he’d say I told you so. Emma didn’t want to hear I told you so. She had suffered enough for one day.
“You’re still here.”
She didn’t have to turn around to know who was speaking. He had said only a handful of words in Mayor Whittaker’s office, but she would recognize his voice anywhere. A deep, quiet voice that made you want to move closer to hear it better. She felt it now, that pull toward him, but she forced herself to stay rooted to the spot.
She didn’t respond. She had said everything she needed to say eight years ago, and there wasn’t anything to add to that.
The rain was loud enough to dampen the sound of his footsteps, but she felt him move closer. Her back tensed and she crossed her arms tightly over her chest. He stopped moving.
“You need a ride?” he asked.
She couldn’t ignore a direct question, no matter how much she wanted to. Her parents had taught her better than that, and the only thing she hated more than Eli Carter was disappointing her parents, even if they weren’t there to see it.
But that didn’t mean she had to use words. She shook her head, still not looking at him.
There was a long pause. A clap of thunder broke the silence, followed by a sharp crack of lightning.
“Yes, you do,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s not clearing up any time soon. You can’t wait it out. Even if you run, you’re going to get soaked.”
All true, but she’d rather be soaked than share space in a car with him even for the five minutes it would take to drive her home.
“And you’re wearing a white shirt,” he pointed out.
She looked down. Well, damn. Her shirt was already see-through in a few places where raindrops had hit her. If she walked home, she’d give the whole neighborhood a show. Main Street had emptied out, but Emma knew people hadn’t gone far. They were in the shops, staring out the windows, waiting for the rain to pass so they could continue their errands.
“I don’t want to,” she said. She knew she was whining and she didn’t care. Why did the universe hate her? Hadn’t she suffered enough?
“I know.” The sympathy in his tone annoyed her even more. Why did he have to be so damn kind? Didn’t he know they were enemies? “Wait here, okay? I’ll pull the car around.”
“Where would I go?” she said bitterly.
He
shook his head, smiling slightly, and dashed into the rain. She waited, watching the rain come down. How had life gone upside down? This morning she had been certain of two things: One, she needed to save her business, and two, she was never going to talk to Eli Carter again. A few hours later, and here she was, accepting a ride from him, and now she was...mayor?
That couldn’t be right.
A black truck pulled up to the sidewalk and honked. She blinked. For some reason, she had been expecting the old red sedan he had driven in high school. But of course it wasn’t. That car had already been nearly a decade old when he had inherited it; now it would be ancient. She ran as fast as she could, but it didn’t make a bit of difference. She was soaked by the time she reached the door he had pushed open for her.
She slid onto the leather seat...and then kept right on sliding, thanks to her wet body making the seat slick. She fell against him, her lips making awkward contact with his neck. “Oomph,” she said against his warm skin.
And for the space of a heartbeat, she pretended things were different.
In the next heartbeat she remembered why they weren’t. She sat up, pushing away from him, and wiped the rain from her arms as best she could. It didn’t make her feel any less damp. She shivered.
He turned on the heat, but only cold air came out the vents. “It probably won’t heat up until I drop you off. You want a blanket? There’s one behind your seat.”
No, she didn’t want to wrap herself in something that smelled like him. She shook her head.
“Suit yourself.” He glanced at her and then quickly looked away again. He gripped the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turned white.
“I thought you would have your patrol car,” she said. She was glad he didn’t.
“I’m off duty.” He gestured to his jeans, his eyes never leaving the road. No uniform.
“You don’t work Mondays?” she asked, surprised, and then bit her lip, wishing she could take the question back. She didn’t want to have a conversation with him.
“No. I requested weekends, and since no one else wanted to be on call for Hart’s Ridge, I usually get the shift.”
What would make a person give up weekends to work? Emma loved weekends, or the idea of them, anyhow. Everyone having the same two days off as everyone else, so there was nothing better to do than have long, lazy meals capped with an overindulgence of fruity alcoholic beverages? It sounded blissful. Trouble was, she couldn’t afford weekends—and neither could most of Hart’s Ridge, for that matter. She kept her food truck open seven days a week, six to three, which meant that she started cooking at five a.m. But if she had a choice, she would spend Saturday and Sunday doing absolutely nothing but sleeping in and reading in her hammock.
But here was Eli willing giving it all up. For what? Mondays off? No one liked Mondays. If it were anyone else, her curiosity would have gotten the best of her, and she would have demanded an explanation. But it wasn’t anyone else. Eli could work weekends until he died—alone and miserable, because no one went on Monday night dates—for all she cared.
She didn’t care.
Still, she was curious. She glanced sideways at him. Once she would have claimed that no one knew him better than she did. Now she didn’t know him at all. He was a mystery.
He didn’t even look the same, not really. A man could change a lot between twenty-two and twenty-eight. Eli certainly had. Back then he’d still had a baby face with a dimple in each cheek. Now he had facial hair, something more than stubble but less than a full blown beard. She couldn’t tell if the dimples were still there underneath. Maybe, maybe not. He’d leaned out and put on muscle over the past eight years, judging from his forearm and the way his gray T-shirt looked on him.
She hated herself for noticing.
It was a short drive. He pulled into her long driveway and slowed to a stop. He still didn’t look at her.
“Where do you want me to leave you?” he asked. “By the Airstream, or your house?”
Hers was a fairly large property. The Airstream was parked next to the road, but the house was set a quarter mile farther down the maple-lined drive. It was a big, turreted house left over from the Gilded Age, when it had been a fancy summer home for the Rockefellers. Emma’s parents had bought it for nearly nothing when she was still a baby. The thing had been in shambles, but the bones were good. They had joked about it being their retirement plan. Someday they would turn it into a bed and breakfast. But someday never came, and now Emma lived there with five extra bedrooms to dust and vacuum.
“Here is fine,” she said. “It’s not three yet. We’re still open, even if we don’t get any customers.”
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the steering wheel, and peered through the windshield at her Airstream, saying nothing. She followed his gaze, noting the hand-painted wooden sign that simply read Emma’s, the small gravel parking lot she’d made that replaced a chunk of her lawn, and the picnic table.
“It runs,” she said defensively. “I know there are different laws for food trucks than if it were a brick-and-mortar restaurant. It can’t be a food truck if it’s not mobile. So, it runs.”
His lips quirked. “Okay.”
“There’s no law that says it can’t be parked in one place for most of its business hours. There’s no law that says I can’t own the property it’s parked on. It just has to be mobile. And it is. I even haul it to the church on Sundays so people can get coffee and lunch after service.”
“I know. I saw you there, once or twice.”
“Then why are you eyeballing it like it’s a health code violation?” she demanded.
“I’m eyeballing it like I never thought I’d see the day where you hung daisy-printed curtains on your Airstream, but here we are.”
“Oh.” She was taken aback. “Suzie made them.”
“Suzie Barnett? How is she doing?”
The wistfulness in his voice caught her by surprise. They had all been friends, once, but Suzie had stopped talking to Eli the moment Emma had. Suzie was now pregnant with her third baby, but Emma wasn’t feeling particularly generous with that information right now.
“She’s fine,” she said, not giving him anything more.
“That’s good.”
Silence fell. She reached for the door handle. It was time to make her escape.
“We need to talk about this,” he said.
She shook her head. “No, we don’t. There’s nothing more to say. Truly.”
He made a frustrated noise. “I think there’s a lot more to say, actually. Look, I’m not any happier about this than you are. I’ve got enough on my plate as it is. I don’t need to take on the role of deputy mayor, not even for two months. But I don’t see as there’s a choice, or at least not one my conscience can live with. The Whittakers have served Hart’s Ridge for long enough. It’s time we did something for them, even if it’s just letting them go.”
Panic churned her gut. There had to be a way out of this. She couldn’t see Eli every day. She just couldn’t. A chill ran through her and she rubbed at her arms for warmth. “So what are you saying? We have to work together?”
“I’m saying—” He looked at her and frowned. “For Chrissake. You’re freezing to death.” He cranked the heat even higher and reached behind the seat, pulled out the blanket, and tossed it to her. “I’m saying we don’t have to be in a room together to work together. Cell phones? Email? Texting? We have the technology to never see anyone face-to-face again, if that’s what we wanted.”
“I guess we could try,” she said slowly. She huddled under the blanket. It did smell good. Like him. Like spicy cologne and cinnamon from the gum he chewed.
“Yeah, we could try. We should try. And, listen, if we can’t make it work, then we’re an embarrassment to our generation and I’ll find someone to replace me, even if I have to play dirty to do it. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said softly. She couldn’t believe she was agreeing to this. But what he said made sense. H
er feelings didn’t matter here. What mattered was helping the Whittakers, and helping Hart’s Ridge. Or at least keeping the lights on until someone better suited took over.
“So we agree? We’re on the same page?”
“Yes.”
Thunder rumbled, so close she could feel it in her teeth. She jumped in surprise. “That’s not ominous at all,” she muttered sarcastically. “Just what we need. In case you haven’t noticed, my luck has, historically speaking, completely sucked.”
He turned away, obscuring his face in the shadows. “I noticed.”
“But maybe that will work in our favor.”
“How so?”
She shrugged. “What I’m saying is that I expect this all to go sideways sooner or later, but I’m used to that. I don’t really know what to do with myself when things are going right. So maybe bad luck...maybe bad luck is exactly what we need.”
He offered a small grin. “I can work with that. My luck hasn’t been the best, either.”
“So...I won’t see you tomorrow, but you can text me, and I won’t ignore you. You need my number?”
“Has it changed?”
“Nope.”
“Then I don’t need it.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. Nobody memorized phone numbers anymore. Was she still saved in his contact list? She had deleted him, but she hadn’t blocked him. She’d known then that she wouldn’t need to. Eli was a man who took a woman at her word. If a woman said don’t call, he wasn’t going to call.
She pushed off the blanket, opened the car door, and darted out into the rain. Something made her pause and turn back. He was watching her, making sure she got in safely. That was Eli, down to the bone. Always making sure she was safe, even if safety came with a broken heart and a dad in prison.
A mess of emotions rioted inside her. Love, loss, heartbreak, hope, rage. Rage. She focused on it, let it grow and crystalize until it drove out everything else. Rage was easier to deal with than all the other emotions. She knew what to do with it.
“I’ll never forgive you, Eli Carter!” she shouted.
Make Me Love You Page 2