It turned out there was something left to say, after all—if only because she was in danger of forgetting it herself.
***
Eli let out a slow breath as he watched Emma disappear inside the Airstream and slam the door shut. For a moment he was too stunned to move, much less drive.
The image of her standing there in the rain, her white shirt entirely see-through and clinging to her breasts and pale lilac bra, was seared into his brain. She had looked so wild, so touchable, so Emma. And then she had hurled those words like a grenade.
I’ll never forgive you, Eli Carter.
“Yeah, well, that makes two of us,” he muttered to himself. He threw his truck in reverse and got the hell out of there.
The clock on the dashboard read one o’clock. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten lunch yet. He was half-tempted to turn back and get a burrito. She needed the money, he needed the food. Everyone claimed they were amazing. He had never experienced one firsthand, knowing he wasn’t a welcome customer.
He still wasn’t welcome, he reminded himself. No way in hell would Emma cook him a burrito, unless it was laced with arsenic. Anyway, it was a Monday—his day off—and that meant lunch with his friend Luke. It was their weekly tradition for the past several years, Eli eating while Luke tended bar.
He pulled up to Goat’s Tavern, a couple miles from the bustle of Main Street. It was a ramshackle-looking log cabin, but like everything Luke Buchanan created, it was built to last. Behind the tavern was the 1860s farmhouse, passed down from one Buchanan to another over several generations, where Luke lived and rented rooms to thru-hikers.
There weren’t more than two or three cars in the parking lot, but Eli knew the place would be packed. Hart’s Ridge was only ten miles off the Appalachian Trail. Word of mouth had made Goat’s Tavern a popular stop off, where hikers could get a shower, a hot meal, and a comfortable bed for the night. On a day like today, with the sky dumping buckets of water, it was a sure bet that hikers would be holed up here.
The rain was still coming down with no sign of letting up, and he got slightly soaked in the couple steps from his truck to the front door. He wiped the water from his face and looked around warily.
“Where’s Goat?” he asked. The little devil could be anywhere. Sneaking up on people was his specialty. Still, he hated thunderstorms, so he was probably hiding.
“He’s—” Luke started. The phone rang and he held up his finger to indicate it would be a minute while simultaneously picking up the receiver. “Goat’s Tavern.” There was a pause. “Yeah. Where you at?” Another pause. “Okay, hold on a minute.” He set the phone on the bar. “Hey, Ethan, we’ve got another hiker.”
“On it.” Ethan, his younger brother, picked up the phone. “What’s your mile marker?”
Luke turned back to Eli. “Goat’s in his room. Pooping on everything, probably, but what am I gonna do about it? You know he hates being outside when it’s storming. So what can I get you?”
“Burger, medium, sweet potato fries,” Eli said without hesitation. His order rarely changed.
“Coming right up.” Luke shouted the order to the kitchen. He grabbed a glass from behind the bar. “You want the Blue Moon? We still have it on tap.”
Eli shook his head. When it came to alcohol, he had a firm rule, born from a decade of watching his dad drink his life away after Eli’s mom left: sadness and alcohol didn’t mix. He could drink when he wanted to have a good time, or relax after a long, hard day. But never, ever to mask sadness. And right now, he wasn’t feeling exactly jovial. “Root beer today.”
Luke paused with his hand on the beer pull, studied him for a moment, then reversed course toward the soda fountain. “Rough morning?” he asked over his shoulder.
Eli didn’t answer right away. Luke might look like a rough-and-tumble mountain man, from his shaggy hair to his worn flannel with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, but Eli knew better. Luke Buchanan could out gossip any fourteen-year-old girl.
But he was also a good friend. And once upon a time, he had also been a good friend to Emma. If anyone could understand the horrifying predicament Eli now found himself in, it was Luke.
Eli looked right, then he looked left. He checked the mirror above the wall of liquor to see behind him. About a dozen or so people, all strangers. No one he recognized. He leaned forward.
“You know the Whittakers are moving out?” he asked.
Luke slid him the glass of root beer. “Yeah, man. Mayor Whittaker even asked me to step in for him. Asked Ethan to be deputy.”
“He asked you to be mayor?”
Luke laughed. “He asked every Hart’s Ridge resident over the age of twenty-five, near as I can tell. Don’t think he’s having much luck finding someone.”
“Oh, he found someone all right.”
“Oh, yeah? Who’s the lucky sucker? It can’t be you. You’re a cop.”
“Emma Andrews.”
“Huh.” He mulled that over. “Interesting choice.”
“No, the interesting part is he made me deputy mayor.”
Luke’s eyebrows shot up and he let out a low whistle. “No shit. Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“But you two have history. Bad history.”
Eli raised his glass. “I’m aware.”
Luke was quiet. “Food’s up!” came a voice from the kitchen. Luke disappeared through the swinging door, then reappeared and set the plate down in front of him.
Thank God. Eli was starving. He took a huge bite of the burger and nodded his head appreciatively.
“So.” Luke leaned casually against the counter, his blue eyes deceptively wide and innocent. “What does Claire think about all this? About you working side by side with Emma?”
Eli couldn’t answer with his mouth full of burger, so he settled for a lethal glare. Claire Miller was his girlfriend. She lived in Piedmont, the next town over.
He finished chewing, took a swig of beer, and said, “Claire doesn’t know anything about it. For one, because I never told her about Emma. That’s all ancient history that Claire doesn’t need to know about, seeing as Emma hadn’t said one word to me in eight years until today. And for two, I’m ending things with Claire, so it doesn’t much matter what she thinks about it anyway.”
“Huh. When did you decide that? I thought things were going well with you and her.”
“Been thinking about it for a while,” he said. “She and I are both busy. It was hard to make time to see each other.”
All true. They were busy, and the kicker was he wasn’t sure he cared. But his ambivalence toward Claire had become painfully sharp when he saw Emma soaked by the rain. There was nothing ambivalent about those feelings. And while he didn’t believe love and sex had to go hand-in-hand, it was a completely different thing having those feelings for someone when you didn’t have them for your girlfriend.
Luke cocked his head, looking at him. “What’s it been now? Six months?”
“Four.”
“Right.” Luke grinned. “It’s always four.”
His brow furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you don’t do casual dating, but you don’t do serious either. You get exclusive with someone immediately, and then four months later, you’re done. No holidays either, I’ve noticed.”
“I was with Claire on Easter.” Eli dipped a fry in ketchup and popped it in his mouth.
Luke snorted. “That doesn’t count. I mean holidays like Thanksgiving. Christmas. Valentine’s Day. You don’t do those.”
“Coincidence.”
“Nah. You just don’t want to get serious, and holidays are serious.”
“Maybe I don’t want to get serious because I haven’t met the girl I want to get serious with. Did you ever think of that?”
“I did think of that, as it so happens, and do you know what I decided?”
Eli eyed him over the rim of his soda. “Any chance you decided it was high time you minded your
own damn business?”
“No.”
He sighed. “I didn’t think so.”
“The problem isn’t that you haven’t found the girl you want to get serious with. It’s that you think you have but she wants nothing to do with you.”
Eli wasn’t about to ask who he was talking about. Emma. There was no one else. Luke had been around when everything went down, and he knew how things were now between them. But he also knew how things were before, because he was there for that, too. He knew how Eli had felt about her, before everything went to shit. That didn’t make him right, though. Eli couldn’t deny he felt some kind of way about Emma, but he had never put much stock into the idea of soul mates or one true love. He hadn’t fallen in love since Emma, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t. He just hadn’t met her yet.
“I’m not going to dignify that with a reply.”
Luke grinned. “I don’t need dignity, man. I’m beneath that.”
“At least you’re self-aware.” Eli raised his burger. “Food is good today.”
“Yeah, Priscilla is amazing.” Luke braced his arms on the counter and leaned forward. “So.”
Eli raised his eyebrows. “So?”
“So you’re really going to do this? Work side by side, every damn day, with a woman you think you’re in love with who happens to hate your guts?”
Eli paused. In love...that wasn’t the right phrase at all. He felt something for her, of course he did. How could he not? Even eight years later, it was still Emma. But he didn’t know her, not the way he did then. You had to know someone to be in love. A lot could change in eight years. What if she had developed an affinity for collecting dolls? Eli hated dolls. They were creepy as hell. He definitely couldn’t be in love with some psycho doll collector.
“I’m not in love with her. We have history. There’s a difference. Anyway, we have an arrangement. We’re going to use strictly virtual communication. Emails and texts, since she probably doesn’t even want to hear my voice. Nothing face-to-face.”
“Right,” Luke said dubiously.
“It’s going to work. Two months, that’s it. What could possibly go wrong?”
“I guess. I mean, she couldn’t possibly hate you any more than she does now, right?”
Eli choked on a French fry. “Right,” he gasped.
She couldn’t. Could she?
Chapter Three
“Emma Andrews, what in the world are you doing?” said a laughing voice from above her.
Emma was lying flat on her back on the living room floor. Beneath her was the braided rug her great-great-grandma had made from scraps of clothes and blankets when she had been no older than Emma was now. Above her the ceiling fan spun lazy circles. It was something she had done since she was a young child. She didn’t have a good reason for why. It soothed her, though.
Strategic regrouping, her father called it. Emma thought it was cute her father had that much faith in her. There was nothing strategic about it.
“Go away, Suzie,” Emma said. “I’m having a moment.”
“This moment is unbecoming of your new station in life,” came another voice, also laughing. At her expense, knowing her friends.
Emma lifted her head, craning her neck until she saw Kate Gonzales half hidden behind Suzie’s ever-expanding belly. “I take it you heard the news.”
“We ran into Cesar at the hardware store. He gave us the whole story.”
Emma groaned. When Eli had dropped her off, she had stormed into the Airstream full of righteous anger and looking like a hot mess. Cesar had taken one look at her and thrown her an apron to cover herself up. That was when she had realized Eli had seen everything. It put her dramatic exit in an embarrassing new light.
That part, Cesar probably hadn’t shared. At least, she hoped not.
But the part where she had informed him that she had been conscripted as mayor and he had promptly laughed himself sick, yes, that part was fair game. The only question was how he had stopped laughing long enough to get the story out.
“Then you understand why I’m on the floor,” Emma said. “It’s the only way I can be sure the ground doesn’t disappear beneath me.”
Suzie nudged her in the ribs with her sandaled toe. “Stop being dramatic and get up.”
“No.” Emma closed her eyes and waited for them to give up.
No such luck.
“If she won’t come to us, we’ll just have to go to her,” Suzie said. “Oh my God, the ground is so far away. You’re going to help me back up, right?”
Emma’s eyes shot open in alarm as Suzie and Kate joined her on the floor, sandwiching her between them. Suzie grunted as she landed, and the hundred-year-old pine floorboards groaned, making Kate giggle.
“Shut up,” Suzie groused. “When you did this, you were seventeen. Pregnancy is different in your late twenties, let me tell you.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. You have a decade of baby-making years ahead of you. You’re not old.”
“I feel old. And large, in an unbalanced sort of way.”
“Well,” Kate said comfortingly, “that’s because you are large in an unbalanced sort of way.”
Emma cleared her throat. “Can we get back to the purpose of this ambush, which is that I am now mayor of Hart’s Ridge and we are all doomed?”
“We’re not doomed,” Suzie said. “At least, no more so than normal. Things aren’t great right now, but that’s not your fault. No one can blame you for the processing plant closing.”
Suzie steadfastly refused to call it the chicken plant, like everyone else did. This was because she kept hens in her backyard and loved every single one of them, so much so that she had named them after Jane Austen characters.
Emma couldn’t help smiling a little before remembering that there was nothing to smile about. She sighed. “No, it’s not my fault. But now it’s my responsibility.”
Emma squeezed her eyes shut again in a futile attempt to block out reality. She hated responsibility, mostly because her life had been far too full of it. Once upon a time she had been a normal middle-class kid. Her dad taught chemistry at the University of North Carolina, and her mom was a third-grade teacher at Hart’s Ridge Elementary. They weren’t rich, but they could afford to spend summer vacations driving around national parks in the Airstream. All that had changed when her mom got sick.
Stage II cervical cancer. At first they had thought she would be okay. Survival rates weren’t in the nineties like with Stage I, but the odds were better than a coin toss. But Emma had never won a coin toss in her life, and her mom didn’t win against cancer. It had taken five years of surgeries and chemotherapy before it killed her, during which Emma did her best to care for her. She raced home every day after school—and sometimes played hooky—to make sure her mom was comfortable. She washed her hair, made sure she took her meds, did all the cooking and cleaning. She helped her go to the bathroom, and when even that was too much, she changed the bedpan. Her dad couldn’t be there—losing his job would mean losing health insurance.
Even with health insurance, once the bills started coming, they didn’t stop. The stress affected everything. He wasn’t tenured, and then he was laid off. But the bills kept coming and they didn’t stop until she died.
But by then he had found a way to put that chemistry knowledge to use.
With her mom’s death and her dad’s arrest, Emma traded responsibility of one parent for another. She dropped out of school to work full time to cover the mortgage and the defense bills.
Being responsible for her parents was terrible, draining, stressful—and those were the people she loved most in the world. Now she was responsible for the whole damn town, and she wasn’t sure she loved more than a handful of them.
“I know it’s overwhelming,” Kate said. “We’re here to help.”
That made Emma feel marginally better, even if she suspected that their “help” would mostly consist of listening to her bitch and moan. They weren’t any more
qualified to be mayor than she was. Suzie was a stay-at-home mom of two with a third baby on the way, and Kate ran a candy shop. Neither of them knew anything about being mayor.
They were screwed, all right. The whole town was screwed.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” Suzie said. “Of course we’ll help. Who is replacing Mrs. Whittaker as deputy mayor?”
Her stomach twisted. Other than shouting I’ll never forgive you, Eli Carter! his name hadn’t crossed her lips in eight years. The look on his face when she said it was the same as it had been all those years ago. Resignation, sadness, and something else that was neither of those things. Something she was afraid to give a name to, because it felt like a punch to the chest.
“Eli Carter,” she said. “Because the universe hates me.”
“No!” Suzie gasped. “Are you serious?”
“What’s wrong with Eli Carter?” Kate asked. “He seems like a solid choice. Maybe a little taciturn and serious, but he’s also, you know, hot. I guess that’s not a requirement for deputy mayor, but maybe it should be.”
In unison, Emma and Suzie turned to give her incredulous looks.
“What?” Kate asked defensively. “What’s with the looks? He is hot! All broody and those muscles.”
Emma covered her face and let out a muffled shriek.
“Eli Carter isn’t hot. We hate him.” Suzie paused, considering. “Well, maybe he is a little hot. But he’s also the officer who arrested Emma’s dad. How do you not know? You’ve lived in Hart’s Ridge your entire life! It was huge news.”
Kate side-eyed them. “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because we didn’t know each other very well back then? Or maybe because I was neck-deep in my own grief and dealing with a daughter who didn’t understand why her daddy was never coming home again.”
Emma winced. When her own life fell apart eight years ago, so had Kate’s. They hadn’t been close friends back then. Kate was only two years older than her, but they had gone to different schools their entire lives. Emma had gone to the local public schools, but Kate’s family, one of the wealthiest in Hart’s Ridge, sent her to private school in Piedmont.
Make Me Love You Page 3