by Lucy Score
“You sound like my wife,” Jax grinned. “We come bearing news that needs to be acted on ASAP, and we need your shiny little badge to get some shit done.”
Donovan brought his fingers to his temples. “Let me guess. Your P.I. found Reeva and Caleb’s mom in Ocean City, Maryland, and we need to move now?”
Jax rushed Donovan’s desk, his excitement palpable. “How’d you—”
“Your P.I. texted this morning. She got a hot tip thanks to a Facebook post. That was the chief of police in OC. He’s having a car pick up Sheila at her motel now on a few outstandings.”
“Hot damn!” Jax grabbed Donovan by his shoulders and laid a kiss on his forehead. He punched Nikolai in the shoulder and ran for the door.
“Where are you going?” Donovan yelled after him, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead.
Jax ran back. “I gotta tell Joey. We gotta tell the kids.”
Donovan sighed. “Jeez, it’s like someone just told you you were gonna be parents. Tell Joey, but wait on the kids until the cops pick her up. Have Beckett fax the papers to this number,” he instructed, shoving a scrap of paper at Jax. “If she signs, drag the kids out of school and throw a damn party.”
“Tell Joey. Fax papers. Have party. Got it!” Jax took off leaving the fax number on Donovan’s desk.
Donovan sighed again. “You mind delivering this to your idiot friend?”
“Happy to help,” Nikolai said. “You got a minute?” he asked, glancing toward the doorway.
“No one’s burned anything down yet today,” Donovan said. His interest piqued when Nikolai shut the door.
“Okay, first thing is kind of a formality. I hear you and Eva are… seeing each other.”
Donovan steepled his fingertips. “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes. We are.”
“Technically, through marriage, Eva is my business,” Niko argued amicably. “So, I wanted to give you the ‘treat her well or else’ spiel.”
“Message received.” Donovan could appreciate the protective vibe, but the only man Eva was going to need protecting her was him. Not some well-meaning brother-in-law.
“I also wanted to let you know that I think you two are a good thing. So, when I tell you this, I don’t think I’m being disloyal. Their mother leaving them had an effect on each of them. They all seem to think that since Eva was the youngest, it was easier on her. I think she lets them think that. And I can tell by your expression I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.”
“I think Eva tends to cope by keeping things to herself,” he admitted. “But I plan to make sure she understands that honesty is the only policy.”
Nikolai looked relieved. “Just wanted to make sure you were aware. These Merill women are formidable, and I want you in the fight.”
“Appreciate it,” Donovan said. They shook over his desk. “Anything else?”
Niko shrugged his shoulders under his leather jacket. “We ran into her on our way here. Looked like she was arguing with someone.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know. Said the woman was a stranger. But that wasn’t the vibe she was giving off. I didn’t catch what they were saying, but it was tense.”
“What did the woman look like?”
“Bleach blonde, older. Smoker. From the looks of her, she had some other unhealthy habits. I’m new here, but she definitely wasn’t the type that usually hangs out around town. And the way they looked at each other?” Nikolai shook his head. “There’s history there.”
Donovan frowned. He had a hard time imagining Eva having an issue with anyone. She’d be more likely to pick someone apart and use them as an antagonist in a book than hate them.
“I’ll ask her about it,” he told Nikolai.
His friend nodded. “Good. Okay. I’m going to go find my wife and talk her into breakfast in bed.”
“You do that. And thanks, Niko.”
Donovan drummed his fingers on the desk when Nikolai left. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but it sounded like Eva was keeping secrets.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
To: Beautification Committee
From: Bruce Oakleigh
Subject: Privacy reminder
Hello, fellow B.C. members,
President Bruce Oakleigh here. Attached, please find the minutes of last night’s meeting. I’d like to once again welcome our two new members and remind them that confidentiality and subtly are two of the Beautification Committee’s hallmarks of operation.
Gia and Eva, if you have any concerns about your capability to keep our business secret, here are a few suggestions.
Only open B.C. emails on a private device in a private room (i.e. Linen closet, locked bathroom, etc). This ensures that no family member accidentally stumbles upon our confidential information.
Use only the operational codes for matches. This ensures that no matchee knows they are being matched.
Consider hiding your B.C. binder in a safe, secure place. Amethyst and I purchased a fire safe which is kept in a secure location within our home.
Should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact a senior member of the committee.
Yours in matching success,
Bruce Oakleigh
P.S. It is forbidden to discuss committee business with any past members, especially those who have been ousted.
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Eva usually didn’t mind keeping secrets. She was good at it. But this one wasn’t sitting well. Not with how raw she felt over seeing her mother in the flesh standing on the picturesque Main Street of Blue Moon. And not with Donovan calling her up to mention how much he admired her honesty and appreciated her trusting him enough to talk about her childhood.
“So how was your morning?” Donovan asked sweet as pie through the phone.
“You mean my post-orgasmic bliss? It’s going well,” she joked.
He laughed softly, and Eva felt some of the ice in her belly thaw.
“Are you home?” he asked.
She could tell he was fishing for something. “I am,” she said, pacing through her tiny living room and willing away the unsettled feeling. “Getting ready to write thanks to all of last night’s inspiration.”
“That was a lot of inspiration,” he admitted amicably. “Enough to warrant a good strong cup of coffee this morning.”
She couldn’t tell if he was making a statement or outright asking, but the bottom line was Niko and Jax had sold her out.
“Let me guess, Jax and Niko blabbed to you.”
“Eva.” It was all the confirmation she needed before mentally adding their names to the running list of secondary characters to torture in future books. She frowned at the way Donovan said her name, oozing with patience. “Don’t use your sheriff voice on me,” she warned him.
“Jax and Niko said they ran into you outside the coffee shop.”
“And invited me to the apple butter boil, whatever that is, on Saturday. Did they tell you that, too?”
“They mentioned it looked like you were having a confrontation.” He was tenacious, sticking to the point with a stubbornness that was putting her in a tough spot.
“Did they now?”
“Eva. What happened?”
Frustrated, she blew out a breath. “I need to ask you a favor.”
“Anything,” he promised.
“I need space to handle something before I can talk to you about it. I need you to trust me to handle it on my own, and I promise you, once it’s fixed I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
He was silent, and she could hear his wheels turning. She was using his own goodness against him, but there was no way she was going to dump this mess on his lap. If she hadn’t gone to her own family for help, she certainly wasn’t going to drag her shiny new boyfriend into it. No, this was her journey. Her responsibility. She’d enabled her mother for her entire adult life. It stopped now, and it stopped with her
.
“Please, Donovan? I need to do this on my own.” He’d give her anything she’d ask for within reason. And he only had to debate whether this was within reason.
He swore. “I don’t like this Eva.”
“I swear to you it’s nothing to be worried about. It’s just an old mess that I’m finally cleaning up. I know it’s a lot to ask given your perpetual town-wide caregiver state, but I need to do this for me. I can’t have someone else fix it for me.”
“You’ll tell me once it’s done?”
“I’ll tell you everything,” she promised. “But there’s one more thing.”
“Eva,” he rasped.
“You can’t say anything to my family. They don’t need to know about this.”
“How can I say anything when you’re not trusting me to tell me what’s going on?”
“Donovan, I trust you. This is just something I need to do myself. Please understand. Please?”
He sighed, and she knew she’d won. But the victory wasn’t sweet. She felt like she was letting him down.
“I know I’m asking you to take a leap of faith here. But I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
“You’re not doing anything illegal?” he demanded.
“No. Nothing you’d have to arrest me for,” she promised.
“That woman. You weren’t married to her or something, and she’s refusing to divorce you because you adopted five kids together?”
Eva laughed and felt the weight lift off her just a bit. “No, and where did you get that idea?”
“This cosmic bullshit that’s happening right now makes anything possible.”
“I promise to make this up to you as soon as the cosmic bullshit is over.”
“Holding you to it. And Eva?”
“Yeah?”
“You know if you need me I’m there, right?”
She smiled, felt the truth of his words. “Yeah. I know that. And I love it.”
“I love you, Eva.”
She chewed on her lip. “I’m not sure if I’m ready for non-sexual declarations of love,” she admitted.
“Yeah, well. Get used to it.” He sounded down, and she hated knowing it was her fault. He was the hero type. He considered it his job to clean up messes for the people he cared about, and she wasn’t letting him do that.
“I’m going to go write, but I’ll be thinking about you,” she promised.
“Please be safe, Eva.”
--------
Eva glared at the blinking cursor and willed the words to come. She’d expected a flood of romance to dance from her fingers after her night with Donovan.
And then her mother had shown up and ruined everything. And letting Donovan down didn’t exactly help those creative juices flow either. She felt like a big, human-shaped pile of shit. And it was all Agnes’s fault.
She’d hoped a simple, stalwart “no” would drive her mother out of her life. Taking the shame and self-doubt with her. But by showing up here, Agnes was threatening everything Eva held dear.
She pushed away from the table, abandoning the blinking cursor, and got up to make coffee. She found the pot was full with hot water. Apparently forgetting that she’d a) made coffee and b) forgotten to actually add the coffee.
“Get a hold of yourself,” Eva cautioned herself. But the worry was clawing at her throat. The woman who had single-handedly inflicted damage on every one of her family members was here and waiting to strike. And this time, she was close enough that she could hurt them all. They were all married and happy, working and living and loving in this tiny town. And Agnes Merill wanted to take that from them. Why?
“Because she’s an empty shell of a human being. And a bitch,” Eva reminded herself.
Her phone rang, and she welcomed the distraction when she saw Eden’s name on the screen.
“Hey, what’s up?” she answered.
“Uh. Hi,” Eden said. She sounded stilted, and Eva heard the sound of a door closing. “Hey, listen. I have a woman here at the B&B who says she’s a friend of yours.”
Eva swallowed hard. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Eden said. “She said her name is Agnes and that you’d be paying for her room?” Eva could hear the edge of unasked questions in Eden’s voice.
Mother fucker. “She did, did she?” Eva asked.
“She was pretty adamant about it,” Eden admitted. “If she’s not a friend like she says, I’d be happy to get rid of her.”
Eva could only imagine the consequences. “No. It’s fine. We’re, uh, distant acquaintances. I’m just helping her out. Temporarily.” Paying for a hotel room was different than shelling out ten grand, she rationalized. “Let me give you my credit card number.”
“Are you sure?” Eden asked.
“Yeah. Yeah. But listen, if you don’t mind, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about this. Like anyone at all.”
“I’m an innkeeper. I keep everyone’s dirt.”
“Remind me to get you drunk sometime and dig into all that dirt,” Eva joked.
“Ha.”
Eva read off her card information.
Eden thanked her. “Okay. I gotta go. I just wanted to check that this was all kosher. And if you come visit your… acquaintance, stop by and say hi.”
Oh, Eva would be stopping by all right. And she’d be dragging Agnes out of there and tossing her out on her skinny ass.
CHAPTER THIRTY
By Saturday, Donovan was tied up in knots. The planetary crossing was still wreaking havoc. Just that morning, Old Man Carson’s cows had inexplicably busted out of the barn and stampeded into town where they proceeded to crap all over One Love Park and eat most of the landscaping. Cleanup was still ongoing.
And Eva still wasn’t opening the vault on her secret. Donovan had a bad feeling about it, but she’d asked him to trust her. He’d been turning it over in his head, wondering exactly what this woman was to Eva and what trouble she could cause. When he’d picked her up to take her over to Pierce Acres for the apple butter boil, she looked pale, exhausted.
“Everything okay?” he asked, his tone easy.
“I’m fine,” she announced with a bright, phony smile. “Excited about apple butter.”
He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. Even his monumental patience was finite. He’d asked her point blank, and she’d batted those hazel eyes at him, all innocence and sweetness, and then lied to his face.
He was in law enforcement. Sure, Blue Moon was a sleepy-ass town with hardly any trouble, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t spot a lie at ten paces. He didn’t like that she didn’t trust him with this secret, but he’d waited this long to win her. He could wait a little longer to earn that trust. She wasn’t going to shake him. If either of them was going to do the changing, it was her.
It was with this determination that he took her hand in his as he steered his SUV toward Pierce Acres. Colby and Layla were splitting the shift this afternoon and into the night, leaving him free—barring any major emergencies—to enjoy the return of the Apple Butter Boil.
“I assume you’ve never been to an apple butter boil?” he asked Eva, his thumb stroking her hand under his.
She shook her head. “Apple butter boil virgin.”
“I think you’ll like it,” he predicted.
“Well, with apples, sugar, and Phoebe’s chicken corn soup, what’s not to like?” Eva joked.
They pulled into the gravel drive and bumped their way toward the house and barn. Donovan pulled off into the front yard, which resembled more of a parking lot than a yard.
Kids and dogs wrestled and played chase. Men with beers and mugs of coffee stood around a huge kettle over a fire. Women, Eva’s sisters included, juggled glasses of wine and babies. And right then, as Donovan took Eva’s hand and led her into the fray, everything in his life felt just about perfect.
The Pierces greeted them with beverages and cookies and a tour o
f the apple butter setup. The witch’s cauldron—as he and Beckett had called it all those years ago—hung over a crackling fire. The scents of apple and burning wood hung in the air. The trees had all turned here, too. Golds and rusty reds clung to the branches for one last hurrah before winter settled in.
It was beautiful. It was home.
“We were just discussing the madness around town,” Summer said, opening a bottle of Chardonnay on the picnic table.
Jonathan, dressed in a tiny flannel shirt, ran over to Donovan arms raised. Donovan lifted the boy up over his head and spun him around delighting in the giggles.
“He just ate carrots,” Summer warned. “That is not attractive vomit.”
Donovan settled Jonathan on his hip and tuned into the conversation.
“It’s like the entire town has PMS and a hangover,” Joey said.
Donovan froze and stared at her. “Jesus. You got bangs.”
Joey shrugged scraping her fingers through the choppy layers covering her forehead. “What’s so weird about that?”
“You haven’t changed your hair since you were seven,” Beckett pointed out, burping Lydia on his shoulder.
“You grew a beard,” Joey shot back.
“That’s different. That was for a bet.”
“You kept it. Maybe you’re under Uranus’s influence,” Joey argued.
Carter slapped a hand on Donovan’s shoulder. “I imagine you’ve been dealing with this kind of shit all over town.”
“You hear about Clayton’s crotch of cold brew the other day?” Donovan asked, handing Jonathan over when the little boy reached for his dad.
“That’s all it was? I heard Selma dumped an entire pot of hot coffee on him,” Carter said.
Donovan rolled his eyes, well used to the Blue Moon grapevine.
“I heard that Selma threw the pot at his head, and he tossed her over the counter to protect himself,” Franklin piped up.
“This is what happens when you disable the gossip group on Facebook,” Joey muttered.