Page 86 of Cherry Picked
And when the room began to overheat from all the dancing and candlelight, Jack led me outside to the cool night air of the parking lot, which had been hung with fairy lights and dotted with chairs, flower topiaries, and enormous tree cutouts I recognized from the town theater group’s production ofThe Lion, The Witch,and The Wardrobe.
“Much better,” I said, fanning my face with my hand. Jack had removed his tailcoat at least an hour ago and stood in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat. I reached up to untie the knot at his neck. “You must be suffocating.”
Jack gasped in mock outrage. “Hawkins Sunday! Are youtaking liberties? Attempting tosteal my virtue,right here in this…” He looked around at the paved ground, and his eyes landed on a potted chrysanthemum. “…garden?”
I laughed out loud. “Is it working?”
“Of course not,” he lied, leaning closer so I could wrestle with the complex folds of cloth. “What would my mother say?”
I laughed harder. “She’d say, ‘Good job, Hawk! Peony and I approve!’”
Jack pursed his lips, knowing this was true. “Still. This reminds me of that scandalousPride and Prejudicevariation you told me about last month, remember? The one where Darcy and Lizzy get it on in the garden while she’s visiting Pemberley, and she’s compromised, and there’s the whole blackmail plot…”
“That was hardlycompromising,” I reminded him. “Darcy had already vowed his eternal love. ‘Trust me with your body as I trust you with my heart, Elizabeth, and I will keep you safe always.’ Remember? She already knew the marriage proposal was coming and they’d be together forever.”
Jack covered my hands with his, trapping them against his chest. “Did she?” he said gruffly, but it sounded like he was saying something else.
Startled, I glanced up at him, my heart beating hard. “Yeah,” I said softly. “Yeah, she did.”
“Good.” He grinned and dropped his hands to my waist. “Then, by all means—” he began.
But I should have known better than to expect a man to be left to his own devices in the town of Little Pippin Hollow because a chorus of male laughter sounded from the other side of the plywood tree to my right.
“Oooh! That’s strong stuff, Norm,” a voice that sounded an awful lot like Ernie York’s said delightedly. He made a lip-smacking sound. “But it’s good.”
“We gotta rejoice that this vote is over and done,” Norm Avery said, grumpy as ever. “Now the Hollow can find something new to get its knickers in a twist over.”
“Nonsense. There’s still the construction left to be done. Plenty to complain about there!” Conrad Pilkner sounded positively delighted at this prospect.
Jack caught my eye and bit his lip to stifle his laughter.
“I just hope they bring in better surveyors this time,” O’Henry Brush said. “Last batch was downright incompetent. D’you know, they brought one of their off-roaders into Chuck’s garage a couple months back? Engine flooded, whole front end smashed in, and—get this—every single one of those heavy tires was flat as a pancake and stuck through with long steel spikes. Looked like it had gone six rounds with a giant metal porcupine and lost. Weirdest thing I ever saw.”
“My Bethy said those steel spikes were some kinda knitting needles. Dee-Pee-Enns,she called ’em,” Norm Avery volunteered. “Said she saw ’em herself on Chuck’s toolbox.”
The others laughed out loud.
“Knitting needles?” Ernie exclaimed. “Nonsense! No disrespect to your Bethy, Norm, but I don’t s’pose the ground is littered with knitting needles up on Fogg Peak.”
They all laughed again at the impossibility of such an idea.
I stared at Jack in shock, and both of us darted a look inside the hall, where Helena Fortnum was holding court with a group of Hookers. She raised an eyebrow at me and lifted her glass of punch as if in a toast, coral feathers bobbing around her face.
“No,” I breathed. “Or… maybe?”
“I thinkprobably.” Jack shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”
Around here? Stranger things happened all the damn time.
My brother Reed came outside to join us. “Getting too warm in there,” he said, yanking at the collar of his button-down shirt. He, too, had taken off his tailcoat earlier.
“Thanks for coming,” I said with a smile. “Even though none of us got to vote in the end.”
“I hope you’re not stressing about that,” Reed said. He clapped Jack on the shoulder. “Your man here made very sure it was going to pass before he let them hold the vote early.”
I looked up at Jack. “I know. I trust him.”
“Good.” Reed grinned. “Anyway, I’m glad I came. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss tonight. And I needed to be in the area anyway for a work thing, so it was kinda… fate. It’s been good to catch up with everyone. To eat Sunday Sundaes with the fam. To wake up in the same bed five days in a row.”
