Page 78 of Fall Into Temptation
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 of 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. Maybeyou’reunder 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.”
