Page 32 of Fall Into Temptation
“Oh, shit,” Eva gasped, clapping a hand to her mouth. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer her. “Aretha, you come out here right now,” Donovan ordered.
Eva noticed he’d unclipped the clasp on his stun gun but wasn’t making any moves toward it. He had more restraint than she did. That lady would have been flat on her back seizing on the floor if Eva had been in charge.
“Not until he gives me the sale price!” she hollered back.
“Goddammit,” Donovan muttered to himself. He yanked the handcuffs off his belt. “Stay,” he warned Eva and hustled back the aisle. There was a high-pitched scream, a thud, and then Donovan was marching Aretha out from the stacks with her hands cuffed behind her back.
She was swearing up a blue streak when Donovan shoved her down on one of the worn arm chairs. “Now, sit there and be quiet so I don’t tase a Sunday school teacher in front of half the town,” he told her. “I’ll do it, and I won’t feel bad about it, Aretha.”
The woman shut up and sat, pouting.
“Fitz, what the hell is going on?” Donovan demanded.
“Dude, I don’t know! It’s the planets, man. I knew I should have gotten in my bunker! She was just in here shopping with the book club and all the sudden starts screaming about clearance prices.”
“The book was inclearance!” Aretha shouted, kicking her feet against the floor.
“For the love of God, woman. Keep quiet until it’s your turn.” Donovan rubbed a hand over the goose egg that was rising on his forehead.
Sensing the primary danger was over, Eva busied herself with picking up the books that had fallen victim to Aretha’s rant. She stacked them neatly on the counter, piling up the damaged ones in the corner.
She was just pulling a cart over when a paperback she’d missed caught her eye behind the couch. Eva bent to pick it up and gasped.
It had happened. The very first time she found one of her books in a bookstore, and it was in Blue Moon’s used book shop, and someone had thrown it in a tirade. It was even better than seeing it in the window of a Barnes and Noble, she decided.
Although being in a second-hand store meant someone hadn’t loved it enough to keep it. But at least they’d read it.
“What’s wrong?” Donovan asked looking over her shoulder.
“Jesus. I need to put a cat collar on you,” Eva gasped, clutching the book to her chest.
There was a knock at the front door. “Is it okay to come back in, Sheriff?” Mrs. Nordemann, the world’s longest mourning widow and busiest busybody asked from the doorway.
“I could really use the money,” Fitz whispered to Donovan. “The stripping has really slowed down this month.”
Donovan rolled his eyes. “Everyone can come in if they help Fitz clean this up and answer my questions. One more outburst, and I’m dragging you all into the station.”
Eva didn’t know what to do with her book. She tried to slide it onto a shelf, but Donovan was watching her. She smiled and waved.
She scuttled behind the desk to help pick up the book shrapnel that had made it over the counter, and when she put her book down for one second next to Fitz’s ancient fax machine, Donovan snatched it up.
“What’s this?” he asked.
She reached for it, but he held it over her head out of her reach.
“Fated Fools by Ava Franklin.”
Eva stopped fighting and squeezed her eyes shut as Donovan turned the book over.
“Holy shit. This isyou?”
Why in the ever-living hell had she put her picture on the back of her books when she revamped the covers last spring?Eva lamented. She wrote under a pen name. Why didn’t she have a pen picture or whatever the hell it was called.
“Don’t say—”
“You’reAva Franklin?” Mrs. Nordemann gasped.
