Page 17 of Holding on to Chaos
Willa, owner of Blue Moon Boots and a self-proclaimed psychic, raised her hand from the third row. “I can’t stop thinking about getting a perm. Is that because of Uranus?”
Eva couldn’t quite stifle her laugh, and Joey leaned over her shoulder. “I think Willa just said Donovan’s anus talked her into getting a perm.”
Tears pricked Eva’s eyes as she struggled to hold in the laughter.
Willa’s blonde hair was straight as a stick and hung to her waist in the same style she’d worn since she was eight years old and told her mother to stop giving her bowl cuts. The idea of the woman getting a perm was laughable. The idea of the woman getting a perm because Donovan’s muscled ass told her to? Priceless.
Emma elbowed her in the ribs. “Stop snorting. I can’t hear what they’re saying.”
“Sorry,” Eva snickered. “I’m just so glad I moved here.” God, this town and its Ken doll sheriff were just the inspiration she needed.Maybe Donovan could unwittingly help her along by playing a starring role,she thought. She just needed to spend some time with him.
“Why are you smiling like an evil genius?” Gia demanded.
“I’m just thinking about Uranus.”
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The meeting wrapped but not before Donovan assured everyone that his department would distribute a PDF on the signs of the coming astrological apocalypse and step-by-step instructions on how to fight the urge to do illegal and/or immoral things. Wading through the crowd, he spotted Eva standing on one of the theater chairs waving at him.
He started toward her when she slid off the cushion and landed hard on the armrest.
Donovan shook his head. The woman should be wearing bubble wrap.
Of course, in Blue Moon, navigating the crowd after a town meeting took the same amount of time it took to make it three city blocks in Manhattan after five. A dozen greetings and required personal reassurances that would be rehashed on Facebook for the next twenty-four hours stood between him and the woman who was smiling at him like he was her personal hero.
He could have been a cop in a city. He could have been a sheriff in any other small town in the country, yet he’d chosen this life. For the most part, his job was peacekeeping and reassuring Blue Moon’s citizens of their safety. He’d rescued ferrets, dried tears, bought candy for lost kids at carnivals, pulled over the occasional speeder—Phoebe at least twice a year. He spoke at town meetings, attended ribbon cuttings, and visited the schools. He talked about the dangers of drugs with teenagers and stranger danger with kindergartners. He taught self-defense classes, spearheaded food drives, triple checked car seats. He did whatever it was that his neighbors needed.
The Blue Moon Police Department was more outreach than crime-fighting, and he’d like to keep it that way. So he stood and listened whileMrs. Nordemann explained how just this week she’d felt compelled to buy a murder mystery novel instead of her usual contemporary erotica. And he nodded thoughtfully when the flannel-cladFincher brothers who ran the campground outside of town told him how “wild” the wildlife had been acting recently.
He made his way methodically through the crowd until he spotted her again. He’d seen her, eyes laughing, hand clamped over her mouth, when Willa had brought up Uranus. Evangelina Merill was already nothing but trouble. He could only imagine what the alignment of planets would do to her. She’d need a full-time babysitter just to make sure she didn’t blow up Beckett’s guest house making popcorn.
She stood in a loose circle with the Pierces, laughing at a shot her brother-in-law Nikolai was showing her on the screen of his camera.
“There’s our fearless leader,” Summer said, patting him on the shoulder. “You realize this all sounds completely insane to people who haven’t lived here their whole lives.”
Niko looked up and grinned. “I think it might sound the same to a handful of others,” he said, turning the camera screen to Donovan. It was a picture of him, standing behind Charisma in the middle of her explanation. He was mid-eye roll.
“It’s nice to know you’re just a little bit human,” Eva said at his elbow as she peered at the screen.
“You expect someone to say Uranus that many times, and I won’t have a reaction to it?”
“How seriously do we need to take this?” Jax demanded. “And is this going to do anything to stir up livestock? We’ve got a stable full of prime horse flesh that doesn’t need any encouragement to get uppity.”
“Oh, geez. Apollo with a bigger attitude?” Joey shook her head. “That narcissistic bastard can barely fit his head through the stall door as it is. No way. We’re all packing up and moving away for a month.”
“You try creating perfect equine gods and goddesses and see how big your head gets,” Carter teased her.
“Oh, hell. What’s this going to mean for kids?” Gia asked. “We’ve got babies on up through teenagers. What kind of a living hell is this month going to be?”
Good.Donovan would rather they be scared. Scared meant vigilant. And vigilant meant at least some of them some of the time would maintain their hold on their marbles. He’d die for these people. Any one of them. But he’d prefer it to be over something big, something meaningful, not being poisoned by perm chemicals or run down in the street by an irate farmer in his combine.
Eva put her hand on his arm, and all heroic thoughts vanished.
“Do you want to get a drink?” she asked.
“More than anything in this world.”
She grinned up at him, and he felt six stories tall.
