Page 31 of Holding on to Chaos
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. And now she was mute.Awesome. Mute and concussed.She felt nervous and excited and horrified and—dare she think it? —hopeful.
Donovan’s phone buzzed from the tray in the dashboard.
He swore darkly.
He grabbed it and stabbed a button. “I thought I told you not to call—”
Donovan stopped, listened. “Are you puking right now?” He pulled the phone away from his ear, and Eva could hear retching.
“Where’s Layla?” Donovan demanded. “Fuck. Okay. I’ll be there in ten.”
He hung up and tossed the phone back in the tray. “A little rain delay,” he told Eva.
“What’s going on?”
“Layla’s on a call, and Colby’s got some kind of stomach bug or food poisoning and can’t stop puking. I have to go check on Fitz at the bookstore. Some customer called 911.”
Eva was not about to let the evening end like this. Not without another kiss and a concussion check. “Can I come with you?” she asked.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There was a crowd in front of the used book store when Donovan pulled into the parking lot. A ragtag band of hippies were pressing their faces against the front windows. Through the open front door, Eva could hear shouting and a sporadic thwacking noise.
“Stay here,” Donovan said. He made it as far as getting his seatbelt off before he reconsidered. “On second thought, come with me. I want to keep an eye on you.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” she complained but got out of the SUV anyway. She was dying to know what was happening inside.
“Oh, thank goodness, Sheriff!” A woman in flared jeans with peace sign patches on both the knees flagged down Donovan. “I don’t know what happened. One second Aretha was browsing the clearance section, and the next she and Fitz are screaming and throwing books at each other.”
“Thanks, Xanna. I’ll talk to them.”
Eva wasn’t sure if anyone else noticed it, but she caught the straightening of Donovan’s broad shoulders, the tightening of his jaw. He was making the shift from friend and neighbor to authority figure. It was sexy as hell.
“You stay behind me. Don’t touch anything. Don’t say anything,” he ordered. “Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it. Let’s get in there before someone throws a chair or a body through the window.”
Inside, Eva was met with the musty perfume of old books. The shop looked a lot bigger inside than it had from the exterior. Rows and rows of mismatched shelves ran the length of the store. They were neatly organized by genre and author. In the center of the shop was a seating area with a few ratty couches and some beat up tables and chairs. Behind the furniture was the empty register.
“It was in clearance!” A woman who Eva assumed was Aretha—though she’d pictured more of an Aretha Franklin than the skinny white lady in her fifties—popped out of an aisle jack-in-the-box style and hurled a paper back at the desk.
Fitz’s head popped up like a prairie dog from behind the register. “I said it was an accident! It was a hardcover! Hardcovers don’t go in the paperback clearance!”
He dodged the magazine that Aretha chucked in his direction.
“It was in clearance!”
“I’m not selling you a Sylvia Day book for a buck! The sex scenes alone are worth at least five! How would I survive on prices like that?”
“You don’t expect me to believe you make a living off used books, do you?” Aretha sent two paperbacks flying at once. “The entire town knows you sell weed out the back door!”
“I haven’t done that since the nineties,” Fitz argued, ducking the next literary volley.
Books were piling up in front of the register in a discarded monument. Aretha sent a hardcover flying and it knocked over the register monitor.
Fitz’s head popped up again. “Hey! Don’t you dare break that!”
“Enough!” Donovan’s voice cut through the screaming and book throwing, and there was one second of absolute silence. And then Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in hardcover flew out of the stacks and caught Donovan on the forehead.
