Page 33 of Under the Lights
He turned to see Decker with his wife and kids, all of them eating brownies. “I haven’t been asked to and I hope to keep it that way. Where did you get the goodies?”
“Bake sale booth,” one of Deck’s sons muttered around a mouthful of brownie.
“I must have missed that one.” A memory surfaced and Chase’s mouth watered in response. “Are there pistachio bars?”
Deck grinned. “The woman who made them when we were kids passed away a few years ago, but her daughter mastered the recipe. I’ve had two already.”
“Nice to see you,” he said to the Decker family. “I have to find the bake sale booth before Leavitt does. He inhales those suckers.”
“It’s over by the guy playing the banjo,” Cheryl called after him. “Just follow the music.”
Chase did just that, stopping to drop a buck in the banjo player’s hat—which had an Eagles Fest sign on it—on his way to the pistachio bars. There was a crowd around the baked goods booth, and he hoped he wasn’t too late.
He got in line and saw the back of Sam Leavitt’s head several people ahead of him.Damn.“Hey, Leavitt!”
The quarterback turned to face him, as did almost everybody else, including the women in front of him. He’d been so focused on the booth he hadn’t realized Kelly, Jen and Gretchen were in line.
“What?” Sam called.
“No cutting,” Gretchen said.
“What are you ladies after?”
“Brownies,” they all said in unison.
“Good.” He looked over their heads to Sam. “Don’t you dare take all the pistachio bars.”
His old friend shrugged. “You gotta be faster, Sanders. Come to think of it, I think I used to say that to you back in high school, too.”
Chase wanted to flip him off, but the street fair was a family event. Instead, all he could do was glare and hope there were plenty of pistachio bars left. With the golden cookie-type crust loaded with pistachio pudding and whipped cream, they’d always been his favorite treat at Old Home Day, and now he had his heart set on one.
“How are you feeling today?” Kelly asked, a deceptively innocent smile on her face.
“Fine.” He wondered what, if anything, she’d told her best friends, who seemed more interested in whatever they’d been talking about than him. “How ’bout you? Did you have your ice cream?”
“I did. Do you remember last night?”
“Of course.” He wasn’tthatdrunk. Buzzed enough to break into the high school and try to get her to make out with him on the bridge, but not enough to obliterate his memory.
He wondered if she was aware of the way her question sounded, because Jen and Gretchen both stopped talking. They didn’t turn around, but he could tell they were interested now and wanted to listen more than talk.
“I’m sure Alex and Sam appreciate your help as much as I do, Officer McDonnell,” he said, just to let the eavesdroppers know they were going to be disappointed if they thought he and Kelly had been up to something else last night.
“You really need to start calling me Kelly,” she muttered.
“Off duty today?”
She shrugged. “For about another hour. Then I’ll run home and get my uniform on and come back.”
“I left you one,” he heard Sam say, and he looked up in time to see the guy biting into a pistachio bar, while holding two more on a napkin in his other hand.
The women in front of him each picked up a brownie, and then Kelly’s hand hovered over the last pistachio bar.
“Don’t do it,” he warned.
She grinned. “I’m wondering what you’ll do for a pistachio bar.”
“Are you going to make me beg?” He dropped his voice, making the question as suggestive as possible in the hopes she’d rather put distance between them than steal his pistachio bar.
