Page 56 of Make Me Love You

“Yes. Yes, you did.”

“Oh my God.”

Emma sat down on the bench outside Wired and rubbed her forehead. Her first act as mayor broke the law. All she had wanted was to make her dad proud. To be like her mom and leave things better than she found them. That’s it. A little thing, she had told herself. And she had failed spectacularly. Why had she ever thought she could do this?

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. What should I do? How do I fix this?”

“I don’t know that it can be fixed, unfortunately. If the historic nature of the lamp posts has been destroyed, there will be fines. I’ll need you to send me, in writing, everything you did to the lamp posts. The method you used for cleaning and painting. The brand and type of paint. All of that. Let’s hope you did not damage anything beyond repair.”

“I’ll do that today.”

The moment she hung up, she started typing. Five minutes later she hit send. Now all she could do was wait.

She stood up, rubbing her aching neck, and looked up from her phone, searching for her friends.Instead of Suzie and Kate, she found herself eye-to-eye with Eli’s new campaign poster. There was a picture of him in his police uniform, grinning his good-guy grin...and next to that was her dad’s mug shot.

Emma froze, stunned. He could have walked up to her in the middle of Main Street and punched her in the face and it would have hurt less. Would have made her feel less exposed than she felt right now, staring at the photographic evidence of the second worst moment of her dad’s life.

Things were not falling into place. Not at all. Things were falling apart.

***

Eli was having a pretty good day until Mrs. Gaither, who was somewhere between the age of eighty-three and Methuselah, socked him on his shoulder with her purse.

“Hey, now!” He rubbed the spot where her bag had made contact. What the hell did she have in there, rocks? “What was that for?”

“Don’t you play dumb with me, young man. I won’t have it. Those posters are all over town. You should be ashamed of yourself.” She smacked him again, on his other shoulder this time. “I’m disappointed in you, Eli.”

That stung more than the clobbering. Mrs. Gaither had always liked him.

“What posters?” he asked. The only posters he knew of were the ones that said he was running for mayor. She couldn’t be pissed about that, could she? It didn’t make any sense. “Honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m just here to get my coffee and maybe a donut. That’s it.”

Shrunken though she was, Mrs. Gaither still managed to grab hold of his ear and haul his face to where she wanted it. “Those posters. Now, what do you have to say for yourself?”

Eli blinked, trying to get his eyes to focus on the image a mere two inches from his nose. There he was...and there was Mr. Andrews.

Oh, shit.

He pulled back, despite her grip on his ear, so that he could see the whole thing. The choice is yours. Do you want the man who puts criminals behind bars, or the criminal’s daughter? Vote for Eli Carter. Vote for law and order.

Double shit.

“What did that poor girl ever do to you to deserve this?” Mrs. Gaither demanded. She released his ear so she could hit him again. “Hasn’t she had enough sorrow in her life? No matter what her dad did or didn’t do, she’s done right her whole life. This isn’t Washington, D.C. This is Hart’s Ridge, and we don’t tolerate this sort of nastiness here.”

“I don’t...I didn’t...” He flailed for words. How had this happened? Who had done this? Because it wasn’t him.

Jacob Bronson. It had to be Jacob Bronson. Goddammit.

“There’s Emma now. Maybe you can explain it to her.”

He turned so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. Their gazes clashed and held. And the look in hers. Oh, God. It damn near broke him. Wounded. Like a lover had stabbed her in the back. Which, fair enough. Only he hadn’t, but she didn’t know that.

She spun on her toes, hair whipping behind her, and broke into a run. She was literally running away from him. There was a time when he would have allowed it. Would have allowed her to leave him over a stupid misunderstanding, because oh well, she was bound to leave him sooner or later anyway. No point in making someone stay when they were determined to go.

But he had only just gotten her back. She couldn’t go away so soon. Not like this.

Not this time, honey.

She had a head start, but that didn’t matter. Emma wasn’t a runner, whereas Eli put in three miles most days of the week. He caught up with her in a block, wrapped his arms around her like a lasso, and hauled her back against his chest.

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