Page 63 of Make Me Love You

Good times.

The first official guests of Holiday House, as she had christened the bed and breakfast, had arrived yesterday and immediately proclaimed everything charming, much to Emma’s relief. They had loved the welcome baskets she had put together for them. She had sent them to Dreamer’s Café for dinner, with a nice discount and a suggestion to try the lamb burgers, and showed them where they could rent bicycles to explore Main Street.

Not only that, but she had managed to get short blurbs in Road Trip Magazine and Southern Magazine about the Fourth of July event, and newspapers all over North Carolina had included it, as well. The budget was tight, but she had managed to get radio and social media ads for a reasonable price. She suspected that their local celebration was going to have a lot of new faces this year—and hopefully those new faces would be bringing their wallets.

She had managed to escape Hart’s Ridge being fined for the lamp posts. Ms. Lipscomb had come out to look everything over. Emma had provided photographs she had found that showed the lamp posts shortly after their construction. She had even managed to get similar flower baskets, which were now overflowing with festive red, white, and blue impatiens. Ms. Lipscomb had smiled at that, and determined that foreclosure had been avoided, whatever that meant.

Now it was seven a.m. and she was at the fairgrounds overseeing the setup for the day’s festivities. Everything was going well. So well, in fact, that she was honestly suspicious that it was a trap and something catastrophic would blow up in her face, like an evening thunderstorm rolling in over the mountains after a bluebird morning.

She cast a steely-eyed look at Hart’s Mountain. “Don’t you fucking dare,” she whispered.

“Who are we fighting now?”

Emma startled at the sound of Kate’s voice. She hadn’t noticed her friend standing there, although she wasn’t surprised she was already there, since Kate had a booth of her own to set up for the day’s festivities. “Weather. Mountains. Fate. The universe. You know, the usual suspects.”

“Oh, is that all. Sign me up. You know I’m always down to throw hands against the universe.”

Emma snorted and bumped Kate with her hip. Her gaze fell on Eli carrying rolls of lights to the barn and her eyes narrowed. He was here already? Interesting, since he hadn’t bothered to say hello. “And maybe Eli Carter, too.”

He hadn’t changed his mind the other day, after he told her about his mom. She had waited up to see if he would, and when it became clear that he wouldn’t, she considered going to him and having it out. But she had stopped herself, because that wouldn’t have helped him. If he needed space, he could have it. It would have been nice if he had told her why, but he didn’t owe her that. It wasn’t like he was her boyfriend.

They had seen each other a few times since, quick moments where they talked about how busy they were before spinning off in different directions. Understandable, given that they were actually busy. Still. Something was off, she just didn’t know what. She suspected it had something to do with his mother, but that didn’t make a whole lot of sense, either, because he had started acting strange before her name had even come up.

And now he was avoiding her.

“Eli?” Kate repeated. She followed Emma’s gaze. “Ah. About that. Anything you want to tell me?”

Emma sighed. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

“How about with that time you made out with him on Main Street before he put you in his squad car? Start with that. Because the whole town is talking about it, but you haven’t said a single word.”

“We did not make out!” Which was true, but not the whole truth. “Not right then, anyway.”

“Ah ha! I knew it!” Kate shouted.

“Shh!” Emma looked around, but Eli was far enough away that he couldn’t overhear. “He’s going to know we’re talking about him.”

“Tell me everything. Especially the sordid parts. Let me live vicariously through you.”

Emma’s cheeks felt hot. Normally she was happy to share details, but somehow it felt different this time. The things that had happened between them were special. Intimate. She wanted to keep it all to herself. It was precious to her.

“It was good,” she said vaguely. “You know. Nice.”

“Nice.” Kate looked from Emma to Eli and back again. “No, I don’t believe that for a second. I’ve seen the way he looks at you, and the way you look at him. The heat between you could start a forest fire in a rainstorm. No way was it nice.”

Emma couldn’t deny the truth of her statement. “It’s...intense. But it doesn’t matter. We made a deal. After the election, we’re done.”

“What? My God, Emma, why? Look at that man. I mean, look at him.”

Emma looked. Eli was now on a ladder, stringing a garland of fairly lights above the barn door. No doubt about it, he was a gorgeous man. She wanted to touch him, to wait for him to come down from that ladder and kiss him right there in front of everybody, like it wasn’t a big deal.

She scowled. “You know our history. It just doesn’t work between us.”

“Really? Then explain all this.” Kate spun in a circle, her arms spread wide, to indicate the fairgrounds around them, where everything was coming together perfectly. “Look at what you did together. It looks to me like things work between you just fine. What you mean is you can’t forgive him.”

For a moment, Emma considered agreeing with her. To take this confusing knot of thoughts and feelings twisted up inside of her and boil it down to one simple concept: He had arrested her dad, and she couldn’t forgive him. Simple. Easy.

But it wasn’t true.

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