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AN HOUR LATER, Pete followed Elissa into the music hall. Even for her, she was walking faster than normal, as if she wanted to get away from him. He couldn’t help wondering if it had anything to do with him startling her that morning. But that shouldn’t have bothered her. It wasn’t as if he’d strolled out into the hall buck-naked.
But something was definitely up because as soon as they stepped inside she scanned the crowd and headed straight for India and Skyler. Fellow deputy Connor Murphy had to do a quick sidestep with his beer to keep from getting mowed down by her.
“What’s up with Elissa tonight?” Connor asked as he approached Pete. “She’s moving like she’s on her way to a fire.”
Pete shrugged. “Who knows? Pressing girl talk, I guess.”
Connor shook his head. “Women.”
Exactly. Just when you thought you had one figured out, she up and started acting strange.
“You been cleaning up your place yet?”
“Haven’t had time. Got to get a truck first, but haven’t gotten around to that, either. Had to go buy a new life today. It’s bad when you’ve got one pair of underwear to your name.”
“Ask Greg. He probably knows someone who has a truck for sale.”
Pete nodded. “Good idea.” In fact, he saw Greg over by the bar, not too far from where Elissa stood. “I need a drink.”
“Later.”
Pete made his way around the edge of the dance floor, crowded as usual with locals and tourists. His gaze connected with that of a pretty blonde who smiled at him. He gave her a small smile back but continued on his way to the bar instead of asking her to dance.
“Hey, Pete,” India called to him over the sound of the crowd and the band.
He waved, but she motioned for him to come over. As he drew closer, Elissa slipped onto the stool behind her. There it was again, the subtle moving away from him. Or maybe he was imagining it. But why would he be? Shaking off the questions, he directed his attention at India.
“Liam’s organizing another rodeo to benefit the tornado victims. Do you think you could get us a list of those affected?”
“Sure.”
“And include yourself, okay?” Skyler said.
“I’m fine. I’ve got insurance.”
Elissa shifted forward on the stool. “You know better than to argue with Skyler, even before she was pregnant and grumpy.”
“Someday when you get pregnant, I hope you have triplets. And that they’re hell on wheels.”
Elissa shot Skyler a look of horror. “Bite your tongue, woman.”
India laughed, and Pete found himself smiling at the familiar banter between Elissa and Skyler. Whatever weirdness had taken up residence in Elissa seemed to have disappeared, thank goodness. It was bad enough he was forced to invade her home, but he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable while he was at it.
Someone touched his arm. When he turned, the pretty blonde stood there.
“Would you like to dance?”
The crazy urge to look at Elissa gripped him, but he resisted. Trying not to read anything into his reaction, he instead smiled and offered his arm to the blonde. “Lead the way.”
As his dance partner told him her name was Candace and she was in town for a wedding the next day, he tried to pay attention. He was beginning to wonder if he’d been knocked on the head during the tornado because it was hard to pay attention to her. But he made the effort, even pulling her a little closer.
Before he even thought about what he was doing, he turned his gaze toward where Elissa had been sitting, fully expecting she’d found her own dance partner. Instead, she still sat on the stool, staring right at him.
Chapter Four
Elissa jerked her gaze away the moment Pete looked in her direction. What was up with her? She was beginning to think she’d taken leave of her senses.
“Are you okay?” Skyler asked.
Elissa shoved away her sudden, brain-addled interest in Pete and slipped off the stool. “No. I didn’t come here to sit on my butt. This place is for dancing.”
“Then go dance.”
Elissa made a vague gesture around the room. “Slim pickings tonight. You won’t mind if I steal your man, will you?”
Before Skyler could answer, Elissa grabbed Logan’s hand and dragged him toward the dance floor. He laughed in her wake.
As they found a spot on the dance floor just as an upbeat tune started, Logan twirled her into the crowd. “One of these days, if you’re not careful, Skyler is going to sock you one.”
“I’m quicker than her on a normal day, and she’s only going to get bigger.”
Logan winced. “Be glad she didn’t hear that.”
“Already touchy about her figure?”
“You have no idea. We had a Chernobyl-style meltdown this morning when she couldn’t fasten her pants.”
Elissa glanced through the crowd toward Skyler. “Maybe I should lay off for a while, though that’s a little like asking everyone in the world to stop posting their cat pictures online.”
Still, maybe Skyler and India both could use a little pampering. If she got a bit further along in her cleanup and rebuild of the nursery, maybe she’d suggest a spa day for the three of them. She could even get into shopping for baby things. Being a mom might not be on her radar, but by golly she was going to be the best honorary auntie the world had ever seen. She was going to spoil those kids so rotten their mothers would never forgive her. She smiled at that thought.
“That smile is never good.”
Elissa looked up at Logan. “What, this?” She pointed toward her mouth. “I’m as innocent as innocent can be.”
“Yeah, right.”
Elissa laughed and for a few minutes let go of all the things she could be worrying about if she let herself. She wasn’t a natural worrywart as her friends could be, so the past few days had been exhausting both physically and mentally. She had to find a way to deal with restoring her business without letting it fritz her brain and turn her into someone she wasn’t.
At the end of the song, a very determined-looking Skyler reclaimed the love of her life.
“Thanks for letting me borrow him,” Elissa called after her, then laughed.
In the next moment, Greg Bozeman pulled her into his arms and began guiding her around the dance floor.
“So, when are you and I going to run off and get married?” Greg asked, a big grin on his face.
Elissa smiled back. “As soon as I can stop seeing you mooning the town from the top of the water tower.”
“Lord, I’m never going to live that down.”
“You are a town legend.” Elissa laughed at the memory from their senior year when after a big win that sent the Blue Falls High football team to the playoffs, Greg and a few other players had convinced someone in Austin to buy them a keg of beer. They’d been relatively fine out on the back of Taylor Binghamton’s family’s ranch. But then Greg had gotten the big idea to moon Blue Falls under the light of a full moon. The only reason he hadn’t been arrested was that the sheriff hadn’t been 100 percent sure of his identity and Greg had hightailed it. By the time the sheriff had found him the next day, Greg was sober. Still, everyone knew it had been him. And despite his protest now, Elissa was pretty sure he liked being the star of that particular story.
“I guess I’ll have to settle for being a swinging bachelor for a while longer.”
“Yes, I’m sure it will be a hardship.”
Over the course of the next three songs, Elissa found herself dancing with three more partners, two friends and one insurance adjuster from Austin in town meeting with policyholders who’d suffered losses from the tornado. Despite his bore-her-to-death job, he was a fun guy. But as soon as their dance ended and she turned to find herself face-to-face with Pete, she totally forgot Insurance Boy’s name.
Pete pulled her into the next song, and she had to fight the totally stupid urge to plant her feet. She had no idea what was going on in her noggin, but if she refused to dance with Pete, she might as well skywrite that she was having odd feelings toward one of her best friends. They’d danced countless times before, just as she always ended up dancing with Greg and a lot of the other regulars at the music hall. Why it suddenly felt different didn’t make one lick of sense. But it did. He felt too close, and she was aware of every point at which their hands touched and where Pete’s other hand rested at her waist.
She had gone completely loony.
“Something wrong?”
She met Pete’s eyes and saw genuine concern there. It touched her more than it should. Pete was just a nice guy, one who cared about everyone.
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I’m more tired than I thought.” She stopped dancing and gradually extricated herself, trying not to be obvious about it. “Honestly, I think I just hit the wall.”
Pete nodded toward the door. “I don’t have a lot of pep tonight, either. What do you say we cut out?”
What she really wanted was some time alone to get her head screwed on right, but she couldn’t say that. She had to ride out the rest of this odd trip on the crazy train until life, and her feelings toward Pete, got back to normal.
“Sure.”
“You’re calling it a night already?” India asked when Elissa told them she was leaving.
“Wow, outdone by the pregnant ladies,” Skyler said.
“Some of us have to rebuild our lives,” Elissa snapped. “Literally.”
Elissa caught the wide-eyed surprise on Skyler’s face and immediately felt like a bitch. “I’m sorry.”
Skyler grabbed her hand. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so hard on you, not now anyway.” She pulled Elissa to her for a hug. “Go get some rest.”
All the way back to her house, Elissa couldn’t stop thinking about how edgy and out of character she’d been acting over the past few days. It had to be stress. Nothing else could explain her mood and actions, the hyperawareness she was suffering around Pete.
Maybe she’d simply lived too long without a guy in the house. She hadn’t lived with her parents for more than a couple weeks at a time since she’d left them to their globe-trotting professions and moved in with Verona at the beginning of her freshman year of high school. So it had been only her and her aunt living in a testosterone-free zone for more than a decade.
“You know we’re back, right?”
She glanced at Pete in the passenger seat. “Huh?”
He pointed out the windshield at the interior of the garage. “You planning on falling asleep in your car again?”
She mentally shook herself and reached for the door handle. “I swear, I feel as if I’ve been losing my mind the past couple of days.”
“You’re not alone.”
Elissa shot a look at Pete, trying to figure out if there was more meaning in his words than what there appeared on the surface, but he was already getting out of the car. Loony. She was completely and utterly loony.
Pete reached the door into the house first and held it open for her. Verona had evidently already gone to bed, because the house was quiet, and only a single lamp was burning in the living room.
“You know what I think will make you feel better?”
Her nerves doing an ill-advised dance, Elissa tried her best to appear normal. “Winning the lottery?”
“Something even better.” He moved into the kitchen and retrieved a lemon meringue pie and two forks.
Elissa glanced toward the hallway before returning her attention to Pete. “Put that back. She made it to take to her poker game tomorrow. She’ll kill us if we touch it.”
Pete gave her a devilish grin she didn’t see very often. “When was the last time we got into trouble?”
She thought about it a moment. “Probably when we filled the entire front yard with Oklahoma Sooners decorations.” Elissa would dare anyone to find a bigger Texas Longhorns fan than her aunt, and the mere mention of the Sooners was enough to make her growl. Having her entire yard “defiled” had made Elissa worry for the one and only time that her aunt might kick her out of the house.
“So what’s a little pie filching compared to the Great Sooner Attack?”
Elissa shook her head. “I’m going to tell her that you ate every bite.”
Pete walked past her, tipping the front of his hat up as he headed for the front door. “Then maybe I will.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said as she followed him onto the porch. “You can’t tease me with pie and then not share.”
He offered her a fork. “Partners in crime?”
She huffed and grabbed the fork.
Pete sat at the edge of the porch at the top of the front steps, and Elissa plopped down beside him. Even with the electricity back on, she could still see the vast array of stars when she looked up at the sky.
“Pretty night,” Pete said as if he were reading her mind. “Hard to believe we all about blew away a few nights ago.” He glanced to the left, toward where his house used to stand.
“Are you going to rebuild?”
“Honestly, I haven’t had much time to think about it.” He stuck his fork in the pie then took the first bite.
Elissa cut a bite for herself and mmmed at the tart taste. Verona Charles never met a type of pie she couldn’t master.
“I’ve got to find somewhere to live, though,” Pete said as he cut another bite of pie. “Or your aunt is going to make me fat. Every time I step in the house, she tries to feed me. I think she believes I can’t feed myself.”
“Sometimes I think she wishes she had a family of her own. She would have been a good mom and wife. Maybe that’s why she’s always trying to take care of everyone in town.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate it, everything both of you have done for me.”
“We haven’t done anything. It’s not like anyone was using your room anyway.”
“I don’t mean just after the storm.” He took another bite and took his time swallowing it. “All the time Mom was sick, Verona was bringing over casseroles and cakes. And don’t think I don’t know you’re the one who set up the mowing and gardening brigade.”
