Merchants in Hellcat Canyon had each other’s backs. A customer was a customer.
Greta collected those cards with the brisk professionalism of a Vegas blackjack dealer and Eden walked out, feeling both fascinated and a little violated. Those tarot cards took some liberties, boy.
The only person she’d felt comfortable yielding her deepest secrets to was... was Gabe.
She stopped short.
How could she walk away from that?
When Eden emerged from the tent, the grounds seemed thronged with kids hopped up on cotton candy, bouncing like rubber balls from booth to booth and shrieking with glee, a jarring contrast to having her soul quietly excavated by Greta.
She strolled casually up a few booths and surreptitiously peered in at Annelise and Emily, who were both being painted to look like butterflies. Neither of them were clutching anything sugary.
She smiled.
She figured they’d get some actual nutrition in the nuts and the cherry on top in a sundae. Right? Technically a cherry was a fruit?
And then she made a beeline for the dunking booth. One of the advantages of being the person who roped in the volunteers was that she knew exactly who was scheduled to be sitting up there right now.
What passed for an enormous crowd in Hellcat Canyon was clustered around it. And Gabe sat up there on the platform like a king on a throne in a T-shirt and shorts, the late-afternoon sun picking glints from his hair and the hair on his shins.
He was heckling the poor woman who’d just whiffed her second toss.
“Aw, c’mon. It’s like this isliterallythe first time you’ve ever thrown a ball.”
The audience was disproportionately women. Which served to remind Eden that there was no reason on earth Gabe Caldera needed to be alone for a single second if he didn’t want to be alone.
And Gabe wanted her.
Lowering her voice to a faux baritone, she shouted, “He’s awitch!” à la Monty Python. “Sink him!”
He grinned, craned his head, looking for the source.
She ducked behind the crowd.
She had to wait through five truly terrible throwers before she got her turn.
To be fair, those women might have been able to throw Nolan Ryan fastballs in their spare time, but Gabe had smiled at each of them as they cocked their arms back, and clearly their arms turned to butter. Weaponizing his strengths, as it were.
Finally it was her turn.
She paid her ticket to the volunteer she’d roped into running the booth. Emily’s mom, as it so happened.
Eden hefted the ball thoughtfully in her hand.
“Hello, Ms. Harwood,” Gabe said finally.
“Your Excellency,” she said pleasantly.
They locked eyes for a long, speaking moment.
He tilted his head and said, with more of that faux sympathy, “You sure you’re not scared to throw that—”
BAM!
She hurled that sucker like a freaking missile. The bull’s-eye target whipped around, Gabe’s arms shot straight up in the air and his eyes and mouth made “O”s and KERSPLASH! Down he went, for the first time that night. Vanishing into the water.
A delighted roar went up.