“I’m a preacher.”
“That’s not the flex you think it is.”
Nigel rolls his eyes.
One of my hands curls into a fist.
Davis tightens his grasp on me even harder. “Tillie Jean, we need the sheriff.”
She squints one eye at him. “I don’t think the sheriff is the one ordained in town to do impromptu weddings, and as much as I love you both, you’re not upstaging my sister-in-law’s wedding day.”
I freaking love Tillie Jean.
I would give her a kidney. I would sell pictures of my feet for her. I would move out of a pickle-scented house that wasn’t actually pickle-scented for her.
That’s how much I love her.
“There was a break-in,” I say.
My friend’s eyebrows meet her hairline. “What? When? Where?”
“Sheriff first, details later,” Davis says.
“Here?” TJ looks down at Davis’s pants like she’s just realizing something more is off than me kissing him and him going along with this fake fiancé ruse. “Today?Dammit. I have to sober up, don’t I?”
Davis doesn’t answer her directly, but he does answer. And it’s oddly calming to have him issuing orders. “Everyone needs to leave.”
Tillie Jean looks at Nigel. “You. Out. Now.”
“Sloane—” Nigel starts.
I growl at him.
He draws back, clearly shocked.
Probably thinking I need an exorcism.
“You can talk to Sloane later.” Tillie Jean pulls a move I’ve seen her do on each of her brothers and forces Nigel to step backward merely by walking at him in the right way. “But right now, you’re talking to my brother’s security detail about how you got into town when you weren’t on the guest list. Sloane, Davis, I’ll be back with the sheriff in the next five minutes. Please keep your clothes on.”
Nigel bristles. “I’m not leaving Sloane alone with this?—”
“If you want to keep your ball sack intact, you won’t finish that sentence,” Tillie Jean says. “Move.”
Davis gives the subtlest of subtle headshakes as we watch Tillie Jean back Nigel all the way out of the room.
“Five minutes. Clothes on,” she calls to us.
The museum door closes, and silence settles around us.
I try to pull away from Davis, but he doesn’t release me.
So I look up at him again.
Big mistake.
Bigmistake.
The full intensity of his gaze lands on me in a way that makes me want to confess everything.
