The crunch of gravel under car tires ran up Eli Devine’s spine like the slow click of a roller coaster creeping up the last few inches of the initial hill before the terrifying downrush.

Eli peered from his perch on the high wooden ladder over the top of the wisteria bush that was exploding in a riot of unrestricted vines all over the front yard. It wouldn’t be long before they were curtained off behind a wild hedge tall enough to keep out Sleeping Beauty’s suitors. Not that anyone in their house was plagued with a surfeit of admirers. Being gay in a small town in the middle of nowhere was a crimp on the social life all by itself, and that was before he factored in living with his grandmas, the three of whom had been out “running errands” for hours now.

Please, let it not be—

The boxy red and blue lights on the car’s rooftop were all he needed to see. No question who had been the ringleader, either.

“Oh, sugar honey iced tea, Gramma Gee. What now?”

He wanted to bang his forehead against the wood siding in front of him, but he’d just finished scraping this section and the last thing he needed was a face full of paint chips and wood splinters when he joined Deputy McGraff on their porch with Georgette in tow. He pulled air in through his nose and let it whoosh out his mouth like the park district yoga teacher taught them to do on Tuesday nights.

Nothing.

Yoga was bullshit. That crap didn’t work at all.

He brought the scraper down with him, because if things were really bad, he’d have to soothe Tom with some lemonade and enough of Nana Bee’s cookies to let him skimp on his wife’s never-ending stream of casseroles. No sense leaving the tools out when the forecast was for heavy rain that night. Last thing he needed was to have to replace a perfectly good tool, even a three-dollar scraper.

Being the town librarian, while the best job in the world as far as Eli was concerned, didn’t exact sit him at the top of the money tree.

The thunk of car doors closing hustled his footsteps faster toward the gravel drive that curved in front of the broad front porch. Theirs was the kind of house that really deserved a porch swing and bright white paint on the posts and newels of the railing. As he ducked behind the wisteria and hoisted himself up onto the porch with both hands and a hop through a broken gap, Eli grimaced and gave a mental shrug.

Obsessive home repair was how he handled stress—thank God, because he had plenty of it lately, and a list of repairs to match—but he could barely keep up. Replacing rotting boards fast enough to save them all from breaking their ankles as they tried to enter and exit the 130-year-old farmhouse was a full-time job all on its own, and the library already kept Eli busy six days a week. Fancy touches like porch swings and paint would have to wait until . . . well, until something else happened to rescue them from this beautiful heap that was falling down around them faster than he could fix things.

Voices murmured low as he tossed the scraper on the large wooden spool that served as a porch table and hustled down the steps, skipping the wobbly one at the bottom.

“Hey, Tom,” he called out, registering even as the words left his mouth that the police officer with his back to Eli couldn’t possibly be Tom McGraff. Tom’s comfortably sloping belly would never fit in the slim waist of the dark green pants riding low on those narrow hips.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, Tom’s ass never filled out a pair of pants like the one facing Eli as he landed awkwardly on a rock and stumbled, cursing loud enough to turn heads.

“Ow! Fuck.”

“Elijah!” His Gramma Gee poked a head around the broad shoulders of the man blocking her view, her hot pink canvas sunhat crammed down on a cap of white curls. Aunt Millie and Nana Bee—technically his great-aunts, although he never called them that—crowded behind her. “Are you hurt, boy?”

“No, ma’am.” Ma’am? He never called his grandmas ma’am. Shit. Being around a cop, especially one escorting his troublemaking Gramma Gee and her more timid sisters back home in an official police cruiser brought out the formality in him apparently. “Everything okay with you?”

Because of course he knew who it had to be, standing there, showing off as fine a backside as had arrived in Clear Lake since he’d gotten old enough to appreciate the view. The whole town, all thirteen thousand of them as far as he could tell, had been talking about the new Sheriff from The City ever since he’d arrived last month. Their old sheriff, Buddy Baxter, was enjoying a sudden retirement after his second heart attack, appointing this outsider to take over the county jurisdiction on an interim basis until the next election, just as summer kicked into gear and the cicadas started humming in the trees.

Sheriff Joe Baxter.

Sheriff Sweet Ass was more like it.

When the man spun slowly around and nailed him with a sharp look, Eli hiccupped a giggle and smacked a hand over his mouth to hide his grin. No way could the sheriff know what he was thinking.

Please God let him not know what I’m thinking.

The new sheriff in town was a stone fox.

This was a man who looked like he spent a lot of hours in the weight room each week, the fabric of his short-sleeved button-down shirt straining around his wide biceps and over his shoulders. Eli hoped the deep grooves bracketing the Joe Baxter’s mouth came from smiling a lot, although the man sure didn’t have a smile on right now.

The lines cutting across his forehead and between dark brows were out in full force though.

Eli swiped his sweaty palms on the paint-spattered thighs of his khaki shorts, suddenly aware that not only was he in his oldest, dingiest, monster house-repair clothes, but he was going commando. His ancient shorts were frayed and shredded in a dozen places, with a major rip gaping way too close to his junk for comfort.

Don’t think about your junk around the psychic sheriff, you idiot. Pink elephants, pink elephants, I’m thinking of pink elephants.

The new sheriff’s gaze was drifting over him from head to toe, heading south, when his eyes slammed to a halt in the vicinity of Eli’s crotch.

No fucking way. He really is psychic.

Also . . . that’s interesting.

Eli didn’t flinch. He pushed his shoulders back and walked right up to the cruiser, his dick lolling around in his shorts as he limped a bit on his twisted ankle.

He held out his hand.

“You must be Sheriff Baxter. I’m Eli Devine.”

For a second, he thought the sheriff was going to leave his hand hanging in the air between them. Eli glanced at Baxter’s face to check and found himself caught by dark eyes that crinkled around the corner as Baxter smiled at him.

“The librarian.”

Oh, holy hell.

Because that voice was low and gravelly and did things to his insides that made Eli shiver as the hair on his arms stood up. And that was so, so not a good idea right now. He was barely holding his head above water as it was with all the conflict between him and the library board lately. They’d flipped their lids over his display about sundown towns during Black History Month, when he’d pointed out their own town’s history with photographs from the historical society’s archives. And then he’d hit them with a June Pride display just days ago that had led to veiled comments about agendas and lifestyles to Eli, who wasn’t exactly closeted, but wasn’t exactly not either.

A sudden bodily awareness of the new sheriff in town was a bad, bad idea.

Shake it off, man.

Baxter clasped Eli’s hand in his finally and shook it, hard fingers squeezing briefly. Eli resisted the urge to flex his hand wide open afterward to dispel the feeling of that grip. “That’s me.”

He put on his dealing-with-the-public grin, known to charm small babies, grumpy old men, and cops who brought his grandmas home without slapping on the handcuffs. This time. “Welcome to Clear Lake. Anything you need to know about us, you just ask me. If I don’t know it myself, I know how to find out.”

He gave his words a quick review for accidental flirtatious overtones and found none. Friendly, professional. Good.

The slow grin that eased over the sheriff’s face blew his hopes for a professional demeanor all to hell.

“You got all the inside gossip, huh? The department should have you on the payroll.”

Seriously with the growly voice.

Eli felt heat rising to his cheeks and cursed his German, goat-herder-in-the-Alps, fair skin. The dark blonde hair and the high cheekbones, he loved. The easy blushing? Not so much.

“No, I don’t charge for my services.”

All five people standing on the driveway froze.

Purple.

His face had to be purple by now with embarrassment. I don’t charge for my services? Holy shit.

“My librarian services, I mean.” Nope! Still no good. “Not that I have any other services I charge for. I don’t charge. I give it away.” Holy fuck. This was getting worse. “My library services!” Grandma Gee clapped a hand over her own eyes and groaned. Nana Bee giggled and Aunt Millie looked confused. “Although technically, since the town does pay me a salary, I am doing it for money.” Damn his brain that couldn’t let a conversational inaccuracy slide for one frigging moment. “So, I guess it’s more like I’m the stripper hired for the bachelor party that the whole town is invited to, and the party never ends.”

Silence.

“Ooookay.” His Grandma Gee stepped out from behind the sheriff and eased past Eli with a roll of her eyes and a flap of her hands that said Talk to him, but not like you’re unhinged please. Her fingertips were pink, matching the hat she removed and clutched in them when she saw where Eli’s gaze was caught. “I’m going to get you some lemonade, Sheriff Baxter. Come on, girls.”

“Wait, Gramma Gee. What happened?”

She waved her hot pink sunhat at Eli. “It was nothing. That danged man. I can’t even . . .” And she trailed off, shaking her head and grabbing the railing with one hand as she climbed the steps to the porch. Her sisters followed her, Nana Bee with a guiding hand on Millie’s elbow as they all stepped carefully over the wobbly step.

Worry was a cold shower of ice water in his shorts.

He crossed his arms and widened his stance, bracing himself. “Whatever happened, I can fix it.”

The sheriff settled against the side of his spotless cruiser, half sitting on the hood. One heavy thigh hooked over the side, brown leather boot swinging casually in the air. Eli’s mouth rounded in an O, and his hands clamped down on his own biceps as he bit his tongue to stop himself from telling the sheriff not to do that.

Deputy Tom would not be happy to see someone, even the Sheriff, sitting on one of his precious vehicles. The man took his fleet maintenance duties seriously.

“We do need to talk about Mrs. Devine.” Baxter didn’t wear the old-fashioned sheriff’s felt hat, so Eli stared at his dark hair, standing up a little like he’d already run his fingers through it too many times that afternoon. Eli considered how much Baxter’s nerves might have already been worn by Gee and flinched.

He jumped in, hoping he could put off the bad news. Just because his grandma wasn’t in handcuffs today didn’t mean she wasn’t in trouble. “It’s Miss. Or Ms, actually. She never married. But you should call her Gee. Or Georgette.”

Baxter straightened up and cocked his head. Eli couldn’t tell if he was contemplating the scandal that must have been Gramma Gee’s pregnancy decades before, or simply trying to get Eli to look him in the eye.

Eli resisted. “Because there are three of them. Miss Devines, I mean. It gets confusing.”

“I believe it.”

Baxter’s drawl sounded just like a country boy’s. The new sheriff was settling in fast, it sounded like. Eli had expected the man to be all strict and formal, a big city hardass tromping around their little town and stepping on everyone’s last nerve.

“The other Misses Devine seem a little less . . . confrontational than Miss Gee?”

Eli gave up and let himself meet Baxter’s gaze. Dark eyes in a broad face with rough features and a hint of scruff at the jaw. A nose that was a little flattened in the middle, like it belonged to a guy who’d been a brawler once upon a time. Sheriff Baxter was a good-looking man, real good, and everything about him was impressively oversized. Big head, thick neck, broad shoulders. Just big.

Eli reined his brain in before it could start speculating about other areas where the sheriff might be . . .

He shook his head. Focus.

“Yeah, Gee’s the rebel. None of my grandmas have tattoos but her.” Or arrest records. The sheriff blinked. Eli pushed on. “But seriously, do we have a problem?”

If anything, Baxter relaxed even further, leaning back and crossing his arms. Jeez. It was a wonder he could bend them, what with all the muscles and the bulging.

He probably did that on purpose, just to throw women off their game.

It sure as shit was working on Eli, which would probably freak the hell out of Baxter if he knew it. The type of man who wanted to work law enforcement in a small county in Middle America was unlikely to appreciate being the object of a gay crush from the town librarian. Although there had been that glance at the rip in his shorts . . .

A trickle of sweat slid down Eli’s lower back, getting trapped between his butt cheeks. He ignored the impulse to rub his ass.

“No tattoos for the rest of the grandmas, huh? What about the younger Devine?”

Eli blinked. Ah ha. So maybe that glance hadn’t been an accident. This was . . . unexpected.

“If I had a tattoo I wanted people to see, then you’d know. I guess,” he said before he could think.

Which pretty much felt like he’d invited Baxter to speculate on where Eli might have a tattoo that people couldn’t see.

Baxter’s mouth twitched, but he took pity on Eli and changed the subject. “Your Grandma Gee was defacing a gravesite.”

Maybe they should keep talking about tattoos.

Eli dropped his face into his hands and sucked in a deep breath, the air whistling through the gaps in his fingers. “Not again.”

He peeked through his fingers. The sheriff’s lifted eyebrow was as loud as a shout.

Okay. Eli could work with this. The man hadn’t been thrown by his stripper metaphor, which meant Baxter wasn’t without humor. Eli didn’t know if he could withstand another one of those killer smiles though, so maybe not so much with the jokes.

“A professor at the local college discovered some less than pleasant facts about Clear Lake recently.” Eli had discussed the new addition to their town’s history with some of the other instructors from St. Francis, and that had inspired his Black History Month display. Even with his professional background and believing without hesitation in the value of all research, he’d had to brace himself to read the journals of the town’s founder. The man’s efforts to make Clear Lake a “sundown town”, one where people of color weren’t welcome after sundown, had lingering effects visible in the town demographics to his day, and learning about something so ugly in the history of their beloved town was challenging the perspectives of a lot of multigenerational residents. Eli described the scholar’s research and the town’s reaction to the new history to Baxter, then brought it back around to the personal. “My Grandma Gee isn’t taking it well.”

“Not taking it well. Huh.” The sheriff rubbed his chin and squinted up at the sun.

Eli knew that look. He’d seen it before when dealing with the fallout from Gee’s lack of impulse control. He braced himself.

“Does Miss Gee’s not taking it well generally involve her spray-painting asshole on tombstones?” Baxter asked.

Eli staggered over to the cruiser and braced his butt against the passenger side door, dropping his head between his knees to combat his sudden lightheadedness.

“Holy shit. No.”

The car shifted under his ass as the county’s new head cop stood up and, for one frozen moment, Eli thought Baxter was going to come over to do something totally bizarre, like touch him. Put a comforting hand on Eli’s shoulder. Or his ass. And even through the dizziness he was wrestling under control, he could spot that for the ridiculous fantasy it was.

But the sheriff just stepped away from the car a bit before coming to a halt. Peeking up through too-long bangs, Eli saw Baxter reach over his head, grab a wrist with one hand and lean to the right, and then the left, in a long, slow stretch that pulled his shirt tight against the broad muscles of his back.

What? This is weird. Right?

No way was Baxter doing that by accident. But no way was he doing that on purpose either. Not, like, flirting on purpose.

Oh my god, my head hurts.

Eli stood up suddenly, which at least gave him an excuse for the head rush. By the time Baxter turned back around, he had himself under control. “Listen—”

“Do I even want to ask how she got the spray paint?” Baxter asked. “She told me she doesn’t drive, and you can’t buy that stuff at the hardware store in town. I know. I checked.”

Eli grimaced, remembering. “Yeah, we had to ask Bob to stop selling it a few years back when the football rivalry with Stoneyville was getting out of hand.” And now it was a giant pain in the ass to get a can of spray paint when all you wanted was to redo an end table. Teenagers. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t survive as a species if you kill ‘em all before they graduate high school. “The senior class spent an entire summer scrubbing that crap off brick and concrete, because Buddy threatened to contact all their colleges.” His casual mention of Baxter’s predecessor suddenly felt rude. Or like an invitation. “Sorry, the previous Sheriff Baxter. Who I’m guessing you’re related to?”

“Buddy is my uncle. And one of the things I like about small towns is that we don’t need to stand on formality.” A sunny smile broke out on Baxter’s face. “Everybody knows who I am, even if I haven’t been to Clear Lake since I used to visit Uncle Buddy as a kid. You can call me Joe.”

Oh, hell no.

“That’s okay, Sheriff. I’m, uh—” A rude asshole? Desperate to keep things formal because informality might lead to my pants accidentally falling off? Trying not to imagine what it would sound like, whispering your name in the dark with your hands on me? “—trying to set a good example for the kids when it comes to that kind of thing.”

“I don’t think you’re the one we need to worry about setting an example,” Baxter said dryly. “I spotted your grandmas trying to climb the fence after the cemetery gates had been locked for the evening. That was a sight to behold.”

Eli could picture it. And he knew perfectly well Gee had had her cell phone on her, but Gee would never call for help when she could convince her elderly siblings to risk their necks instead. “Oh, Jesus.”

“They’re some special ladies, aren’t they?” Baxter said, smiling still, but softer now, like maybe he knew what it was like to have family who you adored but who drove you just the teensiest bit crazy, too.

“They really are.” He loved them, even when they were vandals. Maybe because Gee was a rabble-rousing vandal who could talk two other ladies in their seventies and eighties into helping her.

“Seriously, though,” Baxter said, his smile fading. “Miss Gee said they’d lost track of time trying to find . . . Miss Millie, I think it was? She’d wandered off, I guess. It was while she was explaining the situation that I spotted her hands and the can of spray paint in her bag, and realized we had another problem. Your grandma told me exactly what she’d been doing, I have to admit. Soon as I asked her.”

“Yeah, Gee isn’t trying to hide a thing,” Eli said wearily. This latest incident wasn’t going to make things even stickier for him with the town. Damn it, Gee. Not everything needs a public protest.

“I have to ask, do you have anyone else here? Taking care of them with you, I mean?” Baxter’s voice was quiet now, as if he had plenty of experience with asking delicate questions.

Eli shook his head. “I’m an only child, and I lost my parents right before I started high school.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Thank you.” He’d retreated into a shell of shock and sadness for years afterward, even as his grandmas had taken him in and moved him into the house they shared on unincorporated land outside of Clear Lake. Eli had remained a quiet, reserved student through college, never taking advantage of his time away to let loose the way he’d once imagined he would do the moment he left Clear Lake. He suspected the library board’s main problem with him in the past couple of years had to do with the fact that Eli had, eventually, emerged from a decade of quietness and re-engaged with all the fire in his heart that had been washed away by his grief. “So, it’s just me.” Somehow those words felt like a denigration of his remaining family, so he rushed to add, “But my grandmas are great. They take care of me as much as I take care of them.”

“Mmhmm,” Baxter said neutrally.

Eli’s spine stiffened. “They do.”

A long pause stretched between them before Baxter opened his mouth and said the thing that wasn’t supposed to be said. Ever. “Has a doctor checked Miss Millie for signs of dementia?”

“Excuse me?”

Determination sculpted Baxter’s jaw, a fact Eli might have appreciated more if the man weren’t an obnoxious intruder with shit manners. “I’d worry about Miss Gee too, because personality changes can be early warning signs, but it sounds like she’s always been a rebel. Getting lost in familiar places, however, is serious. A medical professional could help you find out now if Miss Millie needs more help than you and your grandmas might be able to handle on your own.”

Outrage—or straight-up rage, more like—flooded his system and heated his skin all-over until Eli felt like he might burst spontaneously into fire. How dare he?

“You’ve been in Clear Lake for five minutes. I hardly think you’re qualified to evaluate my Aunt Millie’s mental acuity.” He threw up formal vocabulary like a shield, trying to block the panic he would never admit to, not with this stranger. “I’ll thank you to keep your nose out of our family business and confine yourself to the police work.”

Eli’s rudeness could’ve led to a less compassionate man to throwing the book at Miss Gee in retaliation, but their new sheriff was not that kind of man, apparently.

“We can talk more some other time, if you want,” was all Baxter said as he straightened up and moved around the squad car to the driver’s side door. “I know how hard it can be to discuss this kind of stuff with family.”

“You don’t know anything,” Eli bit out and watched the man drive away.

So that was the notorious Eli Devine.

And notorious was definitely the right word. Joe had only been in town for a month, but he’d already heard about the community’s perfect, could-do-no-wrong librarian from two dozen people, while hearing about a troublemaking, antagonistic version of the same man from an equal number of crankier residents. He supposed he’d been avoiding introducing himself to Eli, picturing a tightly-wound man with a pointy nose and a ready ruler, threatening the knuckles of any kid foolish enough to have damaged one of his precious books.

No pointy nose, but he definitely looked ready to rap my knuckles with a ruler, if he’d had one.

Joe hadn’t realized he was still holding a grudge against the librarian who’d ratted him out to his mom as a kid until he’d caught himself driving past the small, yellow brick building that housed the town’s library during his first weeks on county patrol and coming up with yet another excuse to put off dropping in.

Now he was ready to curse himself for a dumbass city boy making a fool of himself in the small town.

Clearly the library should have been his first goddamn stop.

He’d tried to pull himself together, make a good impression on the hot and mussed-up librarian—the smear of paint across Eli’s cheek practically gave him a hardon just thinking about how unaware of it he was—but Eli had been less than charmed by him, obviously. And all Joe wanted was the mess the man up even more.

That house could use an extra set of hands, no question. Eli was knocking out the home repair projects right and left, it was easy enough to tell. At least, Joe didn’t think any of the elderly women in the house were responsible for painting the trim three stories off the ground or replacing all of the porch railing. So, Eli obviously knew what she was doing. And wasn’t that just another turn-on? The idea of a tool belt dipping low on those slim hips, pulling down the waistband of shredded cut-off jeans…

But that place was far too big a job for one person. Especially if one of the Misses Devine was developing dementia or Alzheimer’s, the mere mention of which possibility had provoked that explosive response from the blond-haired, blue-eyed, unexpectedly sexy librarian.

Eli wasn’t interested in him? Fine. That wouldn’t stop Joe from being neighborly.

Besides, dropping by to offer a hand with the home repairs would give him an excuse to make a few more observations about Miss Millie. Joe had more experience than he would wish on anyone when it came to the elderly and how dangerous the world could be for them if mental or physical deterioration went ignored. In the city, there were far too many older folks who were on their own and struggling, with deadly consequences sometimes. Joe’s heart had broken every time he’d had to track down relatives and let them know the worst had happened. He never wanted to be called to deliver that kind of bad news to Eli Devine, so he’d find a way to bring the subject up again if he needed to, no matter how much it got him yelled at.

But in the meantime, he’d definitely be keeping an eye out for another chance to talk to Eli. The unexpectedly sexy town librarian.

Not exactly how I planned to come out to the town, but a date with that man . . . yeah, that would be worth it.