Chapter 36
36
Ayla poked around Gunn's church, her fingers tracing the edge of the worn wooden bookshelf in the corner. He'd brought her here with him and Emerson this morning, and she seriously doubted that beautiful blue-eyed man from Nebraska had slept even a moment last night. He and Gunn were quieter now, huddled in the office going through records, searching for possible names for Ronnie’s brother—the FBI agent one. That guy was a seriously funny wackadoodle who liked to tease people. He was also Jake's brother-in-law and had told her just yesterday that Jake had officially adopted her as a baby sister. So she had to deal with Cam now, too.
She'd been poking around the church while they worked. The refrigerator held sodas he'd told her he'd bought a few days ago, and there were microwave pizza rolls in the small freezer if she wanted a snack. She suspected her preacher man might have a junk food addiction—she'd found snack cakes in the kitchen cabinet, too.
Now, at the table in that kitchen, she flipped through some children's books she'd found in the corner. Most were religious stories— Daniel & the Scary Lion, Joseph's Rainbow Coat —but some were more secular with good moral lessons. Including a few Wonkus McBubbles , of course. That Wonkus , he sure got around.
She could hear the sounds of Emerson and Gunn talking now. She gathered her found bounty—three cans of soda in a plastic bag, and the snack cakes she'd tossed in there too—and decided to take care of her man. And his bestie-4-eva.
She hated seeing how both of them were hurting. They were good men who cared about their neighbors. They didn't deserve this chaos.
She knocked on the office door lightly and waited until Gunn met her at the door.
"I have brought supplies," she said, holding up her bag of treasures.
"You're amazing," he said, taking the bag from her. "We’ll probably be a few more hours. I have a retired minister coming to join us. He’s from Coleson Hollow. Reverend Hunter. He goes by Pastor Wil.”
“Okie dokie, I shall play in your flower beds for a while. They have been tempting, and well… I have been led into gardening temptation. Aub and I are going to have replant our flowers, too. That butthead yanked them all out that night. As soon as she’s up to it, we’ll go to the nursery and get what we want. We like to pick out flowers together.”
“We’ll pick some out for here, if you’d like. I can help you plant them. We can do it together.”
She wanted to do as many things together with him as she possibly could. Forever.
“I would like that very much. Consider it a date, Reverend Hiller.”
“Great. We can hit the nursery sometime soon, then I’ll bring you down here and we’ll picnic by the river, how does that sound?”
“Very romantic, actually. The river is beautiful.” Gunn’s church sat in a small bend in the river—well, if it could be called that. It was the original Finley Creek the nearby county was named after. It emptied into the Value Reservoir a few miles up the road from where they were now. It was very…idyllic, this little church, its tiny cemetery, and the river behind it. Beautiful, really.
And just like that, the man of her dreams bent down and kissed her on the mouth. Just a chaste peck, they were in his church, after all, but… her whole world shifted right then.
Talk about a real whammy. She was going to have to tell Hala that the love-whammy wasn’t that painful at all.