Twisted Up (Taking Chances #1) - Erin Nicholas Page 0,27

where people were gathering to see what needed to be done.

Jake couldn’t help the rush of fondness he felt. His hometown really was a great place. People truly cared about one another here. He knew that Chance would pull together, and going through this as a community would strengthen their bonds.

Driving away from Chance after the twister hit last year had been the hardest thing he’d done. It was always a little hard to go, and over the years it had gotten harder and harder to leave. He loved Chance. He loved visiting and reconnecting, the feeling of home and history he had there. Seeing the rubble in the morning light and getting into his car to drive away from it, rather than into the midst where he wanted to be, had torn at him. But it had been imperative that he be in DC that day. That meeting had meant improved procedures for multiple metropolitan areas, affecting the safety and lives of millions. Though it had made him almost physically sick to leave Chance, his little hometown was made up of fewer than six thousand people, and he simply couldn’t justify staying there instead. Avery was here. His dad was here. He’d known they would take care of the town.

Honestly, seeing their faces, their sorrow and anger and frustration and fatigue, had eaten at him. There had been no loss of life and no critical injuries, yet seeing his friends and family and neighbors going through the wreckage of their homes and businesses had been harder on him than any of the bigger disasters with higher mortality rates and recovery bills.

So he’d headed out the next morning, feeling like he was abandoning his home and hating himself for it.

As Jake looked around now at the destruction caused by the third tornado in a row, he knew he would be staying for a while this time. But as he surveyed the broken, but not yet defeated town, he wondered, How much more of this can Chance take?

“We’ll set up the command center at the Lutheran church,” Avery was saying. “They have that big social hall.”

Then there was Avery. He’d never expected that first kiss to twist him up like it had. But he couldn’t leave her alone on his visits after that. Having her respond to him the way she did every time had fed something inside of him that he hadn’t even realized was hungry. And now they’d had sex again.

Tornadoes were all kinds of trouble.

“We can set up a shelter at Chances Are and The Jim,” Frank said. Chances Are was the old theater where the Community Theater Project performed, and it was the site of most wedding receptions and other big parties. The Jim was a gym . . . owned by a guy named Jim. It was a beautiful workout facility with a large gymnasium that could hold a number of cots, and it had locker rooms where displaced families and cleanup workers could shower.

“Are the school kitchen and lunchroom intact?” Avery asked.

“For the most part,” Max chimed in. “We can get it cleaned up and the power back on in the next twenty-four hours.”

“Then we’re going to need a meal plan until that’s up and running,” Avery said. “The church kitchens can be used.”

“We can put the call out for a potluck,” Frank said. “We’ll have a town meeting tomorrow at noon. I’ll need status updates by then.”

The term potluck was, perhaps, lighthearted for what they intended, but it worked. Everyone raided their refrigerators and pantries and brought what they could to a central location to share.

“The guys are going door-to-door now.”

They all turned as the chief of police joined them.

“Hey, Dad,” Jake said in greeting.

“Son.” Wes pulled Jake in for a hug.

He was also on Jake’s short list of huggable men.

“Glad to see you,” Wes said. “Call your mother. She won’t calm down until she hears directly from you that you’re safe and sound.”

Jake nodded. “I’ll call her.”

“Chief Sparks,” Wes greeted Avery.

“Chief Mitchell.”

Avery’s expression and tone were purely professional, and she met Wes’s gaze directly, but her spine was stiff, and Jake noticed her clenching her fists at her sides.

“Hey, Max.” Wes turned to embrace his nephew with a firm thump on the back.

“Hi, Uncle Chief,” Max said with a grin.

Avery turned her attention back to Frank.

Jake frowned. Was he imagining the sudden tension in Avery? They all had plenty of reasons to be tense, of course, but it seemed that when his father

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