Twisted Up (Taking Chances #1) - Erin Nicholas Page 0,46

physical labor. Cutting, hauling, loading, digging. Streets needed to be cleared first so they could get vehicles moving around town to load debris and gather furniture, clothing, and other salvageable items from family homes.

Jake manned a chainsaw and loaded and unloaded his truck for a good four hours, but he eventually found himself back at Command Central. Big surprise. Sure, he wanted to be a part of the effort and yes, this was where the food was. But more than that, the command center in the gazebo in the town’s square was where Avery was.

He’d been thinking about her all day in spite of how busy he’d been. He knew she’d been working nonstop as well. As the fire chief and primary emergency-management director in Chance, Avery had a lot to do. She was coordinating the cleanup efforts, inspecting the damage, keeping track of what had been done and what was left, prioritizing tasks, and assigning personnel from her crew and the rest of the city departments.

But he missed her. And he now fully intended to remind her that Shelby and Frank had essentially ordered them to work together. He wasn’t in the town square now because he needed a new assignment or a sandwich. He was here because he was drawn to her—over and over again.

It was a pleasure to watch her work. Not just because she had a glow about her as she organized and strategized. Not just because she had tied up her hair in a quick, messy bun that made him think about how her hair would look first thing in the morning after being kept awake a lot of the night. Not just because he loved the contrast between the woman in the white button-up shirt and khaki pants today and the woman wearing the silky, hardly-there thong Saturday night in the shed. But because it was clear she loved what she was doing.

She was good. When he’d been a civilian-affairs specialist in the Guard, his expertise had been in identifying the needs of citizens affected by combat or crisis situations and delivering personnel and supplies effectively and efficiently. There wasn’t anything about Avery’s decisions in directing the emergency responders and the volunteers that he would have done differently. It was rare he found someone whose capabilities he could trust as completely as he trusted his own.

The disorganized array of requests for, and offers of, assistance was now divided up into work teams, each focusing on a different portion of the cleanup and orchestrated so that they could efficiently get their work done in a way that would assist the other teams, keep the teams out of one another’s way, and avoid duplication.

He was impressed. All he would need to do tomorrow when the National Guard showed up would be to plug them into the established teams, giving them more manpower and expanding what they could get done.

Or maybe he’d let Avery plug them in. Not only her crew and city employees, but everyone working cleanup and recovery was listening to her. She was creative and personable even as she was making demands, she gave more praise than she did direction, and she listened as much or more than she talked. All the signs of a good leader.

That was why he found her interesting. That was the only reason he was intrigued.

Yeah, sure.

But she was doing a hell of a job.

It seemed clear that his father agreed.

Wes had, as expected, been out of the house that morning by the time Jake had come down for coffee and cereal. But Wes now stood off to one side, listening as Avery outlined a plan to gather debris that could be burned in one of the pastures about a mile from the high school where the fire department would oversee the process.

Jake made his way to his dad’s side. “How’s it going?”

“Good.” Wes put an arm around his son’s shoulders. “All things considered, of course.”

“Right.”

They listened to Avery and a few of the crew talk about some chemical-spill cleanup needed at the school and in one of the mechanic garages downtown.

“She seems to be on top of things,” Jake commented casually.

Wes nodded. “As usual.”

It was a compliment, of course. The kind of thing that Jake would have expected his dad to say. But Jake itched with the sense that something wasn’t right between Avery and his parents. And he intended to find out what was going on.

Avery’s mom had been very young when she’d gotten pregnant and had