Need You Now (Love in Unknown) - By Taylor M. Lunsford Page 0,2

shot politician, but if he was the mayor she wouldn't be able to avoid him. The mayor was everywhere in a small town like theirs. She’d held onto some apparently futile hope that he would be in Washington or at least Austin, so that she wouldn’t have to feel this knot —part pain, part anxiety—every time she saw him or heard his name. She should have known a true Maddox would never stray far from the town his family founded over a hundred and fifty years ago.

"He never told me everything that happened, Mel, but I do know he's always missed you." Gage shrugged. “Can’t say I’d be upset to see you guys get back together.”

Mel narrowed her gaze at her best friend. "He might be your brother, but that doesn't mean you get to take his side on this, Gage. Whatever we had was a college fling. I'm here to start a new, healthy life in Unknown. And Caine has never been healthy for me."

Caine had been her hero as a kid, her secret crush as a teenager, and her first boyfriend in college. Okay, maybe boyfriend was the wrong word. Lover? Friend with benefits? Either way, when everything went to hell between them, she’d lost a big piece of herself. Since then, every man in her life took a piece of her heart and squashed it. She was done giving away pieces. She had a medical license, a shiny new job at the local doctor's office and hospital, and a wonderful family. She was starting over, and that meant no ex-boyfriends.

#

"Come on, Mr. Mayor. I know you think you're Superman, but even Clark Kent took lunch breaks."

Caine Maddox looked up from the pile of papers to see his little brother, Gage, lounging in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk. Blinking away the jumble of numbers, he glanced at the clock. One fifteen. Hell. Where had the day gone? He looked around his office. Oh yeah, it'd disappeared in a haze of bureaucratic business and balancing town budgets. "What are you doing here, Chief? Shouldn’t you be out writing speeding tickets and chasing teens out of the old mill?"

Gage scratched his nose with his middle finger, a not so subtle gesture of affection. "Took a day off. You are familiar with the concept, aren't you? It's something us small folk do every now and then."

Caine stood, stretching his cramped limbs. He'd gotten to his office in historic Town Hall at seven that morning and hadn't moved from his desk since. "Come on, then. Since you're a man of leisure, you can buy me lunch from Cocina."

The brothers walked out of the town hall together, heading east down Main Street, past the red brick buildings their great-great grandfather had commissioned over a hundred years ago when he helped build Town Square. Even as little kids, they'd turned heads whenever they were side-by-side. They were polar opposites in every way. The favorite and the rebel. That's how their parents saw them. They’d never bought into it, though. They were a unit. The Maddox boys. Partners in crime, as their grandfather used to say.

Most everyone in town had known them since they were born and didn’t hesitate to stop to chat as they passed. Caine did his best to charm them all while his brother stood beside him, polite, but silent. They’d grown up since the days of the rebel and the favorite. It’d taken time, but in the few years since they’d moved home, people in town finally accepted them for what they were; the politician and the protector.

Caine said goodbye to Mrs. Bailey, his old grade school teacher, and took in his brother's grubby clothes and sweat-stained hat. "So what have you been doing today? Doesn't look like you've been loafing around eating chips."

"Nah. You know I can't sit still, even if you pay me." Gage's eyes flickered to the side and he shoved his hands in his pockets. "I've actually been helping the Carrs do some moving."

Caine had met Micah Carr the first day they’d walked into Unknown Elementary. All the other kids had treated Caine like a foreigner, a rich kid set loose amongst the peasants. Not Micah. The baker's son walked up to the son of the millionaire and invited him to play catch. They'd seen each other every day from then until the muggy August day when, at thirteen, his parents had shipped Caine off to a stuffy boarding school in