She shook her head to clear it. The back of her neck had become slick with sweat. Those meddling KNO kids! Zane had rejected her years ago. Being forced to spend time with him was unfair.
“Obviously, you’ll have to coordinate your schedules. But this way it can go twice as fast. Hopefully, we can submit the watershed report to the state and start reconstructing the tower by the spring, fingers crossed.”
“When Zane will build it with his own two hands.” A smirking laugh escaped Mabel.
“Right,” Zane said, rolling his eyes. He was probably just as upset as she was about this. She was moving on with her life—they both were. Their friends needed to learn to respect that.
“You guys, I did actually want to say something about this watershed project.” Mack’s brow furrowed, and Cady’s did too. “This is kind of a serious thing. So maybe we can get your thoughts on it, but”—a rapid sigh escaped him—“the well we drilled has helped our flow percentages quite a bit, but with the lake’s levels lowering every year, we’ve got to do more.”
“It’s lowering every year because of what?” Tory asked. “Drought? Global warming?”
“All the above,” Mack said. “The snowpack was at a record low last winter, and things aren’t looking good. Restoring the water tower is crucial.”
“You haven’t mentioned Bartlett, Mack.” Cady scrunched up her mouth and grabbed Henry’s little fist as he reached for Mack’s gravy-covered potato.
“Oh great. What have they done now?” Parker sighed. For a non-native Silver Plummer, he’d jumped on the “We hate Bartlett” bandwagon pretty early on.
“They’re petitioning for a percentage of our water again.”
There were cries of protest around the table. But Mack held out a hand. “I haven’t agreed to anything, but the way they’re doing it, I might not have any say in the matter this time around.”
The finer points of where Bartlett could take their petition were discussed for a while, as were some of the ins and outs of this issue that had now taken years to try to solve.
“So, what are we looking at, Mack?” Anjali asked. “Is this as bad as it seems?”
Mack blinked a couple of times, his gaze on the table in front of him, his Cowboy Spuds untouched. “I’ve spoken with the department of public health, and they’ve said it’s possible we’ll get the grant for the water tower. I’m meeting with a state-appointed hydrologist next week to talk alternate sources, but, guys, this grant application using the windshield survey has to work.”
“So you’re saying the fate of the entire town is on Mabel’s and Zane’s shoulders?” Liam said, a bit of bite under the teasing.
“Ooooooh,” the rest of the table responded.
“No pressure or anything.” Zane’s voice was barely above a whisper, his eyes on the floor.
The silence grew, and everybody started eating again. After a couple of minutes, Ruby threw her hands in the air. “I’ll change the subject. Zane, you still haven’t told us how you got the black eye.”
Zane cleared his throat and took a long drink of water. He set the glass down and wiped his mouth with his napkin. He stared at Mabel. “You know our little emergency room friend? From the other day? He jumped me in the parking lot out of nowhere and gave me this.” He motioned with his hand to his eye, anger resurfacing.
Wait. What? “He came back? When? What happened?”
“Well.” August appeared in the doorway of the restaurant and made eye contact with Hannah as a contented smile spread across his face. He walked over to the table, leaned in, and gave Hannah a kiss that could launch a thousand ships. Then he turned back to the group. “Let’s just say you should see the other guy.”
Chapter 9
Mabel’s throat stung as she listened to the guys’ descriptions of what happened. “The lunatic comes at him and punches him before Zane even sees him,” Liam said with gusto.
“Yeah, he’s hollering about Zane putting him in a choke hold at the ER and how he was going to sue him and he should be fired. All that crap.” Weston shook his head.
August cut in. “Why he didn’t remember how strong Zane was from the first time is beyond reason.”
“Reason?” Mack laughed. “There is no reason in this guy. Unless Zane scrambled his brain even more.”
“He was drunk at the hospital, which explains why he thought he could take him on this time,” Parker added. “He couldn’t remember how much you do not want to mess with Zane.”
So that was it. The story wrapped up with the man being restrained against the side of the ambulance by Zane’s one arm. Obscenities were uttered again. They filed a police report.
How was this reality? How had Zane been subjected to two attacks now? Her head throbbed with guilt.
Both fights had been because of her.
