I nod, glancing at Izzy out of the corner of my eye. Her brow is pinched, her hand still on my knee.
“Fine.”
“Great,” Mayor Reed quips, his attention turning to the rest of the room. “Any last orders of business?”
A few heads shake, a few murmurs of “no.”
“The town council will go into a closed session now, then,” he says, gathering his agenda and leading the rest of the council through the door behind him to the small back room where I can only assume they practice dark magic and stab voodoo dolls they’ve fashioned after dissenting townspeople.
If the unshakeable crick in my neck is any indication, I’m one of them.
I stand, shaking my head as I let out a long breath.
“He’s really a dick, isn’t he?” Ryder asks as I turn toward him.
That charming grin is plastered to his face, and I have to stop my eyes from magnetically following his body as he stretches.
I glare at him, keeping my eyes fixed to his. “Says the dick.”
“Eve,” he says, his shoulders slumping. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”
His words go straight to my chest. A little thump that takes my mind away from the water wheel and puts all of my attention on him. Only him.
“I know how much that water wheel means to you and I’m not in the business of screwing people over. That was my dad’s thing, and ever since I took over his company I’ve looked for ways to help people instead. And while I want this thing to work, I’m not going to go through with it unless I can be certain it won’t be detrimental. To you, to the water wheel, to the community.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You would pull the plug if it would fuck up the water wheel?”
He lets out a long breath, pursing his lips like he doesn’t want to answer me. “I can’t make big, sweeping promises like that.”
I roll my eyes, grabbing Izzy’s elbow and tugging her past him with me.
He follows, quickly catching up to me. “But I can promise you that if you work with me to figure something out, I’m not going to randomly go in some other direction because I feel like it. I promise I’ll listen to you and take intoaccount all of your concerns. I’m not Reed, out to be abig shot,” he says, and I detect a smidge of resentment in those words after the mayor said the same about him. “Work with me. I know we can come up with something good.”
I turn, crossing my arms over my chest as I size him up. “Fine. I don’t know what it is you want from me that requires this level of ass-kissing, but fine. I’ll work with you. But you should just know, I’m going to be a bitch.”
He nods as if he’s digesting this information and then looks me in the eye. “So what were you before, then?”
My fists clench at my sides as he gives me one last grin and turns on his heel, melding easily into the crowd slowly meandering out of the room.
“Dang, that was hot,” Izzy mutters, shaking her head.
“That washot? He just called me a bitch.”
She rolls her eyes. “Heimpliedyou were a bitch.”
“Same difference.”
She shakes her head. “No, it’s really not.” She pulls us out of the crowd, waving her hand between us as if to paint me a picture. “Imagine this,” she starts. “You’re going over development plans together. He wants to destroy everything you love about your farm, and you storm out, running naked through the sunflowers?—”
“Why am I going over development plans naked?”
She rolls her eyes. “Okay, so you’re not naked, but he’s chasing after you and you’re throwing insults at each other and eventually he yells at you tojust stop. He says hewould never hurt you, and then he takes you in a muddy field. Maybe it’s raining, like remember that one time we got the rainbow over the sunflowers and we were already a box of wine deep and went out jumping in the puddles? Like that, except you’re getting fucked.”
“But I’m not naked.”
“Eve! You’re ruining the fantasy!”
“It’syourfantasy! You go get him to chase you naked through the sunflower field. I’m sure the farmhands will have a field day, no pun intended.”
