She closed the file, pulled Cain’s card out of the top desk drawer, walked out, and spoke to Donna. “Make a copy of these, will you, then send them to Tex/Am in Dallas. His information is on the card. It’s kind of expensive but I guess we’d better overnight them.”
“I’ll make sure he gets them right away,” Donna said.
Now that she’d reviewed the file, Carly could drive into Iron Springs for her meeting with the banker. She had mostly been in jeans since she had returned to Iron Springs, but until last year when she’d moved to San Francisco, she had been living in New York City, had been flying the New York-Paris route.
She’d spent every extra dime on fabulous designer outfits, some forward in fashion, some classic, like this one. Hey, it was Paris, okay? And she’d learned to ferret out every possible bargain.
Today she was wearing a russet skirt suit with a cream silk blouse, a bright Givenchy silk scarf she had splurged on and bought on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, and a pair of Jimmy Choo high heels.
Since classic clothes stayed in style for years and she was good at mixing and matching, she was set, at least for a while.
Grabbing her taupe Chanel bag and the information she’d put together, she headed out the door to apply for a loan.
* * *
Linc strode out of his meeting, summoning all his control to clamp down on his temper. Making his way outside the big red and gray stone building, he pushed his way through the throng of protesters, heading for his truck. The sky had closed up, turned dark and sullen. Looked like it would rain later in the day.
He wished the clouds would open up right now, release a downpour, and send these idiots running.
“Keep Pleasant Hill green!” someone shouted, a thin man with big, horn-rimmed glasses.
“Take your filthy rubber and go back to Dallas!” A tiny black-haired woman jabbed a sign in the air that readSAVE MOTHER EARTH. STOP POLLUTION NOW!
Linc clenched his back teeth together and kept walking. He didn’t recognize any faces. He’d been told almost none of the people who were protesting lived in the area. Instead, they were out-of-towners who didn’t know squat about the needs of the people in the community, all of them swarming around like angry bees.
He’d learned at the meeting that they were concerned about the tireretreading process, the rubber dust it created, the storage of the tires themselves, the solvent, the cement vapors, the extra workload the plant might create for the Pleasant Hill volunteer fire department.
None of them could see the good the plant would do for the locals, the jobs it would create, the money that would flow into town in the form of taxes and spending. And the plant would be run as cleanly and efficiently as modern technology allowed.
Hell, he might have joined their cause if they had been right. He donated to a number of environmental organizations. In this case they were wrong.
If he’d known it was going to be such a hard sell, he’d have sent a team down to present the facts, guys trained to handle the concerns of the environmentalists—unlike Linc, who barely resisted the urge to throw a punch at one or two of the most obnoxious members of the group.
Once he reached his truck, he climbed in and cranked the engine. He was just backing out of the parking lot when his cell phone buzzed. The main Drake Trucking number appeared on the screen.
“Mr. Cain? Hi, this is Donna from Carly’s office. Are you still in Iron Springs?”
“I’m here for a couple more hours. What is it?”
“I just wanted to let you know the sheriff sent those case files over. Carly’s already gone through them. She asked me to overnight them to you, but I thought if you were still in town, you might want to pick them up.”
“I’m not far away. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” He ended the call and checked the time. The helicopter was due at the ranch in two hours. Plenty of time to look at the files before he went back to Dallas. While he was at the yard, he could check on Carly.
He thought how happy she’d be to see him and smiled at his own sarcasm.
He drove through town and out the highway, pulled into the trucking yard a few minutes later, and parked in the lot. Unfortunately when he walked into the building, Carly wasn’t there.
“I’m afraid she had an appointment with the bank,” Donna said. “I thought she’d be back by now. I’ll get you that file.”
“Thanks.” He knew Joe’s office manager, Donna Melendez. She’d bea big help to Carly—unless he could convince her to sell. He still hadn’t completely given up on that idea, though the prospect of her handing over the reins seemed dimmer by the hour.
Donna handed him the file. “Here you go.”
“I think I’ll take a look at it while I’m here. Okay if I use the office?”
She smiled. In her fifties now, she was still attractive, and she had completely worshipped Joe. “Well, sure.”
Linc carried the file inside and sat down at the desk, put up with the seat being set wrong for a guy his height, and went to work.
