Amos addressed both teams. "My great-grandfather founded this factory. He was a traditional man. I feel like the factory complex is part of my family. And just like I wouldn't have given my blessing for my daughter to marry some skeezeball salesman, I'm not going to carelessly hand the land over to your development companies." He looked at Meghan and Barry. "Now I know the city technically owns this land," Amos continued.
"It was a generous gift to the city," Meghan said smoothly.
"And a tax burden they can't afford," Mike muttered to me.
"I was under the impression that you would be selling it to a developer with my blessing," Amos complained.
Meg nodded. "Absolutely."
"I don't want to give my land that's been in my family for generations over to some slick-haired wheeler-dealer. I need to see heart and soul in this project."
"Here's the deal," Meghan said to us. "Both of your firms are qualified to do this project from a financial and a logistic standpoint."
Hunter leveled his gaze at her. "We are far superior to the Harringtons. Between Svensson Investment and Greyson Hotel Group, we have ten times as many successful projects in our portfolio." I nudged my brother, hoping he would get the hint to shut up.
"I understand," Mayor Barry said. "Unfortunately, the city isn't sold on the vision yet."
"Barry is being polite, but I'm too old to be nice," Amos said loudly. "I hate those rendering whatchamacallits you all showed." He stabbed a finger at one of the boards. "This looks like some crazy futuristic land. I want to see vision. I want to see the human touch. These things look like something out of Asia. It's like a video game. I hate it."
"Obviously, the final product wouldn't look like that," Evan Harrington said.
"Why don't you all come back with a better vision of what it will look like? Those video-game things are hard to read," Barry said, smiling. "You're bright young people. Especially you, Hunter."
Meghan sniffed. "You have two weeks to come up with something of vision and substance to present."
11
Hazel
After running away from the Svennsons' house, I slunk back to the Art Café.
Slumping at one of the café tables, I checked Venmo. Archer had actually paid me at least, and it was way more than I was going to charge.
"Wait, he paid me three thousand dollars?" I felt bad. I didn't really do that much work, and his younger brothers had helped. "And of course I said something dumb around him. He must think I'm an idiot."
I collected the stack of mail from the floor and threw it in a drawer, not looking at it. I knew they were late notices for my loans and utilities.
Setting up my easel in the café, I decided to take my mind off things by finishing a painting. It was an inspirational painting of my café illustrating how I wanted it to look when I finally had money to fix it up. I touched up the flowers in the window boxes and went to work on the tree I was going to put in the foreground to draw people's eyes into the painting. But all I could think about was Archer. The particular shade of gray of his eyes, the cut of his jaw, the sinew on his neck against the expensive suit fabric.
Sometimes I would get this rush to paint, like I had to, like my skin was going to come off if I didn't. The image of him was burned in my mind, needing to come out. I had the sudden urge to paint Archer, to capture the striking black of his expensive suit against the old brick. It would look like a Dutch master's portrait, the black of his clothes almost fading into the background, the light sculpting the planes and angles of his face and the intensity of his eyes.
"I just need to paint him, then I'll forget about him," I said, though in reality, I wanted Archer to climb out of the painting like Pygmalion's statue and sweep me off my feet. After hours of working, I put the finishing touch on Archer's hair. I had placed him in the sunlight that washed over the front of the building and mixed a series of dark yellows to capture the gold in his hair. Then I placed the painting upstairs in my private studio. There was no way it could ever see the light of day. I would die of embarrassment.
* * *
I half hopedto see Archer and half didn't want to see him at the retreat the next day. I was frazzled the next morning as I made Ida's sandwiches then suffered through the lunch trickle.
Archer stalked in that afternoon, sunglasses planted firmly on his face. He seemed like he was in a bad mood.
"Today we're doing impressionist-style painting. I have some flowers here, donated by Ida's General Store." The seniors clapped lightly.
I passed out glasses of sangria. The older women sipped as they used large brushstrokes to paint the flowers.
"Need a drink?" I asked Archer. He was sitting on the couch, arms crossed, watching his little brothers paint.
"No, thanks," he said. I wondered if he was mad that he gave me so much money for the food. Maybe I didn't do a good enough job cooking.
"Look," I told him. "I think you might have given me too much for dinner yesterday."
