“Thanks. I’m only here for the next hour. After that you can scream as much as you want to,” Matt said with a laugh.
“Actually, I could use a break,” Paxton said. She ran her hands up and down her arms as if chilled, while Sawyer’s skin burned with the hot tension still pulsing between them.
She cast a quick glance his way. “I’m going across the street to get a bite to eat.”
“We’re not done talking about this,” Sawyer warned.
Her chin rose. “We are for now.” She walked over to her desk and grabbed her purse. She then walked past him, her murmured “Excuse me” barely audible.
Sawyer braced his hands on the table and dropped his head as all the fight drained out of him. He felt a strong hand clamp him on the shoulder.
“Rough start?” Matt asked.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Sawyer answered. He blew out a deep breath, dragging a hand down his face.
“Just stick with it,” Matt said. “Gauthier needs this. You weren’t here for the flooding last year. It was bad. I’ve never seen that kind of damage before, not even after Hurricane Katrina. We have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“It won’t,” Sawyer said. Standing up straight, he turned and stared Matt directly in the eyes. “I won’t get a good night’s rest until I’m certain Gauthier never has to endure what it went through with that tropical storm.”
Sawyer knew that to make good on his promise, he would have to figure out why so many places outside the purported flood zones took on so much water. His gut told him that he was on the right track with questioning those maps. All he had to do was convince Paxton that she should listen to his gut, too.
Chapter 4
Sawyer waited atthe curb for an antiquated Dodge with a loud muffler to pass before making his way to the other side of Main Street. A quick glance inside The Jazzy Bean’s large windows showed him just how packed the coffeehouse and café was. Even though today kicked off the weeklong festivities surrounding Gauthier High School’s Spirit Week, which culminated with the homecoming game on Friday, Sawyer knew from experience that it had nothing to do with the crowd at The Jazzy Bean. This was a typical Monday for Gauthier’s hottest new eatery.
Since his return from Chicago a little more than seven months ago, Sawyer had been both stunned and encouraged by the changes in his hometown. A lot of the credit went to the discovery of a small back room at the Gauthier Law Firm, which turned out to be an actual stop on the Underground Railroad. Its finding had turned Gauthier into a tourist destination for history buffs. That discovery had been the impetus the town needed to jump-start its growth.
Some were reluctant to allow Gauthier to grow too much, which Sawyer completely understood. The homegrown businesses were a part of what made this town so unique, but change was necessary if the mom-and-pop shops on Main Street were going to survive the massive expansion taking place just twenty minutes west in Maplesville. It seemed as if the business owners in Gauthier had struck just the right balance in encouraging growth while maintaining the small-town charm that was the hallmark of this area.
The Jazzy Bean was one such establishment. The quaint café drew a wide variety of patrons. From men and women in business suits who drove in from the accounting firm in Maplesville, to nurses in scrubs from the clinic on Collins Street, to men in hard hats who worked at his family’s lumber mill.
Even though Sawyer didn’t have much to do with the operations side of the lumber mill, he knew many of the workers by name. Most of them had worked there for much of their adult lives. There were now a number of second-generation workers, the sons and daughters of men and women who had been loyal to the company his father had founded more than thirty years ago.
Sawyer stopped to say hello to a few of them, and he was quickly sucked into a conversation about the new safety incentive program the current manager had instituted. The safety incentive was the one idea Sawyer had pitched at the last board meeting. He was happy to hear that it was being so well received by the mill workers.
He found Paxton standing at the counter and had to stop just a moment to appreciate the sheer exquisiteness of the way her clothes hugged her trim frame. She was talking to Shayla Kirkland. No, she was a Wright now. Shayla had married the town’s new doctor just before their class reunion this summer.
He and Shayla had shared a bunch of mutual friends back in high school, but Sawyer could never figure out a way to cross that bridge with Paxton, regardless of how hard he tried. And he’d tried everything he could think of in high school to get her to see him as someone actually worth seeing. Nothing had worked.
“Hi, Sawyer,” Shayla greeted him.
Paxton looked over her shoulder and sighed. “Can I please have just a moment’s peace before you start hounding me again?”
“I’m not hounding you,” Sawyer said. “I’m trying to get you to see my side of things.”
She took the cup Shayla handed her and walked over to the station with the coffee fixings. Sawyer followed her.
Okay, so maybe hewashounding her. But he had a good reason this time.
“Look,” Paxton started before he could speak, “I understand your need to want everything to meet this perfect gold standard that you’re used to operating with, but again, you’re not taking my budget into consideration. I have to balance what’s going to work for this project against how much it will cost. Everything will not be perfect because we cannot afford perfection. It will, however, be sufficient.
“And,” she continued after a breath, “just because it’s not perfect doesn’t mean we’re half-assing anything. I would never shortchange Gauthier. I’m as invested in this town as you are. More so, in fact.”
Sawyer’s head snapped back, his eyes narrowing. “Wait.Moreso?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “My mother’s livelihood is here.”
“And that automatically means you care more about Gauthier than I do? Give me a break, Paxton. This is my hometown, too. I care about this place just as much as you do.”
