Convincing the Rancher (30 page)

“We got funding.”

“But you told me you were having trouble finding investors. That you couldn’t find a company to give you a discount.”

“We were. But we eventually got a company to work with us, once we got our money together.”

And then she knew what he was trying to say. “Let me guess. It’s privately funded?”

He nodded.

“Jack and Samantha?”

“Yes. I’m sorry you found out about the protesters by chance. I wouldn’t want you to find out about the funding the same way.”

“Thanks,” she said bitterly. She turned to go, despair pitting her stomach, making her legs feel heavy as she dragged her defeated self down the hall. Not only had Slaid forgotten to mention the huge public protest, but her best friend had neglected to tell her that she and her husband were personally funding the opposition’s plan.

How ironic that the two people who’d pushed her to change, who had convinced her to open her heart to let love in, had stomped on it within days. Tess realized she didn’t care about windmills anymore. She didn’t care about winning. All she wanted to do was get out of Benson as fast as possible.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

T
ESS SAT IN
her car outside her cottage, willing herself to turn the ignition and get started. Her Jeep was packed and the cottage was closed up.

She huddled in her teal parka, staring straight ahead down the street toward the football field where she’d had such an incredible date with Slaid. Where she’d felt welcomed so warmly by the people of Benson. Now she knew they’d given her such a warm welcome because they didn’t perceive her as a threat. By that time they’d had their secret meetings, they’d all signed up for solar panels and called in the environmental activists. By then, everyone had known she was here representing a project that was doomed. Everyone had known but her.

Had they felt sorry for her? Laughed at her? Had Slaid?

Her new understanding of what Slaid and his city council had planned shed a light on so many puzzling events here in Benson. Why people had been so well behaved and asked so few questions at her informational meetings, for one. She’d egotistically thought that it was due to her thorough presentation and persuasive public-speaking skills. Really, they’d just shown up out of idle curiosity. To check out the woman who was dating the mayor while he worked behind her back to make sure she failed spectacularly. They didn’t have any questions because they already knew the most important answer—there was no way a wind farm would be sited anywhere near Benson.

Slaid should be thanking her. The wind farm had made him famous. He’d been on every California news channel last night. They’d dubbed him the sunshine mayor, the mayor of Solar City. Not that Benson was a city, but it sounded better than Solar Backwater. Solar Cow Town. Solar microscopic speck on the map that she would never visit again.

So why wasn’t she leaving? She reached to turn on the ignition, but her hand dropped back in her lap. She was still too shaken up to drive.

Ed should have airlifted her out of here before that town meeting last night. She’d asked him to, but with his customary lack of imagination he’d told her that the meeting couldn’t possibly go that badly.

Ha.

It really hadn’t been much of a meeting. Just chaos. A parade of activists had marched from the proposed wind farm site to the town hall, complete with enormous mangled-bird puppets reminding everyone of the danger that windmills posed to the animals. They had signs saying No Way LA, and You Got Our Water, Hands Off Our Wind. Even Slaid had gotten in the spirit. The literature-loving mayor was mounted on Puck and dressed as Don Quixote, the character from Cervantes’s novel who famously attacked windmills. Puck pranced around while Slaid waved a wooden spear, chasing after a large cardboard windmill built on the back of Betty and Jed’s truck. A teenager, not Devin, thankfully, followed him on a smaller horse—the perfect Sancho Panza.

It was a joke to all of them. An outrageous victory parade because they knew they’d won... They had the media, every major environmental group and logic on their side. How could the BLM and Renewable Reliance put windmills around a town that generated its own power?

Ed had called her about five minutes after the meeting was supposed to start, while she was standing in the city council chambers looking helplessly out over the sea of people, all waving signs and singing “We Shall Overcome.” He told her Renewable Reliance had canceled the contract with their PR firm. And they were canceling their lease with the BLM. They were giving up on the wind project in Benson.

Tess had left the city council chambers by a back door and returned to her cottage to pack. A couple hours later, Slaid had called—she’d hung up on him.

All evening she’d been inundated with calls from the media, requests for interviews from the many reporters who’d shown up in Benson to cover the rally. She’d turned off her phone; she had nothing to say. The image of her pale face up in front of the crowd in the council chambers, trying futilely to call everyone to order, played over and over on the news, so she’d turned off the TV, as well.

She’d never felt like such a failure. She’d come to this town so confident, her biggest worry how to endure the minutes until she could push the project through and head back home to San Francisco. Instead she’d lost control of the project and failed at love.

The sky was getting lighter. She took a deep breath and started the engine. Thankfully, Benson was such a small town that it took only a few moments of driving before it disappeared from her rearview mirror.

* * *

S
HE’D EXPECTED
E
D
to be mad, but she’d never thought he’d fire her. Except he didn’t call it that. He’d suggested they “part ways, professionally” and promised a good recommendation, and to never let on that he’d asked her to leave.

Tess stared around her quiet apartment, remembering his words yesterday—a jumble of mixed metaphors. He said she’d gotten distracted, missed the clues, fumbled the pass, taken her eye off the ball.

Somehow he’d heard about her relationship with Slaid. Now that he was the famous sunshine mayor, video footage had appeared on the internet of them kissing at Devin’s game. Their relationship had become news fodder. The sunshine mayor had not only scored a victory for his town, he’d scored with his opponent, as well.

As words like
unprofessional
and
incompetent
rolled off his tongue, Ed had toyed with the paperwork on his desk—already prepared. Her firing was a done deal before she’d even set foot back in the office.

Maybe it was time for a change. She’d look for a job with a public relations firm that dealt only with clients in nice cities with good hotels. No small-town energy projects ever again. They were far too dangerous for her career and her heart.

The truth was, she might be furious at Slaid, but she missed him. She missed Devin, and she even missed that funny little shabby-chic cottage. She missed Wendy the mustang and Slaid’s ranch and—she couldn’t believe she was admitting this—the silent and majestic beauty of the mountains.

She looked around her apartment, clutching a cup of tea that she’d considered dosing with a dollop of Scotch. But even she had rules against drinking first thing in the morning.

Everything about her apartment looked the same as always, but it felt different. As if something homey and alive was missing. Tess studied the sleek, modern furnishings she’d always loved. Shiny surfaces, no clutter, everything efficient and sculptural. An image of Slaid’s living room pieced itself together in her tired mind. The rustic, faded pillows. The bulletin board in his dining room covered in photos and football schedules. His house was modern, too, but it looked as if people actually lived there.

Suppressing the tears that came way too quickly these days, Tess stood abruptly and pulled her purse and coat out of the closet. She might not be able to fix her heart, but she
could
redecorate.

* * *

E
IGHT HOURS OF
shopping in Union Square hadn’t taken the hurt feelings away—it should have. Tess held firm beliefs in the powers of retail therapy. But her shopping bags lay empty on her apartment floor, her newly purchased throw pillows, vases, and knickknacks were distributed and her home still felt empty. She flopped on her sofa and picked up one of her new pillows, hugging it to her stomach, trying to relieve the turmoil inside.

Outside her huge windows was the view that made the elevator ride to her thirtieth-floor apartment worthwhile. An enormous cargo ship was going under the Bay Bridge, making its slow and steady way through the bay toward the ocean, with Treasure Island rising just behind it. It was gorgeous, and yet she didn’t feel her usual mix of pride and excitement at the view she was able to afford.

She wished her thoughts would just behave, but ever since she’d left Benson, she realized just how closed-off and shallow her life was. She’d built up a material fortress around herself. This expensive apartment, her chic furniture, her perfect wardrobe, had provided her with comfort before. But now, sitting here alone, without Slaid and Devin, they didn’t mean much.

And it occurred to her that she’d been hiding in this apartment, staring at this view, for years now. Hiding while other people made new friends, fell in love, got married, had kids. Hiding while her own child grew up somewhere else, possibly wondering why she had never made contact.

Tess stood up, went to her bedroom and reached under the bed. She had to stretch as far as she could, but she managed to reach the box she was looking for. She stayed where she was on the floor and opened it up.

Inside was a photo, faded and battered, of her sixteen-year-old self in a hospital gown, holding her newborn baby with panic in her eyes. The social worker had snapped it all those years ago. Tess stared at the photo, tears thickening. With blurry vision she groped in the box until she found the key.

She walked back into her hallway and pulled on her coat again, putting the key in the pocket. She grabbed the huge tote bag she used for groceries and left before she could think too much about where she was going. But she knew in her heart that this was the real errand she needed to run today. The real place she needed to go, that just might have the power to fix what shopping could not.

* * *

T
HE POST OFFICE
was dark at this time of day. It was past business hours. But the lobby was open and Tess walked the endless rows of mailboxes, looking for hers.

The nice couple who’d adopted her son had handed her the key to the mailbox here fourteen years ago, promising they’d keep the box open for her until Adam turned eighteen. She’d kept the key hidden, never checked the PO Box once in all these years. She just didn’t have the courage to know the boy she’d given birth to, or the family who’d made him their own.

Her first thought, when she found her mailbox, was that it was big. It was on the bottom row and was about the size of a file cabinet drawer. She knelt down and somehow got the key in with her shaking fingers. The moment the door opened, letters tumbled out, spilling onto the floor in a giant pile of unopened opportunities.

She sat there, loading them slowly into her tote bag, tears pouring down her face—fourteen years’ worth of tears, soaking her cheeks. As she fumbled through her purse for a tissue, a big hand came down and offered her one. She glanced up into the kindly face of the security guard and mumbled a snuffly thank-you as she took it from him.

“Is there anyone you can call, ma’am?” he asked.

Tess blindly nodded and groped for her phone. She opened it and brought her contacts up to the screen, scrolling through without thinking, searching frantically for Jenna’s number.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“
S
O ALL THESE YEARS
, you’ve never told us any of this.” Jenna sat down next to Tess on the couch and put an arm around her shoulders.

It was a statement, more than a question, but Tess answered, “Yes.” She leaned her head on Jenna’s shoulder, feeling completely wrung out and relieved. “Thank you for taking care of me all night.”

“I’m just glad you let me. I can’t believe you’ve kept this stuff inside all these years. I wish I’d known what you were dealing with.”

“Well, I think that’s just it. I haven’t been dealing with it.” Tess stared out at the view, the midday sun lighting up the bay.

Samantha took her hand and squeezed it. She’d arrived about half an hour ago, early enough in the day to prepare for her baby shower tomorrow. They’d planned to spend today shopping and decorating, but so far all they’d done was sit on Tess’s couch while an anxious Jenna tried to explain why Tess was such a wreck.

“Tess, I’m so sorry if I have anything to do with all of this.”

“You mean me falling apart?”

“Jack and I funded a lot of the solar panels.”

“I know,” Tess said. “Slaid told me.”

“We didn’t know what else to do. It seemed as if Renewable Reliance was using their connections to block us at every step. And I was afraid to tell you.”

“It’s okay.” Tess could hear the distress in Samantha’s voice. “I mean, I was hurt when I found out, but now I get it. It’s your town. And now I’m glad you did what you had to do to preserve it. I was just working for a company that ended up firing me anyway.”

“They’re idiots. They should be giving you a medal for how hard you worked for them.” Samantha paused, then reached out and took hold of Tess’s hand. “Okay, so I’m trying to catch up on everything else,” she said gently. “Jenna told me over the phone that you went to the post office last night to get letters that had been piling up for the past fourteen years? From the adoptive parents of a baby you had when you were sixteen?”

“Yup.” Tess sighed, strangely grateful that the information was finally out there.

“And then you called Jenna,” Samantha continued. “And she brought you home and you cried all night.”

“And slept late,” Jenna added.

“And ate donuts,” Tess said, feeling guilty about the calories already.