Despite the Gentleman's Riches: Sweet Billionaire Romance (For Richer or Poorer Book 1) (4 page)

Mr. Fish Stick's nostrils flared as he searched his internal data banks for information on tree transportation. I had a feeling that Jack had never noticed a plant in his life, though, so it was no surprise to me when he came up empty. "Okay," he agreed, too readily for my peace of mind. "You can commute. I'll throw in an extra thousand bucks a month for mileage and meals. The job starts tomorrow at nine a.m. Don't be late."

Negotiations concluded, Jack turned away as if planning to head back into his overbearing mansion. And as much as I wanted to disagree with him further, I needed the money too badly to argue. Five thousand dollars a month! With that kind of income, I could buy my own parcel of land within a year and move my trailer so I never had to see Mr. Reed's slimy face again. In the pursuit of freedom, I'd even abandon my apple tree, despite the sliver of my soul contained therein.

Still.... "What about your car?" I called to Jack's retreating back just before the door slammed behind him. We'd ridden up here together, which meant that his spaceship of a car was still sitting unattended in the high-school parking lot. Good thing there wasn't much criminal activity in our little town.

"I'll catch a ride back down the mountain," Mr. Fish Sticks replied. Then looking back over his shoulder with the same smirk that Lena had treated me to earlier (so that's where the twenty-five percent of their DNA came together), he added: "Don't forget that important meeting. You're late."

"Where have you been?" hissed Kimberly as I slid into the empty seat at the end of the row of Cuadic attendees. The public hearing had already begun, but the city-council member in charge was still droning away up at the podium, priming the pump for the pro-coal camp by mentioning all of the jobs that plant construction promised to create. I'd heard it all before, so I felt no compunction against letting my closest almost-friend within Cuadic fill me in on missed drama.

"Look over there," she said, motioning with her chin rather than giving me a chance to answer her initial question. I craned around to gaze at the back of the room, where dozens of burly men in camouflage were leaning against the wall. "All the local coal companies included a flier with their employees' paychecks this week, insinuating that people would lose their jobs if the power plant doesn't go through," Kimberly explained grimly. "So the miners came out in force."

I could feel my blood pressure rising, hating the way the big industries played fast and loose with the truth and used scare tactics to get the common Joe on their side. The voices of Cuadic supporters were clearly going to be drowned out by this deluge of concerned citizens, all of whom blended in better with the mainstream community than we did. And how could we argue with a blue-collar worker who just wanted to keep his family fed?

It didn't help matters that my usual stage fright was starting to make the sounds within the auditorium recede as I imagined standing up in front of this massive (and largely unfriendly) audience. Two video cameras decked out with the call letters of local news stations upped the ante further—if I fell on my face, my stupidity would definitely remain on film forever and would likely be broadcast across three states. Heck, I wouldn't even have to physically trip to make a fool of myself since I was perfectly capable of stumbling over my words so badly that neighbors would be laughing at my blunders for twenty years to come.

"There goes
the Señora," Kimberly whispered, pulling my attention onto the first of our compatriots to make the trek up to the podium. Speaking of words that would get us laughed out of town....

I glanced down the row of seats toward Brett, curious to see if he'd planned this initial sally. But our organizer grimaced at the group's least persuasive member, making it obvious that he wished he'd found a way to stop her from speaking in public, especially first thing before people began to lose interest and trickle away. Sitting next to our organization's heart throb, two older men in suits represented the national non-profits that I suspected Brett was hoping to step up into, and I noticed our leader lean over and whisper into the nearest man's ear, who quirked his mouth and shrugged in reply. Nope, the big dogs couldn't think of a way to silence the Señora before she made a fool out of us either.

"We
love
the waters and the sky," the pearl-encircled lady started, and even I cringed and mentally blocked out her words. Yep, this wishy-washy speech would be the one quoted in the papers tomorrow morning.

***

My turn to brave the spotlight came hours later, when the room had steamed up from the heat of so many human bodies exuding combative energy. Although he had no control over the Señora, Brett did his best to space the rest of us out so the mood of the crowd wouldn't be so obviously weighted toward the pro-power-plant camp. My slot was near the end of the allotted time period, ostensibly to leave the audience with a positive image of our non-profit from my down-to-earth manner. But I couldn't help hoping that the late hour actually meant that the most discriminating listeners had fallen asleep before I was forced to open my mouth.

Ms. Cooper had spoken ten minutes before me, her fact-laden soliloquy the one I wished the reporters would pay attention to. The educator reminded the community about our river's endangered shellfish, cited studies that showed elevated risks of health problems in areas close to coal-fired power plants, and mentioned the already operational power plant just a few miles down the road that provided plenty of electricity for our scattered population. ("Coal keeps the lights on," rebutted the subsequent speaker simply.) But my wish to spread Ms. Cooper's level-headed message to the masses was clearly bound for failure—the guys behind the television cameras had taken a donut break while the teacher was speaking, content in their knowledge that footage of the Señora's travesty would provide sufficient coverage of the tree-huggers' point of view.

To my chagrin, the reporters were back on the job as I brushed past a row of coal miners on my own way up to the stage. The burly men beside me were definitely intimidating, even though a sheriff's deputy was standing not far away to keep the peace, and my stage fright made way for more tangible concerns. As I sidled past, I tried to smile and bridge the gap between our opposing sides, but the miners' frowns instead made me wish that I hadn't arrived so late that I'd had to park my rust bucket at the furthest, darkest corner of the parking lot. Would I even be safe walking out of the building alone once the hearing was over? The scowl on the face of the man beside my right shoulder seemed to suggest otherwise.

For now, though, the miners did nothing but glare, so I forced my legs to carry me up the steps and further into the public eye. Unfolding my sheet of notes, I tried to focus on my speech rather than on wondering why I was even there in the first place. Yes, I was passionate about keeping the power plant out of our neighborhood, but was this public hearing really relevant to the overall battle? No one was collecting votes pro and con; the participants were just speaking their minds for the sake of hearing their own voices.

Earlier, Brett had warned our group that the city council had already been won over by Clean Power's hefty donations to the municipal coffers, adding that we'd almost certainly have to take the fight to the state corporation commission if we wanted to remain a thorn in power company's side. Communities like ours had battled coal-fired power plants all across the U.S. in recent years, Brett noted, and in the end, nearly all of those struggles had been lost. Polluting plants kept being built and the communities around them suffered.

But
nobody
had succeeded in rejecting a proposed power plant if they didn't even try. So I pulled up yet another fake smile and started to speak. "Our community needs good jobs," I began. "But is Clean Power the solution?"

***

I survived
. Not just my moment in the limelight, but also the gauntlet of coal miners standing in my way as I wended back through the crowd to my seat. I wasn't sure that my legs could hold my body erect much longer, so that piece of furniture was very welcome, and the rest of me definitely felt a bit better to see my compatriots' smiling faces getting nearer as well. Surely I couldn't have flubbed my speech too badly if Kimberly and Ms. Cooper were grinning my way?

But that relief was short-lived. When the city councilman stepped back up to the microphone, I thought for sure he was going to let us all go home at long last. Instead, the elected representative welcomed a face that was all too familiar...to me at least.

"To close out the evening, we're lucky to have Jack Reynolds here with us on behalf of Clean Power to answer any questions you might have about the proposed plant," the brown-nosing politician said, segueing into a list of Jack's accomplishments. But I wasn't really listening; I was too bowled over by the reality that Mr. Fish Sticks was the devil incarnate—a lackey for the very industry that Cuadic was fighting to keep out of our community.

My head whirled as I wondered how I could have been stupid enough to let myself become attracted to this stranger without even wondering what he was doing in town. After all, Jack's food choices alone should have tipped me off to the fact that the guy was trouble. And how could
he
have been so underhanded as to trick me into considering his job offer when the bastard knew that I'd forcefully decline if I was aware of his true identity? My gut reaction in the parking lot had been right on the money—Jack
did
always get his way, even if he had to sneak around every obstacle to get there.

Beauty is only skin deep
, I reminded myself belatedly, and I resolved that the next time I saw Jack, I wouldn't stumble over my words like a lovesick girl. I'd tell him to shove his dinner date. (And Lena? That question was too complicated for my current state of mind to disentangle, so I set it aside for now.)

Too bad the rest of our community was going to be taken in by Jack's handsome face just as I had been. Below the stage, television cameras were already zooming in to capture the golden boy's clean-cut features, and, as he'd done in the parking lot earlier that afternoon, the player angled his body to give the audience a clearer view.

"Thanks for asking," Jack was saying to the earnest-looking coal miner in the front row when I finally squashed my ire long enough to pay attention to his words. "Clean Power estimates we'll be bringing over a million dollars worth of income into your community during the construction phase alone. We've also pledged to upgrade your water-treatment plant so it will have the capacity to handle our plant's effluent, while making your own drinking water cleaner in the process. As our name suggests, Clean Power is committed to building communities that are cleaner and better for everyone."

Jack smiled widely, his grin as fake as his words, but a quick look through the audience showed that nearly everyone was lapping up his malarkey. And although I told myself to be calm and collected, my anger boiled over anyway. "But isn't it true that you'll be outsourcing construction to another company, which will bring in their workers from
outside
the region?" I retorted, shooting to my feet without waiting to be called on. "So
we
won't really be seeing any new jobs." Stage fright forgotten, I glared up at Mr. Fish Sticks, daring him to refute those basic facts.

"Many local construction workers
will
be hired," Jack replied, scanning the audience to see who was speaking. When his eyes lit on me, the bastard's grin grew wider, as if he was glad to be butting heads with a worthy opponent. Or maybe Mr. Fish Sticks smiled because he realized I was an easy con based on my past actions. Whatever. "Plus, there will be plenty of dollars flowing into support services," Jack continued. "For example, I understand that McDonalds is considering opening a branch here in town if your community agrees to our offer of locating the newest clean-power center nearby."

Clean-power center
, the words made me want to retch. Arguing the economic standpoint, though, wasn't getting me anywhere since many of my neighbors wouldn't be able to understand the distinction between minimum-wage service workers and the construction personnel who would be raking in the real money. To my neighbors, a job was a job, and we needed every one we could get.

Still, I couldn't let Jack win the argument that was most likely to sway the local community. "But haven't you seen in other communities like ours that short-term gains in the job market are obliterated by the loss of tourism revenue and by the higher health-care costs that inevitably follow coal plants into town?" I retorted. "Construction will only take a couple of years, then we'll be left dealing with the aftermath on our own once Clean Power has reduced its presence in the area down to a skeleton staff."

"Doesn't that sound a little cynical?" Jack responded with feigned bewilderment. Rather than focusing on my face, now, he panned his seductive smile across the crowd. "As I mentioned earlier, Clean Power commits to the communities we become a part of. Why, my family has already bought a house here in town and we're paying our local staff generously." The raised eyebrows that my opponent shot in my direction dared me to continue arguing the point when I, personally, was a poster child for Clean Power's efforts at community relations.

And, since I hadn't come to any conclusion about where I stood on the issue of Lena and of Jack's enticing job offer, I was left fumbling for words. Cheeks flaming, I dropped back down into my seat as Jack fielded a few more questions, most of them enthusiastic requests for more information about where to pick up job applications. At last, the city councilman closed the meeting and left the group of Cuadic members staring at each other glumly.

"Well,
that
was a catastrophe," Kimberly said unhappily, breaking the maudlin silence. "Who knew Clean Power would send a smooth-spoken hunk to put us in our place?"

Then, when I thought for sure my evening couldn't get any worse, the hunk himself insinuated himself into our cluster. "Well," Jack said, staring into my eyes. "That was fun. Wasn't it?"