“Thank you.” He stepped closer, and for a moment she thought—hoped—he’d kiss her again. But he just gave her a quick peck on her forehead. “Get a good night’s sleep.”
Ginny was dropping her whole wheat toast into the toaster the next morning when her phone dinged with a text.
It was from Kade. Are you awake?
She typed, Fixing my avocado toast.
She was watching for the blinking dots to tell her he was responding when her phone rang in her hands.
She answered, not caring if he thought she was overeager. “Good morning.”
“Did you sleep?” His voice was deep and soothing. It somehow calmed her and energized her at the same time.
She flipped her frying egg. “I had good dreams.”
He chuckled. “I had some memorable dreams myself.”
She felt that silly smile again and thanked the heavens he couldn’t see her warming cheeks.
“What in the world is avocado toast?” he asked.
She explained her favorite breakfast concoction.
“No offense,” he said, “but that sounds really gross.”
“I’ll make it for you sometime. It’s delicious.” She mashed half an avocado. “Are you ready for the meeting?”
“About that,” he said. “I wanted to ask a favor. After our talk yesterday and all your help, I feel like you know as much about the project as I do.”
“Not even close.”
“Enough to be helpful, though.”
Her toast popped, and she spread the mashed avocado on top of it, then slid the egg over it. “I’m happy to help. What do you need?”
“I was thinking, since you know the project, and since you have so much experience with real estate developments, maybe…” He paused, cleared his throat. “Will you come to the meeting with me? You can act as, I don’t know—”
“An assistant?” She carried her plate to the table.
“I don’t know if that’s the right word, but—”
“You’re asking me to assist you, so assistant feels appropriate.”
“But not like you work for me or anything. I don’t want you to think I see you like that.”
“I’m not offended, Kade.” She sprinkled her breakfast with salt and pepper. “I’m flattered you think I can add anything. What time is the meeting?”
He blew out a long exhale as if he’d been nervous to ask. “Two.”
“Hold on a sec. Let me check my schedule.” She put him on speaker, then navigated to the calendar app. “I have a closing at ten but nothing this afternoon. Assuming the closing doesn’t get moved, I can be there. Is there anything you want me to do beforehand?”
“Could you meet me at one-thirty just to talk it through with me? I want to make sure I’m not missing anything.”
“I’ll be happy to meet you. The proposal was perfect, though. I’m sure you have it well in hand.”
“Still…”
She found the concern in his voice honest and endearing. “You have a lot riding on this.”
“I have to get it right.”
She tapped the calendar to add an appointment. “Where shall we meet?”
“McNeal’s?”
“Perfect. See you there.”
A phone call that afternoon from a client kept her at the office longer than she’d planned. When she finally got off the phone, she walked in the waning mist to McNeal’s. She was five minutes late, and Kade was already seated in a far booth focused on the paperwork spread in front of him. He stood when she approached and kissed her cheek. “Thank you for doing this.”
She sat and looked at what he was studying. It was the binder she’d given him. Yellow sticky notes were poking out all along the sides.
“I’m worried I don’t have enough information,” he said. “What if they ask me about this stuff?” He pointed to a blank spreadsheet with columns labeled for every tiny detail of a project.
“Maybe giving you that binder was a mistake.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t have all this information yet. I don’t know how I could.”
“You’ll fill this out as the project goes along. It’ll help you track costs. More than that, it’ll help you with your next project to know exactly where your money went.” Gently, she closed the binder. “You’ve got this, Kade. I have no doubt.”
The little wrinkle between his eyebrows showed he was unconvinced. He sipped his drink. A glass of iced tea sat in front of her. “I hope you’re right.”
“You’ve done this before, right?” She slid the tea closer and added sweetener. “You’ve gone before the planning committee?”
“A few times. And they always approved me until January when I went with this project. It was one thing to get turned down mid-winter. It wasn’t as if I would have broken ground then. But if they don’t approve it today, it’ll be late summer before I can try again, which means we either build in the winter or wait until next year.”
She sipped the tea. “You don’t want to build in the winter?”
“There are so many days when the guys can’t work because everything’s buried under snow or ice. It takes longer and costs more.”
A good point. But something she’d heard in church—his church—on Sunday prickled in her memory. “Isn’t this exactly what the pastor was talking about? You make your plans and do your part, and you trust Him with the results? Because God’s got a plan, right? I’m sure I’m butchering it, but wasn’t that the point?”
His eyebrows lifted, erasing the concern on his face. “You were listening.”
“Of course.”
He nodded. “You’re right. I’ve prayed about it for months. I’ve done everything I can to prepare, and I even asked for help along the way—something I’m not very good at, to tell you the truth. I’ve done my part. The rest is up to God.”
She nodded, though she wasn’t so sure about the God part. Did He really care that much about a little real estate project in New Hampshire? Didn’t God have better things to worry about?
Kade took her hands. “Thank you. We haven’t even gone to the meeting yet, and you’ve already helped me.”
She looked down to hide the smile she knew was beaming on her face.
He squeezed her hands and let go. “If you can just take this”—he opened the binder to one of the sticky-noted pages and turned it toward her—“and keep this section open. Most of the details I think they’ll ask about are here. If I can’t pull an answer from my head or find a number quickly, can you supply it?”
“Absolutely.”
“And if I look lost or… if I need help—”
“I’ll jump in. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
He stood and dropped a couple of bills on the table. “We’ll see.”
Chapter Ten
It was ridiculous how nervous Kade was.
Ginny was right. He’d done this before multiple times. The last time, they’d told him to come back when the project was fully funded, and now it was. He shouldn’t have anything to be nervous about.
But as he stepped into the meeting room in the musty old town office building, sweat broke out on the back of his neck.
He and Ginny scooted into chairs near the front of the room. He sat on the end of the row, the poster-sized picture of the development propped against the side of his chair.
The council members were seated at long tables facing the audience. Bruce sat in the center. If Kade wasn’t mistaken, his chair was higher than the rest of the others. He wouldn’t put it past the man to find a way to make himself look bigger than he was.
His term didn’t end for another year, and it couldn’t come soon enough. He’d been town manager for a long time, and throughout the years, his plan had been to keep Nutfield from entering the twenty-first century. Even this meeting attested to that. In most growing communities, the planning committee met twice a month. But Bruce refused to budge on the once-per-quarter schedule that had been enacted
by their forefathers, probably right after they’d signed the Declaration of Independence. Never mind that the meetings had gotten so long that they’d had to move them back from seven p.m. to two in order to cover all the business.
As expected, every seat was filled, and people stood in the back and out the door.
Ginny looked around at the crowd. “Wow. I didn’t know these were such events.”
“Nobody wants to be here.” He cut his gaze to Bruce, puffed up like a sovereign over his kingdom. “Except him. He loves this.”
She looked. “That’s Bruce Collier?”
“Enemy of progress.”
“Maybe he just fears change.”
“If that’s the case, then he has no business being the town manager.”
She perused the crowd. “So are all these people going to bring new business?”
“I should have warned you. It’ll be a very long meeting. I hope you can get some work done.”
She pulled her phone from her purse and waggled it in front of him. “I’ll keep busy.”
He sat back and settled in for a long wait.
More than three hours later, most of the folks who’d brought business to the meeting had spoken, had their projects voted on, and left. The room was nearly empty by the time Kade’s name was called.
He and Ginny stood and stepped up to a small table in front of the council members. There were two chairs there. He pulled out one for Ginny, and she sat and opened the binder.
He lifted his notes and the proposals from the bag and set them on the small table. Then he positioned the poster board on the easel.
He handed the proposals out, greeting every member by name. That wasn’t hard. He knew them all, and he liked most of them.
When he reached Bruce, he said, “Afternoon, sir.”
Bruce scowled at him.
Kade moved on, finally reaching the person seated in the last chair. “Afternoon, Mrs. Boucher.”
The older gray-haired woman smiled at him. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Kade, you’re a grown man. Call me Constance.”
He winked. “Yes, ma’am.” He and Mrs. Boucher’s son had been friends in school. No matter how many times she told him to call her by her first name, he just couldn’t do it.
Finally, he stood by the table, snatched his notes, and addressed the council.
“First, let me introduce you to Ginny Lamont. Ginny is a real estate agent here in town. She has experience with large-scale real estate developments, and she offered to assist me on this project.”
Most of the council members nodded at her. Bruce, of course, scowled. Ginny was a newcomer, and thus, not to be trusted.
Ginny seemed confident and cheerful, as always. She nodded to him, and he turned to the council and continued.
“I came before this body in January with the same proposal I bring to you today.” He walked to the easel to stand beside the picture. “As you know, I own the parcel of land on the south side of the lake. If you’ll open to page two, you’ll see the boundaries of my land.”
Except for Bruce, all the members flipped to the proper page.
Bruce said, “A gift from your father, if I’m not mistaken.”
Kade nodded twice. “A very generous gift, yes.”
“And what does he think about your little”—he waved toward the easel—“hobby.”
Kade hoped the anger that boiled in his middle wasn’t showing on his face. “My father fully supports my career.”
“I guess he doesn’t care, now that he lives in Florida.”
“Bruce.” Mrs. Boucher turned to face the town manager. “Let the man talk.”
Bruce harrumphed.
Kade continued. “I intend to develop the property into a country club complete with a golf course, swimming pools, tennis courts, and upscale meeting rooms. Though it will be a private club, the membership dues will be reasonable, affording Nutfield residents and those in the surrounding towns the ability to join if they choose to. Everyone will be welcome on the golf course. There will be homes on the property, some abutting the lake, others overlooking the fairways and greens. If you’ll take a look at page three, you’ll see the number and variety of houses—”
“Expensive houses,” Bruce said. “They’ll just draw a bunch more people from Massachusetts with more dollars than sense. Why would we want those kinds of people here?”
Kade smiled. “I’m glad you asked. If you’ll turn to page four…” He flipped through his notes. Where was that list?
Ginny cleared her throat. When he looked, she was holding out what he needed. She winked as he took it.
He went through the benefits to the town he and Ginny had compiled. Most of the council members were nodding, some even smiling, as he spoke.
“Go ahead and turn to page seven, and let’s talk details.” He took them through his plans, the costs he anticipated, the phases he planned, and the timeline for each.
Bruce’s scowl turned smug as he closed his proposal. “Mr. Powers, this is all interesting, but, if I remember correctly, we told you not to come back until you were fully funded. Are you?”
“I am.”
Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “So your father decided to ‘invest.’”
Again, Kade’s anger simmered at the way he’d said the last word, as if this were anything but an investment. He glanced at Ginny, and she seemed as composed and confident as always.
Her smile boosted his confidence as he turned back to Bruce and stood tall. “As a matter of fact, no. If you’ll turn to page fourteen…” He waited as they did so, then took them through the list of investors.
Bruce studied the page as if there’d be an exam. His finger jabbed at it. “Who is this Sokolov Investments?”
“They’re a group of financiers from Boston.”
“We don’t know these people.” He focused his attention on his fellow council members. “Do we really want to let total strangers come into our town and buy property?”
“To be clear,” Kade said, “the property belongs to me. They’re buying shares, but I will own the majority share and will be making all the decisions.”
Bruce harrumphed again. “I don’t think we should trust people we’ve never met.”
A niggle of anxiety rose in Kade’s stomach. That’s exactly what he was doing, trusting a whole group of people, only one of whom he’d met, and only for an hour.
A man whom Ginny had told him made her nervous.
But Sokolov and his friends wouldn’t have any say in his project. Kade would have all the control.
He opened his mouth to argue, but Mrs. Boucher jumped in. “We’re not being asked to trust strangers, Bruce.” She focused on the other men and women on the board. “We’re being asked to trust Kade Powers. His family has roots in this town that go back as far as any of ours. Every project he’s ever brought to us has succeeded.” She faced Kade again. “I don’t see any problem with it.”
Kade endured a long question-and-answer session and managed to answer every question without needing Ginny’s assistance once—though her presence alone helped him keep his cool as Bruce’s questions kept coming and coming. Finally, the council brought it to a vote.
The project passed eight to one.
Kade gathered his things, eager to get out of the building so he could show his excitement. Before they could leave, though, Bruce called, “Kade, if you’d just wait. I need to speak to you.”
He nodded to the man, feeling like he’d just been called out for being naughty in class. Everything in him wanted to tell Bruce what he really thought of that idea. But he’d been raised to respect his elders whether they deserved it or not. “We’ll be out here, then.”
Kade and Ginny stopped in the musty hallway.
Her smile was bright as the sunshine trying to peek through the clouds outside. “You did it.”
“We did it.”
“I did nothing but hand you a piece of paper.”
He stepped closer, too elated to stop himself
, and settled his hands on her hips. He looked down into her beautiful eyes. “That was a pivotal piece of paper.”
Her gaze flicked to his lips, and he couldn’t help himself. He leaned down to claim a kiss.
He loved how warm and willing she was. The confidence she’d shown in him after he’d been so vulnerable, so worried about this meeting, was a strong aphrodisiac.
Noises and murmuring in the room just beyond the door had him remembering where he was. He stepped back. “Sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
Her eyebrows lifted, and he laughed.
“Well, maybe I have a suspicion.” He forced down the lingering desire. “You don’t have to wait. I’m sure you have stuff to do.”
She checked her watch. “Actually, I’m showing a house later, so I should go get ready for that.”
As people filed out of the room, he gave her a quick kiss on the top of her head. “I’ll call you later.”
She took his hand and lowered her voice. “You’re right, that Bruce is a piece of work, but you kept your cool. I’m proud of you.”
It was an effort to keep his chest from expanding.
“Congratulations.” She squeezed his hand and joined the crowd leaving the meeting.
After everyone else had gone, Bruce stepped out of the room, set his feet, and crossed his arms. “Tell me more about this investment group.”
“You looking to develop some property?”
Bruce smiled just enough to show his yellowing teeth. “I don’t trust people I don’t know.”
“Which is why you shouldn’t be the town manager. Look, just because you don’t know somebody doesn’t mean they’re bad. These guys have invested in properties all over Massachusetts. Great, successful properties.”
“And why did they decide to invest in you?”
In him. Not in the project, but in him.
That was an excellent question, actually. Kade had no idea.
Because even if the project plans were excellent, that didn’t mean Kade was capable of pulling it off. Sokolov and his people must have done their homework on him or they wouldn’t have bothered.
Kade told Bruce what he knew about Sokolov and how they’d met.
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