Paxton didn’t have to try to put herself in their shoes. She’d worn their shoes for years. Her mother still did. They both knew exactly how it felt to pinch every penny you could find until old Abe Lincoln squealed. She wouldn’t be surprised if most of the people in her part of town didn’t even have flood insurance. They were probably relying on prayer to keep their homes and possessions safe. Paxton couldn’t help but feel like a traitor for going along with this plan that may put those who could afford insurance under even more financial duress.
But the science didn’t lie. They were doing what needed to be done in order to build a flood protection system that would hopefully prevent them from ever having to cash in on those insurance policies. Still, she was certain some of the people filling these seats wouldn’t see things the same way.
By the time the meeting got under way it seemed as if half the town had shown up.
Mya Dubois-Anderson took the floor and, in her composed yet authoritative way, went over the meeting agenda, stressing several times throughout her initial spiel that questions would be taken at the end of the presentation.
By the time Mya called her to take center stage, Paxton had calmed the nervous energy running through her enough to stop her hands from shaking. Public speaking had never been her strong suit, but she had given this type of pitch enough over her career that she could recite it in her sleep.
But things were different this time. This time it was personal.
Paxton couldn’t look out over the crowd of familiar faces—some skeptical, others hopeful, some completely expressionless—and ignore how deeply personal this all felt. These people trusted her. Even the skeptics wanted to believe that she had their best interests at heart. She didn’t want to let them down.
She gave the crowd a brief overview of what they were planning to do and what they could expect in the upcoming months once the actual construction commenced. The crowd gave her their undivided attention, and then gave the same to Matt Gauthier, who had come in a few minutes later. Sawyer closed out the presentation with his explanation of the mechanics of the flood protection system. Paxton was impressed with the way he explained it all in layman’s terms, without coming across as if he were patronizing anyone. Some of the engineers she worked with at Bolt-Myer could learn a thing or two from him.
“The citizens of Gauthier should also be applauded for approving the millage tax that will be used to fund the rest of the project along with the upkeep,” Sawyer said. “This is going to be a long effort, but after what many of you experienced with Tropical Storm Lucy, I’m sure we all understand just why it’s so important.”
He glanced at Paxton before turning back to the audience. “If you all could bear with me, I’m going to go off script for just a minute.”
Paxton tried to curb the quick shot of anxiety that slashed through her. Going off script was never a good thing in her book.
“Paxton and I, along with several people from the state, have visited the properties that received the most damage,” Sawyer started. “But I think it’s only fair that we give everyone whose lives were negatively affected the opportunity to voice your grievances. We want to hear your stories. We want to know how this has affected you both financially and emotionally these past months.”
Only moments ago Paxton had wanted to strangle him, but if she didn’t think it would cause a firestorm of gossip around town, she would kiss Sawyer right now.
This was what the people in this town needed to hear—that someone cared about the struggles they had endured. It wasn’t just the houses that took in several feet that made this flood protection system necessary. Even one inch of standing water could cost a home owner thousands of dollars in flooring repair.
And that was exactly the kind of stories they heard as, one by one, citizens shared how their lives had changed in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Lucy. Hearing about the damage was bad enough, but Paxton heard so many tales of insurance companies not covering repairs that she thought she would be sick.
Just when she thought they would get out of this meeting unscathed, Clifford Mayes, the town’s retired policeman, posed a question that sent a ripple of tension through the crowd.
“What about these flood maps you want to draw up?” Mr. Mayes asked in his gravelly voice. “I heard they would make our insurance rates spike.”
“That’s what I heard, too,” Nathan Robottom said. “The insurance we already have didn’t want to cover the storm damage. Paying more is just throwing good money after bad.”
The number of people nodding as others aired their grievances about the potential insurance rate hikes continued to increase.
Paxton’s head instantly started to pound, but she couldn’t refute a single claim because they were right. There was a better than average chance that the same people who were screwed by the insurance companies after Tropical Storm Lucy would be screwed again if another storm hit.
She glanced over at Sawyer. The worry clouding his face told her exactly what he was feeling on the inside. This was as hard for him to hear as it was for her. Sawyer was a fixer. He was the kind of man who wanted to come in on his white horse and save the day.
But even the powerful Robertson name and money could not save everyone in town from financial ruin following a storm.
“I’m not as concerned about the insurance rates as I am about our property values,” Jamal Johnson said.
Jamal had moved from Arizona to Gauthier several years ago. An architect, he and Phylicia Phillips had renovated her family’s beautiful Victorian home, turning it into the town’s only bed-and-breakfast. Belle Maison was in an area that wasn’t classified as a flood zone, but Paxton couldn’t be sure what category it would fall into once the new maps were drawn.
“This can be even more costly than just paying a higher insurance premium,” Jamal said. “If your property is in a part of town that is designated as a flood zone, the property values will plummet.”
“And developers will come in and start scooping up the land that isn’t in flood zones,” Mr. Mayes added. “That’s what happened in Maplesville. You’d better believe it’ll happen here, too.”
As the residents continued making the case against the new flood maps, Paxton couldn’t help but be moved by their plight. Tonight had changed her outlook on her career. She would never walk into a town hall meeting again and address a crowd of citizens with the detachment she once felt. Before, she was just doing her job. But her job was not all about budgets and engineering specs and beating her coworker, Clay Ridgley, to the finish line.
This was about people’s lives. This was about years of hard work and sacrifice, about people who had given everything to make life better for their families. She had to look no further than her own mother to see the face of that hard work and sacrifice.
The weight of what they were doing hit Paxton with enough force to steal the breath from her lungs. The decisions she and Sawyer made in that conference room would have a lasting effect on the people in this town for generations to come.
This was her hometown. These were her people.
Paxton knew she would never be able to look at herself in the mirror if she didn’t do right by them. She just needed to make sure what they were doing really was the best thing for Gauthier.
* * *
Sawyer rested his head on the rim of the sofa while running his fingers through Paxton’s short locks. They had been in this position for the past hour, her head on his lap, face turned to the television. Neither of them paid much attention to the crime drama on the screen.
He’d tried to cajole her into driving out to Maplesville for a late dinner after this evening’s town hall meeting, but she had declined, saying she just wasn’t up to it. Honestly, neither was he. Instead, Sawyer had made them both peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which they’d eaten while standing at his kitchen is
land.
He’d given up trying to read her mood. The only thing he was sure about was that it had changed drastically in the twenty-four hours since they’d last been here. When they’d sat in this same spot last night, they’d both been naked, and the atmosphere had been a heck of a lot more fun.
Another twenty minutes of him gently stroking her hair passed before Paxton stirred and asked, “Why did you sell your parents’ home?”
Sawyer’s fingers paused midstroke. “Where did that come from?”
“Even though I’ve been here nearly every night for the past week, this is the first chance I’ve had to really look at your home.”
Sawyer dipped his head and placed a sweet kiss on her ear before whispering, “That’s because I’ve kept you too busy with other things to worry about giving you a tour of the house.”
Her sexy laugh triggered a hardening in his groin.
“This place is nice, but I can imagine that your old house was even more spectacular.” She turned in his lap, resting the back of her head on his thighs so she could look up at him. “Why did you sell your childhood home so quickly? Was it because you had no intentions of returning to Gauthier after you got married?”
Sawyer thought about that for a moment before he shook his head. “No, I knew I would be back,” he answered. “Even though I still have my condo in New Orleans, I always planned to return to Gauthier. I just didn’t want to live in that house.”
“Too many bad memories? I mean, with you losing both of your parents there, I can only imagine.”
“Actually, it’s a bit more practical than that. I just don’t need that much space. Funny thing is, I found out that my mom and dad both thought the house was too big for our family, too.”
“Wait. So neither of your parents wanted that big house?”
“Nope.” He went back to stroking her head.
“So...why?”
“My mom and dad both grew up poor. When they were first married, Dad promised to build her a house fit for a queen. Once he became successful, he did. She thought it was too big, but she didn’t tell him because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He didn’t say anything for the same reason.”
Paxton burst out laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But that’s so incredibly sweet.”
“They were embarrassingly sweet,” he said. “They would have been just fine living in this house,” he said, gesturing to his living room, which was still fairly large by most standards but was nothing compared with the mansion he’d grown up in.
“I was so jealous of your childhood home,” Paxton admitted in a soft voice.
“Hey, Matt Gauthier’s family had a bigger house than mine.”
“Yeah, but he’s a Gauthier. They’re royalty around here.” She looked up at him. “And I didn’t have a crush on Matt.”
Sawyer couldn’t believe the pleasure he derived from her sweetly whispered admission. Yet it killed him to think about how much time they’d wasted.
“You do realize how ridiculous it is that we both had a thing for each other yet were too cowardly to say anything for all this time, right?”
“I doubt I would have been able to handle all of this before now,” she said. “It still doesn’t feel real.”
“What doesn’t feel real?”
“This,” she said. “Being here with you, having you stroke my hair, lying here as if I belong in your arms.”
“This is exactly where you belong, Pax.”
She smiled up at him, but it was too conciliatory to convince Sawyer that she actually believed him.
“I wish I’d had the chance to see your old house before you sold it. I used to covet that place.”
“I’m sure the new owners would let me take you for a tour,” Sawyer said.
She chuckled and shook her head. “It wouldn’t be the same. One of the reasons I loved it is because you were there.” Her statement caused a pang of sweet joy to pierce his chest. “You know, I never told this to Shayla, but I used to envy her so much back in high school because she used to go to your house all the time.”
“Shayla and I were just friends. There was never anything between us.”
“Oh, I know. Believe me, she would have told me if there was. But just the fact that she was your friend was enough to make me envy her. That she hung out with you at Jessie’s after the game and rode around in your truck.”
“I was never brave enough to ask you to do any of those things,” Sawyer admitted. “I thought you would have turned me down.”
“I would have,” she said. “Back then, there was nothing you could have said to me that would have convinced me that I belonged in your world.”
Sawyer brushed his fingers along her jaw before using them to turn her face toward him.
“Why does it seem as if you still don’t believe you belong in my world, Paxton?”
“Because it still doesn’t feel real,” she repeated.
“What is it going to take to make you see that this has always been real?”
Sawyer moved back slightly as she pushed herself up and into a sitting position. She tucked one leg underneath her, then reached over and squeezed his thigh. “This has been fun, but let’s not kid ourselves, Sawyer. We’re just too—”
“Don’t say ‘different,’” Sawyer warned.
“Telling me not to say it doesn’t make it any less true,” she said.
Sawyer shut his eyes and tipped his head back on the edge of the sofa. He kneaded the bridge of his nose and released a sigh. What else could he do to make this woman see that they belonged together?
“I know you don’t like to hear it,” Paxton said, “but you don’t have to look any further than tonight’s meeting to see just how different we are. I recognized the fear in those faces I saw tonight, Sawyer. That anxiety they’re feeling over the potential insurance rate hike? I’ve felt that.”
“We’ve been over this already, Paxton. Those new maps are necessary.”
“Are they really?”
“Are you seriously questioning this again?” Sawyer asked.
“What if what happened with Tropical Storm Lucy was just a freak occurrence?”
“This is the Gulf South, Paxton. It’s hurricane prone.”
“But how many major hurricanes does this area get? There hasn’t been a catastrophic storm since Hurricane Katrina, and Gauthier didn’t suffer nearly as much from that storm as other areas. What if these new elevation maps cause everyone’s insurance to spike, but there are no storms for another twenty years? We could cause people to go into financial ruin just as surely as a storm would.”
“I won’t allow anyone to go into financial ruin over this,” he said.
“How can you prevent it? The Cheryl Ann Robertson Foundation cannot supplement the entire town’s flood insurance.”
He shrugged. “Maybe it can.”
“Sawyer,” she said in a warning tone. “You cannot bail out all of Gauthier.”
“I won’t have to,” he said. “Just trust me on this, Paxton. We’re doing the right thing.”
She looked doubtful, but, thank goodness, she didn’t argue the point any further. Instead she moved over to his side of the sofa again, curling up on his lap. Sawyer ran his palm along her body, stopping at her backside and giving it a firm squeeze.
“Do you want me to finally take you on a tour of the house?” he asked.
A naughty grin played on her lips as she looked up at him. “Only if the final stop is your bedroom.”
Chapter 10
Balancing a cardboard cup-holder tray in one hand while holding a bag of pastries underneath his chin, Sawyer opened the conference room door and stepped inside.
“Shayla was out of those cranberry oatmeal bars you like, so I got you—” He stopped
midsentence at the intense look clouding Paxton’s face.
He set the coffee and pastries on the table and walked over to her desk. She held up her index finger, the universal I’ll-get-to-you-in-a-minute gesture.
He perched on the edge of the table and folded his arms across his chest, not even bothering to go back to the CAD drawing he’d been working on before he went to the Jazzy Bean to get them both an afternoon snack.
With only her “ums” and “okays” to go on, it was difficult to glean exactly what was being discussed. But Sawyer didn’t have to hear both sides to know that whatever it was, it was significant. If it had anything to do with her mother or her dog, Paxton would have left the office without a second thought; he could only conclude that the call was related to the job.
He fought the urge to go directly to the worst-case scenario, but Sawyer had worked on enough state-funded projects to know how swiftly they could move from all systems go to worst-case scenario. The funding could get pulled in a minute. All it would take was someone at the executive level deeming another project more important. Gauthier’s flood protection would be put on hold, funds would be diverted and he would be reassigned to another project before the week was out.
And Paxton would be on her way back to Little Rock.
It wasn’t a question as to which made him more nauseous. As important as it was to this entire region that a capable flood protection system be in place, the thought of Paxton leaving made him physically ache.
It didn’t matter that she would be only six hours away and that he could go up there every single weekend if he chose to—which Sawyer had already decided he would do once she returned. He was supposed to have at least another week with her. He was counting on that week before they had to figure out the “what’s next” part of their relationship.
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