Chapter Fifteen
Emily
When I woke up in Rhett’s bed the next morning, I had a moment where I wasn’t sure whether we’d made a huge mistake. Rhett shifted in the bed next to me, and I realized that his mother could come home at any moment—and she might find me here, cuddled up with her son. Naked. And I realized that I had made the first big move against my father that I had ever made. I thought about what I’d told Rhett the night before, in that moment of vulnerability. Did I want to risk losing my father from my life—and losing my career, too—just to do the right thing?
I think you just answered your own question, dear, I thought, hearing it in my mom’s voice in my head. I had never been super close with Mom, but some of the things she’d taught me had stuck. If I knew I was doing the right thing, then there shouldn’t be anything short of my own death that would make me go against it.
“You look worried,” Rhett said.
I turned to face him in the bed. The morning sunlight dappled against his bare shoulders, and my breath caught at his beauty. The questioning look was still on his face, though.
“Just thinking about how this is going to play out,” I explained. “What we need to do, in what order, all that.”
“As long as you’re not second-guessing doing it in the first place,” he said, looking at me a little doubtfully.
I smiled wryly. “Okay, I guess I can admit that the thought that I’m going to lose my dad over this gave me some cold feet.”
Rhett sat up and reached down under the covers, groping along my legs until he found my feet. He gave me a playful look and coiled the bottom of the quilt around my feet tightly.
“Give it a few minutes and they won’t be cold anymore,” he told me, leaning in close to kiss me lightly on the lips. I couldn’t help laughing at that. Once I’d regained my composure, I kissed him back.
“We should probably get downstairs before your mom gets home, shouldn’t we?”
Rhett shrugged. “She knows I’m a grown man, and she won’t talk,” he said, but he sat up once more, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.
I wriggled my legs and kicked my feet until I was free of the blankets, and then climbed out on the other side of his bed, looking around. We’d come back inside from the barn so late that I wasn’t even sure what time it was, and I’d offered to go sleep in the guest room. Rhett had given me a little grin and told me that unless I didn’t want to sleep next to him, I was going to stay in his bed. I’d said that I didn’t mind sleeping next to him, and he’d picked me up—clean up off of my feet—and carried me over his shoulder up the stairs to his bedroom.
We’d managed to have sex again one more time before falling asleep, and I hadn’t really had much of a chance to appreciate the room itself. With the light of morning coming through the windows, I could see clearly that it was the kind of room that a man’s man—a grown man—would have, which I hadn’t entirely expected, given that it was his parents’ home he was living in. The walls were painted a deep green, with a creamy off-white trim, and he had brown rugs on the floor. The bed had been almost obscenely comfortable, with a heavy quilt and clean linens, a memory foam pad over the mattress and about a half-dozen pillows total. It was even more comfortable than my own bed.
“You know, since you cooked for me last night, it’s the least I could do to cook breakfast for you,” I said as I pulled my clothes on.
“I heated up leftovers, that’s not cooking,” Rhett countered.
“Still,” I insisted. “Besides, it’ll give me something to do.”
He shrugged and pulled a t-shirt over his head, and I spared one last, fleeting look at his muscular body. He is so much more of a man than Jacob could ever think to be, I thought. Even before I’d met Rhett, I hadn’t been interested in my coworker, but now that I had something more solid, more manly—and just altogether better—to compare him to, it was impossible not to be even more creeped out by Jacob’s insistence on hitting on me. Don’t think about him right now.
I followed Rhett downstairs and got to work in the kitchen, thinking about the job we had in front of us. The first thing I was going to have to do—and it would have to be me—was to get more details on the plans that my dad had for Mustang Ridge. I needed to know the terms, I needed to know who had agreed to what and what penalties there might be.
I had to hand it to Mrs. Baxter—she kept her kitchen organized enough that I could easily find everything, and as I moved around, scrambling eggs and cooking grits, my thoughts started to fall in line.
I would call Evelyn in legal. I’d already gotten the day more or less off, on the pretense of checking in with more Mustang Ridge residents, so no one would expect me at the office. I could get a lot done, if I went about it the right way.
“Okay,” I said, as we sat down at the table together. “Part of this is going to be something that only I can do, but I’ll do it from here.”
“What’s that?” Rhett scooped up some eggs on his fork and brought them to his mouth, gesturing with his other hand for me to go on.
“I’m going to call a friend of mine in our legal department and get as many details as I can from her,” I explained. “To really tackle this, we need to know what we’re actually up against.”
“Do you think she’ll just tell you?” I shrugged.
“I think if I sweet-talk her enough, I might be able to get her to email me the actual contracts,” I said with a grin.
“That would be some fancy sweet-talking,” Rhett said with a raised eyebrow.
“Not that hard. I’ve built up some trust with her.” I looked down at my plate for a moment. This still—strangely—felt like sleeping with the enemy. But Rhett wasn’t my enemy; we were on the same side now. Just because he was against my father didn’t mean he was wrong. After all, hadn’t I decided against my father the day before? And I couldn’t think that I was doing the wrong thing in going against him—at least on this one thing. What he had in mind would destroy the town. I couldn’t let him do that.
“I get where you’re coming from,” Rhett told me. “You’re doing something that you never thought you’d do, and you’re going against people you’ve thought of as friends and family for years.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, Jacob won’t be hard to go against, but my dad…”
“You’re doing the right thing,” Rhett told me firmly. “You have to know that. You’re thinking for yourself, and you’re trying to keep your dad from doing something that—if he really got what he was doing—he would hate.”
“I hope so.” I took another deep breath and focused on eating my breakfast.
“This is actually as good as anything my mom’s ever made for breakfast,” Rhett told me when we were both finishing up.
I grinned and rolled my eyes. “I don’t believe it, but I appreciate the compliment.”
As he cleared the table and started on the dishes, I went to get my phone. Better to just get it done and over with.
I called Evelyn’s extension directly and waited for her to pick up, feeling my heart pounding in my chest.
“Hey, girl,” she said.
I put the phone on speaker, so Rhett could hear what both of us were saying.
“Hey, Evelyn,” I said. “I was talking to Dad yesterday and he mentioned that there were some big changes in the Mustang Ridge project.”
“Yep—just got final approval on the contracts and terms the other day,” she said. “You heading out there to pitch the sell to folks again today?”
“Yeah, I’m going to bat again,” I said. “Listen, can you give me some details on it? I need to know if there’s anything I need to change up in my approach.”
“Well, from the selling standpoint, there’s not much difference—just the fact that we need as many people in the target area as possible to sell,” Evelyn said.
“I’d assume that the bigger contract would mean a bigger payout, too, wouldn’t it?” I glanced at Rhett. “There are some big holdouts here in keystone areas. If I could give them a hint that they might be able to get more money, it might be easier to get them onboard, you know?”
“That’s right, I remember Jacob saying there were some stubborn holdouts,” she said. “There’s a bigger budget, but your dad wants us to stay within the pre-sets as much as possible.”
“Yeah, I figured as much.” I caught my bottom lip between my teeth and worried it for a moment. “Well, what can you tell me about the new contract? Dad wants me to be as up-to-date as possible on things, but he isn’t always great about having all the details to mind himself.” I heard rustling papers on the other end of the line.
“You know, there are a bunch of backend changes,” she told me. “I could probably just send a copy of the scans to you. That way you can review them.”
“That would be perfect,” I said. “I don’t want to take up any more of your time than I have to.”
“There are a few things that will only make sense to lawyers—I can go over those,” she suggested.
“I’d appreciate it,” I told her.
I sat back and Rhett sat next to me to listen as Evelyn went over the legalese. It was exactly what I’d started thinking the night before, in terms of what the situation was. There were some increased penalties for us if the deal fell through, but there were also some mechanisms for the town itself to reject the bid—and that was what we would have to count on. We’d have to make the town’s administration fall through on it, as opposed to just keeping people from selling their land to my dad’s company.
“I’ll send you the rest, but that’s the biggest part of it,” Evelyn said, wrapping up.
“I appreciate it again,” I said. “I’ll look over the other stuff, see if it gives me an edge with dealing with people here.”
I finished up the call and thought for a moment.
“So where does this put us?” Rhett asked.
“Basically, the only real way to prevent this from happening is for the town to go against it,” I said. “If a handful of people refuse to sell, that will make things difficult, but really only for Dad; it won’t do much at all to halt the project. Since it’s already gotten approval from your town’s leadership, you have to get them to reverse that. They can withdraw consent to the new plan, but somehow I kind of feel like it’s going to take you guys to make them do it.”
“Considering that they approved the plan without consulting us, I’d say you’re right,” Rhett agreed. “So, what do you think we should do to make that happen?”
“How would you go about putting pressure on them?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I mean, these are your friends and neighbors. The people running the show in the town center are your people.”
“We need time to make them hold a town meeting,” Rhett said.
“The best way to get time is to keep people from selling out,” I told him. “If we can get a few—maybe five or six—people to stonewall my dad and Jacob, then we’ll have time to bring pressure on the town government to hold a meeting.”
“So, you’re going to go out there and tell people you were wrong?” Rhett looked dubious.
I cringed, but I knew he was right. “I’m going to have to, I guess,” I said, smiling wryly. “Feel like going with me? In case people decide to try and run me out of town on a rail?”
“We don’t use rails around here,” he said with a grin. “But I’ll come with you. I feel like people will probably believe you’re being real with them if you’re with me.”
“That was what I was thinking too,” I said. “So—shower and then go meet with people?”
“If you can tell me which people are the most important, I’ll call them and have them come over,” Rhett said. “I’ll check with Mom too—she can help us host them, and we’ll lay things out.”
“Sounds good,” I said, nodding. “I’ll get the map for you, and then…” I took a deep breath. “Then we can go to battle against my dad.”