But this was her job.
She came to when raised voices tore into her shame and sadness.
“We have been working for you people, at a reduced wage for over a hundred years Jeff! I think we’ve earned our land!” Paul was yelling. He was on his feet, his face red, his big hands fisted and resting knuckles first on the table, like he intended to punch it to pieces and was just lining up the shot.
“Now Paul, the ledgers are precise,” Jeff said raising his hands. Valerie saw the abject fear hiding behind his blustering façade. “You are welcome to go through them along with your attorney.”
The room exploded in rage, both sides of the table yelling and calling each other names. And then Paul’s voice rose above everyone else’s and he was yelling at her. He shook an accusatory finger at her, spittal flying as he ranted, “And you! You hussy! You tricked his grandson into showing you the whole place! And now you want to take it from us!”
Valerie was close to tears. The tension in the room was insane and she just wanted to run. She tried to defend herself, to tell them that she didn’t want any of that, that she was just a pawn. Valerie Rousseau made no decisions in the company. She was a glorified pencil pusher with frequent flyer miles. She didn’t want any of this.
God, that vacation time was looking real good around now. In fact, unemployment was looking good too, and that was crazy.
In a rush of emotion Valerie picked up her bag and stormed out of the room. She could be fired for this but who cared, really?
She blundered down the hallway, needing to find her way out when suddenly she bumped into someone, and something hot spilled all over her arm.
Valerie looked up into Kyle’s golden eyes.
“Hey, stranger,” he said smiling instantly when he recognized her. “Sorry about the coffee.”
Valerie shook her head and looked away, “It’s fine, Kyle. Oh God, what are you doing here?”
“Here with Marcus, he’s got some big meeting,” Kyle said vaguely.
Just then the door opened behind her and Marcus and Paul spilled out followed by the others.
“Get away from her!” Marcus roared at Kyle. “She’s poison!”
“She’s gonna take Sun Valley from us,” Paul ranted and Valerie knew she was done for.
She grabbed her laptop bag in her arms and fled down the hallway leaving a confused Kyle behind her.
It was later and tears had happened. Quite a lot of them really and then a panicked phone call back home. Her father was out but her mother was sympathetic until Granny Fifi got the phone, and then Valerie had spent the next twenty minutes crying, while her gran told her what a horrible person her employer was turning her into.
“You come home this instant!” Granny Fifi roared on the other end of the line. “You come here now child, so we can deal with the mess you’re becoming. You can’t take people’s homes! We raised you better than that!”
Valerie had buried her head in the overwhelming cushions on her bed at Grandma’s Inn until she felt she would suffocate. This wasn’t her fault. It was just her job and she’d done it a million times. But all those times she hadn’t gone to dinner with the locals now had she? She hadn’t listened to their stories and heard their love for their home in their voices. None of that.
She had to get her head clear and schedule another meeting. So she would go for a drive.
The rental sped out along the road to Sun Valley. It was just about the only road that she knew and frankly Valerie just wanted to have some open sky around her. Before long she was back at what was almost a cul du sac, but led to Sun Valley. She turned right and went down the track.
After a while she stopped the car and sat behind her wheel for a time. She opened the window needing air and breathed heavily. Okay, she was going to save the situation. Perhaps if she spoke to Mr. Petersen and Mr. Snow, and found out what they wanted to do with the area, then she could lay the locals’ fears to rest. She was pretty sure her company wasn’t going to strip mine the place. But then she was only pretty sure.
Just then voices travelled to her on the breeze. They sounded close by and like there were a lot of them.
Curiosity had always been one of her worst flaws, Valerie knew this, but she got out the car and followed the sound anyway. She headed into the woods, the fallen leaves creating a carpet under foot.
The area was quite clear of underbrush the further in she went and apart from fallen branches she didn’t have much she had to watch out for. The voices grew louder and louder, and suddenly Valerie could see them. It was a whole lot of people, men and women sitting on the ground in a multilayered circle.
She could see Kyle and Marcus, even Paul all sitting there.
Valerie knew she was intruding. She knew it was wrong but she also wanted to know what was happening, so she hid behind a tree.
“…selling the land from under us,” Paul was saying. His voice was angry. Well he had every right to be.
“Do you know what they want to do with the land?” a woman asked. She had long black braids that hung down her chest and pooled in her lap. Her face was mature but not old.
“We didn’t get that far,” Marcus said, “The company rep ran out.”
“And you’re sure it was Valerie?” Kyle asked.
Marcus nodded. “No doubt, my boy. She’s bad news that one.”
“I knew it, I knew it!” Paul was ranting, “From the moment I set eyes on that Jezabel!”
“Paul!” the woman scolded him. “Don’t be an ass, this is her company not her choice. She’s been employed. Does she even know what they plan to do here?”
Valerie didn’t know what she was doing until she stepped out from behind the tree and walked the last little way towards the people.
“I don’t know what they’re planning,” she said.
“You!”
“What are you doing here?”
“Spy!”
The clearing erupted in noise and suddenly Kyle was standing next to her his hand up for silence.
“Valerie, how did you find us?”
“I drove out here to explain,” she said knowing now that it was the truth. “Please, may I speak to you all?”
“Don’t let her! She’ll only lie,” Paul yelled but Marcus stepped up to her and turned her to face him. His eyes were golden like Kyle’s and he looked deeply into her blue ones.
“You tell the truth here,” he said simply as though there was no possibility of argument, “This is a place where we only speak what’s true, no lies, no stories.”
“I’ll tell you what I know with no exaggeration, no embellishment and no sugar coating,” Valerie said, “I can’t promise the truth because I suspect that I haven’t been told it.”
“This is a waste of time!” Paul ranted but when Marcus looked at him the old man sat back down on the leaf strewn ground.
“Hi,” Valerie said. She was standing in the center of the circle now and every single pair of eyes was on her. “I’m Valerie Rousseau, I was sent here to assess Sun Valley for a company. They have employed me for two years so far, to travel all over the country and assess the land or business that they want to buy up. Mostly they buy failing businesses, mines, sometimes when they need a PR boost they’ll sponsor a college or a school, or buy up a piece of land that is a threatened species’ habitat. They have fingers in a lot of pies and the company image is really important to them.”
“They sent me out here to report on Sun Valley, but I have no idea what they plan to do with it,” Valerie said. “They almost never tell me. My job is really just to check the place out and make sure it is what the seller is claiming it to be, then I hand it over to the buyer who comes and does the final negotiation.”
She felt wretched. Her information wasn’t going to help these people to save their home, not at all.
“I just wanted you to know that I… it’s not me,” she said desperately looking at the faces around her. So many faces. “I’m sorry.”
“Can you
stop them?” the woman with the long braids asked. “Can you make them not buy our land?”
Valerie shook her head. “Not if they want it badly enough. I can speak to them and find out what they want.” She shrugged. “It’s not usual but I can do it.”
Suddenly she felt more afraid than ever. She hated speaking to the partners, a privilege she had been granted only on a few occasions when her job had required it. They had requested an update this evening. Valerie guessed she could come up with something to say.
She moved out of the circle and Kyle made her sit next to him on the outer most ring.
For the next hour the people of Sun Valley discussed their future and a plan was formulated. Kyle and his friend Ryan, a big man with dark hair and those golden eyes, would take Valerie back to her room at Grandma’s Inn. She would keep her Skype date with her bosses, and would ask them what they wanted the valley for. Then with this information the rest of them would decide what to do.
The meeting broke up and as Kyle and Ryan escorted her back to her car, she tried to speak to Kyle. After multiple attempts he turned on her, his face full of anger, his eyes flashing.
“Get one thing straight!” he spat, “We aren’t friends. We aren’t ever going to be friends, Valerie. You killed that when you lied to me! It is my home and my family and my life that you’re thinking of taking away. So don’t think for one second that whatever we were building is going to continue, because it’s dead!” and he stormed off.
She was left stunned and hurt though she reasoned that she shouldn’t be. They’d only met the day before. It wasn’t like they’d slept together, but somehow she knew that a bond that had been growing between them was melting like ice in a glass of whiskey.
Ryan drove up front in her rental with her to Kyle’s truck and then they drove to Grandma’s. It was still early, the sun only now beginning to paint the snowcapped mountains in colors of fire.
Her little room was feeling terribly crowded with the three of them, no one knowing what to say or do.
“We could go across the street to the diner?” Valerie suggested. “My treat.”
Kyle scowled at her but Ryan perked up. “That sounds great, Valerie,” he said kindly. “Get up Kyle, we’re going across the street. This room is like a shoebox and I’m getting claustrophobic, so let’s take this nice lady up on her offer and go to the diner.”
Kyle glowered but stood up and made his away across the street. The breeze from earlier was harder now, dragging ragged patches of high grey cloud across the darkening sky as they ran across the street. Valerie was glad she had brought her leather jacket, and she was quite snuggly in it. But the diner was heated and she soon took it off. They chose a booth in the back and sat down, Ryan next to her and Kyle across.
“Why are you mad at me?” Valerie asked Kyle. “I didn’t choose Sun Valley, my bosses did.”
“I’m mad because you could have told me yesterday that you were planning to steal my home!”
“I’m sorry,” she said as the waitress placed menus in front of them. “I don’t have an excuse, but I’m going to try and help you save your home. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
Kyle glared at her and looked out the window over the heads of other diners.
“Don’t mind him,” Ryan said, leaning back and spreading his arms along the back of the chair. “Kyle is hotheaded and full of crap. He’ll come around eventually.”
“Don’t Ryan!” Kyle muttered.
“Don’t what? Be nice to her? Try to understand this little shit storm from her point of view?” Ryan asked, “She flew in yesterday, Kyle. She didn’t know we existed until now, and now she’s ready to try and help us? Sounds like you’re the one with the problem pal,” Ryan said and stood up. “I’m gonna hit the head.” And he walked up the aisle to the front of the diner.
Valerie and Kyle sat in stunned silence for a while until Kyle finally looked at her.
“Ryan’s a total jerk!” Kyle said, “But he has a point. I’m being a dick and I’m sorry.”
Valerie felt tears prick the back of her eyes. “I’m so sorry all of this is happening,” she said wanting to take Kyle’s hands, but he was still angry with her, she could see it and let it be. Anyway she had bigger problems.
Ryan came back to the table and they ordered burgers which Valerie could hardly eat. Her stomach was a knot at the thought of speaking to the two owners of the conglomerate. But seven PM rolled around and she was back in her room with Kyle and Ryan. She turned on her laptop, and set up her Skype. The thing about the partners was that if they arranged a Skype meeting with you, then you waited for them to be ready for you. You didn’t call them they would call you. She had spent some nights waiting all night only to get a call in the morning from one of the vampire secretaries, to say that they didn’t need to speak to her after all.
She hoped that this wasn’t one of those times.
It wasn’t.
She answered after making sure that Kyle and Ryan were out of sight, and knew that they had to be absolutely quiet. The partners had freaky good hearing.
“Evening, Miss Rousseau,” Mr. Petersen said. He was sitting at a desk with Mr. Snow who was an albino and always wore white standing, behind him. “I trust Colorado is treating you well.”
“Oh yes, sir. Good evening, Mr. Petersen. Mr. Snow. Yes, Colorado is getting a little chilly, but it’s all good.”
“And the acquisition? We trust that you aren’t having any trouble?” Mr. Snow said. He was so pale that Valerie would often stare at him to see the blue veins under his skin. But she resisted the urge now.
“Actually sir it is proving difficult. The local inhabitants are resisting the sale,” Valerie said. Behind her screen Kyle glared at her. She swallowed.
“Nothing but inbred hicks my dear,” Mr. Petersen said. Where his colleague was pale he was grey. Grey suit, grey hair, grey eyes. They were quite dull to look at if you put them side by side. “They may moan but in the end the sale will go through. Just finish up your reports for us and then Calvin will come down and complete the sale. We expect no delays.”
“Yes sir,” Valerie said, “But may I ask what you plan to do with Sun Valley? The inhabitants might be appeased if they know that you’re not going to strip mine the place or something.” Valerie tried a hopeful smile.
Mr. Petersen didn’t even blink, he smiled, and his abnormally long canines became visible. “Just get your reports filed on time, Miss Rousseau,” he said and killed the connection.
The next morning Valerie woke after some of the worst dreams she had ever had, but they faded like mist, leaving only an unsettled feeling. It all stemmed from this problem, but Kyle and Ryan had told her to stay put and wait for them to tell her what to do next. They were going to take this total lack of information to the elders.
The room at Grandma’s Inn was a shoebox. On her way out, Valerie left a message for Kyle or Ryan at reception and got into her rental. This time she drove along a different road, not one that led straight to Sun Valley, but one that took her out passed the local farms. She loved the open air feel of them and with the clouds racing up across the sky, she felt she could finally breathe again.
After a while she pulled over and parked the car. Getting out, the wind whipped her curls in her face but she didn’t care. She zipped up her jacket and leaned against a wooden pole fence, letting the wind blow her care away.
Bearly Christmas Page 180
