Emergency Attraction (Love Emergency)

by Samanthe Beck

  Lucky for her, she was an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of girl. Shane had been the one to teach her that lesson, and it had been a killer, coming from him, but since then she’d worked it to her advantage. She enjoyed Manhattan, Los Angeles, and Charleston on her terms, left with a smile on her face, and a call me next time you’re in town ringing in her ears. She didn’t inspire anything deeper from men, and she wasn’t looking for it. Casual and long-distance suited her perfectly, because she didn’t need Kenner, or Mrs. Pinkerton, or least of all her parents, calling plays from the sidelines of her love life.

  “I had fun, too.” He kept his eyes on the road but absently reached over and took her hand.

  She watched like a bystander as he threaded his fingers through hers and then rested their joined hands on the center console. Hers looked small and delicate cradled in his larger, stronger palm. Holding hands—another one of those pastimes that somehow got left by the wayside in the transition from teenager to adult. The men she had fun with these days weren’t expecting to hold her hand. Or go for a drive. Or languish for an evening exploring the agonizing wonderland between all-or-nothing.

  His fingers tightened, giving hers a quick squeeze. “The fun doesn’t have to be over. There are a thousand detours on this journey. We haven’t even gotten close to some of my favorites.”

  Her hormones bounced and clapped at the thought, but a glance at the glowing numbers on the dashboard clock forced her to tell them to simmer down. “Yeah, it does. My dad’s coming over tonight to help me change the furnace filter.” Of course, she’d had an ulterior motive when she’d accepted her dad’s offer. Having to be home by eight ensured a hard stop on her tour guide duties for the evening, but now she grappled with a troubling mix of want and disappointment she hadn’t counted on. Jesus, her head was a mess.

  “I know how to change a filter.”

  “And how would having you do that help my dad escape the house while my mom hosts the monthly meeting of the Magnolia Grove Historic Society?”

  “Ah. I see your point.” Surprisingly, he didn’t disentangle their hands. “Next time.”

  Now would be the opportunity to restore some order to her messy head, and a woman who knew what was good for her would take it. She cleared her throat. “Um. About next time…”

  “Watch what you say. You made a deal, baby girl.”

  “Don’t ‘baby girl,’ me. I agreed to show you around, not—”

  “And you have. I’m trying to get reacquainted with the town, as well as gathering knowledge I need to do my job. That was always the plan.”

  “This town isn’t the only thing you’re trying to get reacquainted with.”

  He squeezed her hand again. “No, it’s not, but you knew that going in. You assumed you wouldn’t have any trouble managing my interest, but you didn’t count on having interests of your own. Granted, there’s more here than either of us bargained for, but the Sinclair I know was never a coward.”

  Okay. That irked. Maybe she wasn’t a free-spirited teenager willing to blindly follow her heart wherever it led, but that didn’t make her a coward. It made her mature. Responsible. Grown-up.

  “Before you throw the word coward around, ask yourself which one of us left—”

  “Shit,” he said under his breath as they passed the Whitehall Plantation, following the curve of the road that eventually led to the turn for her driveway. He withdrew his hand from hers to hold onto the wheel as he turned to look at the gracious antebellum structure set back from the road, surrounded by walking oaks.

  The furrow in his brow suggested he’d moved on from the topic of her alleged cowardice. “What?”

  He faced front again, eyes narrowed, as if solving an equation in his head. “If they fortify the creek banks up here, overflow once handled by the flood fringe will be funneled downstream.”

  She was no expert, but it seemed logical to her. “I guess so. But there’s nothing much downstream. The Pinkerton Family Trust owns the land, and Mrs. Pinkerton wants the natural beauty preserved. Whenever developers come sniffing around—including those in her own family—she throws down the veto. Thanks to her, it’s pretty much all woodland, except…”

  Her words trailed off as he took the turn to her house. He finished for her. “Except your barn.”

  Small seeds of concern took root in her stomach. “It’s barely a creek down here. A four-year-old could wade through it half the time. I’m not worried.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not the standard we use. Statistically, the area is part of a hundred-year floodplain. Our engineers calculate the displacement and look at the impact of all that water coming downstream.”

  The SUV bounced to a halt in front of her barn, and she saw him give the strip of land to the left of her driveway a measuring look—a strip carved over God knew how many years, by the creek that still meandered there, rippling between the bases of tall pines and the branchy trunks of river birch. After a moment, he went on. “I don’t need the engineers to tell me that little bank isn’t enough to hold back a concentrated influx of water from upstream.”

  The roots of concern in her gut dug deeper. “Well, what’s the solution?”

  “The Pinkertons own this land?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I own the barn, but it sits on a land lease. Like, a ninety-nine-year land lease. For all intents and purposes, it’s mine.”

  “No, you own the right to peaceful enjoyment of the land, which they won’t be able to deliver if the golf course goes in. They’ll have to buy you out, and you can use the money to purchase another property.” He lifted his phone from the console and began tapping out a note to himself.

  “I don’t want another property.” The concern twisted into anger. “I want this property—my barn. It’s not model two of phase three of the latest development, interchangeable with half the houses on the market right now. It’s special. I can’t turn around and find the exact same thing a mile down the road.” She turned in her seat, muscles tensing as if ready for battle. “The resort will have to extend the fortification down past my property, or the city can put in drains, or something.”

  Without looking up from his phone, he said, “There’s not enough frontage to build up the bank, and a new drainage system isn’t economically feasible. I don’t see anybody giving that option serious consideration when there’s only one property at stake.”

  She stared at him, dumbfounded, for a full minute. He sat there, so rational and unperturbed, oblivious to how he’d just upended her world. “Well, then, they can’t have their golf course. This is my home, dammit. Maybe you can’t understand the concept, since you seem to prefer living out of a suitcase, but I’ve invested my time, money, and my heart in that place—every board and stone—and I’m not walking away because somebody decides it’s the most economically feasible course of action. My home isn’t about economics.”

  He put down his phone and turned to face her. “That’s not up to me, Sinclair.” His voice remained maddeningly even, but she detected a degree of frustration in the set of his shoulders. “My job is to identify the risks and offer solutions. The city decides which applications to approve or deny. What I can tell you is the simplest option usually wins the day.”

  “Not this time.” She shoved the door open and scrambled down. “I’m not accepting a buyout, and Ricky Pinkerton is about to be advised of that fact in no uncertain terms.”

  Chapter Six

  Some things never changed. City hall still inhabited the white-brick colonial next to the Presbyterian Church, the American flag still waved from the flagpole in the town square, and Ricky Pinkerton was still an entitled shithead.

  Shane stood on the steps of city hall, between Ricky and Mayor Campbell, listening to Ricky offer up a one-sided, utterly uninformed version of the situation with Sinclair’s barn.

  “She called me last night in a snit—you know how she is when she’s got a bug up her ass—spouting nonsense about the golf course, and hundred-year floo
ds, and how a contract was a contract, and she wasn’t selling out. When I told her I didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about, she told me this guy”—he jerked a thumb in Shane’s direction—“advised her us putting in the golf course turned her barn into an ark. Now, I was able to calm her down, because we go way back, and she respects me, but we don’t need some outsider creating problems where those of us who’ve lived here all our lives know damn well none exist.”

  “Outsider? Since when am I an outsider? I was born here. We went to high school together, and you’ve got the bump in your nose to prove it.”

  He wanted to take the last bit back as soon as he uttered it. Reminding people he used to have a habit of solving problems with his fists undermined his ability to do his job effectively, and antagonizing Ricky wouldn’t make the shithead less of a shithead.

  Ricky’s jaw jutted. “You’ve been gone for the last ten years. Those of us who stuck around and have family ties here dating back over a century know the Tomochichi Creek never floods.” He folded his arms across the chest of his dark-green Calloway sweater and rocked back on his heels. “Never has. Never will.”

  Shane battled the urge to belt him, right in his professionally re-sculpted nose, but Mayor Campbell beat him to the punch, metaphorically.

  “Forgive me, Ricky, but last time I checked, you weren’t qualified to give a scientific assessment about the impact of development on a watershed.” He turned to Shane. “Do we have any science backing this up?”

  “We will. Haggerty’s got people with the proper letters after their names at its disposal, but it will take a few weeks to get a report. That said, I know what I’m talking about.”

  Campbell held up a hand. “I’m not saying you don’t, but before we take up the planning commission’s time, or put the development’s pending permit in doubt, I want to make sure we have our ducks in a row. They’ve purchased that land and broken ground on the permitted improvements based on the assurances from the city that we support the project. If we need to go back to them now and tell them they’ve got an environmental issue with the golf course, we’d better be able to support the claim and offer some kind of solution.”

  “Damn straight,” Ricky started in, but Shane shot him a look that shut him up.

  “The way I understand it, Mayor, the investors opted to hold off on submitting the application for the golf course permit until now because they couldn’t agree on the final course design.” He sent Ricky another hard look. “So, this is a risk they assumed. They rolled the dice.”

  “They did,” Campbell agreed, “but this is the kind of situation where the politician in me has to speak up. This is an important project for Magnolia Grove. The resort revitalizes an historic landmark. It brings jobs and tourist dollars to our economy. I don’t do anybody any favors if I put this in front of the planning commission without proper substantiation.”

  Fair enough. More fair than he might have expected, considering Ricky wasn’t the only one on the city council with a horse in this race. Campbell owned and operated the largest construction company in the area, which also happened to be the company doing the work on the resort. An additional permit meant additional work for Campbell Construction. But personal interest or not, the mayor wanted to do things right.

  Shane assured Campbell he was on it and headed to his car, already digging his phone out of his pocket. Intellectually, he knew the mayor spoke the truth, but on a personal front, he couldn’t quite get over the look on Sinclair’s face when he’d told her she’d have to take a buyout. He’d weighed the matter from a strictly logical standpoint, and ignored her emotional attachment to the building. Bottom line? He’d botched the conversation. In his defense, he wasn’t used to factoring any personal concerns into his work. This was a first. Well, a second. But the first time his personal concerns had impacted his job, he’d been eighteen and the U.S. Marine Corps had settled the matter for him. He wanted to do better this time. He owed it to both of them.

  Once in the car, he called Haggerty and explained the situation. His boss approached the matter with his usual flair for practicality.

  “We can get a civil engineer to do the math and write it up, and I can light a fire under him to expedite the report, but someone’s got to manage the brewing conflict in the meantime.”

  “I’ll manage it.” Why was Haggerty even bringing it up? Every job involved some amount of bullshit—competing agendas, ambitions, politics—and he had experience dealing with all of it, regardless of whether they were working with a corporate client, a municipality, or a blend of both.

  “Normally, there wouldn’t be a question in my mind. You have direct, personal familiarity with Magnolia Grove, which makes you the instinctive choice for this assignment, but I don’t want that history to cloud your vision.”

  “My vision is 20/20.” He forced himself to loosen his grip on his phone.

  “Then I trust you see that this Pinkerton guy is one of the major stakeholders. He’s an investor in the resort, and a member of the city council—”

  “He’s a self-serving asshole. Always has been—”

  “And there it is. You’ve got a personality conflict. So, yeah, I’m concerned. What are you not telling me about this self-serving asshole?”

  Shane considered glossing over his past with Ricky, but decided against it. Haggerty had a knack for accessing information. If he didn’t get a reply from Shane that satisfied him, he’d get the details from another source. “It’s nothing. You should be thanking Ricky, actually, because were it not for him, I probably wouldn’t be working for you today.”

  “And to what do I owe his career influence?”

  “I broke his nose our senior year of high school. At the prom, to be exact.”

  “Because?”

  “Because I punched him in the face…for not respecting the word ‘no’ despite his date having said it more than once,” he added in response to Haggerty’s unspoken question.

  “Let me guess. He said, ‘Goddamn, Shane, that’s a hell of a punch. You should join the Marines’?”

  “More like his parents lost their shit and threatened to press charges. Sheriff Kenner suggested I’d be better off taking orders from a commanding officer than a corrections officer. I enlisted in the Marines, which satisfied the Pinkertons that I wouldn’t be around to pound the crap out of their son anymore, and I headed off to boot camp right after graduation. The rest, as they say, is history.”

  “I don’t like it. History has a way of repeating itself, and you’re already at odds with this guy. Meanwhile, the client in Seattle would happily move their project up if you’re available. My gut tells me to pull you off this job and make them happy.”

  No fucking way. The strength of his reaction surprised him, and it wasn’t just a matter of professional pride because he’d never failed to complete an assignment. It went deeper. He didn’t want to leave yet. He wanted to see this project through with his hometown, but moreover, he wanted to see things through with Sinclair. See where they went. If he left now, the answer would be nowhere. “Seattle can wait. I’ve got this job under control, and I can handle Pinkerton. This is why you pay me the big bucks.”

  The other side of the line remained silent for so long, Shane started to scramble for more arguments, but Haggerty finally replied.

  “See that you do, son, because from where I’m sitting, that guy looks like a dildo strapped to a boomerang. Don’t let him come back and fuck you.”

  …

  “Your father said you seemed distracted last night.”

  Sinclair looked up from her sketch of a necklace a repeat customer had commissioned as a push present for his wife and glanced over to where her cell phone sat on the edge of her drafting table. Her mother’s voice filtered from the speaker, thin on maternal concern, despite the observation. She sounded like a seasoned prosecutor lulling a witness into letting her guard down. Sinclair stretched, working the kinks out of her back. She wasn’t so easily lulled.
“It’s nothing. I got into it with Ricky Pinkerton about the proposed golf course for the resort and how it impacts my property.”

  “So I hear. What a shame if you had to give up that dank, drafty barn.”

  She bit back a laugh and tipped her face up to enjoy the warmth of the sunlight spilling in from the skylight high above. Her mother made no secret of her disdain for Sinclair’s housing choice. Mom wanted her closer—ideally in one of those nice, modern townhomes in the new development about five minutes away from their front door. Cheryl Smith prided herself on knowing what was going on with her girls, and now that Savannah was married and living in Atlanta, the spotlight of all her spare attention had nowhere to land except on her youngest daughter. Sinclair planned to evade that spotlight. “It’s not dank or drafty anymore. Dad changed the furnace filter and checked the vent system. I’m toasty.”

  “Hmm. Maybe you’re warm on account of something besides a functioning furnace?”

  Huh? “Um. I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But, in actuality, she was afraid she did. The Magnolia Grove grapevine was about to twist around her, and the more she tried to evade, the more likely she’d end up strangled by the damn thing. She hunched in her high, swiveling stool and braced for the inevitable.

  “Really? I ran into Sheriff Kenner this morning at the grocery store.”

  Shit. Resting her forearms on the drafting table, she leaned forward and hung her head in defeat. “Mom. I’m a grown woman. I’m not going to—”

  “Apparently not so grown-up, seeing as how you haven’t outgrown having sex in a car at Tomochichi Lookout.”

  “Jeez, Mom. I wasn’t having sex. I was just…” There was no good way to finish the sentence. “…talking.”

  “Right. You talked so long the sun went down, and the windows steamed up, and one of you had to take off his shirt.”

  Thank you, Sheriff Kenner. “Crap. Look at the time. I’ve got to go, Mom.”

  “Nice try. You’re on a cell phone. Go wherever you need to go, I’ll just tag along. Now, back to the topic at hand. Shane Maguire. The same boy you danced with at the wedding. I didn’t realize you knew him so well.”