To Get Me to You

by Kait Nolan

  “It’s the most expedient means of putting everybody at ease and catching them up on my situation. You weren’t the only one I didn’t talk to while I was away.” Norah linked her hand through his and dragged him up the walk. “Come on, I’m desperate for more coffee.”

  So was he, but Cam would’ve preferred having that coffee at home. Or better yet, skipping the coffee all together and spending the day in bed, sleeping and making love as they’d done most of the night. But Norah had rousted him at 6:30, with little more than a shower and one measly travel mug of coffee to prepare him to face the entire family—all of whom had wanted to string him up the day before.

  In accordance with custom, everybody was in the kitchen. And they all promptly stopped talking the moment he and Norah walked in. The weight of their stares hit him like a slap. Yep, they were still very much on Norah’s side, even without knowing the details.

  Miranda, clearly at least two cups shy of functional, pinned them both with a furious glare. “You barely talk to me for two weeks, send one text to say you’re back in town, then you freaking disappear for the rest of the day, without answering anybody’s call or text. I took a double shift and spent half the night at the ER waiting for you to show up in an ambulance. And now you haul my ass out of bed after only an hour without an IV drip of coffee?”

  Without batting an eye, Norah strode up to the lion and hugged her tight. “I’m sorry I worried you. I’m sorry I worried all of you. But I had to talk to Cam first.”

  Miranda took her by the shoulders and gave her a hard once over. “Are you pregnant?”

  Cam choked on the last of the coffee in his travel mug.

  Norah’s face went slack with shock. “Oh my God. No. No.” She spread her hands in the universal sign for no good. “Why on earth would you think that?”

  “Because you’re the most hyper-rational person I know and you’ve been behaving decidedly irrationally. Why else would you call us all together like this?”

  “You are kinda glowing,” Reed added.

  Norah’s face went beet red. “I have completely lost control of this situation.”

  “Well that was your first mistake,” Grammy said. “Assuming you were in control to begin with.”

  “Need I remind you that you’re the one who thought facing the Inquisition at this hour was a good idea,” Cam pointed out.

  “It wouldn’t be a bad thing,” Aunt Liz offered.

  Cam and Norah both stared at her.

  “Well it wouldn’t! Neither of mine are in any hurry to make me a grandmother.”

  “Neither are we,” Cam said.

  Norah poured them both cups of coffee. “I’d rather marry him first, thanks.”

  “How’s Saturday?”

  The ripple of surprise swept through the room. Nobody knew which of them to look at. Cam kept his gaze fixed on Norah. She rolled her eyes at him, vexed. “Even if you were serious, you’re busy Saturday.”

  Oh, I am serious. But he let it pass because this wasn’t the time or place for asking her. Instead he dimpled at her. “That wasn’t a no.”

  She just arched a brow.

  “Okay, I’ll play. What am I doing on Saturday?”

  She handed him coffee. “Formalizing your design for a park at Hope Springs and meeting with the new owner.”

  Cam felt the balance of power in the room shift. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Even if the referendum fails, GrandGoods can’t touch Hope Springs. It’s permanently out of their reach and will be donated to the city.”

  “How?”

  “Because I bought it.” And she just sipped her coffee, calm as could be, as if she hadn’t just rocked his world.

  “You did what?” Mitch asked.

  “I bought the entire parcel of land out from under GrandGoods with cash. Tucker handled the closing. It’s why I saw him first when I got back yesterday. I had to sign the paperwork. And before you get angry with him for not telling you, I had him sworn to secrecy because it was supposed to be a surprise. And he’s acting as my attorney, so that trumps whatever unspoken bro pact thing you think you have with him.”

  Cam’s brain was still stuck at the beginning. “You bought Hope Springs.”

  “All 254.5 acres.”

  “But that had to cost—” Uncle Pete began.

  “Yeah, a lot.” Norah winced a bit at that. “I liquidated every asset I had. It’s why I flipped out when I found out what Philip had done. Given I’m two steps away from being broke, my reputation and employability are kind of an issue.”

  “Jesus,” Cam said. “Why would you do that? Risk that? Have you lost your mind?”

  “Nope. Just my heart.”

  Cam took her coffee away, set it aside with his own. “Norah.”

  She sighed and linked her fingers with his. “I’ve never owned anything. Nothing that actually mattered, nothing that meant any kind of roots or permanence. I believe in what we’re trying to accomplish here, and I’m not afraid to put my money where my mouth is. I promised I’d save your world, Campbell, and this was my best shot.”

  He slid his hand up to cup her nape and pressed his brow to hers. “You humble me.”

  “You should’ve heard the original speech I had planned.” She tipped her mouth up to kiss him briefly, before slipping away to reclaim her coffee and address the rest of the family. “And this concludes the warm and fuzzy good news portion of this morning’s meeting. Please collect your caffeine and breakfast pastry of choice and make your way to the kitchen table. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.”

  Cam watched the mask slide into place, the smooth, calm exterior over the spine of steel. “It’s like watching a Transformer when you do that. Why are you armoring up?”

  “Because it’s how I survived the last two weeks.”

  That ominous remark left him with a whole helluva lot of foreboding about whatever was coming next. What had he left her to handle alone?

  He sat to her left, Miranda to her right, and the rest of them spread out around the big farmhouse table with considerably less commentary than was usual at a Campbell gathering.

  She picked up a croissant. “I want to apologize for how I left, without talking to anybody.”

  “Emergency protocols apply,” Miranda said. “We get that.”

  “It was still rude. I’m not…good with family. Not your kind of family, where check-ins don’t require some kind of performance benchmark. And I’m not good with disasters. Or, to be accurate, I’m fantastic with other people’s disasters. I don’t have a lot experience with any of my own. So when this one hit, I didn’t necessarily handle it the best way possible.” This last she addressed to Cam, eyes full of the apology she’d already made.

  He rubbed at her shoulders. “I didn’t win any awards for how I handled it either. Water under the bridge.”

  “I’d thought that once I got up there, I’d be in a position to spin some damage control. My old intern got me copies of all the outgoing emails from Philip, so I knew some of what was out there. It’s…ugly.” Something flickered over her face, before the mask reasserted itself. “Apart from the allegations of professional misconduct, there were a number of more…personal accusations. Between the emails and the affidavits from some of my former coworkers, it was evidence enough for my attorney to file a lawsuit for defamation.”

  “I’m sensing a gigantic ‘but’ in everything you’re not saying,” Mitch said.

  She glanced up at him before returning to shredding the croissant in her hands, “But that’s about all I can do. I can’t stop what Philip started. I can’t undo the damage. Even if I win—and that’s an enormous if according to my attorney, because it’s a whole lot of he said, she said—there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. My professional reputation is completely trashed. Most of my contacts wouldn’t return my calls, and those who did don’t want to earn Philip’s ire by taking my side. He has a helluva lot more social capital to burn than I do and no compunction about using i
t to knock me to rock bottom as payback for all the existing clients they lost when he fired me and the new ones who won’t go near the firm since I left.”

  Alone. She’d been dealing with all of this completely alone because he’d been too full of his own imagined hurts to be what she needed. Guilt coated Cam’s throat, all but choking him.

  If not for him and his cause, his town, she wouldn’t even be in this mess. “This is my fault.”

  Her eyes flashed hot. “Don’t be absurd.”

  “If I hadn’t—”

  She cut him off. “No. Don’t you dare. I stayed of my own free will. I chose you, and I have no regrets.”

  How could she not have regrets? “But you lost everything you worked for.”

  “And gained everything that matters. My pride will heal, and I’ll figure out some means of earning a living—preferably sooner rather than later because my attorney isn’t cheap—but I’m not giving you up. Period. End of story.”

  “Have you told your parents yet?” Uncle Pete asked.

  Norah shifted her attention to him and Aunt Liz. “I just told the only ones who matter. Hell will freeze over before I give my father that kind of weapon.”

  Knowing what Joseph Burke had said to her regarding what she’d unknowingly been involved with in Morton, Cam could only imagine how he’d twist this to try and bend her. For all the good he focused on doing in the world, how could he not see the damage he did to his own daughter with his expectations?

  “What about Peyton?” Cam asked.

  “Peyton?” Sandra asked.

  Norah ignored that. “What about him?”

  “Is the job offer still on the table after all this?”

  “We haven’t talked about it since I approached him as an investor.”

  “An investor for what?” Uncle Jimmy asked.

  “Ask,” Cam said, “and if it is, then take the job.”

  The burst of temper was immediate. “If you think I’m just going to walk away from—”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  It was Norah’s turn to stare. “You hate the city.”

  “I love you more.” And God, if he could do nothing else for her, he could do this.

  “This is all very romantic and sweet, but anybody want to clue us in on what the hell you’re talking about?” asked Miranda.

  Cam jumped in before Norah could minimize it. “She has a job offer from a billion dollar corporation in Denver to come run their marketing department, and she turned it down for me.”

  “Whoa,” Mitch said.

  “And I don’t intend to reverse that decision. Do you think I don’t know what leaving here would mean for you? I’m not dragging you to the other side of the country away from your family.”

  “Norah, be sensible.”

  “I am being sensible. You’re being impulsive. I appreciate the motivation behind it, but that’s not the answer. We’ve established the economic climate here is crap. The turn around the last couple of months is a start, but only a start. It’s no state in which to sell a business. And at that point, you have no control over what a new owner of the nursery would do. There’s no guarantee that they’d go to the effort to hire on people like Dewey May to keep him and his family afloat. No guarantee someone wouldn’t just come in and turn the nursery into something else entirely. No guarantee that whoever took over for you as City Councilman wouldn’t work to overturn everything we’ve done here. And every bit of that would eat at you, worse than it already does. That powerlessness of not knowing, or worse, knowing and not being able to do a damned thing about it from more than a thousand miles away, would make you miserable. You need to be here. So do I. I’ll find another way. It’s what I do, remember?”

  Frustration simmered at a low boil. Her logic, as always, was undeniable. But there had to be some way he could help fix this. She’d done so much for him, given up so much, and what had he done for her? Chased down some lousy public records?

  “How can I make this better for you? I need to do something.”

  “Help me finish what we started. We’re getting this referendum and we’re going to bury GrandGoods. And then we’re going to turn this town around. And when all of it is over, and no more disasters are hanging around on the horizon, I’m going to fall apart in an absolutely spectacular fashion and count on you to pick up the pieces.” She said it in the same calm, matter-of-fact tone she tended to use when reciting business statistics or weather reports.

  He wouldn’t have been surprised to see it penciled in on her calendar. Have breakdown. 8 AM to 5 PM. Schedule massage for tomorrow.

  “In the meantime, I need to work like I need to breathe, so you’ll take me back to get my car and let me take over the loft with a quantity of bulletin boards and office supplies that will make it look like Office Depot dropped a tactical nuke on the place.”

  A hint of a smile tugged at his lips. “Okay.”

  “What can we do to help?” His mother, as calm and focused as Norah herself.

  “That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. How long would it take you to set up a town meeting?”

  Chapter 23

  Please let this be nearly over. Cam sent up the prayer as he pulled open the door to Edison Hardware and stepped inside to continue the petition tally. It was almost time for lunch, and he’d already been by half of the businesses on his list. Aunt Liz and Uncle Pete were doing the others. Avery had been keeping a running tally as they went, and they were close. So close. If the total tipped over their threshold, they’d be spending the next several hours validating that each one was a registered voter. If they didn’t get the numbers today, they were out of time.

  Tyler stood at the counter, her ponytail pulled through the back of the fire engine red YES cap that matched his. She looked up as he came in and one corner of her mouth curved up. “Hey Councilman, Mr. Cleese here wants to know if signing the petition will decrease his chances of getting called up for jury duty, seeing as it’s kind of a civil service.”

  “Well now, that’s something to consider. But I reckon you’d have to take that up with Judge Carpenter.” Might as well foist the responsibility for that decision off on somebody else.

  Mr. Cleese rubbed the tip of his bulbous nose. “Y’all should check on that. It’d be a real incentive for folks.”

  “We’ll take that under advisement. In the meantime, how about you join the ranks of other fine citizens of Wishful and add your name to the petition?”

  After some further hemming and hawing and additional suggestions that were completely out of Cam’s power as a city representative, Cleese finally signed the petition.

  “Thanks for your support, Mr. Cleese. Here’s your sticker.” Tyler reached out and plastered the YES: I signed badge on the old man’s shirt pocket. “You be sure to tell your friends up at Bingo Night.”

  Cam peeked over to check the petition numbers and texted the total to Avery.

  “I thought about adding a suggestion box,” Tyler said as the door swung shut.

  “Been getting a lot of quid pro quo kinda ideas, have we?”

  “A fair number. None actually actionable, I don’t think.” She leaned back against the counter and crossed her legs. “How are the numbers looking?”

  “Overall good. We picked up eleven at No Sweat. Fifteen more at Brides and Belles. Only six at Sanderson’s. But it’s slowing down to dribs and drabs. Everybody’s reporting the same kind of thing. They keep running into people who’ve already been hit up. I’m not sure how to get beyond that crowd without going door to door.”

  Tyler pursed her lips. “I heard you spent a fair chunk of time talking to Rosanna Sanderson this morning.”

  Cam sent her a flat stare. “And who exactly is keeping tabs on how long I’m spending in local businesses?”

  “You know perfectly well Cassie can see the door to Sanderson’s from The Grind.”

  “So? She was on my list, same as you and Cassie and more than a dozen other businesse
s.”

  “Half an hour just seems like a long time to spend checking on six signatures in a jewelry store.”

  “Any angler knows you’ve gotta put out better bait if you wanna catch bigger fish.”

  Tyler grinned at him. “Does that mean there’s a bigger fish to catch?”

  “If there was, do you think I’d be dumb enough to confirm it? I’m well aware of the state of gossip in this town. Cassie’s looking for something to scoop Mama Pearl on, and I am not gonna be it.”

  “I’m not hearing denials.”

  “You’re not hearing squat.” Cam shoved open the door. “I’ll keep you posted about the signature total. As soon as Avery notifies us we’ve got enough, I’ll be back by to pick up the pages for signature verification.”

  “I’ll be here. And Cam?”

  He paused, looking back at his lifelong friend.

  “I’m glad she’s back.”

  “So am I.”

  Cam made quick stops at Lickety Split and Inglenook before finally working around to Dinner Belles, where Norah had turned a corner booth into an impromptu command center. Against one wall was a markerboard showing the running tally of signatures. Norah herself hunched over a map of the city that showed the individual Council wards, with two others in street team gear. She, too, wore a YES cap, and with the braid in her hair, she looked about eighteen. At least until she started giving out orders like a five star general.

  “Mamie, you hit up the senior center. They’re all of a generation where voting actually meant something, so they’re probably registered. They just aren’t necessarily super mobile and coming into town.”

  Mamie saluted. “That’s a fabulous idea. Autumn, you should come with me.” She turned back to Norah. “Autumn’s the head librarian. She volunteers at the center once a week. The seniors just love her.”

  “Do it. We need every asset we’ve got.”

  The pair of them headed for the door, flashing cheerful smiles at Cam on their way out.

  Cam joined Norah at her booth. “Where’s your walkie talkie?”

  “Don’t tempt me. I’ll make you hunt some down for me. You know Cassie would be all over that.”