by A. J. Wynter
There was a frustrated sigh amongst the spectators as everyone started to pull on coats and stand to stretch. Mr. Caldwell and his executives remained seated.
“If you don’t mind, Mayor Smythe, the council is prepared to vote now,” Larry shouted over the din of the shuffling in the room.
Lauren knew that the mayor’s hands were tied with bureaucratic red tape. She had never felt so hopeless in her life. All of that work, all of those late nights, after everything she had done, this despicable man and his pocketbook were going to ruin Chance Rapids.
Mayor cleared her throat and tapped on the microphone. “Excuse me, everyone. The council would like to vote on the exemption. All in favor of providing an exemption to the density to permit the construction of Caldwell Creek say...
“Stop.”
Everyone in the room turned to face the double doors. Lauren stood on her toes to try and see over the crowd of spectators in the room. There were three uniformed police officers as well as at least five men in suits that looked like some kind of special agents.
“Mr. Caldwell, you’re under arrest.” The tall dark-haired man leading the group of officers strode confidently through the room.
As the policemen made their way through the stunned crowd, Mr. Caldwell remained glued to his seat. “What’s the charge?” His arms were crossed, and he casually tilted his wrist to look at his watch.
“Racketeering,” one of the men in suits stepped forward and started reading him his rights.
Lauren gasped. These were federal agents, and racketeering was a very serious charge. The color drained from Mr. Caldwell’s face as two of the uniformed officers helped him to his feet and placed his hands in cuffs. “You have no proof.” Barry and Thomas were also handcuffed, and it felt like a movie that had gone into slow motion as the three of them were led from the municipal chambers.
The murmurs of the crowd grew louder as Mr. Caldwell’s shouting became irate. “You can’t do this to me.”
Lauren could no longer see the trio of executives, but she could hear Mr. Caldwell’s yelling from the hallway.
“Holy fuck,” Charlotte rushed over to where Lauren was standing. “What just happened?”
“It looks like Mr. Caldwell just bought his last council.” Lauren shook her head.
“What happens now?” Charlotte whispered.
“I don’t know. I don’t think that there’s a protocol for this kind of thing.”
“Could everyone please be seated,” Mayor Smythe said into the microphone. For someone whose council chambers had just been stormed by the police, she remained surprisingly calm. “We will resume the vote.” Her voice was flat, and her hands were folded on the table in front of her. “Unless, in light of the current circumstances, the council would like some time to review the proposal.” She looked to the council members, who all looked like they were about to vomit. “Mr. Lawrence?” she prodded.
“Actually, we would like some more time to review that report.” His face was so red, Lauren wouldn’t have been surprised if he had keeled over from a heart attack.
“I thought so,” Mayor Smythe said. And like nothing ever happened, she moved onto the next order of business on the agenda.
Lauren slipped out of the council chambers and rested on one of the hard wooden benches in the hallway. She didn’t know what would happen next, with the head of the corporation under arrest there was no way that the development would move forward.
Logan and Charlotte appeared in the hallway and rushed to sit with Lauren. “Holy shit,” Logan said. “Can you believe that just happened?”
“This day has been insane,” Lauren whispered. “I have to get out of here.”
“Want to go for lunch?” Charlotte asked.
“I can’t eat anything,” Lauren pressed into the bench to push herself to her feet. The emotion and drama of the meeting had finally caught up with her and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to keep any food down.
“I’ll go get the car,” Logan said. He patted Lauren on the shoulder, leaving her in the empty hallway with her sister.
As the door closed behind Logan, Lauren’s face crumbled. She sat back down on the bench, her face in her hands. Charlotte sat down and pulled her in close. “What’s wrong?” Charlotte asked. “This is a good thing, isn’t it?”
Lauren didn’t know where to start. “Oh, Charlotte. How did everything go so wrong?”
“Wrong?” Charlotte rubbed Lauren’s back.
“I fucked everything up.” She managed to get the words out and chased them with a sob.
“No, I fucked everything up.” A deep voice echoed in the hallway. Lauren paused, her face still in her hands.
“What did you do, Baxter?” Charlotte pulled Lauren in closer to her. Lauren parted her fingers, the fluorescent light from the hallway filtering in through her fingers and then she let herself look up at him.
Baxter Caldwell, Junior was standing at the end of the hallway, his hiking boots covered in snow. He strode down the corridor, “I broke a promise to your sister,” he said. He knelt down on the floor in front of Lauren and wiped away her tears. “I promised you that I would never make you cry.” He took Lauren’s hands in his. Charlotte squeezed her shoulders. “I’m going to leave you two alone. Are you okay?” she whispered. Lauren sniffed and nodded.
“I’m sorry, Lauren.” Baxter squeezed her hands. “Can you forgive me?”
Lauren looked into his blue eyes and squeezed his hands back. “No,” she whispered.
She stood up and followed her sister’s path out of the hallway and down the front stairs of the town office.
“Wait, Lauren.” Baxter burst out of the building behind her. “Can we talk?”
Lauren broke into a light jog, but the boots she had borrowed from Charlotte didn’t provide much grip and she ended up doing a high-speed penguin waddle through the snow on the sidewalk. Baxter easily caught up with her. “Lauren.” He was breathing heavily and held onto her bare arm. “Is there somewhere we can go and talk? I don’t want to leave things the way that we did. You have to admit, you kind of dropped a bomb on me.”
“On you?” Lauren pulled her arm from his grip. “What do you call that?” she pointed to the town hall. “You changed the plans. You lied to me. Was this your plan? To catch me off guard, get me into bed, and then do the old bait and switch with the development plans?” The blood coursing through Lauren’s veins was boiling, but her teeth were chattering.
“You’re freezing.”
“I-I-I’m not,” she chattered.
“Come with me, somewhere warm.”
“N-n-no. You had your chance to talk and you ran.”
Baxter sighed. He pulled off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. “I know. I regret that. But come on, you just told me I was a dad. I think that I was in shock. But now I’m back, and I want to talk to you about, well, everything.”
“Why did you send your father in to do your dirty work?”
“Ahh,” Baxter smiled.
Lauren looked away, knowing that his smile had a certain way of melting her icy resolve. Baxter held up his hands in front of her. “Do you see any handcuffs?”
Lauren squinted her eyes at him. “No.”
“My dad took over the project. I couldn’t let him ruin your town. Our town.” He reached out to hold both of Lauren’s hands, rubbing his thumb on the back as she trembled in the warmth of his grip. “Our daughter’s town,” he whispered.
“You were the whistleblower?”
“I found out my father paid off the council here, and I went back to the head office and did some digging, and that wasn’t the worst of it. My dad is a very dirty man.”
“But what’s going to happen to you?” Lauren asked.
“I don’t want that legacy.” He slid his hands from hers to cup her cheeks. “All I want is you, and our daughter.” Lauren held onto his wrists and while the tears streamed silently down her face. “Things have become so clear to me, Lauren.”<
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“Are you sure?” she whispered.
“I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, and I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.” He leaned in and kissed Lauren’s lips gently. He pulled back and Lauren kept her eyes closed, waiting to feel the warmth of his face against hers again. When it was taking too long, she opened her eyes and saw him kneeling down on the sidewalk in front of her. Her hands were still in his.
“Lauren Bunkman, will you marry me?”
Lauren shivered, but this time it wasn’t from the cold. Her tears started flowing again as she kept nodding. “Yes, Baxter, I will marry you.”
Baxter pulled a black velvet box from his pocket and slid a giant emerald cut ring onto her finger. The stone sparkled on Lauren’s finger. Never in a million years had she envisioned a ring on her finger, but this one felt right.
He stood and hugged her in tightly. “I’m Brock now, baby.” A whoosh of adrenaline coursed through Lauren’s body in response to hearing that name. “Brock, I will marry you.” She smiled and then kissed him. She didn’t know how long they stood in the center of town, amongst the frosty windows of the downtown shops and the freshly cut greenery of the Christmas wreaths that hung from the iron lamp posts and she didn’t care.
“Oh, there’s one more thing,” Brock said. He pulled out a matching velvet box and handed it to Lauren.
“What’s this?”
“I was going to get her a teddy bear, but even I know that she’s too old for that.”
Lauren cried out as she opened the box and saw a matching stone to hers on a simple white gold chain. “I hope that she says yes too.” This time Brock’s eyes were the ones brimming with tears.
Lauren handed the box back to him. “Let’s go get her. Our daughter. And you can ask her yourself.” She slipped her hand into his and he held hers tightly as the two of them walked down Main Street of Chance Rapids, the snow lightly falling around them. “It looks like I need to buy you another sweater,” he whispered in her ear. “I love you, Lauren.”
Nestled into his arm, Lauren didn’t feel anything but warmth. “I love you, Brock.”
Epilogue
SIX MONTHS LATER
“Dad, it looks like snow.” Tabitha lets go of Brock’s hand and ran down Acorn Street with her arms outstretched, the petals from the cherry trees floating lazily in the air around her like a pink-themed snow globe. She ran back to him and stopped to scoop up a handful of the silky pink petals.
“It does look like snow,” he agreed. The air was full of the swirling petals and he brushed one off his shoulder. “It smells a lot nicer though,” he added.
Tabitha buried her nose in the petals, nodded, then tossed them into the air and slid her hand back into Brock’s. They turned onto Main Street and Tabitha started to skip, jostling Brock’s hand. Never in a million years did he think he’d find such joy in the small things. The feel of a little palm holding onto his, the smell of spring, and the sense of belonging to a community. He had only lived in Chance Rapids for six months, but he’d never felt more at home.
“Brock,” Charlie shouted as he and Tabitha stepped onto the construction site. “Back here.”
“Careful, Tabby,” Brock said. He plunked a pink hard hat, one that he’d special ordered, onto her head. They made their way to the back of the soon-to-be brewery, stepping around piles of sawdust and electrical supplies.
There had been some growing pains when Brock first moved into Lauren’s house. The biggest challenge had been explaining why he’d been absent from Tabitha’s life for the first nine years. They had decided to go with the truth. He didn’t know and he couldn’t be found. He worried that she might be angry with him, but the girl didn’t have a resentful bone in her body. Maybe if they had waited until she was a teenager, she would’ve been dramatic about the whole thing, but all Tabitha wanted was a father in her life and he was happy to step into that role.
A loud miter saw screamed at the same time as a drill started up and Brock handed Tabitha an ear protection headset. “Really, Dad?” She rolled her eyes. He grabbed a second pair from the hook on the wall and put them on his own ears; teaching by example. Freddie was pulling wire through the steel studs and waved to the duo as they walked by.
Charlie was in the back office, a makeshift space with a folding table and a couple of worn leather chairs. “We made the news.” He slid a copy of the newspaper across the table showing Lauren, Brock, and Charlie’s photograph while at the ground-breaking ceremony last month; Lauren’s foot on the shovel as the rest of them posed with their thumbs up.
From the first taste of Charlie’s brew, Brock knew that it was a winner, and their first small batch collaboration, A Snowball’s Chance, had won the state Brewmaster award. From there they decided to become partners; Charlie would handle the beermaking and Brock would take care of the business side. Thus, the Chance Rapids Brewhouse was born.
Brock jumped as someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to see the beautiful smile of his fiancée. “Hi, baby.” He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her in for a kiss. He didn’t think there would ever be a day that he would tire of kissing Lauren.
“Ewww.” Tabitha wrinkled her nose and ran off to tour the brewhouse with Charlie.
Lauren and Brock were both early risers, and with a kid in the house, had adapted to making love sweetly and quietly in the hours before dawn. This morning he had been having an amazing dream about sky diving, something he’d always wanted to do. The adrenaline had been surging through his body, and sky diving felt like the most amazing thing he’d ever done. He had slowly been roused from his dream to realize that his fiancée’s lips around his cock had provided the sensation for his dream, and the excitement of sky diving paled in comparison to the reality of coming hard and fast with Lauren’s green eyes staring up at him. He had practically ripped the post of her bed in half holding in his groan as his cock twitched between her lips. She had kissed him and left him panting in bed.
“Thanks for this morning,” he whispered in her ear.
She smacked him on the arm and pulled one of the earmuffs from his head, “You’re yelling.” Her face was flushed red. Lauren presented as a prude, and Brock loved the fact that only he knew what a wildcat she was in the bedroom. He pulled her back in tightly and nipped her ear. “I’ll get you back later.” He looked around and then slapped her ass. She shot him a look, but he knew that she loved it. He let his hand rest on the curve of her lower back. “Did you see the article?”
“I did,” she said. She took the paper from his hand and folded it in half.
“Wait, I didn’t get the chance to read it,” he said.
“No need. It just said the usual stuff.” She shoved the paper into her overflowing leather briefcase and bit her lower lip. That’s when Brock knew that she was hiding something from him. He snatched the paper out of her bag. The front page featured the article about the brewery, no big deal there. He opened the paper and saw his name in the headline of a story on the second page: Caldwell fights back. His eyes scanned the article, it wasn’t about him. It was about his father. Caldwell International’s application had been defeated, but somehow his father had managed to escape the racketeering charges.
“Do you think he’ll try again?” Lauren asked.
Brock shook his head. “I don’t know. But if that son a bitch tries anything, he’ll have to go through me.”
Since severing ties with Caldwell International, Brock had only communicated with his father through his solicitor, Barry Birkner. He had been prepared to walk away from everything for Lauren, and she was willing to take his sorry broke ass, just the way he was. They had both been shocked when they found out that Brock’s mom had out-savvied his dad, and that half of Caldwell’s billion-dollar fortune was Brock’s. That week the Conservation Authority received an anonymous million-dollar donation and the idea for the craft brewery and restaurant was born.
Lauren took the paper from his hands and reached around t
o grab his ass in both of her hands, pulling his hips to hers. Instant hard-on. She squeezed. Raging hard-on. She winked at him, “You know it gets me turned on when you talk like that.” She slapped his ass and then stepped away. “Got to get to work,” she grinned.
“You...” He adjusted himself in his pants and rubbed the stinging spot on his butt. He pursed his lips at the little tease.
She started to walk away but turned as if she’d forgotten something. “Did you see that they’ve started renovating the shop next door?”
“I saw that there was paper on the windows. Do you know what’s going in there?” he asked.
Charlie and Tabitha returned to the office. “Going in where?” Charlie asked.
“The space next door. Lauren said that they’ve started renovations.”
“Better not be a brewery,” Charlie muttered.
The drilling paused. “Flower shop,” Freddie yelled.
“Come on, really?” Charlie laughed. “A flower shop? That will last five minutes.”
“Hopefully, at least ten,” a soft voice said. Everyone turned to look at the front door. A petite blond woman had opened the door and stood halfway inside the building. “I was just coming to introduce myself.”
Charlie sucked in his breath next to Brock. The man was his business partner and Brock had never seen him be anything but calm and collected.
“I’m Emma.” The woman gave a wave from the doorway.
“Nice to meet you, Emma,” Freddie said and continued pulling wire.
Emma clasped her hands in front of her as if she didn’t know what to do next.
“Come on in, Emma.” Brock gave an exaggerated wave. As she approached, Brock stuck out his hand. “I’m Brock and this is my daughter, Tabitha.” Emma smiled and shook both of their hands.
“Nice to meet you,” she said.
“And this is my business partner.” He turned to introduce Charlie, but he had disappeared. “Charlie...” his voice petered out. “I guess he had to go.”
