Читать книгу At First Sight - Tamara Sneed - Страница 9

“As members of the city council, it’s your job to look out for this town’s best interests. And the best interests of this town…”

Graham Forbes blocked out the rest of the speech being given by Mayor Boyd Robbins. He had heard it all before during the six months he had spent on the Sibleyville City Council, a position he was still trying to figure out how he had gotten. The issue might change, but Robbins always found something supposedly in the town’s best interests that usually involved either he or his two sons profiting in one form or another.

Graham felt an ache growing at his temples and rubbed his forehead to soothe the pressure. He glanced around the small cramped meeting room in city hall. As usual, all the windows were shut tight, even though it was the middle of summer and the old building had never been upgraded to air conditioning. As usual, Robbins’ long-suffering wife, Alma, sat in a chair in the corner of the room, taking notes of everything Robbins said, although she usually stopped writing whenever anyone else spoke. And, as usual, the four other city council members managed to look intrigued, as if they had never heard this exact same speech before. And since the other four had gotten elected to the city council around the same time the telephone had been invented—and Robbins had been making the same speech about that long—Graham knew they must have.

Graham was the youngest person in the room by about three decades, and considering he was thirty-two years old, he wasn’t exactly young, and he was feeling older by the second. He wondered how his father had done this, year after year. Not only this, but everything else that came with living and operating a ranch in Sibleyville. Yet now Lance Forbes was finding it difficult even to endure the physical therapy that would get him back on track after a heart attack six months ago.

What had started as a three-week vacation to visit his father and help his mother with the farm had turned into six months and a city council position. Graham had started avoiding the increasingly insistent calls from his job, because he didn’t know what to say. His father was still playing sick and his mother’s eyes lit up every time she saw Graham walk into the house. The guilt was unbearable, but Graham had vowed to return to Tokyo after planting season ended. There were only three weeks remaining in the season, and given the long hours he and the workers had been putting in over the last month, Graham figured the farm was ahead of schedule.

“We have to get Max Sibley’s girls to see what a great place Sibleyville is, or they could sell the land right from under us.”

Graham snapped out of his brooding at the mention of the Sibleys. He hadn’t been able to get Quinn and Kendra Sibley out of his thoughts since leaving their property an hour ago. There definitely weren’t women like those two in this small town. The women were gorgeous and sophisticated, like the women he dated in Tokyo.

He had to admit there was no one like the other Sibley sister either. She had looked nothing like Quinn or Kendra. She had been thicker than the other women, more curvy than Kendra and less silicone-assisted than Quinn. Her thick brown hair had hung in limp waves to her shoulders.

Also, unlike her sisters, she had looked at him as if he were evil personified. Graham vowed to stay away from her. Bringing his attention back to the meeting at hand, he demanded more sharply then he intended, “What are you talking about, Robbins? The town owns the land.” Robbins glared at him. The two men had a mutual distrust and dislike for each other.

As six pairs of shocked eyes swung to him, Graham grimaced. He had forgotten his rule of not speaking at the meetings.

“We had a small problem in the seventies, Graham,” Velma Spears explained, her oversized eyeglasses obscuring half of her wrinkled, kind face. Velma told every citizen who came to speak at city council meeting that their speech was “lovely.” And she meant it.

“Small problem.” Boyd Robbins snorted at Velma’s understatement. “We had some real issues in this town. If you haven’t noticed, Forbes, this ain’t Tokyo—”

“I’ve noticed,” Graham muttered, dryly.

Boyd’s red face grew even more red. Boyd had been in the military for thirty years and it showed in his ramrod-straight posture, buzz-cut graying brown hair and constantly clenched jaw. He was in his late fifties, but after a lifetime in the sun, he looked closer to seventy. His skin was constantly a shade of red or maroon, and just looking at Graham sometimes made him turn purple.

“Boyd means that when we fall on our hard times, we can’t rely on tourist dollars or exports to hold us until times get better,” Angus Affleck, Graham’s father’s best friend, chimed in from the seat on Graham’s right. “The seventies were tough for all small towns. A lot of people left for big cities like San Francisco and L.A. We almost had to shut down the local elementary school. And without residents, we didn’t have a tax base or a consumer base. Main Street was almost shut down, not to mention the problems we had selling our crops. We needed help, and Max helped us.”

“He bailed out an entire town?” Graham asked, surprised.

“At a steep price,” Boyd said, his voice echoing in the small room because of his close proximity to the microphone on the table. As if he needed it. “He wanted the deeds to all the stores on Main Street.”

“He let us keep our ranches, Boyd,” Velma said, softly.

“Because he knew we’d stuff his lawyers down his throat, if he tried that,” Paul Robbins, Boyd’s brother and loyal supporter, chimed in from his seat on Graham’s left.

“Although his bank damn near owns half the ranches in town anyway,” Boyd grumbled.

“He made a lot of improvements to Main Street. We wouldn’t have the clock tower or the movie theatre without Max,” Velma continued, her voice becoming more insistent.

“Some people think throwing around money will buy them respect. Max Sibley was a rat.” Boyd’s face had gotten so red, he looked on the verge of imploding.

“From what I understand of those Sibley girls, they’re just as bad as Max,” Paul said, taking over for his brother, who was too overcome with anger to continue. “One of them is even an actor on one of those soap operas.”

“Diamond Valley,” Angus offered, cheerfully. Graham looked over in surprise at the grizzled rancher and part-time sheriff of the town, whose skin was like well-worn leather after decades in the sun.

“I don’t care about the name of her stupid show,” Paul snapped, sending Angus an annoyed glance. “The point is, she’s an actress, and we all know what those people are like. We don’t want an actress in charge of the future of this town, nor the other ones. One is a stockbroker in New York—”

“I bet she had something to do with Enron,” Boyd interrupted, suspiciously.

Paul continued, “And the other one works at some Black museum… Oh, excuse me, Graham, African-American museum.”

Graham ignored the dig and concentrated on the Sibley sisters. Judging from Kendra’s conservative dark suit, tight enough to display that she worked out on a consistent basis and could probably kick a grown man’s ass, Kendra was the stockbroker. Quinn’s almost luminous glow obviously meant that she was the actress. That left the mute one as the museum worker. It figured.

“A bunch of liberals,” Boyd summarized his brother’s lecture. “We’re looking at our town being controlled by a bunch of female liberals. What are they even doing here? Those girls live in the lap of luxury all of their lives and now they willingly move into a shack that hasn’t been inhabited by anything more than raccoons and snakes in over fifteen years? By any means necessary, we have got to get those girls to give us back our town before they cause irreparable damage.”

“On that cheerful note, how about we conclude this meeting for the night and go our separate ways to think about how we’re going to swindle the Sibley sisters?” Graham said.

“I second that,” Angus said, smiling proudly at him.

“Wait, we’re not finished—” Boyd started.

“All in favor say ‘aye,’” Graham said. A murmur of “ayes” followed his statement, besides Paul’s tentative “no.” Graham pounded the mayor’s gavel and announced, “This meeting is adjourned. Until next week, folks.”

He stood, took a few moments to make certain that Velma had a ride home, avoided Angus’s attempt to get his attention, ignored Boyd’s poisonous glares and slipped out of the claustrophobic town hall.

He breathed in the fresh night air as he strolled towards his truck parked in one of the marked spots on Main Street. The nights in Sibleyville were like nowhere else that Graham had ever been, and he had been all over the world as an executive with the conglomerate, Shoeford Industries. There was something about the mixture of dirt, mountains, green trees and water that combined to make Sibleyville smell…smell like something comforting and inviting.

Graham stopped his thoughts. He was standing on Main Street in a town that had one stoplight, one movie theatre and where the big social event of the year was David Markham’s Fourth of July hoedown. There was nothing in Sibleyville that made him want to stay. Graham could not survive in this environment, after having spent the last fifteen years living in major cities around the world. He needed excitement, luxury, glamour. And not even Boyd could lie and say that Sibleyville had that.

“I’m sick of you railroading me in city council meetings, young man,” came Boyd’s angry voice behind him.

Graham inwardly groaned. He remembered his grandmother’s old phrase: Speak of the devil, and he’ll appear.

Graham turned to face Boyd. Graham was tall at six foot two, but Boyd was probably stronger and showed no signs of allowing age to slow him down.

Graham nodded a greeting to Boyd’s wife, Alma, who cowered behind him. As large and intimidating as her husband was, she was small and petite. Graham tried not to think about it, but he still wondered how they… Well, they had two big sons, so they must have figured out a way.

“Good evening, Alma,” Graham said, smiling politely.

Alma smiled shyly in response.

Boyd grumbled, then said, abruptly, “I got your number. I know what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?” Graham asked, curiously.

“You’re trying to bring your big-city ideas here. This isn’t New York City,” Boyd informed him, while drawing out “New York City” as if he was saying “Sodom and Gomorrah.” “You think you’re so special because you have a few stamps on your passport. I’ve been to all of those places, too, with the service, and there’s no place like Sibleyville, U.S.A.”

“I’m not trying to do anything, Boyd. I just don’t think threatening the Sibley sisters is going to make them hand back the keys of the town. They either will or won’t, but it’s their decision to make.”

Boyd’s eyes narrowed then he poked a gnarled finger in Graham’s face and warned, “I’m watching you. You get in the way of this town’s progress, and I’ll rip you a new one.”

Boyd stomped off towards his town car. Alma smiled apologetically at Graham then raced after Boyd. Graham shook his head in disbelief then laughed. He had spent the last ten years working and living in almost every major city around the world, and the only time he had been threatened with bodily harm was by the mayor of Sibleyville.