Page 24 of A Secret Chance
“Everyone?”
Baxter blinked quickly. “Not the literal everyone.”
“Baxter, against my better judgment, I’m going to offer you one piece of advice.”
“And what’s that?” He was leaning against the back of his chair. His lips stretched tight.
“Spend some time here. Get to know the town, the people.” She softened her voice. “You can’t just fly in on your helicopter and tell everyone here that dropping a development triple the size of the existing town is going to be good for them.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Lauren.”
She could feel her face burning red, but not with a sexual desire for the man. That had been replaced with contempt. He was lighting a fire in her, and not the between the legs kind.
“Go on.” She pushed back in her chair, its legs scratching on the pine floorboards.
“I’ve spent plenty of time here.”
“You have?” He had to be lying. None of the locals that she had spoken to had ever met anyone from Caldwell International. “When?”
“It’s been a few years...” His voice trailed off, “so get off your high horse.”
“High horse?”
“Shit. I didn’t—” Baxter sighed.
Lauren interrupted. “I think it’s time for me to go.” She gathered up her coat in her arms and pulled her messenger bag over her shoulder.
“Either you come back with an updated plan or get ready for the fight of your life against one of the delusional, small-minded, not forward-thinking Rapidians.”
“Wait, Lauren.”
But she’d had enough. “Good day, Mr. Caldwell.” The crowd parted as she made her way to the door, but she stopped as she reached the door. “Shit,” she muttered to herself.
She stomped back to the table and slammed down an envelope in front of him.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“It’s for the sweater.”
“That was a gift,” he replied.
“More like a bribe, coming from the likes of you,” she lobbed his own non-pc phrase back at him.
His phone was next to the envelope and as it lit up with an incoming call, the song, Eddie Vedder’s big hit fromIntothe Wildrang out.
Lauren’s eyes snapped to the phone.
“Is thatInto the Wild?”
“It is,” Baxter replied. “Pearl Jam is my favorite. I see them in concert every time I can.”
The room started to spin around Lauren. Suddenly, that song transported her back in time. Back to a time when her hands were always pruney from the rubber gloves that her mom made her wear to protect her hands from the cleaning chemicals, to a time when her hair didn’t have strands of gray.
It couldn’t be.
She looked at Baxter, he had taken off his thick black-rimmed glasses, and all of a sudden Lauren saw him with the long wavy hair, with the beard. How could she not have seen it before now?
She held her hands out to steady herself. The floor felt like it was laid over rolling ocean waves. It had to be a coincidence. That man from her history’s name was Brock, not Baxter.
