Page 9 of The Marriage Deal
“Mmhmm.” I lean close to my brother but keep my eyes on Briggs as he lands his hands—one still holding my scissors—on his hips. He pushes his chest out asthough he’s taking a breath, and then he says all the wrong things.
Another slide appears with facts about the town. Expenditure, debt, and stagnant taxes verses rising inflation tipping the needle of cost. A projection analysis I know for a fact most people can’t begin to read, never mind digest, flashes on the screen. It shows the projected state of Sunset Falls’ financial debt analysis in five years, then ten, then twenty.
Briggs explains the projection of each analysis, but it goes over the people’s heads. It’s not about stupidity or even a reluctance to grasp what he’s saying, although there is undeniably reluctance. It’s about the fact that the people have been carrying this town as a community for forever, and not once in the analysis of the town’s dire future has Briggs brought up all the sacrifices, the moments of coming together, the public funding. He hasn’t acknowledged thecommunity.
Having some new guy slide in with his city-slicker business degree and millions—or is it billionsof dollars is—well, it’s offensive to everyone who has devoted their love and lives to every breath this town breathes.
There is no longer an incensed murmuring in the crowd, but a full-out denial of all that he is saying or has said. If there was any warmth toward his ideas to bring Sunset Falls into a modern attraction, bringing wealth and growth to the town, it’s been buried under the mountain of perceived disrespect and personal hurt masked now by outrage.
“Ah shit.” Dakota shakes his head. “Here we go.”
“Who does this goon think he is?” Dad demands, standing, just like most everyone else who shouts their concerns and denial to the front where Briggs stands, looking, for the most part, unfazed.
Gone is the red that initially climbed up the column of his neck. Gone is the approachable light in his eyes. It’s all been replaced by a cool calm mask of cut-throat business-hardened man.
Briggs raises his hands to speak over the crowd. Again, he says the wrong thing. This time, it’s with the hard implacability of the cut-throat businessman the town thinks he is. “I’m not going anywhere. The approvals are already in place. The projects will move forward.”
Another voice rises over the rest. Jim Santiago. “Where are the funds for this project coming from, Mr. Alder?”
Briggs slides his eyes to Mr. Santiago, and that hardness in his face gets harder, but he says nothing.
Dakota leans in again to whisper, “He’s done his research if he knows who Jim is.”
I’m pretty sure Briggs has done nothing but research on Sunset Falls and its inhabitants in the five weeks he’s been here. As for me, I’ve only been back for six weeks, and although the man has been an interest of mine in that time, I honestly don’t have the time or the headspace to even attempt a dance with a man like Briggs Alder.
He might look collected and calm—what Mom would call a cool cucumber—but I know for a fact there’s more to him. The man has layers, no doubt. The kind of layers that can be dangerous for a woman like me.
I’m still licking the wounds inflicted by the last man I encountered with layers. Layers to his charming personality that, well, damn near destroyed me.
Layers that forced me to return home sooner than I liked to rebuild the wreckage of my life after him. Layers that still stung when I thought about the repercussions of revealing them. The heartbreak. The betrayal.The cost.
I thought perhaps, after my encounter with the man on the boardwalk, that he might be one of the good ones. A man with feelings. With depth that wasn’t constructed by layers of deceit. A man who wasn’t iced over by the chill of a disconnected life, as I’d first thought when I saw him on that cliff looking—well, looking mostly unfeeling. Caged. Iced off.
Now, I see by the disconnect he exudes at the people’s fear and push-back, that he is exactly as iced off as I thought he was.
My arms cross over my chest, and I sink deeper in my chair as Mr. Santiago informs Briggs, “You’ll be hearing from my lawyers, Mr. Alder.”
“I look forward to it, Mr. Santiago.” The smile Briggs flashes is the epitome of cold disconnect. It shatters what little hope the town had to avoid an all-outwar, like innocence stepping onto too-thin ice. The man is going to drown us all.
Saying nothing, I slide into the cardigan Nan knitted for me and head for the exit. I’ve seen enough to know there is little I can do, not that I wanted to do anything anyway.
Briggs had presented the town with a way forward. It was a good way, mostly, though I understood the pushback. The fear. The formation of an estate community would most definitely increase the cost of town taxes. But it would also bring much needed business to the currently struggling industry of Sunset Falls.
Still, the way he’d went about it—ice cold.
A shiver rises over every inch of my flesh as I reach the door. A glance over my shoulder uncovers the source. Cold green eyes framed in long, inky black lashes are locked on me.
The shiver intensifies, prickling with such an intensity it stings with a bite of heat. I cut the connection of his stare, dip my chin, and push out into the dry heat of an early Okanagan summer.
But not even the familiar wash of heat can chase away the cool shards that settled deep in the aftereffects of the ice man’s stare.
5
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH
LILAH
The man is everywhere. I’d call him a social butterfly if he wasn’t perpetually alone. Since the town meeting four days ago, I’ve not had a single conversation with him. Granted, the first time I’d seen him after the meeting, he’d been talking to someone named Nash on the phone. It had sounded like he was annoyed, and I’d been pretending not to eavesdrop as I slid into an empty seat at the booth Mr. Hardman had been eating at.
