See You at Sunset (22 page)

For years,
she’d
been the married one, the lucky girl who’d snagged a wonderful, brave man who loved her as much as anyone could hope to be loved. But time and death had turned that upside down. Now her friends had wonderful futures stretching out before them, while Holly had had one true love in her life and didn’t know if she had the courage to risk another.

“Micah, I would be so, so grateful if you would just let it go. Please. I feel like I’m being interrogated right now, and I can’t deal with anything more than what’s on my plate already.” She hated the desperate note to her voice, but she really needed out of this conversation.

Coward.

Like he’d done so many times in the past, Micah rescued her. His brawny arms wrapped around her in one of his wonderful bear hugs. Then he let her go.

“You’re right,” he said. Even in the twilight, she could see the pain in his gaze. “I was a dick to push you. I promise I’ll back off and give you all the space you need.”

He really was the best guy she knew, while she was a total jerk. She had to force down tears to answer him. “Micah, I don’t know what’s going to happen between us, I truly don’t. But just promise me that you’ll always be one of my dearest friends, no matter what happens. I don’t want to lose that. I can’t.”

He flinched, obviously not happy to be relegated to the friend circle in her life. But then he pulled up the warmest smile she’d ever seen on his oh-so-masculine mouth. “You’ll never lose me, Holly. I’ll always be there for you.”

Chapter 17

T
he Seashell Bay Town Hall was a modest affair, and although the meeting room was scrubbed and tidy, the cracked vinyl flooring and the graying, chipped tiles in the suspended ceiling spoke to its advancing years. Holly could still remember when the building had gone up when she was a kid. Back then, she’d thought it huge and impressively modern. Now, like the Jenkins General Store, it seemed so much smaller and a little shabby.

“So many people,” Beatrice said, scanning the room. She’d taken a seat in a row near the back. Florence had squeezed in next to her, and Holly had claimed the aisle seat.

“Let’s just hope our folks are in the majority,” Holly said.

She was impressed that islanders had shown up in such large numbers to let the town selectmen know how they felt about the Night Owl application. Well over three hundred people had signed Miss Annie’s petition, and scores had come to tonight’s special meeting to have their say on the building permit application. Later this week, the selectmen would hold their regular meeting and make a final decision.

At a narrow table up front were Selectmen Chester Buckle, Thor Sigurdsson, and Amos Hogan. Chester sat in a tense, rigid posture, while Thor and Amos had pushed back their tilting chairs and looked relaxed as they chatted. From the front row, Miss Annie was giving the selectmen a combination of sweet smiles and meaningful glares. Beside her were Roy, Lily, and Aiden on one side, and Morgan and Ryan on the other. The six formed a formidable team that would be vocally supportive of Holly’s aunts.

Three rows ahead of Holly, Micah was sitting beside Enid Fitzsimmons. Fitz was a pretty, lively girl with a compact, athletic body. She looked to be in her midtwenties and appeared
very
comfortable talking to Seashell Bay’s deputy sheriff.

The second Holly had seen Fitz and Micah chatting away, their heads intimately close together, Holly’s already nervous stomach had started to cramp. She knew she had no business being jealous, not after the message she’d delivered to Micah, but that didn’t make it any easier to see what a cute couple those two made. In fact, she had to clamp down hard on the impulse to march up to Micah and physically pull him away.

In the four days since their walk along Island Road, she’d seen Micah only once. That had been for about five minutes when he’d shown up at her aunts’ house to adjust the door on the new porch. Other than that awkward encounter, he’d become a ghost. Not that she blamed him. While they’d pledged their continuing friendship, she had no doubt they’d both come away from that conversation feeling like crap.

“Look at Thor and Amos chatting away up there as if they were just having a beer at the Pot,” Florence said grumpily. “You’d think those old bug catchers would be taking this more seriously, wouldn’t you? They’re probably griping about the price of diesel fuel or some such fool thing.”

Holly patted her aunt’s hand. “Now don’t go getting your blood pressure up, Aunt Florence. The meeting hasn’t even started yet.”

“Well, it’s about time it did.” Florence inched forward on her metal chair and stretched her neck high. “What are we waiting for, Chester?” she called out.

When a smattering of people started to applaud, Chester got to his feet. “I didn’t want to start without the representative from Night Owl, but here he is now.”

A tall, thin man in a blue suit strode confidently down the aisle to take a chair off to the side of the head table.

“I’d like to introduce Mr. Kevin Archer,” Chester said. “He’s the local district manager with Night Owl.”

Smiling broadly, Archer waved. “Hi, folks. Thank you, Selectman Buckle. I’m pleased to be here.”

Chester quickly outlined the events that had led up to the meeting, and ended by opening the floor for questions and statements. When a dozen hands went up, Chester pointed at the island’s most irrepressible octogenarian.

“I won’t say everything that’s on my mind tonight,” Miss Annie said, hitching up her jeans. “You all know my position on this application, since I was the one who put together the petition.” She pointed to the stack of papers piled in front of Chester.

Chester flashed an apologetic smile at Miss Annie as he squared up the stack.

“A huge number of us have already signed the petition, making it crystal clear that we don’t need or want a Night Owl store,” Miss Annie continued. “So I don’t see why we need to have much of a debate. I say the people have spoken, and it’s time to put an end to this nonsense.”

Even before she resumed her seat, the crowd began to buzz. Holly was surprised that Miss Annie hadn’t delivered one of her typically blistering tirades but had instead opted for a short, strong plea based on the strength of the petition. The only problem with that was unfortunately a lot of islanders had declined to sign too.

Though Morgan’s hand had shot up right away, Chester instead recognized Boyd Spinney, a vociferous Night Owl supporter. Though Spinney wasn’t exactly a beloved figure in Seashell Bay because of his noisy backing of the doomed car ferry proposal, he commanded the respect of the pro-development crowd.

Spinney tugged on his jacket and sucked in a deep breath, as if preparing for a pitched battle. “Chester, Thor, Amos—let’s face it. We just can’t keep blocking every proposal that would bring some new business to Seashell Bay.”

He then launched into a lengthy recitation of all the development projects that had failed to get off the ground over the past quarter century. He ended with a mournful reference to the sad fate of his pet project, the Bay Island Properties resort and housing development that had been deep-sixed by the defeat of the car ferry referendum. “I know a lot of you folks were against the Bay Island project, and I respect that. But you know what thumbing our noses at them earned us?”

“A reprieve?” Aiden said sarcastically.

“A Nobel Prize?” Jessie Jameson shouted out.

“A new ecoresort?” Lily chimed in.

Spinney glared. “Yeah, sure, you folks think it’s funny. No, what it earned us was a reputation for being a real bad place to do business.”

A number of people jeered or groaned.

“You know it’s true,” Spinney said loudly. “I figure it’s almost a miracle that a corporation like Night Owl would want to set up shop on our shores. I’m just thankful that they do, and you should be too. This place deserves a modern, well-supplied store that addresses
all
our needs. It would be a pure blessing not to have to run to the mainland every time you need to shop.”

That was a huge stretch since a convenience store—however big—would hardly eliminate the need to go into Portland to shop. Still, Spinney got a fair bit of applause when he sat down.

Florence grasped Holly’s hand. “I’m afraid he’s got quite a lot of supporters here.”

“So do we,” Holly said stoutly.

From the crowd’s reaction, she thought that certainly well more than half were against the permit. The selectmen, on the other hand, were another matter. By tracing the long history of islanders’ reluctance to embrace mainland businesses, Spinney seemed to have made his point effectively.

Morgan spoke next, focusing on the value of loyalty as well as the ability of the existing stores to adapt to islanders’ needs instead of corporate directives. Her staunch, heartfelt support left Holly blinking back tears. Beatrice started sniffling into her hankie.

Unfortunately, Morgan was followed by four speakers in a row that supported Night Owl with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The last speaker, Heywood Calhoun, a mainlander who owned two vacation rental properties, made a long-winded point about how the world had changed into a consumer culture, and that Seashell Bay needed to adapt to meet consumers’ needs, especially the tourists who brought in so much revenue. By the time Calhoun wound up, Florence was so agitated that Holly was ready to get her out of there.

Then, to her shock, Micah raised his hand.

Chester blinked, clearly as surprised as Holly was. “Go ahead, Micah,” he said, ignoring the other hands.

The room went silent as Micah rose. Though he was often in uniform at public events, tonight he wore old jeans and a brown, lightweight leather jacket over a black T-shirt. And boy, did he look hot. To Holly’s growing chagrin, Fitz apparently thought so too, since she was gazing up at him with open admiration. As were all the other single women at the meeting—some married ones too.

Micah gave a friendly nod to the selectmen, then turned in a slow circle as he scanned the room, making eye contact with just about everyone in attendance. It was a powerful tactic that riveted their attention. If he didn’t do it on purpose, he had mighty good instincts when it came to commanding a room. Then he turned sideways so he could speak to the front and still be mostly facing the locals.

“Thanks for the chance to say my piece. Folks, you know I usually don’t say anything at meetings like this. I don’t like taking sides unless I’m putting money down on college football.” He flashed a rueful smile that surely melted the panties off half the women in the room.

Including Holly’s.

“And you’re not very damn good at that,” Boone Cleary piped up.

Micah laughed along with the rest of the crowd. “You got that right. But I am going to take sides tonight.”

Holly blew out a shaky breath, trying to relax, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Micah. He was mesmerizing.

“Boyd, you and a couple of the others use the word
progress
a lot. Well, I guess it’s pretty hard to be against progress.” Micah lifted his broad shoulders in a dismissive shrug. “But what is progress? Is it building more subdivisions, destroying prime forests and farmland, and messing up our rivers and lakes? Is it building more and more roads so gigantic semis can haul more cheap goods to us even faster?” He gave his head a shake. “Lots of people would call all those things progress because they create business and make people money. I’m not denying that’s a good thing, but there’s a point where the downside outweighs the upside.”

When he paused, the only sound in the room was the ticking of the second hand on the big clock behind the head table. People were hanging on his words.

“You talk about consumer culture—getting what we want, when we want it,” Micah went on. “But to me, that means a race to get everything as cheap and as fast as possible, no matter the fallout. And that fallout comes down hard on small-business owners, people like Florence and Beatrice.”

“You tell ’em, Micah,” Brett Clayton said loudly.

Micah gave his friend a nod before continuing. “We all shop in the big-box stores in Portland, right? Sure, because they’ve got good prices and great selection. But what happened to all those small hardware stores, lumberyards, butchers, grocery stores, pharmacies, and other shops we used to see? Places run by owners who knew and cared about their customers. They’re gone, and I bet a lot of you miss them. Call me old-fashioned, but I sure do.”

“You know it, boy,” Roy Mayo said in loud voice. “Last time I went to one of those big-box stores, I couldn’t even find the damn bathroom. That’s holy hell on an old dog like me.”

Miss Annie smacked him on the arm. “Watch your language,” she barked to a smattering of laughter.

When the chuckles died down, Micah looked straight at Kevin Archer, the rep from Night Owl. “Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Archer. There’s nothing the matter with Night Owl or any of those big stores. You’re all just doing your thing. But the question is—do we need any of you in Seashell Bay?” He shook his head. “Not in my book.”

Micah turned around and looked straight at Holly, Florence, and Beatrice. “But I’ll tell you one thing we do need. We need the Jenkins General Store and Sam’s Island Market. Those stores are part of the fabric of Seashell Bay, of our way of life. They’re
us
. And they can adapt,
are
adapting. But if you grant this permit, soon Night Owl will be all we have left in Seashell Bay. Whether it takes a few months or a few years, it’ll happen as sure as there’ll be morning fog on the bay. Ask yourself, folks, is that really progress? To abandon those who’ve always been here for us?”

He directed his gaze at the selectmen. “It’s not my definition of progress, that’s for damn sure.”

Before his butt even hit the chair, Holly jumped to her feet and applauded harder than she’d ever applauded anything in her life. Micah, the most taciturn guy she knew, had hit it out of the park. Miss Annie raced up and hugged him, while Ryan and Aiden moved into the aisle to shake his hand. Roy Mayo stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out an earsplitting whistle.