To Get Me To You: A Small Town Southern Romance (Wishful Romance Book 1) (14 page)

By the time French roast dripped through the filter, Norah had commandeered the coffee table. Her assortment of new notepads was laid out by size, and she was in the process of organizing the pens by color.

“You had multiple colored highlighters and sticky notes when you studied in college, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did. There were flashcards, too. I made everybody play Trivial Pursuit to study.”

Amused and happy to have her in his space, alone, he flopped down beside her on the sofa and tugged her into his lap. He cut off her squeal of surprise with a kiss.

“Mmm, I’ve been waiting for that for days.” Nibbling his way down her throat, he said, “Been waiting to get you here all to myself for longer.”

“Stop.” Norah’s voice was a trifle breathless as she slapped a hand to his chest and shoved back. “We need to talk.”

“Talk.” The universal warning signal for relationships everywhere. Where was she going with this?

“I—oh for heaven’s sake, I can’t do this in your lap.” She extricated herself and took a breath. “Look, what we’re trying to do here is huge. It’s going to take a lot of work, and I need to be at the top of my game. I can’t do that if you’re scrambling my brains every other minute with your mouth.”

Cam fought the grin for all of two seconds.

“Don’t look so pleased with yourself, Campbell.” Her narrow-eyed glare was entirely ruined by the twitch of her own lips

“Hard not to be when you’re exactly where I want you. Almost.” He managed not to glance at the door to the bedroom as he curled his hand around hers and stroked a thumb over her wrist. Her pulse jumped and that pleased him as well.

“This—you and me—it’s complicated.”

“Doesn’t have to be.” He didn’t want it to be. He wanted things to be simple.

“It’s complicated.” Those expressive eyes were full of so much doubt and uncertainty. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with my life.”

“So? You don’t have to have a plan for everything all the time.”

“I do. Do you know the last time I didn’t know exactly where my life was going and how I was going to get there? Fifth grade, when my parents divorced and had to sort out custody, which was really trying to work out whose career trying to save the world was inconvenienced the least by having to deal with me. I don’t just bounce along without a plan. Ever. Because I have to
know
I have somewhere to land.”

Cam bled for her. He knew what it was to be abandoned by a parent because of career. But at least he’d had his mom. He’d always been able to count on her. On the rest of his family. He wanted to tug Norah back into his arms, but he didn’t think she’d let him. Not just now.

“Miranda and her family—
your
family and this town have been that for me. So I intend to win this war. I won’t watch what happened to Morton happen here. I can’t.”

She carried so much guilt. He wanted to ease that burden for her but didn’t know what he could say that she would believe. So he just brushed the hair back from her face and said in all seriousness, “We won’t.”

Norah shifted back, as if his touch pained her.

Cam felt the first hints of true unease slither through him. “What’s wrong?”

“It can’t work, Cam.”

His heart began to thud. “What can’t?”

Her eyes, those lovely, dark eyes, were full of apology. “Us.”

The hand he still held was trembling, and she looked on the verge of tears. But he couldn’t shove down the temper and disbelief, “I think the last two weeks are pretty damned good evidence to the contrary.”

“This isn’t about compatibility or attraction. But there’s no future here. There never was. I was always leaving, at some point. I have a life, a career to salvage. You just made me forget that for a while. Staying to run this campaign is a delay of the inevitable. We’re not fling kind of people, and I think it’s wiser to stop things before they go any further.”

“I pretty much blew wisdom all to hell the moment I decided to kiss you.”

“We got in over our heads. I’m just trying to do the right thing here. I don’t want to hurt you, but my life isn’t here. Not beyond the temporary.”

More than half the reason he’d asked her to stay was to give her a legitimate reason not to go back, to continue to explore what was growing between them. And she was all set to walk away.

Same song, different verse
.

“If you truly think the life you left behind is worth more than what you’ve found here, then you’ve just failed Life Lessons 101. Miserably.”

She flinched and pulled her hand free. “We’ve established that’s the one area Burkes regularly fail at. Please don’t be angry. We have to be able to work together on this campaign.”

Of course. The campaign. No matter what was going on between them, he needed her to help save his town. She’d agreed to stay, however long it took. So he’d use that and find a way to convince her that there were more important things in life than career and prove that she had a place here, if only she was willing to take it.

So Cam stopped arguing. “Fine.”

Norah blinked at him. “Fine?”

“That’s not unreasonable logic.” Cam went to pour coffee because he needed to put some physical distance between them. “I don’t like it, don’t agree with it. But there are bigger things at stake here than us. We don’t have a lot of time to put this together. Just two weeks until the next City Council meeting. What’s next?”

Her shift into work mode was almost like seeing a set change for a play. She squared her shoulders, shutting her emotions away, and reached for one of the legal pads. Cam wished he could do the same as easily.

“Who has final say on this decision? Is this going to be a vote of the City Council or will it go out for a public ballot?”

“As the law currently stands, it’s a City Council vote.”

“So our goal is to persuade the decision makers to say no.” She scribbled that at the top. “There are two avenues to do that, and we’ll follow through on them both. On your side, you’ll be fighting this from within the system of city government. You know, or can find out, all the steps in the whole process of going from proposal to approval where there’s an opportunity to stop them in their tracks.”

“There aren’t nearly enough of those steps for my taste.”

“Nevertheless, we’re working with what we’ve got. You’ll be focusing on how the store would harm the community and the economy—and first thing tomorrow you should request an economic impact study from an independent contractor. Morton didn’t do that and should have.”

Cam stole one of the smaller pads and began to make his own list. “What about you?”

“My efforts will be geared toward showing how many members of the community support a ‘no’ vote.”

“Considering how many people we hypothesize will want a ‘yes,’ how do you plan to do that?”

“By educating the public—and myself—on the hidden costs of big box stores and creating a campaign to get the word out about that. But to do that I need data. About forty percent of persuasion is knowing your audience. I want to do a focus group with the local Chamber of Commerce.”

And a challenge straight out of the gate.
“That’s gonna be a bit tough. The Chamber of Commerce is more or less defunct.”

“How defunct?”

“Well, I can’t really remember the last time they met. They never formally disbanded, but they haven’t actually
done
anything in a good five, maybe seven years. Not since I bought the nursery, and I’m technically a member.”

“Well then, now’s the time to revive it. Local businesses are going to be the biggest potential allies in this fight, as they’re the ones who have the most to lose.”

He couldn’t fault her logic. “I’ll make some calls, put something together.”

“Good. Let me know when and where. If we can get a venue with a marker or chalkboard, that would be really helpful, but in a pinch I can pick up a flip chart and easel.” She began listing things out in a smaller notebook.

“Should be able to set something up at the community center. I’m pretty sure they’ve got markerboards floating around there somewhere. I’ll go by and book the space tomorrow.”

“Good. Do you think they’d be willing to show up out of concern and civic duty or should we offer incentives?”

He offered her a steaming mug. “Incentives?”

“Feeding people is always a popular way to get butts in chairs.”

“I expect we can get people to show up either way.”

“Then we’ll save that for when we have a head count to see if it’s within the budget. What
is
the budget?”

“Budget?” When he’d concocted this plan, he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“My skills aren’t the only expense of a marketing campaign.”

Maybe it’s a good thing she decided to do this pro bono.
“I’d have to do some figuring.”

“This isn’t a big city, so the big ticket items like TV spots are unnecessary and wouldn’t be hitting our target audience anyway. We’ll focus on guerrilla marking and low budget, grassroots tactics.” She made more notes, this time on one of the larger pads.

“Guerrilla marketing? Do I need to pick up some greasepaint and a ghillie suit?”

“Guerrilla marketing focuses on tactics outside the traditional realm—thinking outside the box instead of focusing on mass marketing through traditional media. Ideally we’d have a much longer period of time to build something, but since we don’t, it’s vital that we define our target audience, figure out who the best local influencers are—that’s where I hope to loop in the local business owners—and get them to help spread the word. This is a small town. Everybody knows everybody else, and gossip is the currency of the day. Our goal is to get that working to our advantage to get a Shop Local campaign off the ground.”

He blinked at her, trying to process everything she’d said. “Wow. That’s…I don’t know. A bit more elaborate than I was expecting.”

“That’s not even a full basic prospectus. What exactly did you think you were asking me to do?”

He’d been trying to give her a reason to stay that she could justify without getting into the murky issue of their relationship. The relationship she’d just broken off. “I didn’t look much beyond the fact that you were an ally. After the City Council meeting tonight, those were in pretty short supply.”

Cam saw her reach toward him, as if to lay her hand over his, then stop. “Well, I am that. I love Wishful. I always have. If I can do something to preserve it, I absolutely will. But we have to have a plan for that. I’ll do some research, see if there happens to be some kind of smoking gun of bad press on GrandGoods, but chances are there won’t be. We need to be prepared to give the town an alternative.”

“An alternative?”

“Part of why GrandGoods is going to be so appealing is because it’s something different from the status quo. If they have no other options, people will make the shitty choice just because it’s there.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. Burgess—the City Planner—has always had this tendency to over-emphasize industrial recruiting. I understand that. It’s the loss of industry that got us into this financial state to start with, but in all of his efforts to woo companies into coming here, he pays almost no attention to improving the quality of life in the community. Prosperous small town economies are built on the foundation of strong communities. We’ve lost so much in the last decade, and part of that is community spirit. But we only have two weeks. I have no idea what we could do in that span to remind people of that, let alone give them a true economic alternative. We have virtually no resources, little support. And as much as I believe you are Wonder Woman, I don’t know if even you can pull this off.”

“Have a little faith, Cam, and people might surprise you.”

“I’ll do my best.” But he was afraid faith, like allies, was in very short supply.

~*~

The streets of downtown Wishful were all but empty, shrouded in winter quiet. In another hour or so, the get to school and work hustle would begin, and businesses would open for another day. For now, it was just Cam and the silence of the green, exactly as he liked it. Even in the winter, it felt like a postcard of his own little slice of paradise. He’d fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.

Wanting to stretch his legs, he parked across the green and walked the couple of blocks to his destination. With the nursery being somewhat out from town, he made it a point to drive in and patronize other local businesses at least once most days. He considered it good for the local economy and part of his job as a City Councilman to be visible and social—connected to his constituents. As he was bound for City Hall, he set his sights on The Daily Grind and a caffeinated form of olive branch to hopefully smooth his way.

As soon as he stepped through the door, Cassie Callister called out, “Just the man I wanted to see! Do a girl a favor and give me the scoop on this proposed store before Mama Pearl hears.”

Being one of the two major gossip hubs of town, Cassie and the staff of The Grind were in a constant competition with Mama Pearl at Dinner Belles to be the first to know anything worth knowing. Given the general consensus that Mama Pearl was somehow psychic—Violet swore to it on a stack of Bibles—Cam was pretty sure she was in a perpetual lead.