To Get Me To You: A Small Town Southern Romance (Wishful Romance Book 1) (26 page)

“I certainly like the
idea
of that.”

“The fact is, we don’t
need
what GrandGoods is offering. We don’t need someone from outside to come in and save us. Not at that kind of expense. We can take care of our own if we’re just willing to work together to find a solution that will truly benefit the community.”

“That’s not going to be a popular position,” Hank said.

“It’s not our job to be popular.” Cam had resigned himself to that a long time ago. “It’s our job to work in the best interests of Wishful. And that means looking at long-term impact. Look, I don’t want to belabor the point. Just promise me you’ll consider that when you cast your vote about GrandGoods and their proposal.”

“Fair enough.” Grace packed the soil around the roots of some ivy. Dusting her hands off, she straightened, looking at something back toward the green. “Is that Abe Costello?”

“That’s sure as heck his championship smoker.”

Cam turned to look. “What on earth?” As he watched, Abe backed the enormous trailer onto the green. “I’d best go see what this is about. Can you two finish up these planters and get them in place?”

“Go ahead, son. We can handle a bunch of pansies,” Hank said.

The truck was parked and the driver out of the cab by the time Cam made it over.

“Uh, Abe. Whatcha doing with Black Beauty here?”

The old man merely grunted and lowered the trailer foot. “Got a bunch of volunteers. They gotta eat. Least we can do to feed ’em for their trouble. McSweeney’s is donating fixins, the Rotary Club is donating burgers and hot dogs for lunch, the Kiwanis Club is demolishing the butcher section for supper, and the Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian women’s groups are in some kind of competition to donate sides.”

Cam blinked at him, his brain not quite catching up to what he’d heard. “You’re planning to feed the volunteers?”

“That’s what I said. Don’t just stand there, boy. Help me get this wood out of the truck.”

Cam leapt into action.

Smoke was curling toward the sky by the time he got back to the landscaping. As the afternoon progressed and the scents of grilling meat filled downtown, more tables and tents popped up on the green. Clay Turner hauled out the PA system from the community center and added a party feel to the proceedings, playing DJ while the work progressed at a furious pace.

It shouldn’t have come together so fast. Not given the state downtown was in that morning. But by the time the news van pulled up late that afternoon, every business downtown had at least one fresh coat of paint, windows sparkled, displays had been updated, and the concrete planters had been set in intervals along Main Street, a pop of color that tied in with the new hanging baskets mounted on all the light poles. Teams were working on getting up new awnings as the reporter climbed out.

Norah appeared from somewhere, managing to look polished and put together in her jeans and camp shirt, despite the paint liberally streaking her legs. She shook hands with the reporter and launched into an animated explanation of what was going on, gesturing to various businesses along Main Street.

His mother stepped up to join him.

“Hey.” Cam pulled her in for a one armed hug. “I haven’t seen you all day.”

“I’ve been recovering the booths at Dinner Belles. They’re a bit harder than the dining room chairs I did last year, but they came together.”

“It seems everything’s coming together. In more ways than one.”

She looked around in satisfaction. “This is amazing. I haven’t seen this kind of community spirit and unity in years. It’s all because of you and Norah.”

“We make a good team.” Cam turned his gaze back to where she stood with the reporter. “But none of this would’ve happened without her. She single-handedly brought in a freaking army. Just by asking.”

“Sometimes that’s all it takes, for someone to have the courage to ask. She’s not afraid to do that. She doesn’t expect everyone to jump at the snap of her fingers, and she’s not…entitled like her father, but she’s not afraid to ask because she knows her mind and she knows her worth. I hope you know it, too.”

“I’ve been counting my blessings since the day she walked into my life.”

“Good.” Leaning up to press her cheek to his, she said, “In case nobody else has said it, thanks for taking the hard stance on this GrandGoods thing, baby. It’s what needed to be done.”

“For the first time, I’m starting to believe that with Norah’s help, it just might be enough.”

Chapter 15

“Valentine’s Day may be over, but love is still in the air here in the tiny town of Wishful. Residents and volunteers gathered today to give downtown some much needed TLC. I’m here with Norah Burke, public relations chairwoman of the citizen’s coalition behind the project. Can you tell us a little about what’s going on here?”

Norah leaned forward from the sofa, her hand clamped around Cam’s as she and the rest of the Campbells watched the interview on the ten o’clock news. The station played the whole thing, unedited, as she succinctly explained the origins of the coalition, the threat to their small town way of life, and their hope of reminding the people of what’s really important. She came off charming, erudite, and welcoming, finishing up with an invite to everyone in the viewing area to come by and see what they’d been missing. The camera cut from her to a sequence of shots showing updates in progress or finished, before panning back to the green and the cookout, where the reporter remarked about the outpouring of support from the community for the volunteers. That observation was backed up by a half dozen one liners of gratitude from said volunteers, capped off by Chelsea Patterson, who said “From the moment we arrived, they made us feel like we were home.”

“There you have it. The restoration of this little slice of Southern Americana, where visitors will find friendly faces and a touch of home. And, if they’re lucky, a little romance in the process.” This last was accompanied by a zoom in on Cam, who’d surprised Norah with a deep dip and an enthusiastic kiss to celebrate the success of the day. She hadn’t realized they’d still been filming. “I’m Deanna Fossett, WTVA News. Back to you, Cathy.”

Norah leapt off the couch executed a victory boogie around the den. “Yes. Yes! You cannot
buy
coverage like that.”

“The camera loves you,” Cam remarked.

She waved that off. “You’re biased. But tying Wishful to the idea that it feels like home. Genius. People
love
that. God bless, Chelsea. I would absolutely hire that girl if I could.”

“Why don’t you?” Aunt Liz asked.

“Well, aside from the fact that she hasn’t graduated yet and isn’t actually looking for a job, I’m not being paid myself, so I would have nothing to pay
her
, even if she did want to come work for me.”

“You don’t right
now,
but you could. Did you ever consider opening your own firm?”

“That would require a lot of capital, a lot of risk for not very good odds of success. Under the best of circumstances the majority of small businesses fail within two years. These aren’t the best of circumstances. A town of five thousand doesn’t have a lot of need for what I do.”

“I think the last couple of months have proven that to the contrary.” Cam snagged her hand and tugged her into his lap.

Exhausted, she tumbled into it, snuggling in and sliding an arm around his shoulders so she could finger the fine hair at his nape. She could go to sleep right here…

Norah realized in the expectant pause that she was supposed to respond and worked to keep her brain online for just a little longer. “I’ve done good work for the coalition, but that’s not a paying job, nor is it going to turn into one, unfortunately. The city can’t afford to hire me, even if they
were
inclined to create a new position. I’ve seen your books. The budget’s an absolute mess, and I don’t know who’s doing the accounting, but I think they’re dyslexic because there are a lot of discrepancies in the numbers I saw.”

“Wait, what?” Cam stopped stroking her back.

“In those city records I analyzed for the last decade, the numbers are all kinds of wonky. I’m sure it’s not as bad as it seemed. I’m not an accountant, after all, and I didn’t dig all that deep. But really, y’all should look into proper accounting software to keep up with stuff. All those paper ledgers leave so much room for error.”

“I’ll have a word with the comptroller,” Sandra said. “That’s something that I admit I let slide without enough oversight during my treatment.”

“But back to the question at hand,” Aunt Liz insisted.

Norah felt a prickle of annoyance. They meant well, all of them. But this wasn’t a topic of conversation she really wanted to deal with right now. It was ruining her lovely high from the day’s success. Wanting to stay and being
able
to stay were two entirely different things, and she lived in the real world. “I am a marketing executive. And Wishful
doesn’t
have much need of that.” God knew, she didn’t have the energy to contemplate a total career change, even if she wanted one.

“How big a geographic area does metro Chicago cover?” Mitch asked.

“I don’t have a clue. Why?”

Mitch googled it from his phone. “Nearly 5500 square kilometers. That’s something like 3400 square miles.”

“Okay.” If there was a point, she was missing it.

“It’s got a relative population density of about nine and a half million people,” Reed added.

“And if I were half awake, I could probably give you an arm-long list of entertaining factoids about it. I still don’t see where you’re going with this.”

“My point is that’s a lot of physical territory, and it includes a lot of communities. And I know for a fact your firm did work outside the city.”

“So?” Still baffled, Norah wondered what she was missing with her sleep deprived brain.

Cam slid a hand beneath the fall of her hair to rub at the knots left by the hours of painting and hauling. “I think the point he’s making is that just because Wishful is only five thousand people, there are a lot more towns in the area. It isn’t the sort of population density of Chicago, but—well, to use the same argument GrandGoods is using to base a store here, you’ve got a few hundred thousand people in an hour and a half radius. A whole lot of them are business owners. If you opened your own firm here as a home base, there’s nothing stopping you from reaching out to them.”

“Or from reaching out further than that online,” Miranda added. “You’re good with web work. I’m sure there are all sorts of potential clients you wouldn’t necessarily need to meet with in person. For stuff like that, it wouldn’t matter where you were based. And there’s no rule that says you can’t travel to meet somebody if you needed to. You did that with Helios all the time.”

Feeling hemmed in, Norah struggled to find patience and a rational argument that they’d accept. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the capital to start her own firm. But money wasn’t the only consideration. She had the will-power and the know-how but absolutely no reputation to speak of outside world she’d walked away from. There was no way to do what she’d done before. There wouldn’t be the epic corporate accounts, the fast-paced, high-powered
everything
without the glowing recommendation of Philip Vargas.

But had she missed
any
of that since she came to Wishful? Had she once given thought to her corner office or the intra-office politics that had been so much a part of the game that kind of career demanded? She certainly didn’t miss Chicago itself. For all that most of her life had been spent in big cities, she appreciated the slower pace of small towns. And she appreciated the people, the personal, the messy community ties she’d found in Wishful. All the things her colleagues would’ve been scrambling to escape, she actually
liked
. She loved that people here knew her name and gave a damn about her personal life—even if that was mostly as a source of good-natured gossip—because they wouldn’t ask if they didn’t care, if they didn’t feel that in some small way, she was one of theirs.

Norah had wanted that all her life.

But the question of whether she’d be happy in Wishful wasn’t actually at issue. No, the question was whether she could be successful in Wishful. They’d made strides, begun to implement changes that would, over time, help keep the town afloat. But afloat was a long way from financially viable as a business location. It wasn’t that she was looking to replicate her six figure salary. The cost of living in Mississippi was the lowest in the country. But she had serious doubts about whether there was sufficient business, even in that hour and a half radius, to make a marketing firm, even one with a payroll of just her, sustainable. They needed to make the
town
sustainable first.

Don’t you want a piece of that? Don’t you want to save this place every bit as much as Cam? Who better to spearhead that movement than you?

So maybe it
wasn’t
such a crazy idea. It would be hard work. Harder even than she’d put in on this anti-GrandGoods campaign. But if she could pull it off…