Graham said, his tone polite and neighborly. One corner of his mouth lifted as he added, “Judging from the beating you gave that tire, you’re the one I should watch out for in a bar fight, right?”
Quinn and Kendra laughed, while Charlie just stared at him. His voice was so deep and warm. It reminded her of molasses, or grits or something hot and Southern. The baritone sound poured into her body and curled into something warm and welcoming.
Then she realized that she had been rendered mute by a cowboy. It was humiliating. When she still couldn’t force her mouth to open, she averted her gaze again and instantly spied her chocolate-laden bag in the trunk.
She grabbed it, murmured a choked “Excuse me,” and limped towards the house as fast as she could with her foot throbbing with pain and her dignity in shreds.
Chapter 3
“As members of the city council, it’s your job to look out for this town’s best interests. And the best interests of this town…”
Graham Forbes blocked out the rest of the speech being given by Mayor Boyd Robbins. He had heard it all before during the six months he had spent on the Sibleyville City Council, a position he was still trying to figure out how he had gotten. The issue might change, but Robbins always found something supposedly in the town’s best interests that usually involved either he or his two sons profiting in one form or another.
Graham felt an ache growing at his temples and rubbed his forehead to soothe the pressure. He glanced around the small cramped meeting room in city hall. As usual, all the windows were shut tight, even though it was the middle of summer and the old building had never been upgraded to air conditioning. As usual, Robbins’ long-suffering wife, Alma, sat in a chair in the corner of the room, taking notes of everything Robbins said, although she usually stopped writing whenever anyone else spoke. And, as usual, the four other city council members managed to look intrigued, as if they had never heard this exact same speech before. And since the other four had gotten elected to the city council around the same time the telephone had been invented—and Robbins had been making the same speech about that long—Graham knew they must have.
Graham was the youngest person in the room by about three decades, and considering he was thirty-two years old, he wasn’t exactly young, and he was feeling older by the second. He wondered how his father had done this, year after year. Not only this, but everything else that came with living and operating a ranch in Sibleyville. Yet now Lance Forbes was finding it difficult even to endure the physical therapy that would get him back on track after a heart attack six months ago.
What had started as a three-week vacation to visit his father and help his mother with the farm had turned into six months and a city council position. Graham had started avoiding the increasingly insistent calls from his job, because he didn’t know what to say. His father was still playing sick and his mother’s eyes lit up every time she saw Graham walk into the house. The guilt was unbearable, but Graham had vowed to return to Tokyo after planting season ended. There were only three weeks remaining in the season, and given the long hours he and the workers had been putting in over the last month, Graham figured the farm was ahead of schedule.
“We have to get Max Sibley’s girls to see what a great place Sibleyville is, or they could sell the land right from under us.”
Graham snapped out of his brooding at the mention of the Sibleys. He hadn’t been able to get Quinn and Kendra Sibley out of his thoughts since leaving their property an hour ago. There definitely weren’t women like those two in this small town. The women were gorgeous and sophisticated, like the women he dated in Tokyo.
He had to admit there was no one like the other Sibley sister either. She had looked nothing like Quinn or Kendra. She had been thicker than the other women, more curvy than Kendra and less silicone-assisted than Quinn. Her thick brown hair had hung in limp waves to her shoulders.
Also, unlike her sisters, she had looked at him as if he were evil personified. Graham vowed to stay away from her. Bringing his attention back to the meeting at hand, he demanded more sharply then he intended, “What are you talking about, Robbins? The town owns the land.” Robbins glared at him. The two men had a mutual distrust and dislike for each other.
As six pairs of shocked eyes swung to him, Graham grimaced. He had forgotten his rule of not speaking at the meetings.
“We had a small problem in the seventies, Graham,” Velma Spears explained, her oversized eyeglasses obscuring half of her wrinkled, kind face. Velma told every citizen who came to speak at city council meeting that their speech was “lovely.” And she meant it.
“Small problem.” Boyd Robbins snorted at Velma’s understatement. “We had some real issues in this town. If you haven’t noticed, Forbes, this ain’t Tokyo—”
“I’ve noticed,” Graham muttered, dryly.
Boyd’s red face grew even more red. Boyd had been in the military for thirty years and it showed in his ramrod-straight posture, buzz-cut graying brown hair and constantly clenched jaw. He was in his late fifties, but after a lifetime in the sun, he looked closer to seventy. His skin was constantly a shade of red or maroon, and just looking at Graham sometimes made him turn purple.
“Boyd means that when we fall on our hard times, we can’t rely on tourist dollars or exports to hold us until times get better,” Angus Affleck, Graham’s father’s best friend, chimed in from the seat on Graham’s right. “The seventies were tough for all small towns. A lot of people left for big cities like San Francisco and L.A. We almost had to shut down the local elementary school. And without residents, we didn’t have a tax base or a consumer base. Main Street was almost shut down, not to mention the problems we had selling our crops. We needed help, and Max helped us.”
“He bailed out an entire town?” Graham asked, surprised.
“At a steep price,” Boyd said, his voice echoing in the small room because of his close proximity to the microphone on the table. As if he needed it. “He wanted the deeds to all the stores on Main Street.”
“He let us keep our ranches, Boyd,” Velma said, softly.
“Because he knew we’d stuff his lawyers down his throat, if he tried that,” Paul Robbins, Boyd’s brother and loyal supporter, chimed in from his seat on Graham’s left.
“Although his bank damn near owns half the ranches in town anyway,” Boyd grumbled.
“He made a lot of improvements to Main Street. We wouldn’t have the clock tower or the movie theatre without Max,” Velma continued, her voice becoming more insistent.
“Some people think throwing around money will buy them respect. Max Sibley was a rat.” Boyd’s face had gotten so red, he looked on the verge of imploding.
“From what I understand of those Sibley girls, they’re just as bad as Max,” Paul said, taking over for his brother, who was too overcome with anger to continue. “One of them is even an actor on one of those soap operas.”
“Diamond Valley,” Angus offered, cheerfully. Graham looked over in surprise at the grizzled rancher and part-time sheriff of the town, whose skin was like well-worn leather after decades in the sun.
“I don’t care about the name of her stupid show,” Paul snapped, sending Angus an annoyed glance. “The point is, she’s an actress, and we all know what those people are like. We don’t want an actress in charge of the future of this town, nor the other ones. One is a stockbroker in New York—”
“I bet she had something to do with Enron,” Boyd interrupted, suspiciously.
Paul continued, “And the other one works at some Black museum… Oh, excuse me, Graham, African-American museum.”
Graham ignored the dig and concentrated on the Sibley sisters. Judging from Kendra’s conservative dark suit, tight enough to display that she worked out on a consistent basis and could probably kick a grown man’s ass, Kendra was the stockbroker. Quinn’s