She left my office, and I called in Sinclair. She’d be the first I’d tell my plans to. She was ready to be mayor and would do a good job and get experience if I left now so that she became acting mayor until the election.
“Are you sure you don’t want to be the presiding mayor over the Harvest Festival? It will be your last one. You can have one last hurrah and goodbye to the town,” she said as she took a seat in the chair in front of my desk.
“No.” The last thing I needed was to stand on a stage as the disgraced mayor of Salvation. “However, Ryder is supposed to play—” I’d seen the paper with Ryder’s appearance at Stark’s fundraiser for Wallace.
She growled. “I’m so mad at him.”
“Yet, he’s still breathing, I take it.”
She shrugged. “
He’s my brother, and I believed him when he said he didn’t know it was a fundraiser for my opponent.”
“But he had to know he was playing for Stark.”
She blew out a breath. “Stark offered him a crapload of money, and with Trina being pregnant, he felt he needed to take it.”
“I get it. People do crazy things for money,” I said, thinking my actions were crazier than Ryder’s.
“Plus, he wants to use the money to negotiate a deal to buy Salvation Station out from under Stark. I can get behind that.”
I laughed. “Good move. Stark won’t like it. Ryder will be a target.”
She cocked her head. “Are you a target? You helped us stop the prison.”
I looked down at the top of my desk as I tapped my fingers on my draft resignation letter. “That’s why I need to talk to you.”
“Oh?”
I liked Sinclair a lot. And I trusted her. That didn’t mean spilling all my secrets was easy, but it had to be done. I shifted, leaning my forearms on my desk as I looked at her.
“Why do I feel like the world is about to end?” she asked.
“Yours is about to start. I’m going to resign.”
“What!”
I’d have thought she’d like the idea, but she stared at me like she was pissed. Sitting back in my chair again, I told her the story of how the mayor of Salvation married his assistant to save his friend’s farm, how he fell for her and lost his friend, and how now Stark was going to use it against him.
“So what!” she said when I finished. “A guy like Stark probably has a graveyard-sized number of skeletons in his closet.”
That was probably true. “I suspect you’re right, but because the marriage is ending before a year, I’ll need to repay the trust. I need the time to figure out how to do that.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How much are you talking about?”
“A lot.”
She bit her lip. “Will you have to sell?”
I looked down. “Maybe.”
“Ah, hell, Mo. What can I do?”
Sucking in a breath, I shook my head. “My bed. I’ll lay in it.”
“Bullshit. You have friends. And where’s Brooke in all this?”
“She’s with her father, where she should be.”