Ridiculously pleased, she smiled back. “I was busy.”
Lame excuse. I was stupid would have been a better explanation and far more accurate. Why hadn’t she gone looking for him when he didn’t appear on the balcony? Well, she knew. She had no next steps, no reason to seek him out other than to see him, and that didn’t seem fair when she couldn’t figure out how to stop being herself long enough to go with the moment.
“Me too,” he said. “I would have made time for you though.”
With that promise ringing in her ears, she cleared her throat and called out, “Thanks for coming everyone.”
The noise level in the diner lowered not one iota until Caleb clapped his hands. “Hi, everyone. Havana has a plan she’d like to share with you. Ask questions, get clear on your part, and then let’s vote on it. Show of hands will do. I’ll let you know when. Havana?”
She fumbled with the projector she’d hooked up to her laptop and somehow got the thing to display on the back wall of Ruby’s after the second try. She’d practiced the presentation four times but somehow still managed to forget the part about Damian’s timeline, so she tacked that onto the end, after she’d outlined her vision for the downtown area.
“In conclusion, we’ve been given six months to get this from a CAD drawing to reality, so we’re going to need everyone’s help.”
The crowd buzzed like a hornet’s nest in the path of a brush fire, which did not bolster her confidence level.
“Six months?” Mavis J called out. “Why the arbitrary deadline?”
“Well, it’s not arbitrary,” Havana explained with a short laugh. “It’s a requirement from the resort developers. If we don’t get the town up and running, they?
?re going to need a different draw for tourists, and they’ll have a really short window to get that decided since the resort construction will be in full swing by then. So in reality, this is very generous—”
“This is our town,” Farmer Moon cut in with a scowl. “I don’t see why an outside developer should get a say in how long we have to make this work.”
“Well…” Havana took a deep breath as her stomach flipped in on itself. “The fact of the matter is that they wanted the shopping center and—”
“We were supposed to get to vote on the shopping center,” Lennie reminded everyone, his tattoos rippling as he crossed his bare arms. “I vote no.”
Several others in the crowd murmured their agreement and nodded their heads. Right before her eyes, her control over the room vanished and took with it most of her composure. This was a disaster. But typical. She had no influence with them and lacked the ability to find the right leverage to sway them. Nothing had changed. These people were not on her side, nor did they have any intention of listening to her.
“Folks.” Caleb’s smooth voice cut through the noise easily, and everyone stopped talking. “You don’t get to railroad Havana’s presentation. This is something she worked really hard on for a long time.”
Dumbfounded, she stared at him as he defended her. Defended her to the entire room, as if they were a unit and when someone went after what was his, he pushed back.
“In fact,” he continued, his voice filling the spaces between people and all those inside her too. “She’s the one who convinced Damian Scott to let us try this. He was going to say no, I could tell. But Havana cares about this town and about all of you. You owe her your attention, and frankly, you owe her for this one chance we’ve been given to show everyone from here to Austin that Superstition Springs is open for business. Now quiet down.”
Oh, dear heavens. Havana’s heart slid right out of her chest and fell into Caleb’s hands, whether he’d meant to catch it or not.
That’s what a real man did to show a woman he cared about her. Caleb’s loyalty to Havana had been hauled out and put on display for the entire town to see, and dang if her greedy little soul hadn’t soaked up every word.
The mayor wasn’t hers. She was his, lock, stock, and barrel. Havana was Team Doritos, one half of a stellar pig-wrangling duo and one hundred percent in love with him. There was no going back.
The “but” in Serenity’s prediction had saved her bacon. Work success may overshadow the desire for a relationship, and a problem may arise in becoming a bit too pushy or aggressive. This is a turnoff to the person receiving your advances, but there is an opportunity to meet a new love through a business colleague or work-related event.
She was a mess of a control freak who let her personality quirks overshadow something great. But. She had an opportunity for new love if she’d get over herself for once.
With her pulse going a mile a minute, she delved back into the presentation, this time with her spine straight and her mind clear. Within ten minutes, she had a majority show of hands voting yes for her town plan.
It was okay that she hadn’t been able to influence them, also known as bending people to her will because that had been the only way she knew how to take care of people. Instead of demanding control, this time, she’d earned the right to be in the middle of this town, leading with her heart, Caleb by her side. He filled her gaps and then some.
Finally she knew what her next steps were.
Nineteen
After Havana’s amazing presentation, Caleb assumed she’d want to spend some time mingling and working the room to get people organized. But she pushed through the wall of Lennie and Mavis J straight to his side, grabbed his hand, and forcibly hauled him from the diner without giving him the option to peep out a word.
Not that he was complaining. Her skin warmed his as she led him straight to the stairs clinging to the side of the old hotel and started clambering. He followed her to the balcony, content to let her take the lead in complete silence because there was too much expectation zinging between them to speak. Too many things he wanted to say. Too many possibilities for how the next few minutes could change everything and not in a good way.
This was the tipping point in their relationship, when it would go one way or the other. There was no question in his mind about that. The heavy expectation and awareness laced every molecule in his body, in the atmosphere. The tension threatened to break him apart, but he had a lot of practice holding himself together with sheer determination. After all, he’d been doing exactly that since al-Sadidiq.