A car horn beeped.
He turned, expecting to see a minivan or a little compact car waiting to pull into the driveway he was standing in, but instead he found a familiar face.
The brunette in the driver’s seat rolled down her window. “I thought that was you! What are you doing out here?”
Reliving the past. Trey stepped toward her. “Hiking to town. I had an unfortunate run-in with a cow on my way in.”
Norah arched a brow in question.
“The cow won,” he added.
The corners of her mouth twitched. “Careful, Gerald. Your city boy’s showing.”
“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. You haven’t exactly turned into a country girl since you moved down here.” Norah might’ve been Mississippian by birth, but she’d come back nearly two years ago from Chicago. “I wound up with a blowout and no spare. Cell phone was dead, so I couldn’t call anybody.”
“Good lord. Hop in. I’ll give you a ride.”
He circled around to the passenger side and climbed in.
“I didn’t realize you were coming back today,” she said.
It hadn’t been a planned trip. By rights, he should’ve been on a flight to London, overseeing the final stages of renovation planning for a new property there, but he’d felt drawn back to Wishful. It seemed he’d been feeling that pull more and more over the past eighteen months. As he’d had a full office suite built at The Babylon, he felt justified in doing some telecommuting. It was as close as he came to rest and relaxation these days.
Trey stretched out in the passenger seat. “I was coming in for your wedding anyway, so I thought I’d come early and work from here until. Particularly once I read your latest proposal.”
Norah Burke was one of the most brilliant marketing minds he’d ever known. He’d tried to hire her to run his marketing division at Peyton Consolidated, but she’d ultimately taken a job as Wishful City Planner—after convincing him to invest in assorted projects meant to revitalize the economically depressed town. She was the reason he’d come to Wishful. Part of the reason. His reasons for being here reached far beyond investment opportunities and into the realm of deeply personal—and possibly foolish. But he kept coming back, kept getting further involved in the affairs of the town. Eventually, he’d have to face the consequences.
“Oh, don’t get me started. Cam will murder me if anything else delays this wedding. I think he and the entire staff of City Hall ganged up to block off the city calendar so we could finally set a date.”
“You, my girl, are a workaholic.”
She glanced over at him and grinned. “Takes one to know one.”
“It is possible I resemble that remark,” he admitted. “But everything’s all squared away for the big day?”
“It is. You’ll get to see the church. I’ve got to swing by and drop off some paperwork on the way. I hope you don’t mind.”
“You’ll still get me to work faster than walking.” He noted more downed limbs as they drove. “Big storm last night?”
“It was, as Cam’s grandmother would say, a frog strangler. Lots of wind too. Hush was so freaked out she crawled under the bed and shook the whole thing. I suppose we should be grateful she wasn’t howling. I…” Norah trailed off, leaning forward in her seat. “No. Oh, no no no no.”
Hearing the alarm in her voice, Trey straightened.
Norah whipped into the small parking lot and skidded to a halt. They both stared at the fifty-foot oak tree sprawled, roots-up, across the church. The weight of the thing had caved in part of the roof and a chunk of the south wall, taking out at least two stained glass windows and letting in God knew how much rain.
“This is your church?” he asked quietly.
In answer, the unflappable, always-in-control woman in the driver’s seat burst into tears.
~*~
“Agnes Crockett is complaining about that stoplight at Market and Spring Street again.”
Mayor Sandra Crawford resisted the urge to bang her head against the desk. That defective stoplight had been the object of more contention…
“What do you want to do about it?” Avery asked.
“Put it on the agenda for the next City Council meeting.” It wasn’t the first time it had been on there and probably wouldn’t be the last. Their town was in considerably better shape financially than it had been, but they had other priorities. Like recovering from the $124,000 their previous city planner had embezzled from city coffers. Sandy still hadn’t gotten over the fact that had happened on her watch.