Page 67 of Where She Belongs

“His assistant, officially.” She glanced at the clerk, then touched Tate’s arm and steered him a few steps toward the enormous stone fireplace, out of earshot. “You’re not the first person to come looking for him, and you won’t be the last, so let me save you the morning. He’s not going to see you. And if you make enough noise down here that he hears about it, you’ll have done your cause more harm than good.”

“My cause.” Tate huffed out something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “It’s not a cause, ma’am. It’s my home.”

She waited. That surprised him. Most people who let him say that sentence were only waiting on their turn to talk.

“That parcel backs onto near a third of my family’s land and most of the Black farm beside it,” Tate said. “There’s a helipad in your father’s proposal. I’ve got a neighbor over there with three goats and a barn she rebuilt out of her own pocket this summer, and I’ve got horses that get skittish when a truck delivers supplies. You can put all that in a report if it makes anybody feel better. Nobody upstairs is going to read it.”

“No,” she agreed. “They aren’t.”

Her mouth moved and stopped. “I know,” she said. “For what it’s worth.”

“Does it help?” Tate asked. “Saying so?”

That earned him a look. Not offended. More like she was working out how much of an answer he’d earned this early.

“I’m the one who comes down,” she said. “That’s the job. He stays upstairs, and I come down and I’m decent to people, and they drive home feeling better about it, and the paperwork gets done anyway.” She said it evenly, worn smooth from handling. “So, no. It doesn’t help. It only makes the part before easier on everybody.”

Tate had nothing ready for that.

It wasn’t worth much. But it wasn’t nothing, either, and that was the part that threw him. He’d driven out here braced for a villain and been met instead by a tired young woman being kinder than her job required.

“You’d be one of the neighbors, then,” she said.

“Tate Dennison. My family’s property runs along the east side of the parcel your father’s after.”

She nodded, like she was filing the name somewhere she’d want it later.

“There’ll be a hearing eventually,” she said. “When there is, come to it. Bring everyone you know. That’s the honest advice.”

“Why would you tell me that?”

For a second she looked like she might answer it straight. Then the small practiced smile came back on. “Because it’s the only advice I’m allowed to give away.”

She went off toward the elevators without hurrying, and Tate was left standing by the fireplace with his hat in his hands and no idea what he’d accomplished.

The far table by the window was empty. Whoever had been sitting there had left most of a cup of coffee going cold.

Nothing. That was what.

The drive home was worse than the drive out. Somewhere past the halfway mark, Rylee’s voice showed up in the cab with him, clear as if she were sitting there. You’re still allowing everything else around you to become a priority.

She’d said it to his face at the market. He’d snapped at her for it. And not one day later he’d gotten up before dawn and chased the developer to his hotel.

Tate’s hands flexed on the wheel.

Nobody needed to know about this. It had come to nothing anyway. The brush-off had been polite, at least. He’d apologize to Rylee properly once things settled, and this whole stupid errand could stay between him and that overpriced lobby.

And he had gotten something, if he was honest about it. A name he could put to the man. The word of the only person in that building who’d tell him the truth, and a hearing that was coming whether the mayor posted it or not. He could work with that. He’d have the whole county in that room.

Nobody would ever have to know where he got it.

He told himself that the rest of the way home.

He almost believed it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Unsteady didn’t begin to describe how Rylee felt lately. Every single day she had the strangest sense of dread. Like she’d been pushed to the edge of a ski slope without the gear and was about to topple over.