might be a Carrigan, but they know I’m not a part of this project.” He finished his last forkful of egg and sat back. “Nobody around here is too happy about the drilling, as you might have noticed.”
The diner’s owner Suze, a heavyset blonde who’d been whipping around the room removing plates and taking orders with her usual efficiency, paused by their table. “You want something?”
This should be interesting. Lane was sure Suze would be the toughest nut for Sarah to crack. The place was hung with dream catchers and cheap prints of wolf packs howling dramatically at the moon. Between the decor she’d chosen and the Birkenstocks on her feet, Lane was sure Suze wouldn’t take kindly to an invasion from the Carrigan Corporation.
“Oh, hi, Suze.” Sarah gave the woman a smile, but the waitress was all business.
“You want something or what?”
“No, thank you.” Sarah rose and laid a dollar on the table, despite the fact she hadn’t eaten anything. She was blinking fast, clearly hurt by Suze’s deliberate snub. “I need to get going.”
“You do that,” Suze said. “You just do that.”
Chapter 27
Sarah sat in the car and seethed, staring at the parking meter. She had fifteen minutes left, but she’d practically been kicked out of the diner. Not physically, but emotionally. And it hadn’t felt good.
Gripping the wheel with both hands, she rested her forehead on the cool plastic. The morning hadn’t been a total loss. She knew more now than she had when she’d arrived.
She knew everybody hated her.
She couldn’t say she was surprised. She’d dreaded her first encounter with the town. But it had been even worse than she expected. Sure, she’d been a bitch in the years before she’d left, but she’d been a kid, a kid with a lot of problems. Couldn’t they give her a break?
Apparently not. Lane said they knew she was there as a Carrigan representative, but why would they assume that was a bad thing? One look around that diner would make it clear to anybody that the town was fading away. There wasn’t a single person in there under forty, and few under sixty. Carrigan would bring better roads, more money for public services, and jobs for peoples’ children, so they could stay in their hometown.
So why weren’t they glad to see her? Heck, they should be clamoring for a chance to talk to her. Suze should have been asking if she’d need more tables for the workers. Joe should have been checking to see if he could get a job working electrical on the rig. Mr. Jenson had a son somewhere, and a daughter. Why wasn’t he asking about employment opportunities for his kids?
Someone had gotten there before her. Someone had put a negative spin on the Carrigan deal.
Was it just a coincidence that Lane was right there to watch her get the big freeze?
She didn’t want to think about it. Shoving the key in the ignition, she cranked the engine to life and blinked a few times, telling herself it was the rising sun that had her eyes stinging. She distracted herself by poking the presets on the radio, looking for a station with soothing music. She’d finally settled for a scratchy, barely there NPR broadcast of a Brahms symphony when her phone rang.
She dug it out of her purse and squinted at the small screen, her vision blurred with the tears she refused to cry.
Eric. Just what she needed. He probably wanted a progress report. What was she going to tell him? Progress was negative. The company had been better off before she’d arrived in town. Her stomach clenched painfully and it took her a moment to recover enough to answer.
“Hello?”
“Sarah.” There wasn’t a hint of his usual bantering humor in his tone. “You’re in Two Shot.”
“Yes.” Why did he have to call so fast? She needed time to think things through.
“I understand you’ve been there before.”
This time, there was no mistaking his tone. He knew. Lane hadn’t just set the residents of Two Shot against her; he’d blabbed to Eric too.
He cleared his throat. “I also understand there’s a lot of negative feeling there toward you, and it’s bleeding over to the project.”
“I don’t know, Eric. I just got here. I’m working on…”
“I’ve gotten three phone calls, Sarah, from three different people, all of them telling me they don’t want Carrigan there.”
“Who was it?”
“They were anonymous. But two of them mentioned you by name. They said you didn’t have the town’s best interests at