Page 87 of Love Arranged

I nod. “If I become mayor?—”

“When,” she corrects.

I catch myself smiling. “When I become mayor, there’s no way I’d ever let something like that go through.”

She exhales loudly, and the tension in her shoulders bleeds out. “Thank you.” She reaches for my bicep and gives it a squeeze. “You have no idea how badly I needed to hear that.”

I miss her touch as soon as she pulls back.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this from the start?”

She chews on her bottom lip.

“What?” I ask when she doesn’t answer me.

“I didn’t trust you. I still don’t, but if this is going to work, we need to start learning to.”

“Right,” I reply, my throat constricted.

She peers over at me, and I can tell by the look on her face that I won’t like her next question. “Why are you running for mayor?”

The cabin of the car closes in around me. “I care about the town.”

“Okay, sure. I assumed as much with all the small businesses you help, but can’t you do that without going up against Ludlow?”

“I can do a lot more for everyone if I’m in charge.” I hope my answer pacifies her.

She shrugs. “Maybe. It just seems like you’re putting in a lot of effort for a town you just moved to.”

Panic grips me, but I breathe through my nose until I’m no longer at risk of revealing my motives.

Before our first meeting at Last Call, I trusted Lily with a few stories about my life, like when my uncle broke my nose, but I can’t tell her about my parents or the Ludlows. Iwon’t, even if the idea of sharing the burden with someone else is tempting.

Someone, or Lily?

Instead of exploring the thought, I deflect. “I think I can do a better job than Trevor, so why not run against him? And now that I know about his Lavender Lane plan, we can use that to our advantage. Once people find out about their plan for the Historic District, they’ll have no choice but to switch sides.”

She latches onto my arm, her fingernails digging into my skin hard enough to leave a temporary mark. “No. You can’t tell people about it without affecting my mom and anyone else who signed the NDA.”

Shit. I comb through all the information she shared. “You mentioned something before about architect plans?”

“Yeah. What about them?”

“Do you remember who drew them up?”

She taps her chin. “I don’t remember the name exactly. It was something like Morris and Holmes?”

“I’ll look into it.”

She pulls in a deep lungful of air. “Please don’t make me regret trusting you with this. The last thing my mom needs with her heart condition is a stressful legal battle.”

“Okay.”

Her relief is palpable. “Thank you.”

It’s quiet in the car for the duration of the drive to Lily’s house, and I’m relieved when I pull into her driveway. There is something about the silence that feels oppressive, and I have a strange urge to fill it with sound.

Particularly the sound of Lily’s voice.