Page 7 of November

“What was he doing here?”

“Scouting the shop or my headquarters, I guess,” she replied.

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know.” She sighed. “Maybe he just wanted to be a dick to me.”

“He was a dick to you? God, that makes sense. He lookslike a dick on all those bus ads. Want me to follow him and kick his ass?” Lainey offered.

She laughed a little and said, “No, it’s fine. He’s probably already in his limo or town car. Do rich people still ride around in those?”

“Who knows? I’m not rich. Are you okay, though?”

“I brought up the debate he’s dodged repeatedly.”

“And?” Lainey asked.

“I’m not getting one. I could keep trying, but he’d just keep dodging my calls.”

“You could call him out on it publicly; get a newspaper to pick up the story or something.”

“I guess. But is it worth it? He’s so smarmy,” she said, shivering a little. “He would find a way to wiggle out of every question with something bad about me, like how I have no money, no political experience, no connections, and talk about how he’s brought jobs to the district.”

“Hehas, technically, but that doesn’t make him any less smarmy.”

“Hey, I just got a donation for a hundred bucks!” Paige yelled from the back. “That’s worth celebrating, right?”

“Heck, yeah,” Lainey said, smiling at Maisie. “Come on back and help us make some calls? I’m sure you’d get more money if it’s you on the other end of the phone.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Sarah, can you take care of things out here?”

“I thought you told that guy we were closing.”

“We’re not. That was just to get rid of him.”

“Oh, okay. Sure,” the teenager replied and cracked open a book she’d bought last week.

Maisie turned to the front of the shop, looking a little to the left, where she knew there was a bus stop and a poster for Colter Stone. She rolled her eyes because she didn’t need to look at it. She needed to get a marker and give him devil horns. Why hadn’t the graffiti artists of this city tagged the hell out of that thing yet? She stared at the poster for a minute, picturing what those horns would look like, along with a thin, evil-looking mustache and maybe even some fangs dripping with the blood of the innocent for good measure.

That was when she saw her. The woman walked right by the shop with her phone to her ear, looking like she owned the planet. Her long skirt looked as if it had been molded to her body, and while Maisie knew nothing about women’s shoes because she preferred cheap tennis shoes to heels, she knew enough to know that those two or three-inch heels had to be expensive. They had the red bottoms that people always talked about. The blouse she wore looked like silk and was beneath a blazer that perfectly matched the skirt and shoes. Normally, Maisie wouldn’t have thought much about it – just another fancy person walking by, probably from one of the new businesses popping up – but this woman was different. Maisie didn’t know why, but the dark-brown hair and matching deep eyes that she saw only briefly through the window and at least ten feet away had her swallowing hard.

“Maise, this woman said she’ll give you money if you’ll talk to her about what you plan on doing with some rezoning thing,” Paige said loudly.

“Yeah, I’ll be right there,” she said as the woman walked past the window and was out of sight.

“Get it together, Maisie. You’ve got an election to win, not some rich woman to stare at.”

She walked to the back of the shop and took the phone from Paige.

“I understand you want to discuss a rezoning issue?” she said into the phone.

CHAPTER 4

“Hey, India,” her boss said.

“I have the numbers on the Atlanta leases for you,” she replied, sitting down across from him at the small conference table.

“Great. And I have another project for you. It was just handed to me, so I apologize in advance for the last minute.”