Chapter Four
Jorja
T HE MAN STRODE TOWARD the counter and nodded at me in greeting. I managed to put a smile on my face, even though I always felt utterly intimidated around him.
“Hello, Mr. Wharton,” I greeted him stiltedly.
He shook his head at me. “How long have we known each other, Jorja?” he remarked. “You don’t need to be so formal with me.”
“Sorry,” I muttered. It didn’t matter how long I knew him, I still felt as though he was looking down his nose at me. Wharton was the richest man in town by quite a stretch, and he walked into every situation acting like he owned the place. Which, to be fair, was true of a lot of places in Mastin Falls, but not of this bookstore, and I wasn’t going to start acting like it.
“I thought you would have known me better by now, Jorja,” he continued, leaning across the counter toward me and flashing me what he no doubt thought was a charming smile. I managed a grimace in return. He wasn’t a horrible-looking guy by any stretch of the imagination, but I had never been attracted to him. There was something about the way he carried himself that I found off-putting, like he thought the world owed him something and he would be pissed if he didn’t get it.
“I guess we just haven’t spent that much time together,” I replied swiftly, trying to cover up my disinterest. It was especially pronounced right now, given that Seth had just been here. Not that there was any comparison between the two of them, no, not in a million years.
I felt my cheeks start to heat again at the thought of the man who had been in there earlier. Oh, no .Wharton would probably think I was getting all flushed at his attempts at flirtation. Ugh! I didn’t want to get on his bad side, but at the same time, I had no intention of letting him think that I was in any way interested in him. Just because he had power and money, didn’t mean he could get anything he wanted from me.
“Was there something you were looking for?” I asked, gesturing around to the stacks of books surrounding us.
He followed my gaze, then snorted slightly. “I don’t have a lot of time for reading,” he told me, a condescending tone to his voice, like it should have been obvious. “But there was something I wanted to talk to you about.”
He reached into the briefcase he had brought with him, and pulled out a manila envelope, pushing it across the counter toward me.
I picked it up, frowning. “What’s this?” I asked, flipping it over in my hands. I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Something told me that, whatever this was, I wasn’t going to like it.
“Just open it up,” he told me, jutting his chin toward the envelope and leaning on the counter. I wanted to brush him off my fresh-cleaned counter, but I knew he wouldn’t take that well.
As I opened it, he seemed unable to hold back, telling me what it was before I had so much as peered inside.
“I’m putting in an offer on the store,” he continued. The sinking in my stomach turned to outright sickness. This was what I had been worried about. He had been skulking around for a long time now, clearly looking for a chance to make his move and claim this place, one way or another. He wanted a monopoly on every place in town, probably in the run-up to Christmas so he could pull in some of that good seasonal money.
But there was no way I would ever part with this shop. It was the only legacy I had, a connection to my grandmother, and the thing that kept me tied to this town. If I lost it, what was the point of me staying here? What would have been the point of dedicating so much of myself to Mastin Falls?
I was about to hand the envelope back to him, when he cut in with another statement—a statement that made a cold shiver run down my spine.
“It’ll be a help for you in the long run,” he explained, grinning at me. “You’ll be able to pay all your taxes on that old house of your grandmother’s. And you won’t have to worry about keeping this place open any more, will you?”
My lips parted in shock. How did he know about that? I guessed he had fingers in so many pies in this town, it was natural that he would know what was going on with my bank account, that I had used so much of my savings to keep this place afloat.
This was a not-so-subtle hint that he was blackmailing me. Well, maybe that was too big a word for it, but that he was making sure I knew that he wasn’t just going to step back and let me turn down his offer with no follow-up. I didn’t know how he knew about my taxes, but no doubt he would up bring the fact that I hadn’t exactly paid them yet to the attention of the local council if I didn’t agree to go along with this horrible little plan of his.
“I’ll give you some time to look through the files,” he told me, waving his hand at the envelope in my hand. “Any questions, you can come to me, okay?”
“Okay,” I muttered. I was too much in shock to argue much with him, even though there was a voice in my head screaming at me to take him up on this. If I let him walk out of here thinking he had won, what then? Damnit, I didn’t even want to think—
“Good,” he replied. Then, with one last grin , he headed out of the store, striding with the confidence of a man who clearly thought he’d gotten what he wanted.
Haley had been listening to the conversation from the far side of the room, and, when he was gone, she practically dived back over to me to see what it had been about.
“What did Wharton want?” she asked. “I thought I heard him asking about buying the bookstore, but you would never sell to him, right?”
All at once, and before I could stop myself, I felt a swell of emotion hit me. I didn’t know how I was going to be able to get out of this, how I was going to be able to handle whatever he threw at me. If he exposed me to the council for not exactly being on time with my house taxes these last couple of years, I wouldn’t be able to keep the place anyway. Dammit, this was becoming such a nightmare.
I felt tears welling up in my eyes before I could stop them, and I swiped them away quickly. Haley didn’t need to see me like this. I was supposed to be her boss.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, but she shook her head, reaching out to give my hand a squeeze.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” she promised me. “What’s going on? You’re going to sell to him.?”
“I don’t know if I have a choice,” I confessed.
She frowned. “You always have a choice.”
I shook my head. “You don’t understand,” I murmured. “I...the store has been struggling lately, and I used my savings to keep it above water. I kept waiting for everything to pick up. I thought I could build my savings up again, but I... I’ve missed a couple of payments on my property taxes. And if I don’t have them paid up by the end of the year, the council will be all over me.”
“Oh, they don’t care about stuff like that,” she replied, waving a hand. “You’ll be fine.”
“Not if he goes and tells them,” I replied, maudlin. “That’s what he’s threatening me with.”
“He said that to you?” she asked, eyes wide.
I sighed. “No, not exactly,” I replied. “He just... made it clear that was where he was going to go if I didn’t sell the place to him.”
I stared down at the envelope he had left me. I couldn’t believe this was happening. It felt surreal, almost impossible, like it must have been happening to someone else.
“That’s ridiculous!” Haley exclaimed. “He can’t just... he can’t just walk in here and tell you how things are going to be. Like he doesn’t own enough of this town already! When is it going to be enough for him? Someone needs to stand up to him, put their foot down so they can just...”
As she ranted, I couldn’t take my eyes off the envelope in front of me. I didn’t see a way out of this. I mean, how was I supposed to find a way around this, without making a mess of everything? I couldn’t lose the store, but I couldn’t lose the house, either, let alone to someone like Wharton. But if I dug my heels in and refused, chances were I was going to lose both.
This morning, I had been so full of the Christmas spirit, and now, I felt empty, like someone had reached into me and hollowed me out and left me with nothing. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. How did I get out of this? Was there even a way I could make that happen, or was everything already in motion?
“He can’t just do this, especially at Christmas!” she continued. “Do you think this is why he’s going it now? Because he knows he can make more money off the place than he would otherwise?”
“I have no idea,” I muttered. I just knew he wasn’t stupid, and he was likely well aware that he would make a good profit if he made a move on this place sooner rather than later. I wished I could rewind time just fifteen minutes or so, before all of this had happened, when I had been able to convince myself that maybe, just maybe, everything would turn out okay after all.
“Here, let me get you a tissue,” Haley told me as she patted my shoulder. I was glad she was here, and she was being really sweet about all of this, but she had to be worried too. Her job was on the line just as much as this store was, and it wasn’t as though there were a whole lot of openings going on in Mastin Falls. Perhaps it would be better for her to get out of here, find a job somewhere else, somewhere that could offer her a more secure line of work, so she wouldn’t have to deal with comforting her sobbing boss when she found out that she was nearly out of money.
Just as she returned with a tissue for me, the door chimed again, and, when I looked up, my stomach flipped when I saw who it was. No way! It was the man who had been in earlier that morning, the man who had caught me when I had taken a plunge from that tree. Seth? That was his name, right? Oh, I couldn’t let him see me like this. As though this day couldn’t get any worse.
I ducked down and rushed into the back office before he could lay eyes on me. It might have felt like everything was falling apart around me, but that didn’t mean I had to allow him to see me in such a state.
I slammed the door behind me and leaned up against it, catching my breath, the envelope clutched to my chest. I figured I was going to have to read through everything eventually, but right now, all I wanted was to burn this thing and pretend I’d never seen it at all.
If only all of my problems could have been solved that easily.