The Year of Chasing Dreams (4 page)

Alice Faye shook her head in disgust and walked out of the room.

Eden circled her bedroom like a cat in a cage. She’d emailed Colleen but as yet hadn’t heard anything. Eden had no way of knowing where the walkabout group would be, or even if they were still together. Only the fact that her email hadn’t returned to her with a “failure to deliver” notice gave Eden any hope that it might have landed in Colleen’s in-box. She told herself to remain calm.

She still had a good bit of money in the bank from the house sale and plenty of squirreled-away cash from what had been Tony’s drug cache, but not much else to call her own. Unlike Ciana, she had no roots. Her mother, Gwen, was somewhere in Florida, probably off her bipolar meds and living who knew where. Eden shied away from thinking about Gwen. Too painful. However, she was feeling the pressure of needing to do something with the rest of her life. She couldn’t live in Ciana’s house forever. She needed to make plans for her future. Problem was she had no direction, and until she settled with her past and her feelings for Garret, she wouldn’t have any. She longed to know how, or even
if
, they fit into each other’s lives.

“You ready? My truck’s warming in front of the porch.”

Ciana’s shout from the bottom of the stairs snapped Eden out of her thoughts. Despite being at loose ends about her own future, she was dressed and ready to go with Ciana to the town meeting, intent on supporting her friend. “Putting on lipstick,” Eden called, grabbing the tube from her dresser and hastily sweeping it over her mouth. She clattered down the
stairs to the foyer, where Ciana was prowling restlessly. “Your mom coming with us?”

“She wants to take the Lincoln. Probably her way of showing people we have different ideas about Bellmeade’s fate.”

Ciana’s face was as dark as the sky outside. “Don’t be too hard on her for wanting something different,” Eden said before Ciana bolted out the front door.

“She can do whatever she wants. I’m keeping our land,” Ciana snapped, and shut off further discussion.

Eden followed her friend outside, deciding that having nothing meant never having anything to fight over. Or for that matter, anything to fight
for
.

Ciana couldn’t believe her eyes. People were packed in the old courtroom in city hall used for public meetings. All eyes turned to her and Eden when they came into the room. Why had so many people shown up? Hastings’s project didn’t even involve most of the attendees. Her stomach did somersaults, but she squared her shoulders and walked to the front of the room. She sat in the first row directly in front of Hastings’s presentation table as Gerald Hastings and two of his staff hovered around a large covered board propped up on an easel.

Eden slid into a chair beside her. “You sure you want to sit here?”

“Positive. I want to make sure he sees me.” After returning from Italy, Ciana had seen his plans for her property. She’d told him then she wasn’t interested in selling, but the man had ignored her as if she were a small child incapable of understanding his great plan.

Eden said, “Well, he can’t miss you, girlfriend.”

Ciana casually glanced over her shoulder at the crowd behind
her. She recognized neighbors, business owners, farmers, teachers—a cross section of Windemere residents. Her gaze stopped sweeping when she saw Jon standing against the wall at the back of the room. His green eyes only on her. He offered a slight nod while keeping his expression neutral. Gratitude flooded her, knowing he’d come for her sake. She saw Bill Pickins, too, and Eric Winslow, who’d arrived without Abbie. Arie’s parents had not shown up.

The mayor interrupted the buzz of chatter by calling the meeting to order. He did some talking about the great turnout of citizens and how this new venture could help the town, then turned the mike over to Hastings.

Under her breath, Eden said, “He’s good-looking. See how some of the women are staring at him? They’re almost panting.”

Ciana was forced to agree. Hastings looked casually polished in khaki slacks and a blue golf shirt. His salt-and-pepper hair was precisely cut. She thought his blue eyes looked cold behind wire-rim glasses. “He’s the enemy,” Ciana fired back softly.

“I’m just saying,” Eden said.

Hastings introduced himself and his staff, offered up his professional background while his staff passed out paperwork to any who wanted it, and most people did. Finally he walked to the easel, pulled the cover off, and discussed his drawings for Bellmeade Estates. People listened. Rumors had swarmed about the project for months, but now as it was being laid out publicly, Ciana felt more threatened than ever. Hastings talked about the economic impact for the town, causing murmurs to ripple through the crowd. He told of how he had built such communities in other states, of how he had persuaded both the Federal Transportation Authority and the Tennessee
state legislature to okay a new exit off the existing expressway to accommodate traffic, and of how such an exit would impact the town for the better. He alluded to how much his company had already invested because “that’s how much he believed in the project.”

Ciana curled internally. Of course, the new subdivision sounded like a windfall for the town, economically depressed for years. The new housing and golf course would attract buyers from Nashville and Murfreesboro who would bring money and jobs into Windemere. The only catch was that hundreds of acres of fertile farmland would be sacrificed, changing the face and the purpose of the countryside forever. For Ciana the sacrifice was too great, but when Hastings opened the floor to questions, she clearly saw that for many from the area, it wasn’t. Several of the smaller farms bordering hers were owned by elderly folks with no family interested in or even available to take over their properties, so Hastings’s buyout offer was a path to financial security.

And yet there were townspeople who liked the small-town atmosphere of Windemere and didn’t want unchecked growth that might bring in urban sprawl and worse, crime. Ciana wasn’t alone, but she was clearly in the minority.

Once Hastings finished his presentation, an excited buzz filled the room. Ciana felt tensions rising until she could take no more. Her heart thudded, her palms sweat, but she stood, and looking Gerald Hastings in the eye, she said, “You may build whatever you want. Just not on my land.”

She marched down the aisle, head high, hearing shocked whispers, with Eden scrambling after her.

“Want to talk about it?” Eden asked as Ciana drove them home.

“Looks like farming is a lost cause,” Ciana said bitterly.

Eden felt Ciana’s despair. “Not everybody feels that way. Some seemed to like the town the way it is.”

“You don’t.”

“Not true,” Eden defended herself. “I actually like the gardening and the canning and cooking.”

“But you want to blow this town.”

“Not for the same reasons I once wanted. Think back to when we were in high school. There was nothing to do in our dead little burg.”

“I had plenty to do.”

“And so long as you and Arie were hanging with me, I did too. But when we were fourteen and you both left for the summer, well, that’s when I met Tony, and we both know how awful that turned out.”

Ciana knew. “It was a bad time for you.”

“If Italy hadn’t happened …” Eden let the sentence trail off, remembering how Tony had terrorized their families until a drug deal went bad for him in Memphis.

“We’re both survivors, Eden. And I’ll survive this crisis with Bellmeade. Bet on it.” She turned into her driveway, saw Jon’s pickup truck parked by the barn. Light glowed through the side window.

“Looks like you have company,” Eden said.

Ciana’s heartbeat quickened. “Seems so.” She parked and Eden scurried through the rain into the house. Ciana ran into the barn, found Jon sitting on a beat-up chair and whittling a lump of wood. He immediately stood, folded his pocketknife, and shoved it into the pocket of his well-worn jeans.

He opened his arms and she walked into his embrace, longing to be comforted. “Hey, cowboy.”

His arms tightened. “Hey, pretty lady. You okay?”

“Not really. I—I didn’t expect so many people to be in favor of the project. I thought the land meant more to all of us. Some of those people sounded like they’d won the lottery. Why, they’d sell their heritages without blinking.”

“The dude’s offering folks a lot of money. Human nature being what it is … well, it’s hard to resist the sweet smell of money.”

“Not for me,” she said around emotions stuck in her throat. “Is the whole town against me?”

“Bill’s on your side.”

Bill’s ranch and cattle were on the other side of the freeway, south and west of Windemere and in no danger of being gobbled up by Hastings’s project. “Good to know,” she said with a sigh, and pushed away.

Jon looked into her eyes fiercely. “
I’m
on your side too.”

Tears threatened to spill out as she tried to shake them
away. Beauchamp women were supposed to be tough. Hadn’t Olivia taught her to stand and fight against all odds?
“The land is everything, child. You fight for what’s ours. You fight to win.”
The words rang in Ciana’s ears. “You don’t have a dog in this fight, Jon Mercer.”

He lifted her chin. “I have something more important at stake. I have a girl I want to keep.”

His words were comforting and well meant, but Bellmeade was her problem, not his. “I won’t change my mind about selling.”

“I didn’t expect you would, but—” He paused. “You could be in for trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Money changes people. I was at the meeting too. Hastings is throwing this town a lifeline to most folk’s way of thinking. I heard them talking. To a lot of them, you’re the enemy, not Hastings.”

She was struck dumb by his words. Her? An enemy? Impossible. She realized people were disgruntled, but they should understand where she was coming from. Bellmeade was a legend, and the Beauchamps were not just its owners but its protectors and guardians. “I just want to keep my land. It’s
my
land!” She was angry now, not at Jon, but that he’d dug up ugly things and dared to flash them at her.

“I’d like to move in again, Ciana. I can help protect you and Bellmeade.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “
Protect
me? Jon, nothing’s going to happen to me. People will get over it and once Hastings sees I’m serious, he’ll go back to Chicago and forget all about us.”

Jon’s green eyes studied her, his face shadowed by concern. “Don’t fool yourself. The man’s already invested a lot of
money in this project. He won’t walk away. Plus the people around here—”

“Are my neighbors,” she interrupted. “I’ve known these people all my life. They aren’t going to come after me.” The idea was so ludicrous that she turned and walked to the stalls where horses stirred because of the raised voices.

“And you can’t move in again,” she added stubbornly. Jon had lived in the barn’s tack room and helped with chores before having to take his father home to Texas in March. “Barn’s full, except for my two freeloaders, Firecracker and Sonata. My four boarders will bring in enough extra money to get us through this winter. Come spring, I’ll plant more crops, begin to make this farm productive again. And as you can see, I took out some storage space and built extra stalls. I only wish I had room for more.”