Owen (BBW Western Bear Shifter Romance) (Rodeo Bears Book 2) (159 page)

As he said the last two names Valerie felt her stomach sink into her over-priced shoes. Well there was no denying or hiding from it, the last two men were the same old men she’d had dinner with the night before.
 

Oh, boy!
 

“So, to business,” Jeff Headley said, “Sit down young lady.” She sat in the first chair she could reach. Mr. Headley had the tone of one who would broach no argument.
 

“Miss Rousseau’s company, what was the name again dear?” he asked leaning towards her. Although there was a lot of wood between them she could feel his condescension rippling across the space towards her.
 

“Petersen-Snow,” Valerie offered, “I have…”
 

“Yes, I’m sure you do,” Mr. Headley drawled, “But all in good time.”

Valerie developed an instant, bone deep dislike of this pompous ass. But he was one of the people she’d been sent to schmooze. She couldn’t do that with her boot up is prerogative. So she sat back and let him prattle.
 

“As I was saying, Miss Rousseau’s company has taken a liking to Sun Valley. They want to buy the place and since the amount to purchase the land, outstanding since 1876, has not been paid in full…”

“We will need to see your ledgers, Jeff,” Marcus said softly. His eyes moved from Jeff Headley to Valerie and his look was pure venom.
 

Valerie wished the ground would swallow her whole. Of course her company wanted to buy the place, she had known that, but it had only been a blip on a map when she’d started this whole process for them. And now it was an actual place with real people who had history and lives and futures. They were proud of their land, their heritage which seemed so connected to the land. Valerie knew about that. Being from New Orleans with the story of witches and supernatural beings tying their magic to the land, she had grown up knowing her own anchor was the soil she was born on. That was why she longed for it so. Her family went back generation on generation on that land, and she didn’t want to take Kyle’s equivalent away from him.
 

But this was her job.
 

She came to when raised voices tore into her shame and sadness.
 

“We have been working for you people, at a reduced wage for over a hundred years Jeff! I think we’ve earned our land!” Paul was yelling. He was on his feet, his face red, his big hands fisted and resting knuckles first on the table, like he intended to punch it to pieces and was just lining up the shot.
 

“Now Paul, the ledgers are precise,” Jeff said raising his hands. Valerie saw the abject fear hiding behind his blustering façade. “You are welcome to go through them along with your attorney.”
 

The room exploded in rage, both sides of the table yelling and calling each other names. And then Paul’s voice rose above everyone else’s and he was yelling at her. He shook an accusatory finger at her, spittal flying as he ranted, “And you! You hussy! You tricked his grandson into showing you the whole place! And now you want to take it from us!”
 

Valerie was close to tears. The tension in the room was insane and she just wanted to run. She tried to defend herself, to tell them that she didn’t want any of that, that she was just a pawn. Valerie Rousseau made no decisions in the company. She was a glorified pencil pusher with frequent flyer miles. She didn’t want any of this.
 

God, that vacation time was looking real good around now. In fact, unemployment was looking good too, and that was crazy.
 

In a rush of emotion Valerie picked up her bag and stormed out of the room. She could be fired for this but who cared, really?

She blundered down the hallway, needing to find her way out when suddenly she bumped into someone, and something hot spilled all over her arm.
 

Valerie looked up into Kyle’s golden eyes.
 

“Hey, stranger,” he said smiling instantly when he recognized her. “Sorry about the coffee.”
 

Valerie shook her head and looked away, “It’s fine, Kyle. Oh God, what are you doing here?”

“Here with Marcus, he’s got some big meeting,” Kyle said vaguely.
 

Just then the door opened behind her and Marcus and Paul spilled out followed by the others.
 

“Get away from her!” Marcus roared at Kyle. “She’s poison!”
 

“She’s gonna take Sun Valley from us,” Paul ranted and Valerie knew she was done for.
 

She grabbed her laptop bag in her arms and fled down the hallway leaving a confused Kyle behind her.
 

It was later and tears had happened. Quite a lot of them really and then a panicked phone call back home. Her father was out but her mother was sympathetic until Granny Fifi got the phone, and then Valerie had spent the next twenty minutes crying, while her gran told her what a horrible person her employer was turning her into.
 

“You come home this instant!” Granny Fifi roared on the other end of the line. “You come here now child, so we can deal with the mess you’re becoming. You can’t take people’s homes! We raised you better than that!”
 

Valerie had buried her head in the overwhelming cushions on her bed at Grandma’s Inn until she felt she would suffocate. This wasn’t her fault. It was just her job and she’d done it a million times. But all those times she hadn’t gone to dinner with the locals now had she? She hadn’t listened to their stories and heard their love for their home in their voices. None of that.
 

She had to get her head clear and schedule another meeting. So she would go for a drive.

The rental sped out along the road to Sun Valley. It was just about the only road that she knew and frankly Valerie just wanted to have some open sky around her. Before long she was back at what was almost a cul du sac, but led to Sun Valley. She turned right and went down the track.
 

After a while she stopped the car and sat behind her wheel for a time. She opened the window needing air and breathed heavily. Okay, she was going to save the situation. Perhaps if she spoke to Mr. Petersen and Mr. Snow, and found out what they wanted to do with the area, then she could lay the locals’ fears to rest. She was pretty sure her company wasn’t going to strip mine the place. But then she was only pretty sure.
 

Just then voices travelled to her on the breeze. They sounded close by and like there were a lot of them.
 

Curiosity had always been one of her worst flaws, Valerie knew this, but she got out the car and followed the sound anyway. She headed into the woods, the fallen leaves creating a carpet under foot.
 

The area was quite clear of underbrush the further in she went and apart from fallen branches she didn’t have much she had to watch out for. The voices grew louder and louder, and suddenly Valerie could see them. It was a whole lot of people, men and women sitting on the ground in a multilayered circle.
 

She could see Kyle and Marcus, even Paul all sitting there.
 

Valerie knew she was intruding. She knew it was wrong but she also wanted to know what was happening, so she hid behind a tree.
 

“…selling the land from under us,” Paul was saying. His voice was angry. Well he had every right to be.
 

“Do you know what they want to do with the land?” a woman asked. She had long black braids that hung down her chest and pooled in her lap. Her face was mature but not old.
 

“We didn’t get that far,” Marcus said, “The company rep ran out.”
 

“And you’re sure it was Valerie?” Kyle asked.

Marcus nodded. “No doubt, my boy. She’s bad news that one.”

“I knew it, I knew it!” Paul was ranting, “From the moment I set eyes on that Jezabel!”
 

“Paul!” the woman scolded him. “Don’t be an ass, this is her company not her choice. She’s been employed. Does she even know what they plan to do here?”

Valerie didn’t know what she was doing until she stepped out from behind the tree and walked the last little way towards the people.
 

“I don’t know what they’re planning,” she said.
 

“You!”

“What are you doing here?”

“Spy!”
 

The clearing erupted in noise and suddenly Kyle was standing next to her his hand up for silence.
 

“Valerie, how did you find us?”

“I drove out here to explain,” she said knowing now that it was the truth. “Please, may I speak to you all?”

“Don’t let her! She’ll only lie,” Paul yelled but Marcus stepped up to her and turned her to face him. His eyes were golden like Kyle’s and he looked deeply into her blue ones.
 

“You tell the truth here,” he said simply as though there was no possibility of argument, “This is a place where we only speak what’s true, no lies, no stories.”
 

“I’ll tell you what I know with no exaggeration, no embellishment and no sugar coating,” Valerie said, “I can’t promise the truth because I suspect that I haven’t been told it.”
 

“This is a waste of time!” Paul ranted but when Marcus looked at him the old man sat back down on the leaf strewn ground.
 

“Hi,” Valerie said. She was standing in the center of the circle now and every single pair of eyes was on her. “I’m Valerie Rousseau, I was sent here to assess Sun Valley for a company. They have employed me for two years so far, to travel all over the country and assess the land or business that they want to buy up. Mostly they buy failing businesses, mines, sometimes when they need a PR boost they’ll sponsor a college or a school, or buy up a piece of land that is a threatened species’ habitat. They have fingers in a lot of pies and the company image is really important to them.”

“They sent me out here to report on Sun Valley, but I have no idea what they plan to do with it,” Valerie said. “They almost never tell me. My job is really just to check the place out and make sure it is what the seller is claiming it to be, then I hand it over to the buyer who comes and does the final negotiation.”
 

She felt wretched. Her information wasn’t going to help these people to save their home, not at all.
 

“I just wanted you to know that I… it’s not me,” she said desperately looking at the faces around her. So many faces. “I’m sorry.”
 

“Can you stop them?” the woman with the long braids asked. “Can you make them not buy our land?”

Valerie shook her head. “Not if they want it badly enough. I can speak to them and find out what they want.” She shrugged. “It’s not usual but I can do it.”
 

Suddenly she felt more afraid than ever. She hated speaking to the partners, a privilege she had been granted only on a few occasions when her job had required it. They had requested an update this evening. Valerie guessed she could come up with something to say.
   

She moved out of the circle and Kyle made her sit next to him on the outer most ring.
 

For the next hour the people of Sun Valley discussed their future and a plan was formulated. Kyle and his friend Ryan, a big man with dark hair and those golden eyes, would take Valerie back to her room at Grandma’s Inn. She would keep her Skype date with her bosses, and would ask them what they wanted the valley for. Then with this information the rest of them would decide what to do.
 

The meeting broke up and as Kyle and Ryan escorted her back to her car, she tried to speak to Kyle. After multiple attempts he turned on her, his face full of anger, his eyes flashing.
 

“Get one thing straight!” he spat, “We aren’t friends. We aren’t ever going to be friends, Valerie. You killed that when you lied to me! It is my home and my family and my life that you’re thinking of taking away. So don’t think for one second that whatever we were building is going to continue, because it’s dead!” and he stormed off.
 

She was left stunned and hurt though she reasoned that she shouldn’t be. They’d only met the day before. It wasn’t like they’d slept together, but somehow she knew that a bond that had been growing between them was melting like ice in a glass of whiskey.

Ryan drove up front in her rental with her to Kyle’s truck and then they drove to Grandma’s. It was still early, the sun only now beginning to paint the snowcapped mountains in colors of fire.

Her little room was feeling terribly crowded with the three of them, no one knowing what to say or do.
 

“We could go across the street to the diner?” Valerie suggested. “My treat.”
 

Kyle scowled at her but Ryan perked up. “That sounds great, Valerie,” he said kindly. “Get up Kyle, we’re going across the street. This room is like a shoebox and I’m getting claustrophobic, so let’s take this nice lady up on her offer and go to the diner.”
 

Kyle glowered but stood up and made his away across the street. The breeze from earlier was harder now, dragging ragged patches of high grey cloud across the darkening sky as they ran across the street. Valerie was glad she had brought her leather jacket, and she was quite snuggly in it. But the diner was heated and she soon took it off. They chose a booth in the back and sat down, Ryan next to her and Kyle across.