Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Don’t worry about what people think. They don’t do it very often.
—Denver to Hux
DENVER
The first place I visited was Nate Ryder’s place.
He was an elderly man in his late eighties on his last leg. I’m talking stooped over, could barely lift his cane, shuffling all the way across the house at a speed that was alarmingly slow.
He’d been farming his land for so long that you could see the toll it’d taken on his body.
He held out his hand to me when I arrived at his front door.
“I was wondering if you’d ever come talk to me again.”
His words had my back straightening.
I frowned. “I was here last week. Fixed your tractor for you, remember?”
He nodded. “I do. But I wasn’t home. Had a doctor’s appointment. I’m sorry to hear from your wife that you don’t want to buy this land from me anymore. What happened? Your wife said financial hardship.”
I counted to ten before I explained everything that’d happened. Trying not to curse my ‘wife’ the entire time.
His mouth dropped open. “You’re divorced?”
“For six months now,” I promised. “What exactly did she tell you?”
“Well, we ran into each other in town after my doctor’s appointment.
And I told her that I was ready to sell.
That I couldn’t handle the work anymore.
To relay the information.” He patted his chest. “Got kidney failure. They said I might need to go on dialysis very soon. I need a bigger city for that. So I’m going to move in with my kids in Missoula. ”
Fuck.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, truly sorry to hear. He was a great neighbor to have, and had been standing up to the powers that be that wanted his land for years. “She never relayed anything to me. Which I’m assuming is when she told you about our supposed financial hardship?”
He nodded his head. “I’m only in the early talks with them. We’re not actually under contract. I just wanted everyone to stop bombarding me with offers. You still interested?”
“Yes,” I answered immediately.
Then he jerked his chin toward the door. “Then let’s go hash everything out.”
So we did.
Everything.
I even wrote him a check on the spot using the Windsor trust.
I didn’t do anything with this cattle operation without going through the trust. It was mine just as much as it was Boone’s, as it was Sawyer’s, as it was Sorcha’s.
I called the tax assessor’s office and my lawyer, and we got them lining everything up on their end.
It was about midafternoon when I headed out to meet with the city.
The first person I saw was my ex-wife, smirking smugly as if she’d caught the canary.
The damn snake.
I ignored her and walked past her.
“He’s just going to ignore you like you’re not the mother of his children?”
That was Juliana’s sister, Morgana.
I ignored her, too, for the sake of my freedom, and headed inside the city’s main offices, which just so happened to be a small building that, funny enough, they rented from the Windsor Corporation.
We owned a lot of the land and even more of the businesses in both Sawtooth and Bear Pass. But Bear Pass, which was where we lived, was the one that was always trying to get ski resorts in the area.
We already had one that was just outside of Jawbone, and Jawbone had practically been overrun with tourists now. Even Sawtooth was getting there.
Bear Pass was my refuge, and if I had to instill my own damn council in there, I fuckin’ would.
There wasn’t a single Bear Pass resident that wanted that damn ski resort, and Juliana didn’t count. Because deep down, she didn’t want it, either. She’d been pretty damn vocal over the years that the ‘tourists are ruining skiing for everyone else.’
The first person I saw was Knox Teller and Marcellus Figley.
Two of the worst people on the damn board, mostly because the motherfuckers didn’t live in Bear Pass at all. How and why they were on the board for Bear Pass, I didn’t know. But that might be my next step—to evict them from their proverbial thrones.
The fact that they thought they could sneak a damn ski resort in here without me knowing…
“Uh, hey, Denver.” Marcellus looked all of a sudden nervous.
He should be.
I was going to ruin him by the time I was done.
He’d spent years trying to pass laws that just wouldn’t work for us—trying to make us a bigger city when, in fact, we were anything but.
Residents wanted the small-town life. We didn’t mind a tourist or two.
We didn’t mind people visiting to see our beautiful land.
But we didn’t want their ideals changing our way of life when all they were going to do was leave as fast as they arrived.
And Marcellus was number one in wanting to change that for us.
He’d come from fucking Seattle with his big city views, and his ‘money, money, money’ morals.
He didn’t care about the local baker who donated to the Little League every year. He didn’t care about the mechanic in town that’d been fixing cars for fifty years now. And he certainly didn’t give one flying fuck about a cattle business that would need water to survive.
A hot commodity for the area.
“Well, hello there, Marcellus,” I drawled. “The rest of the board in like I asked?”
They blinked and shifted nervously on their feet.
They knew I ran this town.
They might think they were running it, but it was my club and I that enforced laws around here. Even the sheriff was on our side.
Nothing big happened in the three towns in our area without it being run through us first.
And the fact that they tried to sneak this one in…
“We are.” Marcellus cleared his throat. “What’s this about?”
I ignored him and Knox and headed inside the room where they all met.
They all took their seats on their high chairs surrounded by their podiums and waited for me to talk.
I took a seat in a rolling chair and crossed my arms over my chest and waited.
“Uh, Denver?” Knox asked, shifting uncomfortably. “What’s this about?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
The door behind me opened, but I didn’t turn around.
I knew who it was.
My club would trickle in one at a time when their schedules allowed.
Whoever had just come in yanked the seat back loudly and sat, stretching his feet out in front of him.
The slow, methodical “click-click” of a toothpick rolling across teeth let me know that it was Odin.
I nearly laughed.
Out of everyone in the entire club that could get here first, it had to be him.
Odin was by far the grumpiest, meanest, and least patient.
He already sounded like he was ready to leave.
The city’s board shifted in front of me even more nervously.
The door banged shut again, then I heard Hux say, “Ow, dammit. What the fuck?”
I looked over my shoulder at him rubbing his elbow as if he’d hit it on the doorframe on his way inside.
“Sorry to interrupt.” He took a seat.
Then, in front of everyone, popped the tab on his beer can.
More people slid in as the board continued to stare.
Eventually, Odin got impatient enough to ask, “What the fuck are we even doing here if they’re not going to talk?”
The lone lady on the board, the same bitch who liked to kick people out of their apartments for no reason, shifted in her seat. “We’re unsure why we were called.”
The lady that my mother termed ‘the old bat’ was actually Carolina Edridge, one of the wealthiest women in the area. Though she sure the fuck didn’t act like it. She never missed a chance to heckle the baker for a cheaper loaf of bread.
The door shut a final time.
Fourteen times in total.
That was all that said they could make it.
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my thighs, and leveled them all with a single look.
“What makes you think you can bring in a ski resort without running it by me first?”
“Then he’s all ‘what makes you think you can bring in a ski resort without running it by me first?’ and they all collectively start apologizing like it was all some simple misunderstanding.
” Major laughed with Sorcha and the girls.
“They’re not going to get it passed, that’s for sure.
They all decided to resign. We set up Nettie, Mable, Birdee, and Sorcha as the temporary city board. ”
“Half of them didn’t even live in Bear Pass, though,” Holly pointed out. “Wouldn’t you want people on the board that actually live in the community? That’s literally the entire point.”
“We’re working on that,” I admitted as I took a bite of my sister’s favorite ‘easy meal’ to cook for the ranch.
It was a chicken, bacon, ranch pasta bake that seemed to always be a pretty big hit for the crew.
Half of it was already gone, and we’d only had half the hands eat so far.
It was going to be a tight night if they didn’t hurry and I got a second helping along with Major and Hux that’d followed me home from the city council meeting.
“But it was an emergency thing. We had to get people on it, or shit doesn’t get funded. ”
Holly tapped her fork gently against her plate.
“I wouldn’t mind helping. I’ve lived here my entire life.
Not to mention, I can ask a few people who actually care if they’re willing to step in.
There are a lot of people who are die-hard Bear Pass residents that want to see it thrive, while also not wanting to sell out to big corporations. ”
That was exactly what I wanted, too.
Though I wasn’t nearly as articulate as her. “If you want it, it’s yours. I don’t want to micromanage. I just want to make sure that I’m not going to wake up with some fancy ski resort that wants to kill my mountains.”
Dinner finished up, and Holly excused herself to head to her apartment.
Major and Hux waited until she and the girls had left to go clean up the kitchen before saying, “You like her.”
I scoffed. “I like her, sure.”
I liked her a lot, actually.
I just wasn’t sure that I was going to do anything about it.
“She still hates you a little bit,” Major pointed out.
Tell me something I didn’t know…
“You should just tell her the truth at this point,” Hux said. “I mean, it’s not like you were purposefully an asshole to her. Didn’t play her and her dad. You did what he wanted. Plus, it cost you almost twice what the land was worth. Which, I still think is absurd. But you didn’t ask me.”
I snorted. “No, I sure the fuck didn’t.”
Major chuckled, clutching his belly.
Hux stood up, gathered all the empties and the rest of the trash on the table, and headed into the kitchen.
Only when it was just Major and me did he say, “Do you think that they’re going to cause problems?”
“I don’t ‘think’, I know,” I admitted. “They’re working with that company. They’ve been trying to pass it for years and haven’t found a way to do it. They even tried taking our land ten years ago, and Dad had to fight tooth and nail.”
That’d been when I decided that as club president of the Dixie Wardens, a mantle I’d taken on early, that I wouldn’t allow anyone in this town to be pushed around.
I would fight for what I thought was right.
And that was the creed I’d lived by for the last ten years.
This mountain was our home, and we weren’t going to be letting anyone take it from us.
“You ready, old man?” Sorcha asked, tapping Major on the shoulder.
Major stood up, tossed my sister over his shoulder, and declared, “I’ll show you, old man.”
Sorcha giggled like she was a teen and not an almost fifty-year-old.
Hux came out moments later with a grin on his face.
“What?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing.” Hux grinned so cheesily that it made my teeth grit. “Just talking to Joe about what ‘grandpa’ name you were going to be called.”
I flipped him off and headed outside, checking on the animals one last time.
I was giving some extra love to Applesauce and her foal when the door to the barn’s bathroom opened and Holly stepped out in a towel and nothing else.
We both froze.
“Uh, hi.” She smiled tentatively. “Night.”
I closed my eyes, trying really fucking hard to forget the way she looked all wet and slippery, but didn’t manage it.
It was like the view was permanently etched into my brain, right at the front, where I could think about it for all time.