Chapter Two
Autumn rolled her eyes as she passed the Welcome to Signal Bend! sign and its cheerily cutesy steam train coming around a bend, where a bright signal light showed it the way. Little bit on the nose, huh? The people of Signal Bend were not into subtlety—or style, for that matter. They leaned all the way in on the kitsch, in the proud, cluelessly unironic way of true believers.
In all honestly, when she’d first discovered the place, she’d been charmed; Signal Bend and its people were like a 1950s Technicolor musical starring Shirley Jones or Doris Day. The architecture in the main part of town was full of cute little touches with either Scandinavian or Victorian flair—gingerbread corners, wraparound porches, turned dowel railings, stained glass, the works. So cute!
There was a slowness to the place, too, that had a hint of vacation in it—the kind of indolent busyness one experienced at a tropical resort or mountain cabin. In her daily life, Autumn was busy from the moment she woke each day until she switched off her bedside lamp at night, and she was sure she’d be bored out of her head if her life moved more slowly. But for a week or two of vacation, she was happy to laze on the beach all day (okay, yes, with her laptop open on her legs). Before Signal Bend had proved to be a thorn in her side, she’d enjoyed its mellow vibe—and that first impression had made her even more committed to getting this deal done.
On her first time in town, when she’d made a point to drive every street and get as clear a sense of the place she could, she’d come across one house that had caused her to slam on the breaks and get out of her rental car to explore. It reminded her keenly of the house from It’s a Wonderful Life—clearly abandoned, halfway down the road to ruin, but what a beauty it must once have been. She adored finding old things and giving them new life; her heart ached for what that house had once been and could again be. That house deserved to be loved. It was a tragedy the town was just letting it rot.
They’d been letting the property she’d bought rot for years as well. Even so, they’d been maniacally committed to preventing her from buying it and making something new.
After half a year of trying to close a deal here, she had grown to loathe this theme park of a nowhere town and all the inbred hicks who made up its meager population. And they didn’t like her any better. Of course, they treated her like a pariah, while she kept a friendly smile plastered on her face.
She’d been in commercial real estate since grad school, and she was no stranger to protests from the NIMBY types. Such people always wanted more convenient shopping and services, but they always wanted it built ‘over there, not here.’ Negotiating that resistance was a normal part of her work. But in Signal Bend the resistance had been infuriatingly intractable, all because of fewer than twenty men: The Night Horde MC. They ruled this town like kings, and they wanted no part of her first Heartland Homestead project.
She’d been getting increasingly threatening demands from Chase to close the deal before he pulled the plug on the whole project, and the past month or so had been full of sleepless nights as she fretted that the project truly had failed before it had a chance.
But the tide had finally, unexpectedly turned. Thanks to the sudden death of the previous mayor, who’d been so far up the Horde’s butt he could have checked their teeth for cavities from the back, she finally had a closed deal, signed and notarized, with his successor. Whether the bikers liked it or not, the first Heartland Homestead would be built right here in Signal Bend, Missouri.
She didn’t feel remotely guilty for celebrating the death of Mayor Hopkins. That happy fool had been bought and paid for, and the Horde had kept hold of the receipt. He could rot.
For the next year or so, she was going to be spending a lot of time in this place and with its people. Good thing she, unlike most of the yahoos in Signal Bend, was extremely practiced in keeping her true feelings under wraps.
Not wanting to draw attention to herself as she drove through town, she put up her window and turned down her music. Once she remembered how to do both those things. She’d rented this Audi at the St. Louis airport, and every new rental required a lesson on how the buttons and knobs—and/or touch screen, depending on the model—worked.
Every trip, she told herself she’d just drive the whole way. It was less than six hours by car, and she drove two of those hours from St. Louis when she flew in. Once she factored in all the time on the ground it took to fly anywhere, it was a ridiculous waste of time to fly into Missouri.
But Autumn had been in a pretty terrible accident while she was in college, driving home from Cornell. She’d fallen asleep at the wheel while driving through Ohio and woken in a hospital two days later, and she’d spent the next three weeks there. She’d nodded off, fallen into a real sleep, and the car had gone off the road and straight into the concrete pylon of an overpass. In broad daylight.
Boredom made her sleepy. Any prolonged stillness tended to knock her out; she’d never yet spent more than about thirty minutes on a plane without napping, unless she had a travel companion who kept her alert. She could go longer when she drove, with the radio on and up-tempo music playing she could sing along with. But since the day of the accident, she’d avoided driving anywhere alone longer than about two hours.
So every time she traveled to Signal Bend, she wasted an entire day, landed in St. Louis, rented a nice car, and drove the rest of the way.
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~oOo~
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It was Thursday afternoon, and Main Street looked like backstage at a movie studio. The town’s ‘Spring Fling’ started tomorrow, and apparently most of the town was involved in the preparations. Shops were open, and there was plenty of foot traffic, but around that regular activity were dozens of people—several of them in black leather vests—hanging garlands and lights and banners, wrapping swaths of brightly colored plastic, like giant ribbon, around signposts and pillars.
Seriously. Autumn expected Robert Preston to strut down the middle of Main Street any second, leading seventy-six trombones. As an avid fan of musicals (she’d been raised by two gay men; of course she was both a fan and vastly well versed in them all), she would normally have been delighted by all the quaint fuss, and she had been when she’d first explored this town. But six months of frustration and abuse had tainted her every view of this town with a veneer of filth.
As she passed the town park and all its spring-fling bustle, she turned off the main road and headed into a small, charming residential area and onto a seemingly forgotten, dead-end block at the back. There were only three houses here, none of them occupied. One of the houses had captured her imagination. It had become a little ritual to park in front of that fascinating old relic for a few minutes and imagine plans she’d make to restore it.
Though the townspeople here would probably fight it as well, she could track down the owner (it was probably the town itself, anyway, just like the lot she’d bought), make an offer, and flip the house. She’d likely make a nice profit, and she’d have a blast doing the work. But MWGP didn’t work individual residential deals, and she didn’t have time to take on a project like this outside of work.
Also, she didn’t want anybody else to have that house. It would never be hers; she didn’t live anywhere near this town, and she absolutely did not want to. But as long as it was derelict, she could tell herself it wasn’t not hers. And have this little daydreamy ritual to soothe herself before she entered the Thunderdome that was Signal Bend.
She got the Audi moving again and continued on her way to Keller Acres Bed she now had the property for Phase One of the first Homestead, and she was two deals away from buying out the block that would be Phase Two.
Signal Bend was getting improved whether it wanted to or not.
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~oOo~
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The Keller Acres Bed obviously they were as into the ‘Spring Fling’ here as everywhere else in town.
Charm. Everywhere you looked. As sick to death as she was of everything about Signal Bend, she could still appreciate the value of its earnestly quaint aesthetic. It was perfect for her Homestead, even if she could not manage to make them see it.
No one was at the desk, so she tapped the old-fashioned brass bell, and it chimed lightly. The front door opened, and a couple came in, laughing and talking. They were dressed like models for an REI catalogue. If they were in town for the Spring Fling, they’d apparently started their long weekend with some hiking or other outdoorsiness.
They made eye contact with her as they headed toward the staircase, and they and she did the closed-mouth, stranger-greeting smile.
When Autumn turned around again, Shannon Ryan—a co-owner and the executive director of the hotel, but not normally someone who worked the front desk—came from a side door to do just that.
Shannon was in her older middle age, by Autumn’s estimation. Late fifties, maybe. She must have been an absolute stunner, like Rita Hayworth or something, in her youth, because she was still gorgeous. Very tall and on the heavy side, but in the shapely, substantial way that people used to call ‘statuesque.’ Perfectly coiffed, made-up, and dressed, even in this hick town.
She was a redhead, too, but Autumn couldn’t tell if she was naturally so. Shannon’s hair color was different every time Autumn saw her, though it was always in the red range. Autumn had never colored her own red hair, she liked her natural copper, but she’d known a few gingers who habitually traveled through all the hues from auburn to Bozo and back.
“Hi, Ms. Rooney,” Shannon said as she took a spot at the reservation computer. “Welcome back.”
“Hi, Shannon. I told you to please call me Autumn, remember?”
Shannon smiled as she typed on the computer, but she didn’t acknowledge Autumn’s request otherwise. Because she didn’t like Autumn and had no intention of calling her by her first name.
It didn’t matter. Autumn had won her deal, and someday the first Heartland Homestead would be up and full of new businesses. Then it would be somebody else’s problem, and she could never step foot here again.
“We have you in your usual suite, of course, and I had Maggie bring in two extra pillows and two extra quilts.”
“Oh. Thank you!” Autumn liked to sleep in a very cool room and then make a nest and bury herself under a bunch of blankets to be warm and cozy. She had trouble sleeping without some weight on her, but weighted blankets were far too heavy. Layers were better.
She hadn’t asked for extra bedding to be waiting in the room for her, and she wouldn’t have, but the past two or three times she’d been here, she had called down for more pillows and blankets. A note must have been made somewhere that it was a preference.
Shannon completed the check-in, and Autumn signed on the line. As Shannon pushed the key across the desk, she said, “The dining room opens at six, and Chef Nate is preparing a Parmesan-encrusted walleye served with braised mixed squash and buttermilk biscuits.
Autumn cocked her head. “I’m sorry—walleye? What is that?”
The smile that shaped Shannon’s perfectly tinted lips might have had a snarky pinch. “It’s a fish that’s local to the area. Substantial and delicious. We get them very fresh from local anglers.”
“Ah, okay. Actually, though, I’m planning on spending the evening in town, so I’ll get something at Marie’s later.”
“Marie’s is always an excellent choice, of course. Do you need help with your bags this afternoon?”
“No, thanks. I’ve just got the one bag this time. I can manage it myself.”
Shannon didn’t press the point. “Very good. Is there anything else I can do for you at the moment?”
“Nope, I’m good. Thank you.”
“Of course. Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will.”
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~oOo~
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Her usual ‘suite’ wasn’t really a suite as a major hotel would classify one. This was a spacious room with a very nice bath and a nook that served as a seating area. The décor had a feminine cast to it, with lots of flowers and warm pastels. It was the nicest room here, and probably where the bridal party headquartered on wedding weekends.
Autumn really liked it. If she had any intention—or for that matter potential—of getting married, she’d want to do it somewhere like this: elegant but not ostentatious, quaint but still classic.
That was a silly schoolgirl daydream, however, and her schoolgirl days were long past her. She hadn’t been serious with a man since her twenties, and that unmitigated disaster had set her priorities and her expectations firmly in place. Work was the thing in her life that fulfilled her, so it came first. And she would never again allow a man close to her who had even the faintest flutter of a red flag.
So she would be alone. And that was fine.
She opened her bag and selected a change of clothes. No one around here took her seriously if she dressed for work. Though she considered shoes with a heel lower than three inches to be basically sneakers, and sneakers to be appropriate for exercise only, she now had a couple pairs of lower-heeled (two inch) Frye boots and a cute pair of Ferragamo wedge loafers.
And jeans. Actual jeans. Until a few months ago, she hadn’t worn jeans since undergrad. Now she had three pairs.
All so she could fit in a little better with these hicks who thought she was Cruella DeVil, Ursula the Sea Witch, and Cersei Lannister, all packed into one five-foot-two Indianan.
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~oOo~
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About half an hour later, dressed as much like a local as she could tolerate, her hair even in a ponytail, Autumn went down the impressive staircase to the lobby. The aromas of dinner in the making wafted from the kitchen. Walleye was definitely fish, which was definitely not her favorite, but the overall medley of scents was quite appealing. Nate Jensen was an excellent chef, trained at the Culinary Institute of America.
She smiled lightly at the pleasing scents, and then froze solid, halfway through her step off the staircase. A member of the Horde sat on a sofa, scowling at his phone.
Last year, when the Horde had thrown themselves bodily in her way, Autumn had taken the time to get to know the whole club, hiring an investigator to compile oppo on them all. She had their full names, their birthdates, their skill sets, their criminal and/or military records, the names and birthdates of their so-called ‘old ladies,’ of their kids, their parents, everything. She’d memorized the details for the club leaders.
It was Daniel Cox sitting in the lobby. Not a club leader, so she had to rifle through her mind to grab some of his details. He went almost exclusively by his surname, so: Cox. In his late thirties, as she recalled. A notoriously sour personality—as she’d experienced firsthand. Even with his anger, the man had no serious criminal record, which had to mean he kept his violence at home, where his ‘club’ could bury it.
A licensed mechanic specializing in heavy machinery, his ‘official’ job was head mechanic at Signal Bend Construction—a surprisingly legitimate company with a good rep in the region, and not simply a front for illegal business. She’d been shocked to learn that.
Autumn was about seventy-percent sure she’d give SBC the contract for the Homestead, as an olive branch if nothing else, as long as they didn’t try to screw her over the details. Her thirty-percent reservation on that decision was one-hundred-percent petulance. These ignorant meatheads had made her life difficult for months. It galled to reward them with a multimillion-dollar construction job. However, hiring them would employ more Signal Bend citizens than merely the Horde, and that would show them all that she was walking her talk. She’d get over her pettiness soon enough.
But why the hell was Cox here?