Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
That evening, after the house had gone quiet, Tate sat down at the computer in his office and typed in the name he’d been hearing around town for weeks.
Reginald Williams.
The man was a millionaire in his own right.
He was the CEO of a company that prided itself on revolutionizing small towns and building resorts so wealthy visitors could get the whole rustic experience without giving up a single amenity they were accustomed to.
Town after town, the articles told all about the ribbon-cuttings and the promises the developer made.
Then there were the other articles, buried a few pages deeper. Communities left worse off when the company lost interest and sold. Jobs gone. Infrastructure costs the towns never recovered. One place in Colorado that was half empty now.
Tate scrolled until his eyes burned. From location to location, Williams brought along an assistant to help plead his case—a young woman who appeared at his elbow in half the photos.
Cecelia Williams. It didn’t take much searching to confirm what the name already suggested. The man had brought his own daughter.
Tate sat back, jaw tight. The hearing everyone kept waiting on had been pushed again. No signs. No notices. Nothing posted at City Hall. And the man responsible was living in luxury at the Overlook Grand Mountain Lodge, ordering room service and getting massages.
Somebody ought to look him in the eye. The thought arrived somewhere past midnight, and by morning it had hardened into a plan.
He was on the road before his second cup of coffee.
The sun came up over the pass while he drove. By the time the lodge gates showed on his right he had most of what he meant to say worked out. It had sounded a good deal better out loud in the truck than it did now.
The lodge lobby was modern rustic with timbers and glass more refined than most cowboys felt comfortable in. But the place definitely drew a crowd, including cowboys from time to time. Tate crossed to the front desk, hat in his hands, and asked for Reginald Williams.
The clerk didn’t even check. “Mr. Williams isn’t receiving visitors.”
“He’ll want to receive this one. Tell him it’s about the property out on—”
“Sir. Mr. Williams isn’t receiving visitors.”
Tate’s hands tightened on the brim of his hat. Then he thanked the man, because his mother raised him to be polite, and went and sat down in one of the big leather chairs across from the fireplace.
He was good at waiting. Most of the business was waiting. On weather, on a scared kid to decide he’d be safe in the saddle of a horse, on a man to work his own way around to hiring you. He could outlast a front desk.
It was early enough that the place hadn’t quite woken up. Two men in golf clothes waited on coffee before their tee time. Over at the far table somebody sat alone with a cup and a phone propped against it, head down over the screen. Nobody looked at Tate longer than it took to place him as staff.
So he sat. Guests wandered by. A bellman wheeled a luggage cart past him twice and the second time gave him a nod, one working man to another. The clerk picked up the phone once and looked at Tate while he talked into it, which Tate chose to take as progress.
He’d been there long enough for the breakfast crowd to come and go when a voice sounded at his elbow.
“He won’t, you know. Come down. He takes his meals in his suite.”
The woman was younger than the photos made her look. Polished. City-dressed. Entirely out of place here and entirely at ease about it. And there was something tired around her eyes that the pictures hadn’t caught.
“You’re his daughter,” Tate said.
“His assistant, officially.” She glanced at the clerk, then touched Tate’s arm and steered him a few steps toward the enormous stone fireplace, out of earshot.
“You’re not the first person to come looking for him, and you won’t be the last, so let me save you the morning.
He’s not going to see you. And if you make enough noise down here that he hears about it, you’ll have done your cause more harm than good. ”
“My cause.” Tate huffed out something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “It’s not a cause, ma’am. It’s my home.”
She waited. That surprised him. Most people who let him say that sentence were only waiting on their turn to talk.
“That parcel backs onto near a third of my family’s land and most of the Black farm beside it,” Tate said.
“There’s a helipad in your father’s proposal.
I’ve got a neighbor over there with three goats and a barn she rebuilt out of her own pocket this summer, and I’ve got horses that get skittish when a truck delivers supplies.
You can put all that in a report if it makes anybody feel better. Nobody upstairs is going to read it.”
“No,” she agreed. “They aren’t.”
Her mouth moved and stopped. “I know,” she said. “For what it’s worth.”
“Does it help?” Tate asked. “Saying so?”
That earned him a look. Not offended. More like she was working out how much of an answer he’d earned this early.
“I’m the one who comes down,” she said. “That’s the job.
He stays upstairs, and I come down and I’m decent to people, and they drive home feeling better about it, and the paperwork gets done anyway.
” She said it evenly, worn smooth from handling.
“So, no. It doesn’t help. It only makes the part before easier on everybody. ”
Tate had nothing ready for that.
It wasn’t worth much. But it wasn’t nothing, either, and that was the part that threw him. He’d driven out here braced for a villain and been met instead by a tired young woman being kinder than her job required.
“You’d be one of the neighbors, then,” she said.
“Tate Dennison. My family’s property runs along the east side of the parcel your father’s after.”
She nodded, like she was filing the name somewhere she’d want it later.
“There’ll be a hearing eventually,” she said. “When there is, come to it. Bring everyone you know. That’s the honest advice.”
“Why would you tell me that?”
For a second she looked like she might answer it straight. Then the small practiced smile came back on. “Because it’s the only advice I’m allowed to give away.”
She went off toward the elevators without hurrying, and Tate was left standing by the fireplace with his hat in his hands and no idea what he’d accomplished.
The far table by the window was empty. Whoever had been sitting there had left most of a cup of coffee going cold.
Nothing. That was what.
The drive home was worse than the drive out. Somewhere past the halfway mark, Rylee’s voice showed up in the cab with him, clear as if she were sitting there. You’re still allowing everything else around you to become a priority.
She’d said it to his face at the market. He’d snapped at her for it. And not one day later he’d gotten up before dawn and chased the developer to his hotel.
Tate’s hands flexed on the wheel.
Nobody needed to know about this. It had come to nothing anyway. The brush-off had been polite, at least. He’d apologize to Rylee properly once things settled, and this whole stupid errand could stay between him and that overpriced lobby.
And he had gotten something, if he was honest about it. A name he could put to the man. The word of the only person in that building who’d tell him the truth, and a hearing that was coming whether the mayor posted it or not. He could work with that. He’d have the whole county in that room.
Nobody would ever have to know where he got it.
He told himself that the rest of the way home.
He almost believed it.