Page 47 of Worth the Trouble

And then she asked for the thing she’d come to ask.

“Run it again,” she said. “The whole process, done right. Published notices, the paper, flyers in every window that’ll take one. I’ll cover the printing and postage personally if the town will allow it. Everyone with a right to stand up in that room should know exactly when the room opens.” She took a breath. “Including the people who’ll stand up to bury my father’s proposal. Especially them.”

Nobody spoke for a moment. The youngest council member had stopped taking notes in the middle and hadn’t caught up yet.

“Miss Williams,” the woman at the center said at last. “You understand this statement doesn’t go away. It’ll be in the minutes. It’ll be in the paper.”

“I’m counting on it,” Cecelia said. “It’s the first honest publicity I’ve ever run.”

She picked her purse up off the floor and thanked them for their time, and she walked out through the lobby, past the front desk where she’d signed her name on the way to the worst thing she’d ever done.

Her phone started buzzing before she reached the car. Her father. It buzzed again while she crossed the lot, and a third time while she stood with her hand on the door, watching the mountains hold up the sky at the end of the street.

She silenced it and put it in her pocket.

Whatever this was going to cost, and it was going to cost, every price on the list was finally hers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Tate showed up with the newspaper before Jason finished the morning feed.

He didn’t say anything at first. He laid it on the workbench, front page up, and stood there with his thumbs in his belt loops while Jason read.

They’d put it above the fold. Developer’s daughter admits role in notice failure, asks council to redo process. There was a photograph of the council chamber, a quote from the clerk confirming the statement would enter the minutes, and there in the third paragraph, was the account of what happened. She’d cleared Kyle Sinclair as far as anybody could clear him. She’d offered to pay for the printing out of her own pocket.

“Did you know she was going to do it?” Tate asked.

“No.”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“No.” Jason set the paper down. His hands weren’t quite steady, and he didn’t mind that. “If she’d told me first, it would’ve been half mine. She wanted to own it.”

Tate was quiet for a while. Down the aisle a horse worked at a hay net, and the sound filled up all the space the two of them weren’t using.

“I’ve had my whole life to practice saying hard things wrong,” Tate said at last. “So let me try to say this one right. What I brought you at the round pen was true, and I’d bring it again. And what she did with it is a thing most people never manage once.” He folded the paper and set it under Jason’s coffee cup for a coaster. “Tell her the Dennisons don’t scare easy. Rylee’s already planning something, and I’ve learned not to stand in front of that woman when she’s planning.”

The lodge was quiet when Jason got there. Cece came down to meet him at the trail instead of letting him up, which told him plenty, and she had the look of a woman who hadn’t been sleeping and had decided to be composed about it anyway.

“You saw the paper,” she said.

“I did.”

“My father hasn’t spoken to me since I walked out of his suite. His lawyers have, though. Twice.” Her laugh had no floor under it. “It turns out I’m a liability in the technical sense now, not just the social one.”

“How do you feel?”

The question caught her sideways. She reached for the polished answer, and she set it back down. “Lighter,” she said. “Poorer. Scared.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Like I handed this town a knife, and now I have to live here while it decides what to do with it.”

“Good,” Jason said. “Then you’ll want to be there when it decides.”

“Be where?”

“The rodeo.”

She stared at him as if he’d suggested a swim in the creek with ice coming in. “Jason. Half that grandstand thinks my last name is a swear word.”

“The other half read the paper.”