Page 88

—Jessamy to Black

Black

I was going on day three of no sleep when a commotion started in the hallway.

Since I was at the satellite office in Bear Pass, I knew exactly who it was the moment that the woman started screeching.

I took my glasses off and pinched the bridge of my nose, a headache already forming.

It wasn’t even eight in the morning yet.

Though, I suppose that was what you got when you were going off three hours of restless sleep over forty-eight hours and your daily allotted intake of caffeine before six a.m.

“Their own city?” Amile screamed, her voice reaching an octave that most opera singers couldn’t hit. “How is that possible?”

My lips twitched.

So they’d heard.

“It’s possible because you forced them into the corner and made them choose,” Jack, always the voice of reason, said. “Did you get a look at their bylaws?”

The lawyer I’d offered up worked quickly, apparently.

“You mean where you can’t have a hotel within five miles of the closest house?”

“That one.” Jack laughed at the anger in Amile’s voice. “I’m pretty proud of them. They pretty much took every available avenue from you. And they didn’t even know that you were doing it.”

That wasn’t quite the truth…

“You should’ve never put them in that corner,” Jack continued beating his point home. “Not to mention, the revenue from that ranch Milo owns was a pretty big chunk of taxes Sawtooth got.”

Amile said something lower under her breath, but I didn’t hear it.

Jack laughed, and then he was marching past my open door.

He paused when he saw me at the desk and turned around.

“Hear that?”

I nodded.

“You got them a good lawyer,” Jack commented. “She knew what she was doing. The ski resort that was planned isn’t going to happen with that town’s bylaws. They’re even more strict than Sawtooth.”

Sawtooth had passed a law that said that no hotel/ski resort could be built within the city limits. Bear Pass had decided “let’s do all the ski resorts.”

Luckily, the road between the two cities was pretty treacherous in the winter, having to go through a couple of passes to get from one to the other, and most tourists didn’t want to navigate that.

Bearly There was between the two and no passes separated Bear Pass from Bearly There. They’d be slammed with traffic on their road if that ski resort went in. Plus, they’d have to widen it to allow for traffic.

Now? They were protected.

“Bearly There, population nineteen.” Jack laughed. “I’m out of here.” He paused when he got to my door. “How’s our girl?”

My stomach clenched.

I’d been doing a pretty good job not thinking about Jessamy.

I’d made it through our entire five-minute conversation and everything.