The Montana Bride by Jeannie Watt

Author:Jeannie Watt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tule Publishing
Published: 2015-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

On Tuesday it rained. Horse camp was cancelled due to a sloppy arena, so Jacie dropped Darby at Lil’s house, where she would spend the day helping to assemble cherry-themed potholders for Lil’s Aunt Tilde’s Cherry Festival booth. Lil topped off Jacie’s coffee and then she headed back out into the wet morning. When she got to the Montreau she took the back hallway to her office, so as not to track mud and water over the marble floor of the foyer, pushed her door open, then jumped a mile when she saw that someone was sitting in the chair opposite her desk.

And he was smoking. The smell took her instantly back to their dysfunctional past, but she was not going to fall into the role of powerless stepdaughter.

Jacie set her damp purse on her desk. “Put that out.”

Clinton made a show of looking around the room for a place to stash the small cigar. Jacie waited. Finally he said, “You don’t seem to have an ashtray.”

She stepped back so that the door was accessible. “Feel free to put it outside. There’s no smoking in this building. Surely you knew that.”

Instead he leaned back in his chair and brought the cigar up to his lips, drawing in, making the tip glow red.

“Put it out, Clinton.”

“Or?”

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and snapped a picture of him, framing in the old photo of the Montreau hanging above his head. There would be no doubt as to where he was sitting while blowing smoke. “I guess I’ll email the fire marshall.”

He pulled the cigar out of his mouth. “Delete the photo.”

“Put out the cigar.”

With a dark look, Clinton wet his fingers and pinched the end. In return, Jacie pushed the delete icon, then turned the phone for him to see.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

He casually studied her, using the same stare that used to make her squirm. “Do you think that you can come to my town and cast aspersions and not have to answer for it?”

It took her a moment to come up with the aspersions in question. “Do you mean my conversation with Glenna? Well, guess what? You are manipulative and I don’t see any reason that I should keep that to myself when you’re screwing with my livelihood.”

“I screwing with your livelihood?” he said as if he were the injured party.

“You had another engineer check my beams and report back to the owners? I’d say that qualifies. And it’s also a pathetically transparent attempt to stir up trouble for me, considering the fact that he was a geological engineer.”

“He was free.” Clinton tossed the cigar into her trash can. “You purposely scheduled the restaurant closing during my event.”

“It’s not all about you, Clinton. Reschedule.”

“The people coming in for the event can’t reschedule.”

“That’s unfortunate.” Now how was she going to get him the hell out of her office short of calling 911? “I can’t reschedule either. I have a budget and a schedule to manage and my first concern is to the owners.

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