Page 50 of Worth the Trouble

He circled the block and parked. The Bloom Shop on the corner had another notice in the window that the building had office space for lease above the shop. That might be just what a new PR firm needed to get off the ground.

He didn’t know much about public relations. He knew what the paper had printed. First honest publicity I’ve ever run. He’d read that line enough times that the fold had gone soft. He knew she’d walked out of her father’s suite with no title and no salary and nothing to fall back on but whatever she could build. And he knew she still counted every door that opened for her in this town as if she expected it to shut.

A room over the square, with her name on the door, where anybody in town could walk past and see her working. That’d answer the question. Not for the town. For her.

The bell over the Bloom Shop door rang when he went in. Cold water and cut stems, buckets of mums along the wall in every color the mountain turned in October, and the woman behind the counter looked up from a ribbon she was curling with the edge of her scissors.

“Help you?”

“The space upstairs.”

“By appointment.” She went on curling. “It’s my sister’s building. She’s particular about who she shows it to.” Then she looked at him again, longer. “You’re the Dennison from the rodeo.”

“One of them.”

“The one who went in the pen.”

He didn’t say anything to that. She set the scissors down.

“Tell her Jason Dennison asked,” she said. “She’ll call you back before supper. She was in the grandstand.”

He saved the number off the sign. Then he stood there longer than he needed to, hat pushed up off his forehead, looking up at windows that might be the front to a perfect space she hadn’t seen yet.

His phone went off while he was still at the glass. A number he didn’t have, area code from out east.

“Mr. Dennison?”

“Speaking.”

“Reginald Williams.” A pause. “Cecelia’s father.”

Jason turned from the window. “Is she all right?”

“She’s fine. This isn’t about that.” Papers moved on the other end of the line. “I think it’s time you and I had a conversation. Dinner. Tomorrow evening at the Aviary. I’ll have a table.”

“What’s it about?”

“You’re not a stupid man. You know what it’s about.”

“Does Cece know you’re calling me?”

“Cecelia and I aren’t discussing much of anything at present.”

Jason stood there with his phone to his ear. Across the square, Wendy came out of Horseshoe Antiques with a stack of orange paper under one arm and started on the lamppost.

“Will Cece be there?”

“No. And I’d take it as a courtesy if she didn’t know about our dinner meeting.”

“I don’t keep secrets from her.”

“On this, you’d be wise to.”

“I’ll be there,” Jason said. “And I’ll be telling her. I won’t keep anything from her.”

Nothing on the line for a breath. Then, “Tomorrow, Mr. Dennison.” The call ended.

A man like that didn’t buy dinner to say congratulations. Jason turned the phone over in his hand. Tate would want to come. Tate would want to sit in the truck outside the Aviary with the engine running, and Jason would tell him no, and Tate would do it anyway. Whatever Reginald Williams had to say across a white tablecloth, he’d be saying it to a man who wasn’t going to back down from him.