“If there was a problem, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you, Lolly?” he said behind her.
“You know me, Daddy,” she said, trying to keep her voice light while avoiding looking at him as she kept walking toward the door and her escape. “Should I call you once I’m done?”
“No need. I’ll know if the letter was not just delivered but that you’d stayed while he read it. Then you need to come back here right away. Is that understood?”
The shiver she felt raced along her spine. His last words were clearly an order. She needed to come back to the ranch where she would be safe from whatever was going down.
Chapter Twelve
When the truck arrived in front of the café with the huge neon sign on the back, the townspeople all turned up to watch. Not all that long ago, locals would have said nothing ever happened in Dry Gulch. Then Cordell Lander returned, and things had been happening ever since. Cordell’s hotel renovation project had revitalized the town. It was as if Dry Gulch had been sleeping for years and had suddenly awakened along with its residents. Change was in the air and while some people embraced it, others cursed it.
“It’s so ugly,” Penny Birch declared as she eyed the Arnie’s sign strapped down on the flatbed truck.
Carla Wilson began to cry as she watched men take down the Goldie’s sign. “I remember the day that sign went up,” she said and sniffed. “Remember, Emily? We all cheered we were so happy for Goldie.”
“Well, there is nothing to cheer about with Arnie’s,” Penny said glumly. “Look at him walking around like a bandy rooster.”
“I was behind the café earlier,” Emily whispered. “I found all of Goldie’s menus in the trash.” The women gasped.
“The gall of that man,” Penny said. “You couldn’t get me to eat in that place. Not ever again. I predict he’ll go broke in a week. I started a petition to get residents to boycott him. A few people refused to sign. Closed their doors in my face—most of them hardly ate there anyway. But everyone else signed.”
As the Goldie’s sign came down and the Arnie’s sign went up, Carla turned away. “I can’t watch this. Poor Goldie. This is breaking my heart.”
“Well, she’s the one who sold the café,” Penny snapped. “I’m sure it has something to do with that fancy man she’s taken up with. Probably thinks she can do better than the sheriff.”
“Penny, you know it was the sheriff who broke up with her. He broke her heart, so I don’t blame her for what she’s doing,” Carla said. “But you don’t think she’d leave town with that other man, do you?”
Emily wasn’t listening. “I wonder what’s going on inside the café that he doesn’t want us to see,” she mused, trying to peek behind the soaped-over windows. “It makes me wonder what he’s up to.”
“I heard the whole interior is being ripped out by a construction company he hired from out of town,” Penny said. “That tells you the kind of man he is. Didn’t want to use any local help.”
The three women grew silent as the Goldie’s sign was driven out of town. Over their heads, the Arnie’s neon came on.
GOLDIE HADN’T BEENable to watch her sign come down. When she’d shown up at her friend’s law office, Josie had ushered her in and closed the blinds so neither of them had to see it.
“I almost slept with him,” Goldie said as her friend handed her a cup of coffee and they took their spots on the couch.
“For a moment, I thought you meant Arnie,” Josie said.
“I was more than willing, but Donovan…” She shook her head. “True, it was up on the hillside overlooking the pools and town last night. But it seems I can’t even get my fake boyfriend to make love to me.”
“You know that’s not true. What surprises me is that the man might have more integrity than I thought,” Josie said and took a sip of her coffee.
“Now I’m going to have to hire someone to make my fake boyfriend jealous,” Goldie joked. “But at least now I have the money to do it. Josie, my life is out of control.”
Her friend gave her a sympathetic look. “What do you want to do now?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea. I’m still so angry at Max for letting me sell the café. I know, I’m not in my right mind to blame him. But he knew how much the café meant to me. How could he let me go through with it?”
“I hate to say this, but you could have stopped it at any point,” Josie said.
“Why didn’t I?” Goldie demanded. “What is wrong with me?”
“Nothing. You had to give Max one more chance to change his mind.”
“He didn’t.”
“So does that mean your business with Donovan is concluded?”
