Lassoed by Fortune

“I dunno about anyone else, but I’m here to get out of doing more chores,” a male voice at the back of the room piped up. A smattering of laughter followed the remark.

“Glad we could help you out, Zack,” Harlan said, recognizing the speaker’s voice. “All right, let’s get started,” he declared, bringing down his gavel and officially calling the meeting to order. “It’s recently come to my attention that there’s been some serious talk about some out-of-towners thinking of opening up a new restaurant right here in town.”

“Why do we need another restaurant? What’s wrong with The Grill, I’d like to know?” a woman on the left asked indignantly.

“Have you been there lately? It ain’t exactly the Four Seasons,” her neighbor, a woman with a rather heavyset face, pointed out.

“Well, this ain’t exactly New York now, is it?” the first woman countered.

“Ladies, ladies, you’ll all get your chance to state your opinions,” Harlan promised calmly. “That’s why we’re here. No need to try to shout one another down. We’re not taking a final vote tonight. That’s for the next meeting. Right now, we’re just going to discuss it. All right, one at a time, please,” he requested, looking out at the sea of faces before him. “Who wants to go first to make a case for or against a new restaurant opening up in Horseback Hollow?”

More than a few hands shot up. This certainly was a hot topic, Harlan thought. He fervently hoped that it wouldn’t divide the town and put the residents at odds with one another. Something like that could turn ugly quickly.

Though he rarely expressed his own opinion on things, he felt strongly about one thing. He would not stand by and see the people who were his neighbors come to blows over this. He wouldn’t allow the restaurant to be built here if it came down to that.

* * *

Though she was friendly on a one-to-one basis, especially with her store’s customers, for the most part Julia considered herself to be rather on the shy side. She certainly didn’t like to call attention to herself, and as a rule, didn’t like speaking up in a crowded room. She always preferred to keep out of the spotlight.

Julia had attended more than one town meeting without saying a single word during the proceedings, only raising her hand those times when a vote had to be taken.

But this was different.

This—the restaurant that was under discussion—could very well mean the resurrection of her own dream, as well as representing some definite choices for the residents of Horseback Hollow.

Contemplating the restaurant’s advent, Julia had already gone so far as to create whole menus in her head, menus that offered so much more than The Grill—the building next to the saloon—did. The latter only served burgers, hot dogs and a grilled-cheese sandwich, which served as the establishment’s main and most popular meal. The selection at The Grill was so limited that it almost hurt.

So, after listening to one opinion being stated after another, with little being resolved—it was more like mundane bickering—Julia decided that maybe it was time for her to speak up on the side of the restaurant. She could see only pluses in having the business built here.

“Anyone else want to say something?” Harlan asked when the last speaker had finally and mercifully run out of steam and sat down. His eyes quickly swept the room.

When he saw the raised hand, he looked rather surprised to see who that hand belonged to.

“Julia?” he said uncertainly. “Would you like to say something?” Even as he asked, the mayor still expected to hear her say “No,” that she hadn’t really meant to raise her hand.

But she didn’t.

“Yes, Mr. Mayor, I would,” she said in a firm voice that gave no hint to the fact that her stomach had flipped over and was currently tied up in a very tight knot.

“Well, stand up and speak up,” he said, gesturing for her to rise. “No use talking if nobody can hear you or see you.”

“Might not be any use her talking even if we can,” someone scoffed.

“Shut up, Silas, and let her say her piece.”

The tersely worded command didn’t come from the mayor, as Julia might have expected. It had come from Liam Jones.

Stunned, she looked over toward where the rancher was standing at the back of the room. He was indolently leaning against a wall, the expression on his face moderately contemptuous. Initially, she would have said the contempt was aimed at her. But now, with his becoming her unlikely defender, she really couldn’t say what Liam was being so contemptuous of.

“Thank you,” she mouthed.

Liam just nodded silently in response, indicated that she should get on with what she had to say.

Liam Jones was a hard man to read, Julia thought, turning her attention back to the subject that had brought her here.

* * *

In truth, Liam wasn’t sure just what had prompted him to speak up just now to silence the would-be heckler. The man had only said aloud what he himself had been thinking. But the thought of someone trying to ridicule Julia into holding her peace had unexpectedly raised a fire in his belly.

If anyone was going to put her in her place, it was going to be him, not some half-wit who thought himself to be clever. And he definitely didn’t want to hear her put in her place in front of a crowd where she could be publicly humiliated. There was no call for that sort of crude behavior.

Julia’s soft, melodic voice broke into his train of thought. Liam turned his attention, albeit somewhat against his will, toward the redhead who had been haunting his thoughts ever since he’d kissed her and had messed up life as he knew it.

“Now I know that a lot of you think that things are going along just fine the way they are in Horseback Hollow—” A smattering of voices agreeing with her echoed around the room. “But they’re not really,” Julia insisted. The same voices now muttered protests.

Harlan raised his gavel in a warning gesture as he looked around the room, daring the mumblers to continue. The murmurings stopped.

Julia continued as if nothing had happened. “You can’t tell me that things are so good, so perfect that we couldn’t stand to have a little more revenue coming into the town.”

“You mean like taxes?” someone asked, somewhat confused as to where she was going with this.

“No,” Julia answered patiently. “I mean like people coming here from some of the nearby towns to eat at the new restaurant and spend their money.”

“So the people who own the restaurant make money, what’s that do for us?” Riley Johnson challenged. Julia could see by the man’s expression that he was one of the ones she needed to convert to her way of thinking. The man could be very persuasive when he spoke.

“What it means to us is a great deal,” Julia insisted, quickly explaining, “after all, the restaurant isn’t going to run itself. It’s going to need waitresses and busboys as well as people to do the cooking, to make sure there’s enough food, enough coffee, tea and other beverages to drink. It takes a lot to run a decent-size restaurant.

“The restaurant’s backers are going to be hiring local people, not busing in people regularly from Red Rock,” she pointed out, effectively shooting down a rumor she’d heard making the rounds this morning. “And those customers who’ll come to eat at the restaurant, they’re not just all going to get back into their cars and drive away into the night,” she said with a laugh. “Maybe they’ll stay and look around, buy something before they go—”

“The town’s only got a handful of shops,” Riley pointed out, still not convinced that the good outweighed what he viewed as the bad in this case.

Julia approached the subject from another angle. “Maybe this’ll encourage some of you to open up more stores. The way it is right now, we have to drive to other towns to get almost everything. For example, we could stand to have a full-size bakery right here in Horseback Hollow,” she suggested.

Liam raised his voice above the voices of several other people, pointing out, “You’ve got a bakery in your store.”

“What we’ve got are doughnuts and coffee,” Julia corrected him, smiling amicably. “I’m talking about a real bakery, one that has proper cakes, pies, fresh-baked bread straight out of the oven on the premises, to name just a few things.”

She looked around to see if she was getting through and to her surprise, she began to make out faces rather than just a sea of blurred features and hair all running together.

Some of those faces were smiling at her with encouragement. Julia took heart in that.

“I’m talking about building up a place that I am proud to call home. It is not going to be easy and it is not going to happen overnight. But it all starts with that first step,” she said with sincerity because she really believed what she was telling the people at the meeting.

Unconsciously holding her breath, she looked around the room to see if she had managed to make her neighbors understand.

“Yeah, but that ‘step’ you’re talking about involves inviting those Fortunes into our town,” someone toward the back piped up. “Who knows, after they’re finished, it might not even be our town any longer.”

Where did they get these ideas? Julia couldn’t help wondering. Even as she did, she caught herself slanting a look in Liam’s direction.