Page 2 of The Bitterroot Inn (Jamison Valley 5)
I was here on a fool’s errand.
That woman loved her unborn child and would never give
him up.
The elderly woman at my side said something I didn’t catch. So caught up with Maisy, I’d forgotten I wasn’t alone on this couch.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I said I don’t envy her,” she repeated. “If that baby takes after its father at all, she’s in for a rough delivery. He’s as big as a mountain. For her sake, I hope she gets the drugs.”
I shook my head and mumbled, “He’s not the father.”
“Pardon?”
I didn’t repeat myself. Instead, I stood and walked out of the waiting room as quickly as I could, going straight for the stairs so I wouldn’t have to wait for the elevator. The second the stairwell door slammed tight behind me, I pulled out my phone from my pocket. I pressed the most recent name in the call log and held the phone tight to my ear as I bounded down the steps two at a time.
“She’s keeping the baby. Leave her be.”
Maisy
Three and a half years later . . .
“Do you think they’re ever going to get over it?” Milo asked.
“Over me renaming the motel?”
“Yeah.”
I smiled and shrugged. “Probably not.”
Milo and I were sitting in a booth at the Prescott Café, eavesdropping on the Coffee Club as they debated whether the decision to rename my motel from The Fan Mountain Inn to The Bitterroot Inn was going to land me in bankruptcy. They’d been having the same discussion for over a year now and still hadn’t come to any conclusions.
“I swear, these guys are running out of gossip,” Milo said. “I remember their meetings being much more informative. Now they’re just recycling old topics.”
I giggled. “It’s just because Seth Balan is on vacation. Once he gets back, I’m sure he’ll infuse the group with fresh material. He’s their ringleader, you know that.”
He nodded. “True.”
The Coffee Club was the foundation of Prescott, Montana’s gossip mill. For as long as I could remember, the group of local men had been meeting here at the café every morning for coffee. Since the club was mostly made up of retired farmers and ranchers, they spent their first cup discussing the cattle market and grain prices while cussing the weather. But after those topics were hashed out, everything else was fair game. How they got their information I had no clue. Not even my mom’s quilting club could get the inside scoop as quickly as these men could.
“So, did you decide what to get Sara for her birthday?” I asked, changing subjects. He’d been stressing for weeks about what to gift his wife.
“No.” He leaned back into the vinyl booth, turning to stare out the window beside us. “She’s impossible to shop for,” he told the glass. “If she wants something, she buys it for herself, which leaves me with spa gift cards and jewelry she rarely wears. I want to get her something special this year. Do something big. Any ideas?”
I shook my head. Sara was a good friend, but Milo was right; she was very difficult to shop for and I was struggling to come up with a birthday gift for her myself. “Why don’t you talk to Nick?” I suggested. “He’s always going over the top for Emmeline. I bet he could think of something big.”
Milo turned back to the booth and frowned. “He’s going to laugh at me if I walk into the garage and ask for gift ideas for my wife.”
“No, he won’t. He’ll totally help.” I knew for a fact that Nick Slater loved nothing more than going all out to make Emmeline’s special days even better, and he’d be all over helping Milo. I had the sneaking suspicion that Nick was the mastermind behind many of the birthday and anniversary gifts my friends had gotten from their husbands.
“I’ll think about it.” Milo reached for his pocket and pulled out a handful of cash. “I’ve got coffee today.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
He dropped a few bills on the table, then slid from our booth and walked to the counter to pay the three dollars for our coffee carafe.
Milo Phillips and I had been meeting for coffee once a week since we’d been in our early twenties. Because our mothers were close friends, we’d grown up together. As young adults, we’d lost touch for a few years. He’d left Prescott for the police academy and I’d gone away to college, but when we’d both made our way back home, we’d started this weekly ritual at the café.
