The Cougar and the Cowboy

He headed straight to Jace and sat down at the bar next to him. After ordering a shot of whiskey and downing it immediately, he smiled and said quietly, “Hello Jace. Are you ready to sign the papers yet?”

Jace asked, “Isn’t it a bit early to be downing shots, Blakely? Even for you?”

“I wanted to celebrate early. I knew today was going to be my lucky day. You would come to your senses and accept my offer for this establishment. I even had my attorney draw up the papers and I hired an architect to design the new and improved restaurant I’m going to build on this property…after I tear this one down.” He smiled a toothy grin as he glanced around the room. “Yes, I would say Bozeman could use some new eateries on this side of town. Don’t you agree, Jace?”

It was all Jace could do to keep from picking Blakely up by the seat of his pants and his shirt collar and tossing his carcass into the street. Instead, he told him, “I hate to disappoint you but you’ve made a trip for nothing. I told you the last time you were here The Branding Iron isn’t for sale…not then, not now and not in the future. And even if it was…I wouldn’t sell to you.”

Blakely smiled. “Oh you’re going to sell to me. Maybe not today, but at some point when the creditors get ready to take it out from under you, you’ll be more than happy to take my generous offer. And all that bullshit you spew out about how this is a landmark and it would destroy this part of Bozeman and there’s so much history in this place…I’ll try to shed a few tears as the bulldozers demolish the joint.” With that, he stood up and walked out.

It was still deathly quiet. Everyone knew the very real possibility of what he said and that it could become a reality. The bar was in financial trouble and no one knew exactly how to help Jace avoid the dire consequences Blakely was talking about.

“I’m going home for a bit, Mitch. I’ve got some phone calls to make,” Jace stated as he left.

***

“Okay, guys, how are we going to help him?” Ken asked when they knew he was gone. “Anybody got a few hundred thousand laying around that you’d like to part with?”

They shook their heads at that suggestion but continued to think of possibilities.

“What about setting up one of those Go Fund Me pages? There’s a lot of people who wouldn’t want to see this building torn down and might contribute.”

“Yeah, maybe that would work. How about the Bozeman Historical Society? Think they could help?”

“Probably not,” was the answer.

They continued talking but made no progress.

Finally Ken said, “I’m telling you all the same thing I told Jace. He needs something to draw people in here. I know I kiddingly suggested pole dancers but y’all know I wasn’t serious. In the beginning, it needs to be a group or groups who are good enough to pack this place on weekend nights. The residents of New Bozeman don’t even know this place exists so there would have to be some advertising and lots of talkin’ it up. I know how we all feel about the wealthy residents and we talk about them like they’re the enemy…but in this situation, they just might be the savior.”

“So where do you propose we find this fantastic entertainment and if they’re that good, they won’t be cheap. How’s Jace gonna pay for them to be here, if we do find someone?”

“Hey, I came up with the idea. Now you guys can figure out the hard parts,” Ken told them as he stood up to leave. “It’s not going to be torn down tomorrow so we’ve got some time to work on a few things, ok?”

He stepped up to the bar and called Maggie and Mitch over before he left. “Why don’t you two sign Jace up for another dating site? A senior one. I’ll pay for it. You never know. Maybe one of those lonely older women would like a good looking younger guy like Jace to wine and dine them. If they get romantic enough, she might give him the money to bail him out. They’re called cougars, if I’m not mistaken.” He winked and left, quite pleased with his idea. Mitch looked at Maggie and shrugged his shoulders, “I guess it couldn’t hurt, right?”

Maggie shook her head slightly. “I don’t know, Mitch. He was pretty hot about us signing him up for the first one. He might explode if he starts getting notices from older women, too.”

“Besides our jobs, what do we have to lose?” Mitch said under his breath. “And if it worked, he’d thank us, right?”

“I don’t know. Hell, let’s just do it. It’ll take a while for him to figure out it’s another site anyway.”

***

When Jace got home, he immediately called his banker and his mortgage company. He needed to know exactly how much he still had in his savings and in the few investments he made when money was flowing like water. That seemed like eons ago. He also checked how much was required to pay off the loans he had against his property. As much as he hated to admit it, the truth was that it might come down to making a choice between saving his homestead or his business.

He would have the long trip to Colorado to think about his predicament and to weigh all the options. He was pretty sure Danielle wouldn’t want to talk for hours on end and since they didn’t really know each other, they wouldn’t have much to talk about anyway. He could use the time to work on a strategy…whatever that might be.

CHAPTER 12

CAMILLE PRETENDED TO read a book during the plane ride, not wanting to have conversations with any fellow passengers. She had her notes about who she was going to be and the entire fabricated story of her life. She wanted to be well versed in her new persona when the plane landed.

She reminded herself there would be no pictures to accompany her submissions to the magazine…only a fake by-line: Emily Hasbro. That was the name on her new driver’s license too. Hopefully, that would avoid any slip-ups. She chuckled, thinking this sounded like a clandestine spy operation or that she had just entered the Witness Protection Program. She prayed they had covered all the bases. She knew no one in Montana or any surrounding states. She had no relatives except her mother, in Paris, so there should be no danger of a long-lost cousin recognizing her. She also believed the majority of visitors came to the state for sightseeing or the excellent skiing and she had no intention of going anywhere near a crowded tourist attraction or a ski slope.

Camille, now known as Emily, still had trouble believing she had allowed herself to be convinced this was something she needed to do. Perhaps it was punishment for being the oldest person on the magazine staff. Trying to think positively, she convinced herself it would be a nice respite from the office and the daily decisions. That thought gave her pause as she distinctly recalled the last time she’d agreed to let someone else make important decisions. She had nearly lost the magazine and her freedom along with it. She laid her head back and tried to catch a nap but thoughts of that time in her life wouldn’t allow any sleeping. If it hadn’t been for Will, she would have lost everything…something they agreed to never speak of...however, he occasionally tried to blackmail her with the facts of their collusion.

It had been decided Emily Hasbro needed a profile picture for the dating site. She also needed a Facebook page in case any of the men who contacted her would look her up but there would be no profile picture of her face on Facebook. Instead Allie used a flower picture; a pot of geraniums, if she recalled correctly. That in itself was pretty funny, since she wouldn’t know a geranium from a tulip. Her new driver’s license did have a picture of someone who looked similar but not identical of course and the name on it was Emily Hasbro, not Camille Desmond. The profile picture on the dating site was the same as the one on her license. She had done some research and realized not every email or notification was going to result in a meeting, but when it did, she wanted to be prepared. Prepared enough to at least remember where she was supposed to be from, her name and her age.

Submitted articles and columns were generally accepted with a six-month lead time, however, due to the relevance of this story, the publishing timeline had been rearranged to make room for the input Camille was going to send throughout the month. Those stories would then be put in chronological order for readers to see what happened in her dating life in a ‘real-time’ format. At least that was the conceived plan.