Jeannie Watt Read Online Free Page A

can, but frankly, I have no idea what I’m doing.” Nicky rolled his shoulders, working the kinks out. “Believe it or not, I’m an engineering student. But I’m a lot better with calculations than I am with a hammer and a saw.”
    Matt enjoyed the kid’s candor. “Why doesn’t she just hire a contractor? Money?”
    Nicky grew serious. “She has to watch the budget, but the problem is all the local contractors are ‘booked.’” He said the word in a way that caught Matt’s attention.
    “What do you mean ‘booked’?”
    Nicky’s mouth tightened into a semblance of his sister’s smirk, but it wasn’t nearly as deadly. “She’d kill me for talking about this, but it’s nothing you won’t hear in town. There’s this family that runs an inn nearby. Real successful.”
    “Somers Country Inn?”
    “That’s the one. They’re ticked off that Tara is opening a competing business.”
    Matt frowned. He’d seen the Somers Country Inn when he’d been driving around a few days before, trying to fill the empty hours, trying not to think. It was a few miles away from the Sullivan place—a huge two-story cedar ranch-style building surrounded by picturesque cabins, outbuildings, split-rail fences and giant cottonwood trees. It smacked of luxurious hospitality with a pseudorustic flavor. The kind of exclusive out-of-the-way place where the rich would go to rough it. There was no way that Tara’s little Victorian, even if it were fixed and decorated, could compete with that place.
    “Rumor has it, and it’s only a rumor,” Nicky added in a way that made it clear it was anything but a rumor, “old man Somers has fixed it so that nobody wants to work with Tara. I mean, we had no trouble getting help with the roof, the foundation and the kitchen. It wasn’t until the plumbing…”
    “What happened with the plumbing?”
    “When we changed it over from iron to PVC, she had the guys plumb in a bunch of bathrooms—one for each bedroom, you know. That’s when the community found out she was planning to open a bed-and-breakfast, and suddenly no one was available.”
    Matt gave the kid a long look before draining his cup. Nicky filled it again without asking.
    “She finally got an electrician to come from Elko, but he was twice as expensive as the local guy. Now all that’s left are the floors, walls and stuff that needs to be fixed like the doors and the porch. Luke tries to do what he can around here, but he gets those arthritis attacks.” Nicky nodded at Matt over his coffee cup. “It’s decent of you to help him out.”
    “No problem,” he replied, looking at his watch. “Any idea what time your sister will be back?”
    Nicky shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.” He pulled the paper Tara had given him out of his pocket and smoothed it on the table. “But since this list is twice as long as it was the last time I saw it, I think I’d better get busy.”
     

    T ARA PUSHED OPEN one of the double doors of the convention room at the community center. She was late for her first meeting of the Night Sky Business Association and she would have to make an entrance instead of slipping in as she’d originally planned.
    Almost every chair in the room was filled and all heads turned her way as she started down the aisle between the rows, looking for an empty seat. A few people seemed surprised to see her, but most just stared unsmiling or nodded. She wondered, as she always did, if anyone was sincere in offering the simple greeting. She was, after all, a Sullivan. Daughter of a convicted felon and the latest in a long line of troublemakers.
    Her mother’s family had been upstanding citizens, but no one seemed to remember that, and she couldn’t really blame them. Almost everyone here had had some sort of unpleasant run-in with a member of her late father’s family.
    Martin Somers was in the front row, dressed in his expensive faux cowboy clothes, his thick gray hair perfectly combed. He, too, nodded as she