by Cora Seton
Curtis exchanged a look with Anders. Had the developer grown a conscience in the last few months? Montague was their mortal enemy, made so by the way Fulsom had set up the show. If they failed to meet all of Fulsom’s dictates by the end of May, Fulsom would kick them out and hand the whole ranch, including Base Camp and the manor, to Montague to develop.
Montague had shown them his plans before. He intended to raze every structure on the ranch and build seventy identical houses in a subdivision. Just the thought of it made Curtis’s blood boil.
“I was thinking too small, but all that’s changed,” Montague said smugly. “Fire up the presentation, Fulsom.”
To Curtis’s surprise, Fulsom did just that, as if he was working for the odious little man. He got busy typing on a laptop he’d set up and, with Boone’s help, projected the first slide in a presentation onto the screen on the wall.
Base Camp—the Theme Park, bold letters proclaimed.
“What the—”
“Theme park?”
The room erupted into noise and confusion, and Daisy jumped up, barking, until Fulsom raised his hands to calm them down. “Hear him out!” He tapped on the keyboard to advance to the next slide. Curtis soothed Daisy back into a sitting position.
Montague beamed at them, hands on hips. “You are going to lose,” he proclaimed happily. “Which is a damn good thing because you all know nothing about business and making money. In fact, if I tried, I couldn’t make less money off this ranch than you all are managing to do. It’s like you’re deliberately trying to fail.”
Curtis’s fingers balled into fists. Beside him, Anders leaned forward as if he might explode from his seat to confront the man.
“Luckily for you, you’ve got me! When you’re done making a colossal mess here at Base Camp—which, at the rate you’re going, will be in about five days,” Montague added, pointing a finger at Curtis, “I’ll swoop in and turn this place into a gold mine. How am I going to do that? I’ll tell you.” He slapped the screen. “Base Camp, the theme park! See, I was just a lowly housing developer when you first met me. When I took a look at this property, I saw its potential. Houses. Lots and lots of houses. Big ones! On teeny, tiny lots! What a dream, right?”
“He’s got to be kidding,” Anders said.
“You’re right—I was a fool! Because meanwhile, you all were taking this ranch and making it famous! With a little help from Fulsom, here.” He patted the billionaire’s shoulder. “Next slide.”
Fulsom tapped a key. The next slide appeared, showing an artist’s mockup of an amusement park, complete with roller coasters, a Ferris wheel and other rides.
“People all over the world are watching Base Camp, and what’s more, they want to be a part of it. Five million hits to your website this month alone!” He let that sink in. “It occurred to me—all those idiots would be glad to fly in and see where the show is made. Once they’re here, it won’t be hard to part them from their hard-earned dollars. Rides, food, lodging—I’ll have it all right here!”
“Our audience doesn’t want amusement parks, they want to learn about sustainability,” Kai Green protested.
“Like hell they do. They want cotton candy and roller coasters, and I’m going to give them to them.”
“Are you going to make a sustainable theme park? Like… run everything on solar or wind energy?” Avery asked.
“Hell, no. Solar!” He waved the idea away. “You can’t run a decent ride off solar. But you’ll like this—there’s going to be a wax museum. Each of you will have a statue in it so people can see who started it all. Not to mention the dude ranch experience. We’ll keep a handful of bison and let tourists herd them around. They love that kind of shit. Paired with an endangered species safari, we’ll be turning people away!”
“You can’t make an endangered species safari,” Boone sputtered.
“You’re having us on,” Curtis said. “There’s not going to be a safari or a dude ranch or an amusement park. Montana is too damn cold half the time for that. It would be a waste of space.”
“Ah, but we haven’t even begun to talk about the ice rink complex, and the luge and giant slalom training complex we’re going to build. Athletes will fly in from around the world during winter months to hone their skills—”
“If you put thousands of people on planes flying to Chance Creek, you’ll burn so much carbon everything we’ve done will be for nothing,” Boone exploded.
Montague grinned. “I know. Good times, right? You self-righteous idiots sitting here week after week making people feel bad about spending their money. I can’t wait to destroy what you’ve built.”
Curtis pulled back, surprised by his venom. That went a little far, didn’t it? “We know all you care about is business,” he started, but Montague stepped forward and cut him off.
“No, you don’t know that. You think you do, but you don’t get it at all. I don’t want to win because I want this piece of property. There’s property everywhere, and I could set up twenty subdivisions tomorrow if I cared to. I want to win because I want to stick it to you and everyone like you. I worked my whole life to get where I’m at, and it’s time for me to develop big properties. I’m not building tiny houses, or green houses, or sustainable houses, or any of that crap. I’m building honking big McMansions, because it’s my turn to build them! To put my mark on this planet. I didn’t work this hard to consume less. I did everything so that I’d have more. More houses, more cars, more vacations, more steak, so I don’t need you people to tell me to think about the future of the earth. I don’t care about the future. I don’t care about climate change. I don’t care about the stupid glaciers, or the polar bears, or the wetlands, or the goddamn tree frogs in Venezuela!”
“Do you care about having enough to eat?” Boone interjected. “Do you care about millions of people having to move because of rising oceans or scorching summer heat? Do you care about the spread of disease and—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Montague roared.
Daisy whined. Curtis put a restraining hand on her collar. You could have heard a pin drop in the bunkhouse.
“You don’t get to tell me that me doing my job has anything to do with any of that.” Montague shook his finger at Boone.
Boone opened his mouth but then shut it again and shook his head. Curtis knew what he was thinking. You couldn’t change someone’s mind once they began to take the earth’s natural processes personally. Climate change wasn’t some kind of divine retribution the planet was wreaking on people because they’d sinned; it was more like a well-executed science experiment. If you add chemical A, you get result B—every time—no matter how much you wished things might go differently. Curtis had seen scientific articles from the 1800s that forecasted everything that was happening today. None of it was a surprise.
That didn’t change the fact that people wanted the lifestyle they wanted.
“We were all taught to want big, beautiful houses,” Curtis tried to explain to Montague. “Now we need to learn something new. That doesn’t mean your work isn’t valuable—”
Montague reared up to his full height. “Of course my work is valuable. My work represents all that’s great about this country, which is why I’m going to win. Why everyone on my side is going to win!” He looked around. “I’m done here.” He stalked across the room, grabbed his coat from one of Fulsom’s aides, pulled the door open and slammed it shut behind him as he left. The bunkhouse was silent until Fulsom spoke again.
“What do you say?” he asked. “Think we should let the show rest on its laurels and just ride out the rest of the season?”
“No,” Boone said shortly.
“You got the motivation you need now to find yourself a wife?” Fulsom looked at Curtis.
“You’re the one making it hard for us to succeed,” Curtis pointed out. Fulsom was the one who’d come up with all the rules for Base Camp, after all.
“I came up with a way to make people interested in something they’r
e not interested in at all,” Fulsom countered. “As evidenced by Exhibit A.” He pointed to the door through which Montague had stormed out. “So find a wife. Then find a way to make people understand what’s at stake.” He made a chopping motion, and the camera crews shut down and began to pack up.
Renata crossed over to talk to Boone. Curtis couldn’t help overhearing them. He gave Daisy a pat, needing the reassurance as much as she did.
“We’re all pulling out of here tonight before the storm hits,” Renata said, “but we’ll leave Byron with you. You give him full access, you hear me? Remember what we talked about.”
“We’ll give him access,” Boone assured her tiredly.
Curtis eyed him uneasily, and he wasn’t the only one. Boone usually handled these kinds of confrontations with more equability.
“Fulsom’s been unhappy,” she went on in a lower voice, glancing back at where the man in question was speaking to his aides. “He thinks the show is getting boring. I’m not sure what he’d have done if Curtis hadn’t canceled the wedding last minute. He said it was the first interesting thing to happen in weeks.”
“We’ll do our best to make things interesting, although with this blizzard coming, we’re going to be stuck inside—” Boone trailed off.
“You’ll think of something.”
“You going to be able to get back to town? The snow is starting to come down hard,” Clay said to Renata.
“The 4x4s will make it. We’re taking two and leaving the other one with Byron. Don’t let him drive it unless it’s a real emergency, though. That kid couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag, and the insurance on the thing is through the roof.” She turned away, and it wasn’t long before the bunkhouse cleared out.
When Raina’s phone blipped again, Hope bit back a sigh and kept driving. She could have understood her friend’s obsession with the gadget if it was Ben texting her, or even if it was Raina’s mother, who’d been in Bozeman all week. Since Raina had worked right up until the last minute, unwilling to leave her little charges at the daycare center before she had to, her mother had been helping make sure all the last-minute wedding details got done.
It wasn’t either Ben or Diana getting in touch, however. Hope had grown to recognize all the alerts Raina got on her phone. Sometimes she got actual calls or texts, but more often it was a message from one of the dozens of television shows and celebrities Raina followed. Over the last two days, a steady succession of pings had punctuated their every conversation until she’d almost given up.
“It’s a Base Camp Bulletin!” Raina cried, proving Hope right.
“What’s a Base Camp Bulletin?” Hope knew she’d regret the question, but she asked it anyway.
“You know Base Camp. I’ve told you about it a dozen times!”
“The one where the naked people are performing on the street?”
“That’s Stripped and Busking.”
“The one where toddlers commit crimes?”
“That’s Baby Breaking Bad.”
“The one where dogs go out on first dates?”
“That’s Dogs Swipe Right.”
“Really?” She’d made that one up.
“Stop putting down my shows. Base Camp is the one with the Navy SEALs who are building a sustainable community.”
That sounded better than Dogs Swipe Right. “What does the bulletin say?” Raina would only marry once, she hoped, and she was going to make this trip a good one if it killed her.
“Oh my god. Oh my god, it happened again! He got left at the altar!” Raina grabbed her arm and shook it. Hope tried to stay on the road. “OMG, his fiancée married her assistant!”
“Who married her assistant?”
Raina stared at her for a long minute, then let go and tapped furiously at her phone. “Now he’s single again. And he’s not the only one. There’s Walker, Angus, Anders and Greg—” She cut off and snapped her mouth shut.
“What are you talking about?” Hope demanded.
“What? Oh, nothing. Forget it.” Raina turned to stare out the window at the scenery passing by.
Was she serious? “It wasn’t a nothing a minute ago when you were shaking me!”
“Okay, it’s something. Maybe something big, but you don’t care. You don’t even watch the show. Pull over at the next rest stop, would you? I need to pee.”
A half hour later, refreshed from their break and back on the highway, Raina was her chatty self again. In the driver’s seat now, focused on the road, she couldn’t get distracted by her phone anymore. Hope soon wished she could. She was happy for Raina that she’d found her soul mate and was getting married, but Raina was in that impending-marital state that made brides want to fix up all of their single friends.
“It’s too bad Scott’s got a serious girlfriend. Wouldn’t it be great if you fell for him and we had a double wedding?” Raina said.
“Given that I’m not going to meet him until the day before your wedding, I doubt there’d be a double ceremony even if he was single.”
“But I want you to get married, too,” Raina complained. “I hate it when we’re not in sync.”
Hope bit back a smile. Good ol’ Raina. Best friend a girl could want. “You know I’m not getting married for a decade.” It was in her planner. She simply didn’t have time right now for that kind of connection.
“In a decade my kids will be going to high school.”
Hope shot her a look. “Your math skills suck.”
“They don’t suck. I’m going to have really smart kids.” She was quiet for a moment, but Hope knew it wouldn’t last. She was right. “What kind of guy are you going to marry—in a decade?” Raina pressed.
“I don’t know.”
“Describe him.”
“Are we back in seventh grade now?”
“Dark hair or redhead?” Raina demanded.
Hope sighed. Raina was only going to keep going until she gave in. “What about blond?”
“Not available.”
“What do you mean not available?”
“There aren’t any blonds left on—there aren’t any blonds available.”
“In the whole world?” Hope asked.
Raina ignored the question. “Well?”
“Dark hair.” She’d never dated a redhead.
“Skinny or burly? Like… not super skinny, but rides a bike skinny.”
“Burly.” Raina liked the skinny guys. Soccer players, long distance runners, cyclists who wore those stretchy little bike shorts. Ben was like that. Hope liked guys with a little more meat on their bones.
“Accent or no accent?”
That stumped her for a minute. An accent was always interesting, she had to admit, but in her experience guys with accents didn’t get serious about women like her. They were into flings and moving on, and despite the fact she wasn’t getting married for a decade, she didn’t find flings attractive.
“No accent.”
“Okay. That’s one down for sure. And Walker really should end up with Avery.”
“Who’s Walker?”
“No one. You sure you don’t like wiry guys?”
“Nope. No offense.”
“None taken. My husband-to-be is impervious to your criticisms.”
“He’s perfect for you.”
“And I know who’s perfect for you.”
Hope refused to give her the satisfaction of asking who.
Raina kept her eyes forward. “I think Ben’s right; it’s definitely going to snow.”
When Hope turned her way, Raina was smiling.
“Can someone give me a hand?” Anders asked, opening the bunkhouse door and leaning in rather than tracking snow into the entryway. “Snow’s starting to come down hard; we’d better get the plow on one of the trucks and clear the lane to the road. Probably have to do it several times tonight.”
“Take Curtis and get it done,” Boone said with a sigh. “He’ll need a way off this ranch if he’s going to find a wife.”
&nbs
p; “I’ll find a bride, Chief, no matter how much it snows,” Curtis promised, but he got up gladly. He’d spent last night and all day on the dating sites without much luck, and it was probably time for him to try the local bars again tonight. He’d help Anders with the plowing and then head into town. He couldn’t say he was much in the mood, though.
How did you go from buying a woman a drink to proposing in just a few days? Michele had been the one to get things going last time.
“Come on, Daisy.” He followed Anders outside, Daisy trotting happily at his heels. She didn’t care what the weather was like as long as she was in on the action. She’d been far happier since Michele had gone than she’d been in weeks.
“It’s a good thing you guys finished the next few tiny houses,” Anders said as they waded through the snow to one of community’s trucks.
“I think so, too.” Curtis was glad to change the subject. They had rushed during the past few weeks to frame in and roof four of the five remaining tiny houses they needed. They’d make it through the winter and build the last one come spring.
Daisy snuffed when a flake of snow landed on her nose and tried to shake it off.
“I hear you, girl.” Curtis looked around and whistled. The snow was piling up. “Guess I’d better get going if I’m getting to town tonight.”
“Not sure you’re going anywhere,” Anders said, his tone even.
“I can’t stay here.”
“Not sure the bars will be open much longer, the way this is coming down.”
He hadn’t considered that. “I really blew it, didn’t I?” For the first time he allowed himself to think about what might happen if he didn’t marry before the end of Monday night. He’d never let himself consider that possibility as if it could be a real outcome. “Anders, what am I going to do?”
“You’re going to plow the lane. You’re going to take a look at the roads and see if it’s worth it to drive to town. If not, you’re going to go back inside and try your luck online. That’s all you can do.” They climbed into the truck, Anders at the wheel, Daisy curled up at Curtis’s feet.
“What if I blow this for everyone?” It was the question he’d never dared ask aloud. “You guys—you’re like my family.” He searched for the words to describe how he felt. This was uncharted territory. He was a doer, not a talker.