Page 10 of Big Daddy Bull Riders

It was early in the evening when Mina heard the loud knocking.

“Coming!” she called as she bounded down the wooden staircase, though she doubted whoever was on her porch could hear her.

It was still too early for Jackson and Slater to be there, so she expected to see a group of Littles waiting on her. But once she came off the stairs, rounded the corner, and hurried through the newspaper office to the front door, she looked through the peephole to see a man in a suit waiting on the front porch.

He knocked again.

For a moment, she was nervous about answering but remembered what Sheriff Quinn had said about his close proximity. She could just yell if it was needed. And this was nothing like where she’d lived back in Dallas. That had been outright scary!

Besides,she thought,maybe someone was dropping by with a juicy tip.She could use all the hot leads she could get. It wasn’t likely, but she wouldn’t know until she talked to the guy.

So, she opened the door.

“Hi. May I help you?”

The man took off his sunglasses and smiled, but there wasn’t much warmth to it. “Good evening. My name is Hugo Sparks. I’m looking for City Hall.”

“Oh. Sorry. This is the newspaper office,” she said.

Hugo Sparks was about fifty, had graying hair, and when he fidgeted with a ring he wore, she saw his nails were perfectly manicured. The faint smell of cologne was present, too, but not overpowering by any means.

If his appearance was any indication, he was loaded. She figured he had lots of money, but also knew that might just be an act. Looking past him and noticing the car he’d parked out front—a Porsche of some kind—she realized that her assumption must be correct, after all.

Or maybe he was just in debt up to his eyeballs.

Her reporter instincts kicked in and she wanted to know about this man and why he was in town.

“My apologies. But when I looked the records up online, this said it was city property, so I assumed…”

“Oh. I think I might know what’s up,” she said, stepping out of the door and onto the porch. “The city does own this building. But it’s not City Hall. That’s down there.” She pointed in the direction of the small building that sat near the firehouse.

He looked down the street and then back at her. “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”

With that, he trotted down the three steps and got back in his fancy sports car.

As she watched him drive away, Mina thought that car probably cost more than she’d ever made in her twenty-seven years of living.

Wasn’t really any of her business, she told herself.

But then again, as a reporter, wasn’t everything in Big Cedar sort of her business? Short of getting into people’s personal lives, of course.

She shrugged and then went back inside.

“If it’s anything exciting, I’m sure I’ll catch wind of it,” she told herself out loud.

But as she tried to go on about her business, she realized her mind just wouldn’t let the issue die. She had to know what that guy was up to. Something just seemed off about him.

She pulled up her phone’s browser and did a search. It didn’t take long to find him. Hugo Sparks was a fairly unique name, and the first results she saw helped her ascertain that he was a real estate developer out of Houston.

“What’s someone from Houston doing all the way up here?” she wondered.

Maybe he was just drawn to the beautiful, lush, green mountains like so many tourists were.

Or maybe he wanted to build some sort of resort… That was just the type of thing a real estate developer would do!

With that in mind, she hurried outside and locked up. There was plenty of time to go investigate before meeting Jackson and Slater.

As excited as she was for dinner with the cowboys, some work would just have to come first.

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