“He’s a real estate agent from Waco,” Jake said to Adam.
“I sure as hell didn’t like his attitude,” Randy said to his Adam. “He seemed pretty dismissive of Michaela’s assertion that she wasn’t interested in selling.”
“He was dismissive of my ability to care for my land, period.” Michaela said. “But then my own father felt that way.” She shrugged. “I know you guys were offended by him. But honestly, how could anyone think that a bit of petty vandalism would scare me off? Especially since he knows the two of you are with me. Not that I particularly like the man. He’s a little off-putting. But I just can’t see him having done this.”
Jake pulled his cell phone out, and from the focus on his face, Lewis guessed he was looking the turd up.
Michaela’s statement had been partway right. They’d been offended by him, but more, they’d been suspicious of him. Terry Gowan had rubbed him wrong too, and Lewis couldn’t really say why. He might be willing to concede that what had been at the base of the emotional reaction he’d had to Gowan had been his inner Neanderthal protecting his woman from another man.
“I’d asked Mel and company to look into him,” Jake said. “Shortly after the funeral.” He looked over at his brother. “I hadn’t liked that he’d tried to tell me he had a spoken agreement with Harold, Michaela’s father, when I knew he hadn’t. Harold Powell would have told me about it, and then he would have asked me to find out what kind of an agent he was, and he would have asked me to find another agent, so he could play them off, one against the other. That’s how Harold rolled, and he did none of those things. Gowan also showed up at the funeral, but he didn’t, according to Michaela, even bother speak to her or give her his condolences. He seemed…furtive.” He turned to look at Lewis. “So the two of you are not off, in my opinion, to be suspicious of him. He’s acted suspiciously.”
Jake put his attention back on his cell phone. “That’s the preface. Now for the report. Gowan has no criminal record, himself, but his father was recently released from prison in Oklahoma, where he served a fifteen-year sentence for theft and fraud. The senior Gowan is currently living with his son. Connor noted that this is a fairly recent development. Neighbors report they saw the old man arrive—via taxi with a wheelchair and oxygen tank. They’ve only seen him come out of the house a couple of times since, with his son. He’s not, apparently, one to sit out on the front porch.”
“How’s Gowan’s business doing?” Adam asked. “Does he seem to be desperate?”
“No. According to the report I’m reading, he isn’t getting rich, but his head is well above water. He’s making a decent living, and he’s got a moderately good retirement portfolio.” Jake looked around the table. “I see nothing here to raise even one eyebrow.”
“All right. Here’s what I know.” Adam steepled his fingers together and looked down for a moment. When he looked up again, he met Lewis’s gaze. “Those who begin with petty ‘nuisance crimes.’ as it were, often have no trouble escalating from the petty to the dangerous. I need the three of you to be hyper-aware of your surroundings and immediately suspicious of anything you see that’s out of place—anything that’s not normal. And don’t focus that on this Gowan person, either. I understand why you’d be suspicious, but there’s no evidence you should be. Just because his father is a criminal doesn’t necessarily mean he is.”
Lewis reached over and picked up Michaela’s hand. He knew she thought they were being overly cautious. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it.
“Michaela, I believe you’re right,” Adam said. “You seem to be the target of whatever’s going on here. I think it would be a good idea if you didn’t go anywhere alone, at least for the immediate future.”
“You think I’m in danger?”
“I don’t know, and I’m sorry that’s so. It could just be someone’s being an asshole. God knows there are enough of them every damn where these days.” He ran a hand through his hair. He looked from his own brother to Lewis and Randy. And then he put his focus back on Michaela. “The truth is there are a lot of assholes around who might think that you, being a woman, have no place claiming and planning to work this land. You won’t hear that crap from anyone in the families, but that attitude does exist in the world in which we live.
“However, regardless of who this is, or what their motive, I have a gut feeling that whoever attacked the fuel tank and then the electric wire is the same person, one who’s just getting started. We’re all going to do our best to figure this out, and then you can damn sure bet I will be throwing his ass in jail.”
Lewis read the resolve in Adam Kendall’s eyes. His brother, Jake, looked equally determined. And because Lewis had already developed a keen appreciation of Adam’s instincts, he met Randy’s gaze.
In that moment he reaffirmed what he’d already known. He and his cousin would do everything to protect their woman—and get to the bottom of whatever was happening.
* * * *
“Well, what do you have here, sweet girl?”
Michaela grinned at Grandma Kate. The nonagenarian had just arrived with Jordan and both Lewis’s and Randy’s brothers. The men were all outside, preparing to get to work on the exterior of the house. Jordan had gone over what needed to be done. There’d be a final scraping of the old paint—Michaela had actually done the task herself, once—and then they’d make any repairs to the wood siding that might be needed. When the prep work was done, they’d cover the windows and prepare to spray-paint the house.
Since a lot of ladder work was called for, Lewis and Randy had suggested that she attack their attic finds while they do the heavy lifting outside.
Michaela was proud of herself for letting go and agreeing to the plan. Still, it was more than amazing that Kate Benedict had come along for a visit. The few times she’d sat and chatted with the older woman—at both the Roadhouse and Lusty Appetites—she’d enjoyed herself immensely. And, like nearly everyone else in the vicinity, she had indeed agreed to call her Grandma Kate.
Michaela turned her attention to what Grandma Kate was looking at—one trunk, unmarked, and four boxes, all labeled.
“Before everyone arrived, I decided to have a look in the attic, to see if there were any farm records. I can’t remember what my father used to grow, or any other details, and I thought, well, since I want to do something with the ranch, it would be nice to know the history.”
“That make’s perfect sense to me.”
“So, I went up into the attic…and this is all that was up there. I was expecting boxes by the dozens, like you hear others have in storage. This house has been in my family for nearly a hundred and fifty years! But this was all there was. I think Dad must have really cleaned house after Mom died.”
“Perhaps he thought to save you the work,” Kate said. “I hope I don’t upset you when I say that, from what I understand, Harold knew he didn’t have much time left.”
“I’m not at all upset, Grandma Kate. I did have that same thought. I hope it was that. I hope it was an act of looking forward and not one of trashing the past.” Since she didn’t like the way that last thought felt, Michaela shut the thought down and focused on her very welcome if unexpected guest. “Would you like some coffee, Grandma Kate? Or tea?”
“Coffee sounds good, Michaela. Thank you.”
There were still some of those wonderful pecan cookies that Anna Jessop had sent, so Michaela put some on a plate and brought them, with the coffee, to the dining room table.
“Thank you, Michaela.” She picked up one of the cookies. “Our Anna is such a wonderful baker, isn’t she?”
“I love her cookies and her banana bread. But Aunt Bernice has a hand with yeast bread that seriously puts eating it, warmed and covered with butter, into an entirely new realm of gastronomic delight.”
Grandma Kate chuckled. “She does, indeed. I never had much talent when it came to baking or cooking, for that matter. I was a competent cook, but not a talented one. The best meals our
children ate, growing up, happened when either Gerald or Patrick manned the stove.”
“That’s not one of my great talents, either,” Michaela said.
Kate looked over at the boxes that Lewis and Randy had placed on the table and read off the labels aloud. “Let’s see, you have Farm Business, Family Papers, Mable’s Recipes, and Daniel.” She met Michaela’s gaze. “Daniel was your brother, wasn’t he? A hero who gave his life in service to our country.”
“Yes, he was. Ten years ago.” She looked down at the box. “I didn’t even know dad kept anything of his.”
“Well, then, it was a nice surprise to find he had, wasn’t it?”
Michaela grinned. “It was!” She sighed. “My brother’s death changed everything. I thought about it, just recently, the way it was after he died. Looking back, it was as if Daniel was the glue that held our family together. And when he died…it all just kind of crumbled. Especially for my dad.”
“It’s hard to lose a child,” Kate said. “Even if that child is an adult fully grown. My sons are all senior citizens now, and yet, they’re still my babies. Our daughter, Maria…she was a woman fully grown, with a son who was technically an adult and a young daughter. Yet she was my baby girl, my only daughter. When she died in that plane crash—and our granddaughter, Amy, with her—oh, that was a hard, hard thing. So painful to bear and so very difficult to see any kind of future at all, at first.”
“I hope to have children one day. Even just thinking about that, I can’t imagine it.”
“I don’t think it really does any good to do that—to imagine it before it happens. Because until it does, you don’t truly know how you’ll react.”
“You’re right, of course.”
“Now having said that, I can say that while Maria was the only daughter of my blood, I still had children and grandchildren who needed me. I had husbands, then, who really needed me. We grieved, the three of us, together. And we loved the children we had left—though they were grown—all the more because of our loss. That part seems a tough thing to do for a lot of people, but it’s how you survive the hole in your heart that never mends.”
“Mom tried, but Dad… He became a bit bitter, a real curmudgeon. I think he just felt the loss of his only son too deeply.”
“Yes. I think so too. Will you open Daniel’s box today?”
“No. I thought, actually, I’d begin with that trunk. Because it had no label, so I don’t have a clue what’s in it.” Michaela tilted her head. “Would you like to help me explore it?”
“I think I would!”
Michaela unlatched and then lifted the lid of the trunk. The faintest scent of lavender wafted out.
“The first time we took a trip to England,” Grandma Kate said, “was in the early 1950s. We traveled via ocean liner. In those days, trunks such as this one made up your luggage.”
“Very different from the easy-to-wheel suitcases of today.”
“Indeed.”
Tissue paper covered the contents. Michaela carefully gathered that covering layer and placed it on the opened lid then looked down.
“Oh!” Michaela reached in and carefully picked up the gown, once white but now with the yellowish tinge of age. “I didn’t know this was here.”
“Your mother’s wedding dress?”
“Yes. She showed it to me once, oh, I must have been maybe ten or eleven. I was still at the age of playing ‘wedding’ with my dolls.” Michaela hadn’t thought about that in years. She stood and held the dress up. Her mother had been a bit taller than she was and a bit larger, besides.
“There’s a dry cleaner in Waco that specializes in wedding gown restoration and preservation.”
“I’ll have to take it there. I think I’ll do that on Monday, before work.” She met Kate’s grin with one of her own. “You never know. I just might have need of it one day.”
“And if you don’t, it’s still something of your mother’s, isn’t it? Perhaps something that might interest a future daughter.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
There were other garments inside the trunk as well, items that she recalled as soon as she saw them. There were a couple of dresses that Mabel Powell wore to church on Sundays and the black one she’d only worn once—to her son’s funeral. There were a few sweaters Michaela recalled her mother wearing. And folded as precisely as it had been on the day she’d received it was the flag that had draped Daniel’s coffin.
“These can be preserved, too, can’t they? Michaela asked.
“Jordan has a friend who does that,” Grandma Kate said. “It can be put into a glass case and hermetically sealed.”
“Then I could set it out, put it on display. It would be a way to honor him, wouldn’t it?”
“It would, indeed.”
“I’ll ask Jordan and if he’s willing, I’ll give it to him before he leaves today,” Michaela said.
“I like that you want to see to things as soon as possible,” Grandma Kate said.
Michaela grinned and gave voice to the words that came to mind. “As Momma used to say, I know the names of the days of the week, and someday isn’t one of them.”
“I’ll have to remember that one,” Grandma Kate said.
“Words I live by, unless there’s a reason not to,” she said.
Michaela uncovered the small jewelry box her mom cherished, though she didn’t think there was a precious gem in the bunch.
In the box lay a brooch, a piece she remembered well. About the size of silver dollar, it was gold in color and had imitation pearls in the shape of a star. She blinked back tears. “I can’t believe she kept it!”
“From you?” Kate asked.
“Yes. I bought this for her one Christmas, with money I’d made helping after school.” She set it back inside the box. As she set the box on the table to take to her bedroom, something in the trunk caught her eye. Michaela picked up one of the three stacks of letters that were in a corner in the bottom. Wrapped with a bit of faded red ribbon, there were no envelopes. But she recognized her father’s handwriting.
“Love letters?” There were a lot of them, and they appeared to be in chronological order. “I don’t understand. Dad didn’t ever go anywhere—well, not after he came back from Vietnam, and these were written after that.”
“So, he wrote them while he was here, going to bed each night with your mother, sitting across the breakfast table, day by day.”
Grandma Kate’s words settled gently in her heart. “I…I never saw tenderness from him, particularly. I left for college when I was eighteen and never came back to live until Jake called me to tell me he was ill.”
A handkerchief filled her wavery vision. Michaela accepted it from Grandma Kate. She took a moment to clear her vision. “It gives me such a sense of joy to think that there was another side to him and that he would take the time to write love letters to my mom. I’ll have to read these. I think I’ll set them in Daniel’s box, and when I feel up to it—and when I have a good supply of tissues—I’ll read them.”
“That sounds like a plan. Now, I don’t know what kind of records are in that box marked ‘Farm Business,’ but while my husbands ran our ranch, I took care of the paperwork. So I might be able to help you.”
“I don’t have any idea what’s in there, either, but I definitely welcome your help.”
Much later, she was sitting in her dining room after inspecting the wonderful job everyone had done on the house. Michaela told Lewis and Randy about the discoveries she’d made that day—and not just the emotional ones. She’d been right in that, after her brother died, Harold Powell had scaled back his operation considerably. After her mother passed, he’d stopped altogether. He sold off the rest of his cattle and taken a lower price on his last crop of corn, because the rancher who bought it had had to harvest the crop himself.
“This is good information,” Randy said. He and Lewis had finished scanning the documents she’d handed them. “We now know the last year the tractor worked was
2013. We’ll want to have it looked at by a mechanic before we try to start it.”
“Oh, speaking of that,” Michaela pulled over one more item that she’d kept out to show them.
“The owner’s manual for the tractor! Perfect.” Lewis grinned. “This really helps. Your father bought it in 2000. Likely no warranty left, but this is golden.”
“I also discovered that, the last few years, Jake was helping Dad with his taxes and keeping track of his bills.” She looked at the guys. “I don’t think I understood just how good of a friend he’d been to Dad.”
“Well,” Lewis said, “that’s how Kendalls do things.”
“It is,” Randy agreed. “But of course that’s the Benedict way, as well.”
Michaela smiled. She’d heard those mottos on more than one occasion. “Jessops are like that, too, I’ve heard.”
Both men smiled in response to her quip.
“When you’re ready to think about going forward, farming, ranching, whatever, we’ll have some additional information for you.” Lewis met her gaze and held it. “Do you trust us, baby girl, to do that for you? To talk to those in the families who are working the land and to get up to speed on the breeds of cattle that do the best, as well as the feed crops and grasses that work?”
Here they were, at her dining room table, looking ahead to an evening with Randy and Lewis’s family. She’d told them everything she’d learned during her amazing time with Grandma Kate.
She had shared her body with them and found she really wanted to share oh, so much more. She looked from one to the other then tilted her head to the side. She hadn’t planned to be the first one to say it and certainly hadn’t thought she’d say it yet. The words, it seemed, had a mind of their own and came out, soft yet clear, and they rang with the truth.
“Of course, I trust you. I love you. I love you both.”
Chapter Sixteen
Michaela hadn’t known what to expect as a response to her unplanned and somewhat bald declaration of love.
Love Under Two Mavericks Page 14