Homestead

Chapter Seven

A knock sounded on the metal door of the trailer, and a second later Ella stepped inside.

“Hey,” she said. “You’ve been locked up in here almost all day. You want something to eat?”

Clay pushed back from the workbench bolted to the long wall of the thirty-foot trailer where she’d spread out the survey maps of the surrounding counties. A big satellite dish sat on the roof, providing Internet access for the laptop she’d set up to review documents related to the job. If the wind didn’t blow too much, she had a pretty decent signal.

“What time is it?” Clay asked. Someone in marketing had labeled the current job the Adirondack Pilot Project. The specs called for forty drill sites within a hundred square miles of where she sat. From the air, the rolling hills would resemble a porcupine of tower-quills.

“Almost four.”

Clay rubbed her face and sipped some of the cold coffee from the thermos Ella had left for her early in the day. The thermos was about as empty as her stomach, and her stomach was sending out distress signals. “Did you eat?”

“Some of the guys got pizza a while ago—I saved you some.”

“Thanks. Sorry, the day kind of got away from me.”

Ella leaned a hip against the counter. “It’s a pretty place. I found a spot in the shade.” She indicated the iPad mini she carried everywhere with her, outlined in her jacket pocket. “I’m used to waiting. Problems?”

“I’m starting to think so.” Clay grimaced. “I haven’t had a chance to review all Ali’s filings yet, but we’ve got more than a few uncrossed t’s. Acquisitions have been scattershot. Whole tracts of land right in the middle of our projected drill fields are under active use, and we don’t have clear right-of-way. Getting permits could be a problem.”

“Have those owners been approached?”

Ella was more than just Clay’s guard and assistant. She was smart and quick and had been around long enough to have learned a lot about the business. Oftentimes when it was just the two of them traveling from one project to the next, Clay talked things over with her. Ella’s insights, unmotivated by personal gain and uninfluenced by corporate politics, often gave Clay valuable perspective. This time, she was going to need it.

“That’s the big question.” Clay tapped the survey map. “If we don’t secure rights from a couple of places, we could be in trouble. From the looks of the geological analysis, we’re going to be drilling under them if not through them.”

“Well, the underground drilling rights will be easy to get, don’t you think? If we’re not putting derricks on the property, the acceptance will be higher.”

“Ordinarily, I’d say yes, but the farming industry up here is a little different than what we’re used to in Texas or even the Midwest. These aren’t big corporate farms with thousands of heads of beef cattle being bred for market. In this area especially, we’re looking at dairy farms. Not only that”—she tapped the map again, her pen bouncing on the words Rolling Hills Farm—“organic ones to boot.”

“Well, that throws a spanner in the works,” Ella muttered. “Operations like that tend to be paranoid about anything that even smells of chemicals.”

“Tell me about it.” Clay rolled back the desk chair, stood, and stretched the tight muscles in her lower back. She squinted out through the slatted windows of the trailer into the yard, a hundred square feet of packed earth that had once been a pasture. Men and women were off-loading eighteen-wheelers filled with machinery—front-loaders, bulldozers, drills, and derrick parts. Flatbeds carried prefab walls and roofs for temporary housing. Swarms of construction workers had already erected a cluster of barracks with sleeping quarters for eight, and rudimentary bathrooms with chem toilets and stall showers near the bordering woods. Tanker trucks pumped in water, time-rationed with automatic cutoffs, encouraging fast showers. The spectacle was so common she barely noticed it most of the time. NorthAm built mini-villages like this on every job site—mobile communities that could be erected or struck at a moment’s notice. To the locals, NorthAm probably looked like a marauding raider laying waste to the countryside. And this was only the beginning of the siege.

In the next few weeks, the cranes and drill towers would arrive, and once that happened, the project would gain a momentum of its own, impossible to redirect. Before then, Clay had to assuage the community’s concerns and secure the rights NorthAm needed to tap the underground fuel in the quickest, most cost-effective way. Without endangering the land or the water.

“So what’s your next move?” Ella said.

“Time to go a-visiting,” Clay said with equal parts uncertainty and anticipation. She’d been hoping for an excuse to see Tess again, but Tess wasn’t going to be happy about what she had to say.

Tess turned into the driveway a little after four. She and Leslie had talked long after lunch ended, catching up as they ambled through Washington Park past people sprawled in the grass with backpacks and laptops scattered around them, or walking dogs, or pushing strollers with children sleeping in the late-afternoon heat. Finally Tess couldn’t put off the inevitable.

“I have to head back—afternoon chores.”

“I guess I should go back to the office and wrap up too,” Leslie had said, “but I really don’t want to.”

Leslie had dropped onto a bench overlooking one of the small ponds that marked the heart of the large park. A flagstone walkway, shaded by trees and shrubs, circled it.

Tess sank down beside her. “It’s been great seeing you.”

Leslie turned on the bench, one arm stretched out along the top, and smiled. “It has. I don’t want to lose touch again.”

“Neither do I,” Tess said softly. “I’d love to see Dev again too.”

“Then we have to get together soon.” Leslie had smiled that smile she got whenever she seemed to be thinking about Dev. As if some secret pleasure had been brought to mind that eclipsed everything else.

Tess had wondered then what that would be like, to love someone whose mere presence was more important than anything else, and to be loved by them in return.

She’d still been thinking about it all the way home. Turning into the long dirt drive to the house, she shook off the musings and pulled her truck around the side of the barn and under the lean-to. She’d promised Leslie she would get together with her and Dev at their house on the lake, but she wasn’t sure now she ever would.

The thought of visiting the lake sent a twinge of pain flaring around her heart. Silly. She couldn’t avoid a place just because once upon a time she’d thought it was a fairyland filled with endless possibility and limitless promise. Just because she’d thought she’d found the future there and learned she had been wrong. She’d been taken with the fantasies of youth and hadn’t realized until now she hadn’t quite been able to let them go. She really should thank Clay for showing up and forcing her to face her own foolishness.

Feeling a little more settled, she stopped in the barn to check the mother cat who’d wandered in from the fields during a rainstorm and promptly deposited five newborn kittens in a bed of straw she’d carefully built on a wide, deep windowsill. Tess had been feeding the mother ever since, and every day the mother let her get a little closer to the sanctuary before hissing to warn her off. Tess made it to within three feet of the litter today and counted that all five kittens were still there and growing well. Two orange ones like their mama, a tortoise, a gray striped, and a black with a white blaze on its chest. She knelt down and held out her hand, and the mother cat ambled over to allow Tess to scratch behind her ears. Tess hadn’t tried to pick her up and doubted the cat would like it, being as she was the independent sort. But no matter how independent she might be, she liked the attention.

“You’re going to have to let me pick them up, you know,” Tess murmured, stroking the cat’s soft fur. “Otherwise, we’re going to have a pack of wild kittens running around, and before long we’ll have an entire country of them right here on the farm.” The mother arched her back and looked unperturbed by the notion of a new generation of felines on her adopted territory. “But we’ve got time, don’t we?”

The mother cat didn’t answer, just purred to announce that she would consider Tess’s concerns and let her know how she felt about trusting her kittens to a human.

Tess laughed and walked out to the barnyard. She stopped before she’d gone ten feet. A black SUV was parked by her front porch. She didn’t know the vehicle, a shiny, new oversized monster designed more for carting people around than goods and equipment. Not a farmer’s car. A corporate car. Her spine stiffened. She could only think of one person who might be driving a car like that around here, and she’d made it clear that person did not have an open invitation to drop in. She strode forward, her jaws clenched tight, formulating her verbal assault, just as the driver’s door opened and a gorgeous blonde stepped out.

Tess slowed, surveyed the woman. She looked…Nordic, somehow. Her blond hair was so pure gold it almost seemed white. Even from twenty feet, the woman’s deep-blue eyes, as crystal clear as a high mountain lake, were captivating. Tess had a hard time looking away as the stranger walked to the front of the car and stopped, waiting, her gaze holding Tess’s. Another door opened and her passenger stepped out. Clay.

Tess didn’t need to look to know. The heat-laden air shimmered, as if a pulse of energy coursed through it. Her skin tingled. Imagination, of course. Who else would it be? Tess steeled herself and pulled away from the blonde’s hypnotic aura.

“I don’t remember making an appointment,” Tess said.

Clay smiled, the lopsided half-rueful, half-apologetic grin that once had Tess’s heart melting a little. But it would take more than a smile to melt the ice that encased her heart now. She waited.

“Tess, sorry to barge in, and I promise not to make a habit of it,” Clay said, the grin disappearing. “But I called and didn’t get an answer, so I thought I’d take a chance you’d be out working somewhere.” Clay gestured to the blonde. “This is Ella Sorenson, my assistant.”

Assistant. Tess tried to square the memory of the rebellious teenager on the big black motorcycle with the present businesswoman who looked polished even in casual clothes, accompanied by an equally polished assistant. She couldn’t.

“Hello,” Tess said, trying to sound at least a little bit civil. She didn’t know the blonde, after all, and her relationship to Clay really didn’t matter. Shouldn’t matter, anyhow.

“Please to meet you, Ms. Rogers,” Ella said in a mellifluous alto that sounded cultured and confident and sexy. All the things Tess was not feeling right now.

Tess folded her arms across her chest and focused on remembering all the reasons she did not want to talk to Clay. “What do you want?”

“Can we talk?”

Tess stared off into the distance. Why, all of a sudden, had Clay appeared wanting to talk? How Tess longed to say no. She’d waited day after day after day for exactly this—for Clay to appear around some bend in the road, calling out that she needed to talk. Needed Tess. And night after night, she’d gone to sleep confused and hurt, her waiting for nothing. She sighed and cut her gaze back to Clay. Their eyes met and Tess’s heart gave a little jolt.

She’d always loved Clay’s eyes, so intense and penetrating, as if Clay were reading her mind without the need for words. Sometimes when she’d been cold, Clay would slip her jacket around her shoulders without being asked. When she was tired, Clay would ease an arm around her shoulders and guide her head down to her chest, never saying a word. She’d imagined Clay had known her, been able to intuit what mattered to her. Clay had touched her all the way through.

“Fine. But I don’t have long. I need to bring the cows in soon.”

“Thank you,” Clay said.

“I’ll wait for you outside, Ms. Sutter,” Ella said, turning back to the SUV.

“You can’t wait in the car,” Tess called, feeling grouchy for no reason at all. “It’s too hot out here. You’ll roast.”

Ella smiled over her shoulder, looking even more beautiful, if that was possible. “I’ll turn the air-conditioning on, but thank you—”

“Don’t be silly,” Tess said. “Sit on the porch—it’s shady. I’ll bring you something to drink. Lemonade? Seltzer?”

Ella canted a hip, a whimsical expression passing over her face that Tess would swear was completely genuine.

“You know, I would absolutely love a lemonade.”

Tess laughed, charmed in spite of herself. “Well then, go ahead and sit down. I’ll bring you out a glass in a minute.” She looked at Clay. “Let’s go back to the kitchen.”

“Thanks,” Clay said, hurrying to catch up as Tess strode off without waiting for her. She swore she could hear Ella laughing behind her.