Homestead

by Radclyffe

  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.

  Chapter Eight

  “Sit anywhere,” Tess said, not looking at Clay. She needed another minute to collect herself. Clay and the past had been too much on her mind all day, distracting her, destabilizing the order of the world she had built for herself. She couldn’t let that go on any longer. At the refrigerator, she took out the pitcher of lemonade she’d made earlier that morning and rummaged on the second shelf for a can of soda. She paused before closing the door and half turned to face Clay. “Do you still drink Coke?”

  Clay sat at the big oak table exactly where Pete Townsend had been a few hours before. She shook her head. “Gave it up. If there’s enough lemonade, I’ll have that. If not, water’s fine.”

  Tess put the soda back in the refrigerator and poured three glasses of lemonade. She put two on the table and stood regarding Clay, resolving to forget, as Clay apparently had, the secrets they’d once shared. “We should start over—as if we’d just met. We really are strangers.”

  The words dropped like splinters of ice, plunging Clay into the cold. She turned in her chair and looked up, uncertain where Tess was going with her pronouncement, not sure if her comment indicated progress or something a great deal more final. “Can you do that? Just erase the past?”

  Tess regarded her for a long moment, her expression unreadable. “Why not? It’s not like the past has anything to do with what’s happening now.”

  Clay wasn’t so sure. Since she’d arrived in New York—since she’d seen Tess standing in the late-day sun by the mailbox at the side of the road—she’d felt as if doors were opening on memories she had buried and now wanted to reclaim. She liked the hum of excitement, of being alive, pulsing inside her. Feelings she’d lost and not known she’d missed until now. But she had a job to do, a mission to complete, and if Tess needed to forget they’d ever known one another in order for them to talk, she would have to try.

  Her father’s warning to guard against past entanglements came back to her, and she winced inwardly. He had been right, again. He’d known her history with Tess might be a roadblock to negotiations, but she wasn’t going to let that happen. She wasn’t going to let personal feelings affect her business judgment. “All right. We’ll start fresh.”

  “Good,” Tess said, although she didn’t look any happier.

  Clay smiled. “Will that make you less suspicious of me?”

  “Afraid not. I’ll be back in a minute.” Tess took the glass of lemonade and left.

  Actually, she was gone more like five minutes. Clay wasn’t consciously counting, but her gaze kept straying to the big clock on the wall with its Roman numerals to mark the hour and broad, fat hands sweeping around its face. She hadn’t been immune to the chemistry that had sparked between Ella and Tess outside in the yard. Ella’s beauty was irresistible—even after all this time, Clay wasn’t used to it. And Tess—Tess was radiant, as fresh and wondrous as spring blossoms opening after a rainstorm. Why wouldn’t the two of them appreciate each other? She’d never seen Ella really notice a woman before, but Ella had clearly noticed Tess.

  The tightness in her chest didn’t ease until she heard Tess returning. She forced her shoulders to relax and sipped the lemonade. Tart and tangy, with just the slightest bit of sweetness lingering on her tongue after the initial burst of flavor. Tess’s taste had been just the opposite, all light and honey until an unexpected explosion of heat raced through her mouth, scorching her to the core. The first time they’d made out, under a moonlit sky on the deck of a sailboat moored next to the boathouse where Tess worked, she’d planned to go slow, to be gentle, knowing Tess was inexperienced. Only Tess hadn’t given her a chance to be either of those things. The first kiss had rocketed from tentative to tempestuous in a few breathless seconds, Tess’s teeth raking her lip, her hands grasping Clay’s shirt, palms grazing over her breasts until her nipples stood up like windswept stones in a storm.

  “Something wrong with the lemonade?” Tess asked.

  Clay jumped. “No. It’s great. Thanks.”

  Tess’s chair scraped out and she sat down, bringing with her a hint of honeysuckle and loam. “What do you want?”

  Swallowing the sand in her throat, Clay said, “What makes you think I want anything?”

  “I don’t have time to play games,” Tess said wearily. “You’re here for a reason, and it can only have to do with the drilling. There’s nothing else to bring you here.”

  Clay sat back in the chair, stretched her legs out underneath the table. She couldn’t avoid the conversation, as much as she wanted to. She’d managed plenty of hard sells before, but this was more than a business transaction. This was…this was personal, and she couldn’t let it be. “Do you think you can listen to me without prejudice? For just a minute or two?”

  Tess studied the woman across from her. Clay Sutter was a woman you would notice—strikingly attractive, polished, assertive. Tess hadn’t been lying when she’d told Clay they should start over from here. She didn’t know this Clay Sutter. The Clay she’d known had been ready to take on the world, filled with passion and unbridled confidence. The woman at her kitchen table, despite her commanding presence, struggled with some kind of burden that showed in her eyes, in the rigid set of her shoulders, in the fatigue that burrowed through her voice. As strong as she had to be to do what she had come to do, she labored to carry the weight.

  Despite the stirrings of sympathy, Tess was wary. Clay was a threat—the company she represented was potentially dangerous. Like most farmers, Tess didn’t trust big business. She wasn’t much of a fan of the government, either. When it didn’t rain, when nor’easters blew the topsoil away, when floods rotted the seeds in the ground, no one came to bail them out. Oh, sure, there were government subsidies to be had, but most of that money went to the large corporate farms, owned by the wealthy few with the kind of
influence to buy friends in the government. The average small farmer saw almost nothing from the millions of dollars set aside to presumably support them in times of market declines or natural disaster. No, in the end, the small farmer had only family, neighbors, and luck to count on. NorthAm was not her friend, and Clay was NorthAm. Tess would be foolish to trust her, even if they’d never met before.

  But still, the shadows in Clay’s eyes pulled at her heart.

  “I’m listening,” Tess said quietly, and she vowed to try.

  “The Marcellus Shale extends from Ohio through Pennsylvania and southern New York. There are other drill sites already operational in Pennsylvania and Ohio, some in New York, but the deposits in the eastern part of the state have never been tapped. We—my company, NorthAm—are interested in a thirty-square-mile area of land locally that’s directly over what we believe are the largest deposits of fuel in the entire shale. There could be enough natural fuel to increase the national yield by twenty-five or thirty percent. That would have a profound influence on fuel economics here and around the world.”

  “I suppose it would be unpatriotic if I said I don’t care,” Tess said, not entirely serious, but she still wasn’t about to sacrifice her livelihood and the land she loved for some political game only politicians would benefit from.

  Clay nodded. “I understand, and you’re not the first farmer I’ve heard say that. I know you have to get up every morning before the sun rises and work until after the sun goes down to keep this farm going. What happens in the next state doesn’t matter as much as what happens down the road, and what happens across the ocean maybe not at all. I just want you to know there’s more at stake here than whether NorthAm makes a profit.”

  “All right, you’ve made your point. You’re not quite robber barons.”

  Clay laughed softly. “Not quite, no.”

  Tess stood abruptly. She didn’t want to be swayed by anything other than the facts, and Clay so close, her laugh so damn familiar, distracted her. “Why can’t you find somewhere to drill that doesn’t expose our farms to contamination? You can drill horizontally underground a long ways, right?”

  “You’ve been doing your homework.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t? That I’d just let you walk in and…” Tess shook her head. “Sorry. This is personal to me—to you it’s just business.”

  “No,” Clay said softly, “it’s not.”

  Tess stepped back before the tenderness in Clay’s voice could wrap around her the way Clay’s jacket had when she’d been cold—comforting and safe. Clay wasn’t safe. “The question?”

  “We do drill horizontally, have to in order to open the channels in the shale,” Clay admitted. “But the more shallow the well, the less it costs, and the closer we can get to where we believe the largest deposits to be, the less water and sand and chemicals we have to pump into the ground to get it out again. Generally, the most direct route is the best all around.”

  “And the most direct route is somewhere on the Hansen tract?”

  Clay blew out a breath. “Actually, the ideal location in this area is in a very localized area about a mile square. That’s where we’d like to start.”

  Tess frowned. “Where?”

  Clay walked to the kitchen window and pointed to the ridge behind Tess’s house. “Right about on top of that ridge—at the junction where your land, the Townsend property, and Hansen’s land meet.”

  Tess stared out the window at the view she’d seen a hundred thousand times. “My land. You want to drill on my land.”

  “On a little bit of it, yes.”

  “No.” Tess gathered up the empty glasses and carried them to the sink. “I don’t want you any closer to my farm than you have to be, and certainly not on it.”

  “Tess,” Clay said quietly, softly, as if she was very, very tired. “Ray Phelps already negotiated for that tract of land up there. We have a signed letter of intent.”

  Tess spun around. Clay was just a silhouette backlit by the slanting rays of the sun as it dropped behind the mountains, her face in shadow. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I have a copy of the paperwork for you. I’ll leave it—”

  “Ray isn’t here,” Tess said, hating the tremor in her voice. “He never said anything about it to me.”

  “Maybe he was waiting until we were ready to drill.”

  “It’s my land now, and I certainly won’t agree to let you drill.”

  Clay’s shadow shifted and sunlight illuminated her profile, the bold lines of her face appearing as sharp and hard as a Roman conqueror’s, carved from stone. “If we go to court it will be expensive. Tess, consider—”

  “No,” Tess said more softly.

  “We might be able to keep the tower off your land,” Clay said, moving closer, “but we’re going underneath you, Tess, one way or the other.”

  “Not if there’s any way I can stop you.”

  Clay held out a hand as if to touch her, then drew it back. “Let me survey on your property. I’ll bring my team in and look at what’s down there, map the aquifer, and chart the water runoff. If I could tell you with reasonable certainty that we won’t have a problem with backflow into your land or your water, would you consider it?”

  “I have to think about it.”

  “Tess,” Clay murmured, aching to run her thumb over the shadows beneath Tess’s eyes, to erase the pain and worry. “Just let me look. I can promise with what we would pay you for those rights, your farm would be secure forever. You could do anything you wanted to with it.”

  “Not if there’s even a chance of contamination.” Tess stepped back. The softness in Clay’s voice, the tenderness in her eyes, the heat radiating from her body was too much. Tess felt herself bending toward her like a willow in the wind, called against her will, and she refused to be drawn in. “We don’t have anything else to discuss.”

  “Take some time. We’ll talk again.” Clay wanted to tell her she wouldn’t hurt her, but Tess had no reason to believe her. Tess pulled farther away, taking the heat and the sunshine with her, as if a cloud passed between Clay and the sun. She had nothing else to offer. “Thanks for seeing me.”

  Tess nodded wordlessly.

  Clay let herself out through the white screen door onto the stone path that led from the kitchen to the barnyard. Ella came down the steps from the broad front porch to meet her.

  “How did it go?” Ella asked.

  “First volley.” Clay noticed the empty lemonade glass on a small table next to the white wood rocking chair where Ella had been seated. “It’s going to be a long war.”

  “Are you sure there’ll be a fight?” Ella walked ahead and opened Clay’s door before continuing around to the driver’s side. She slid in and started the engine.

  Clay climbed in and buckled her seat belt. “Tess isn’t too happy, and Townsend is already stirring up the opposition.”

  Ella backed the SUV around and headed down the drive. “Tess doesn’t seem as unreasonable as some.”

  “Did one glass of lemonade convince you of that?”

  Ella smiled and stared straight ahead. “It didn’t hurt.”

  Clay detected something more than passing interest in Ella’s voice. She didn’t like it, but she had nothing to say about it. She liked that even less.

  Chapter Nine

  The crackle of gravel crunching under the tires of Clay’s SUV quickly faded away, leaving Tess alone in the silent house. She stared at the plain manila folder Clay had left on her kitchen table without touching it. If she didn’t touch it, didn’t read it, perhaps it wouldn’t be real. Even as she avoided it, she knew she was only fooling herself. Trouble didn’t disappear just because she closed her eyes, any more than the rain fell or the crops came in strong when she whispered a prayer to make it so. If what Clay had said was true, she had a whole lot of trouble coming her way, and she preferred to meet it head-on. Whatever had to be done, she would find a way to do it. She wasn’t helpless, she wasn’t witho
ut choices or friends. And she knew how to fight.

  Squaring her shoulders, she walked into the mudroom, pulled on her chore boots, and headed out to help with the milking. Three hours later, the day was almost gone and heavy twilight blanketed the fields, the heat still lingering close to the ground, enveloping Tess in air so thick she could almost hold it in her hand as she trudged back to the house. Inside, shadows cooled the corners of the big kitchen, and Tess worked in the near dark, brewing a cup of tea and assembling a sandwich out of the previous day’s roast chicken. When she was done with the preparations, she switched on the old chandelier that hung over her big oak table and sat down. The folder hadn’t moved, still sitting squarely in front of her plate like a coiled snake ready to strike. Rolling Hills Farm was written on the tab in neat black letters. She wondered idly if Clay had written that. Probably not. More likely someone in an office far away who had no idea what the name stood for, no clue of the land and the life that went with it.

  She slid the dozen neatly typed and stapled pages from the folder and started to read what Ray had done. By the time she’d digested the words, her tea was cold and her sandwich uneaten. She tried to find excuses for him, some explanation as to why he had made these decisions without telling her. She’d always thought they had a decent relationship—she couldn’t say she loved him the way she had loved her mother, but he had been a part of her life for a long time, and though they shared little that was personal, she’d thought they had shared a love of the land. She couldn’t square that belief with his signature at the bottom of a lengthy contract agreeing to allow NorthAm access to his land—her land—for money. A lot of money. She didn’t know if he’d been paid, but she’d have to find out. If he hadn’t been, if things hadn’t gone that far, it might be easier to somehow undo the contract. Because one way or another, she had to. She wasn’t going to let NorthAm violate her land, no matter how much money they offered her or how persuasive Clay might be.