by Anna Jeffrey
“Should we walk over it?” Kelly asked.
Shannon would love to walk out onto the property and, as she had done many times, let her imagination bask in the delight of selling it to a Walmart or a Costco or a Target. But she and Kelly both had on high heels and the ground was wet from the past weekend’s rain.
She shook her head. “No need. I’ve already walked over it a dozen times. Believe me, I know every little bump and swale.”
“I wonder why they listed with a Dallas broker,” Kelly complained. “Why wouldn’t they have listed with us? We’d do a better job than an out-of-towner.”
As the owner of Piper Real Estate Company, Shannon appreciated Kelly not being a passive agent who sat at her desk and waited for the phone to ring. “We aren’t associated with a national chain,” she replied. “And we aren’t part of the big boys’ club.”
Kelly huffed a laugh. “What club is that? It sounds naughty.”
“Commercial Realtors. They’re a breed all their own. And they’re worse than naughty. Most of the ones I’ve met are snobs. They look down their noses at us residential agents.”
Busy pressing the information from the sign into her phone, Shannon’s thoughts traveled to where they always did when they came to this five acres. If she could bring a major retailer to Camden, she would finally be considered a real player in the real estate game. The company she had started in an abandoned store that belonged to a friend of her grandmother’s would become the real estate office to call in Camden, for both buyers and sellers. She and her agents would
never be beggars again in a profession that ate its young.
“The owner lives in Dallas,” she said. “He’s a speculator. I tried to buy it from him before, but he wouldn’t sell.”
“You know him?”
“No, but I’ve talked to him on the phone.”
“Do you know how much he’s asking?”
“He would never say. A lot, I suspect.” Shannon couldn’t keep her mouth from tipping into a huge grin. “But then, that’s what negotiation is all about, isn’t it?”
Kelly grinned, too. “You got it. Does he know you own all the property around it?”
“If his agent is worth his salt, he’s researched the neighboring properties. So it’s my guess that he does.”
When Shannon and Kelly had seen the new FOR SALE sign, they had been on their way to evaluate the sales potential of an upscale home Kelly wanted to list. Homes valued at a quarter-million and up were Piper Real Estate’s specialty. Shannon and her team diligently cultivated such homeowners and homebuyers. With Kelly being a newcomer in Camden and the newest member of the Piper Team, Shannon took pains to assure her how much she valued her efforts to bring new business into the office. She turned her attention to her now. “Do you think your house would wait until this afternoon? Of course we can go now if someone’s expecting us.”
“Oh, any time’s okay,” Kelly replied. “The owners aren’t home. I’ve got their key. We can take care of this five acres first.”
“Let’s get back to the office then,” Shannon said, turning and opening the SUV’s passenger door. “We’ll go look at your house after lunch.”
“Right-O,” Kelly said.
As Shannon latched her seat belt, she cast one last look at the corner and a comfortable future, not only herself, but also for her elderly grandmother.
On the way back to the real estate office, her thoughts settled on her grandmother, Evelyn Piper, in whose home Shannon lived. With the elderly woman’s only income being a small social security check, to help both of them, Shannon had moved in. In exchange for a roof over her head, Shannon had assumed their living expenses. And plenty of living expenses existed in a Victorian house that had been built in the nineteenth century. The heating and air conditioning bill alone was a monthly gasp.
Still, Shannon was happy living there and felt fortunate to have her grandmother in her life. It was nice to go home at night to someone who genuinely cared about her, something she’d never had in her whole life until now. But there was more to it than that. Grammy Evelyn had given her a new start when no one else in the world gave two hoots that she was alive. Shannon would never forget it.
Unfortunately, with the collapse of the mortgage business and foreclosures emerging everywhere, home sales had slowed to a crawl. Once, more than a dozen agents hung their licenses with Shannon and her small company was on its way to being the best. Now, most of the agents had had left to take jobs with regular paychecks. Shannon’s sales staff had shrunk to one team of herself and three other women.
The four of them were lean and mean, but they had to dig business from under every rock. No one of them could afford to be a slacker. She was the only one who didn’t have a husband to support her and pay the bills. Her share of commissions covered her expenses and still allowed her an income, but a small one. If the market didn’t pick up soon, she could be in big trouble. But all of those facts only reinforced her enthusiasm for buying the five-acre tract.
Kelly was as excited as Shannon. “Just think, Shannon, if you could get that corner, you could sell that whole thing to a big box store for millions. This town needs more retail.”
Kelly was quick, but Shannon was way ahead of her. She had done her homework. Without the corner, the bordering thirty acres weren’t worth much more than Shannon had paid for them. But with it, Kelly was right. Maybe not millions with an S, but one million for sure.
She had sold a couple of homes for a million dollars plus in her short career and that had been adrenaline-pumping enough, but the idea of so many zeroes in her own bank account and the financial security it represented boggled her mind.
“I know,” she said. “Thirty-five acres is big enough for most of the big boxes. Or even a small mall.”
Back at her office, Shannon immediately called the Dallas listing broker. He told her the owner of the five acres was out of town through Christmas and difficult to reach, but any offer that came in would be presented as soon as possible. Shannon glanced at her calendar and bit down on her lower lip. Christmas was a month away. Any number of snafus could erupt between now and then. She hated having her bid hanging loose for weeks, but she could do nothing else.
Kelly’s head poked through her office doorway. “Well, is it doable?”
“The owner’s out of town until after Christmas. You know what that means. There’s plenty of time for other bids to come in.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and there won’t be any.”
“Maybe,” Shannon said absently.She had never relied on luck. For her, luck had been mostly bad or non-existent. What had gotten her to where she was now was hard work, sacrifice and self-discipline, fueled by her grandmother’s faith in her. Having assumed the role of her caretaker, Shannon owed the tiny elderly woman security in her old age. She had to get her hands on that five acres.
Chapter 3
The Double-Barrel Ranch
Drinkwell, Texas
Drake Lockhart, founder and CEO of one of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex’s most successful real estate investment companies, spent the Monday after his thirty-fifth birthday riding fence. He had done this task as a kid, when he lived at the Double-Barrel Ranch and cowboyed for his dad. The ranch owned numerous mechanized vehicles he could have used, but he liked reacquainting himself with the land from the back of a good horse.
Through acres of pasture destroyed by fire, Drake rode along a line of new barbed wire fence, checking for broken or loose strands. He had been riding since daylight. He wore a down coat and a neckerchief and silk long johns under his jeans, but still, he was chilled. The temperature had been near freezing when he first left the barn and had now risen to only the low forties. An unseasonable early norther had blown in and it had rained twice during the past week. With that and fog shrouding the landscape, a penetrating dampness hung in the air.
His mount—Silas Morgan had said his name was Mouse—evidently loved the brisk weather. He stepped out with
purpose and showed high energy, causing Drake to hold a tight rein. He liked a horse that constantly reminded him he was horseback.
Climbing a rise, he spotted a dark object the size of a small steer darting behind a low hill. Hog! Adrenaline surged. Drake’s brain refocused.
Drake clucked to Mouse and spurred him to the crest of the rise, at the same time yanking his rifle free of its scabbard. He reined to a halt, set the gun at his shoulder and scanned ninety degrees through the scope. Spotting the hog again, he set his boots firmly in the stirrups, leaned forward and fired. Crack!
Mouse shifted and whirled, but Drake controlled him until he settled down, then sheathed his rifle and gave him reassuring pats on the neck. “Good boy, good boy. ’Sokay, boy.”
Drake was proud of him. Few ranch horses would tolerate a rider shooting from their backs. He trotted the horse downhill toward where he had aimed. Where a hog carcass should be lying, he saw nothing. Not even a sign. “Shit,” he mumbled. He was a good shot, didn’t usually miss.
He circled a small area, searching with his “hunter’s eye,” though it wasn’t as sharp as it had once been, he had to admit. He sat for a few minutes, watching and listening. And shivering. Giving up on the hog, he turned Mouse and walked him back up the rise, still scanning the landscape.
He halted the horse on the brow of the hill and relaxed the reins. As the gelding lowered his head and began to nibble on tufts of grass, Drake gazed out across a shallow valley. The fog and low clouds hid the far side, but he knew that in the distance on the other side of the basin, a miles-long blue mesa met the sky. It and everything between here and there made up a part of the Double-Barrel Ranch’s many thousand acres.
His near view took in four sections, roughly twenty-five hundred acres, known on the ranch as the North Pasture. That is, what was left of it. Last spring, it had been lush with good grazing. Now, grass struggled to take hold on charred, arid ground and hazy blackened skeletons of
scattered live oak trees and sagebrush showed through the fog like contorted skeletons. He couldn’t keep from thinking of the years of work that had gone into making the North Pasture an example of what conscientious range management produced. Ranching was about more than raising good cattle and horses. It was also about responsible stewardship of the land. Common sense.
Years back, before Drake had first left home for Fort Worth, cedar and mesquite trees had been a thick snarl and a haven for rattlesnakes. Every cattleman hated snakes and mesquites. The snakes were a hazard to man and beast. The mesquites sucked water from the ground, depriving grass of needed moisture. Their razor-sharp thorns tore cattle’s flesh, inviting infection and blowflies. They had even been known to pierce a cow or calf’s eye.
His younger brother, Pic, along with the ranch’s brush removal crew, had spent Pic’s summers home from college beating back the thorny growth in the North Pasture, reclaiming grazing land and seeding with hybrid grass.
But Pic and the brush removal crew’s years of effort had been all for naught. The past few years, high temperatures and low humidity had dried grass into kindling ripe for rapacious fire. Drought had turned trees and desirable brush into fodder. Spring had ended with the Lockharts, like every other landowner in Texas, sitting on pins and needles, hoping no accident of man or nature, chose them.
They hadn’t escaped. On one hot, windy afternoon the past June, range fire had rolled over the land and consumed every living thing on the North Pasture’s surface. In this pasture alone, a hundred head of cattle—mothers with new calves—had been trapped, suffocated by smoke and roasted where they stood.
Some believed the Treadway County fire had been set. A half-assed arson investigation was still ongoing, but Drake wondered if they would ever know for sure.
Half the state of Texas had been on fire all of last spring and summer. Hundreds of homes had burned and more than a million acres. Besides the North Pasture, thousands of acres of the Double-Barrel’s rangeland had gone up in flames. Drake had fought the fires himself. He and his two brothers, his dad and even his little sister had stood shoulder to shoulder with firefighters, national guardsmen and volunteers from all over the country.
The Lockhart net worth and cash reserves had taken a major hit. In an industry at the mercy of Mother Nature, disaster of one kind or another loomed ever-present, but in Drake’s lifetime, he had never seen the Double-Barrel faced with so much calamity all at one time. Yet, the Lockharts were luckier than some. Oil and gas royalties and, thanks to Drake, wind turbine leases on the family’s cotton farms in West Texas kept the ranch in cash.
After five months, memories of the fires and the aftermath no longer reduced Drake to weeping, but a knot of emotion had been in his throat all morning. This ranch had been his home from birth until he was twenty-five years old. He might not live here now, but he owned a part of it and felt an undying loyalty to it. He dabbed at his eyes with a corner of his neckerchief. He hadn’t known much true grief in his life, but over the past summer, he had learned it had a way of overpowering even a will as strong as his.
The record-breaking drought continued. He gazed down at the dry and cracking soil with sadness. With only a little help from man, the grass could grow back thicker and richer on the burned ground, but it would take rain. A lot more rain than had been seen so far. And time. So much time. Perhaps more time than today’s fast-paced business world would allow struggling ranchers.
Drake finally gripped his emotions and willed away his downbeat thoughts. He couldn’t do what he had to every day if he allowed negativity to gain a foothold in his psyche.
He breathed in the earthy smells of the damp earth and relished the solitude that surrounded him, let himself be sucked into a silence so profound he could hear it. Without a doubt,
lonesomeness had been born in his soul. No wonder people called him a loner.
He loved the land and being alone with the wide unfettered vistas, the quiet that came with being located thirty miles from the nearest population. This was where he found his strength, where he refueled, where he regained his perspective after weeks of wrangling in the high stakes investment and commercial real estate world in Fort Worth and Dallas. Real estate development and investment was a business in which he had been engaged since the day he graduated from SMU’s business school.
His world at present was a rough and tumble landscape populated by big money individuals and cutthroat players, arrogant lawyers and slick accountants, self-important architects and temperamental designers. Daily, he dealt with self-righteous inspectors, tricky politicians, environmentalist wackos and greedy bankers. Money gave no man mercy, he had learned, but making it with his wits had bought him profound personal satisfaction.
He was a man with a divided heart because as much as he loved the ranch, he loved his business in the city. He had found his niche and was at the top of his game. The rush that accompanied a multimillion dollar deal thrilled him. He delighted in the euphoria that followed triumph, perhaps even more than the financial reward. He didn’t enjoy the deals that went sour—and in the ten years since he had put together his company, he’d had his share—but he didn’t hate them either. Every one of them had taught him something.
A rumble in his stomach caused him to check his watch. Noon. He had eaten only a light breakfast and was famished. He inhaled another helping of the cold fresh air, then drew Mouse up, urged him down the hill and reined him toward the ranch house and food. The Double-Barrel’s sprawling barns and buildings came into sight and he nudged Mouse into a lope.
Silas Morgan, who had lived in the ranch’s bunkhouse most of his adult life, met him at the horse barn. Silas had never been married and had no family as far as anyone knew. That was how it was with several of the ranch hands. They rode for the brand, loyal to the bone. The Double-Barrel was their home, the Lockharts their family and the Lockharts respected that.
Drake swung out of the saddle, feeling a deep ache in muscles he hadn’t used since he had been down from For
t Worth for the fall round-up.
“How you like ol’ Mouse?” Silas asked, taking hold of the bridle.
Drake untied his rifle scabbard and set it against a stall. “Pretty damned amazing. Took a shot at a hog. He didn’t even pitch my ass to the dirt.”
“The hell,” Silas said, loosening the saddle cinch. “What happened with the hog?”
“Missed him.” Drake patted the horse’s neck and told him again what a good boy he was.
“That’s not like you, Son.”
Silas had always called him “Son.” Indeed, Drake saw him as a second father. Years back, Drake had spent a year and a half living in the bunkhouse himself, alongside the ranch hands. Silas had mentored him, taught him to be a real cowboy. And he had gone a long way toward teaching him to be a man. To this day, Drake lived by something Silas had told him: Don’t never give up ’til you just have to. And if it turns out you have to, pick your own place and do it on your own terms.
“I couldn’t see that well through the fog,” Drake said absently, more interested in his mount. He no longer owned a horse, but there had been a time when a good horse had been a big part of his life. “I miss the horses,” he said, dragging the saddle off Mouse’s back.
“You were always good with ’em,” Silas said, removing Mouse’s bridle. “This been a good birthday for you?”
Drake regarded his thirty-fifth birthday as a landmark. This year, it had landed on the day
after Thanksgiving Day. The annual holiday feast had included a huge birthday cake and champagne. “The best,” Drake answered. He carried the saddle into the tack room and placed it on its tree.
The whole family, including Drake’s ninety-year-old paternal grandmother, who now lived in town, and Pic’s girlfriend, Mandy, had been present. Mom had come down from Fort Worth. Even some of the older ranch hands had been there. The gathering had been almost genial for a change. Mom hadn’t nagged him about getting married and having kids. Dad had been on his best behavior, so Mom hadn’t picked a fight with him.
