Chapter 10
B randon wanted to slam the phone into the counter, but that would only break the device, and it was a long drive to town to get a new one.
So he gritted his teeth as the woman on the other end continued to babble about the costs associated with stringing the electrical line another three point four miles .
“And then we’d need an easement on the property,” she said. “Ten feet on either side of the line, for maintenance, and?—”
“It’s fine.” Brandon cut her off, hoping his voice didn’t sound too much like a bark. If Dawson had made this phone call, he’d have growled ten minutes ago and hung up on the woman, so maybe Brandon didn’t have anything to worry about.
“Thanks for checking on it for me,” he said, and the words definitely sounded like a growl. He hung up and slid the phone across the counter—the best he could do without breaking it. His shirt felt too tight, and Brandon reached over his head and pulled it by the collar right up and off his body.
“Great,” he muttered as he threw the shirt on the back of the couch and stomped toward his bedroom.
“Now you’ve gained weight on top of finding out it’ll cost seventy-four thousand dollars to run the electrical line to the homestead.
” And there was no way anyone could afford to do that—and an easement?
Lenore would never agree to that, even if she had the money to pay for the electrical line.
He scoffed as he stopped in front of his closet . “What a joke.”
He’d talked to Alex last night, and neither one of them could riddle out a way to get water or electricity through the forest—not with any level of security, at least.
Alex had at least sat on the phone with him for a half-hour while they brainstormed different ways Brandon might be able to get water to Lenore’s property, what a reasonable fee might be to draw from Alex’s well, and all about that pesky wind in the Panhandle.
That alone made stringing electrical wires downright impossible—especially through trees.
No, if Brandon wanted power near the homestead, his options had narrowed to one: solar.
He’d spent last night watching videos on his phone until it had almost died, as there were plenty of people documenting their off-grid life on YouTube. The cheapest he’d seen anyone get power to their place was eighty-five hundred dollars.
“But they had to buy the panels,” he said. “And we don’t have to do that.”
Unfortunately, the panels weren’t the most expensive part of a solar system.
That honor belonged to the batteries and the inverter that took the power from the sun and converted it into the correct wattage that someone could use inside their home to turn on lights, run a vacuum, or power a refrigerator.
Brandon didn’t particularly enjoy calling anyone on the phone, but he’d spent more time making phone calls this week than he probably had all year. Yes, he could get everything he needed for the solar system at the IFA store. He’d called Benny just to make sure and to see what they had in stock.
To split the power into two houses would require two inverters and most likely two banks of batteries, which only doubled the cost.
You won’t be living here long term, he told himself as he finally found a shirt in a size bigger than the one he’d been wearing. He pulled the dark gray number over his head and tucked it into his jeans.
He’d come inside for lunch today and to make several phone calls, but he didn’t want to stay here and eat his peanut butter and honey sandwich alone. So he returned to the kitchen, grabbed his lunch off the counter, and headed next door to Lenore’s.
After their walkthrough only five days ago, they’d been eating breakfast and lunch together. Well, Brandon had coffee when he stumbled up to Lenore’s front door around nine o’clock in the morning, and to him, that counted as breakfast.
He wasn’t sure exactly what was going on between them, and he hadn’t held her hand again since that first day. She hadn’t cried either, because Lenore had more determination than most people Brandon had met.
As he jogged down the front steps, he looked to his right where the tarped area sat.
They’d been pulling everything out of the barn and moving them in from various piles and dumping spots around the homestead to one central location.
Brandon wanted to see what supplies he had to work with, and they’d laid out as many tarps as they could find in the area behind the barn.
Those tarps now held tires, pallets, machinery, old rope, bags of feed, equipment like rakes, shovels, and brooms, the solar panels, the wheels Lenore’s daddy had planned to use to make a tilting system, and so much more.
Brandon had fixed the door on the barn, and he’d gone to town last night to pick up the equipment he’d rented from the hardware store. When Jean had found out that he was working on Lenore’s land, she’d given him the skid steer and the power washer for free.
He hadn’t exactly told Lenore that yet, but…she hadn’t asked either.
Now that he had the equipment, he planned to use the skid steer to move the greenhouse from the north side of Lenore’s cabin to the south, and clear the land surrounding the chicken coop and underneath it to give the chickens fresh soil to live in.
He hadn’t told Lenore this either, but he planned to bulldoze the current chicken coop and rebuild it from the ground up.
He’d gone to Hidden Hills and collected two chainsaws that he and Lenore would use to cut the lumber that they needed, and he’d already arranged with Calvin Irwin to use his planking machine for eight hours on Monday—another phone call Brandon had made, and another person who’d been willing to donate the machine for Lenore’s use at zero cost.
Brandon’s stomach growled and pinched at the same time as he walked toward her cabin.
He’d only met Lenore a couple of weeks ago, but he knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t like accepting charity.
Her pride seemed to be made of iron, and she wanted to make this homestead work on her own terms.
Brandon was pretty sure he could make a few more phone calls and have a well-drilling truck on the property free of charge by next week.
“So how do I talk to her about this?” he asked. Admiral lifted his head from where he and Susie-Q were lounging in the shade of the front porch, as if Brandon had asked him the question.
“Howdy, woofers,” Brandon said, and they both got up, stretched, and came to greet him. He grinned at them and gave them a scratch behind their ears before continuing up to Lenore’s cabin.
He knocked on the door a few short times and then twisted the knob and entered. “It’s just me,” he called, actually wondering who else it would possibly be.
Lenore groaned as she sat up on the couch where she had obviously laid down.
“Are you napping?” he asked, the flirtatious side of himself emerging. He definitely liked Lenore. Had he met her in any other circumstance, when he wasn’t on a female fast, he definitely would have asked her out.
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “Have you seen how much work we’ve done this week?”
Brandon grinned at her and went around the couch and sank into her recliner. The rustling of his brown bag filled the cabin as he reached inside and pulled out an apple. “I called the city.”
He took a big bite of his apple, feeling his whole demeanor darken. Hope entered Lenore’s eyes, but Brandon shook his head.
Her countenance fell, and she wiped both hands through her hair. “Well, we tried,” she said.
Brandon crunched through his bite of apple and swallowed. “We’re gonna get the solar set up,” he said. “Just like we’re going to get that greenhouse moved this afternoon.” He gave her a quick smile and took another bite.
“And we’re going to fell trees on Monday,” she said. “And build a chicken coop on Tuesday.”
He nodded, still chewing. After he swallowed, he reached up and brushed his cowboy hat off his head. He set it on the TV stand next to him. “I’m going to power-wash the barn tomorrow after church. Then we’ll see what we need to fix. We’ll get that done, then seal it all up, and re-stain the wood.”
“How long does that take?” she asked.
“It’s a pretty big barn,” he said. “Probably a week, with most of that being the staining. I think we can fix any problems and get it all sealed up in a single day.”
Lenore nodded. “So maybe Wednesday.”
“Yeah,” Brandon said. “And then you’ll work on the low-level beds while I build the solar system.”
Lenore put both hands on her knees and pushed herself to a stand. She sighed as she walked into her kitchen and gathered a couple bottles of water. She brought one to him, and then returned to get her lunch.
She kept a cooler on her counter, and she opened it and took out a yogurt and a container of cottage cheese, then got two peach cups from the cabinet. Brandon had seen her eat this exact meal before, and he didn’t comment on it.
He also didn’t want to tell her about all the things that had been donated to her cause. So they ate in silence, and he led the way outside.
“Have you ever used one of these?” he asked, indicating the skid steer that he’d driven off the trailer and parked near the greenhouse.
Lenore eyed it like it might turn into a dragon and start breathing fire. “No.”
“I’ll show you,” he said. “We’ve got everything loosened along the roof. All we have to do is pick it up and move it.”
“You make it sound so easy,” she grumbled.
“We’ve got these straps here,” he said, ignoring her. “And that’s going to be your job. Once I get it balanced on that flat platform there.” He indicated the front of the skid steer, which could also hold a bucket attachment to dig trenches or a scraping attachment to clear land.
But right now, a long, flat shelf had been attached to the front and extended past the main body of the machine a few feet on each side. Brandon had measured to make sure that the eight- by-twelve-foot greenhouse would fit. It would—with a foot on each side for clearance.