3. The Fence Line #2
I reach out my hand, my movement jerky and slow. "Jax," I say, keeping my eyes locked onto hers. "Jackson Rowe."
She hesitates for a half-second before she lets go of the shield and takes my hand.
The moment our palms slide together, the electricity sings up my arms with a sudden, violent jolt that shoots straight up my arm and sets every nerve ending in my chest on fire.
My fingers twitch, wanting to tighten around her smooth skin, wanting to pull her ten inches closer until her full chest is pressed against my flannel shirt.
I can feel her skin burning hot and her pulse fluttering against my thumb. I watch her eyes widen, her chest jumping as she grips my hand back with surprising firmness for a woman her size.
For a second the Galveston motel room is right here between us. The dark sheets, the heat, the sound of her breath in my mouth.
But it's not the motel room that stops me.
It's the way she's gripping that folder. Like it's the only thing keeping her standing. I know that grip. I've held tools the same way. When everything else is falling apart, you hold onto what's in your hands.
Then she jerks her hand back as if she's been scalded. She steps back, her expression locking down into a cold, impenetrable wall. She refuses to meet my gaze.
Her actions make it entirely clear. Galveston didn't happen. The bar didn't happen. The motel didn't happen. She is erasing the text before my eyes.
"Mr. Rowe," she says tightly. "I'm here strictly for business."
I almost scoff out loud, a bitter, rough sound in my throat. I tuck my hands into my pockets to keep from reaching for her again. "Strictly on business? You walk into my salvage yard, and you want to call it strictly business? You're a hardass, Nora. I'll give you that."
"Don't," she snaps, her blue eyes flashing with a dangerous, sharp warning that tells me she's used to directing rooms, not taking orders.
She holds the blue cardstock folder up, thrusting it directly into my face, her fingers trembling slightly against the cardboard. "I think you need to see this."
I look at her for a long beat, letting the silence stretch between us until the hum of the cicadas in the brush grows loud. Then I reach out, my large, grease-stained fingers brushing against hers as I take the folder.
I flip open the blue backing.
Tract 14, Section B, Moonrise Plains Survey.
My eyes move down the page, passing the legal boundaries, until my gaze hits the line marked Grantor and Title Holder, and I read Margaret Elaine Rowe.
My mother.
I look up from the paper, my face hardening into a stone mask, my eyes narrowing as I look at Nora. She's standing there, her arms crossed over her chest, watching me arrive at the conclusion she's already known, obviously.
"Where the hell did you get this, Nora?" I ask, my voice dropping into a low, dangerous register.
She glances over her shoulder, her blue eyes darting back toward the entrance gate, toward Beckett Road that leads out to the state highway. Her hand on her elbow tightens, her shoulders pulling inward by a fraction of an inch.
"It was on my father's desk," she says, her voice steadying as she turns back to me, ignoring my question about her hyper-vigilance. "He had a stroke last week, Mr. Rowe. I came down from Houston to take care of him, and I found the deed while looking for his health insurance files."
"The old man had a stroke?" I ask, my brows drawing together. "Arthur Beckett?"
"Yes," she says, her chin lifting. "And before you ask, no, he hasn't been entirely forthcoming with you.
Or with me. I didn't know until yesterday that the fifteen acres our house sits on actually belongs to your family's survey.
My father had a private fifty-year lease agreement with your mother, Margaret. It expired twelve months ago."
She pauses, taking a deep breath through her nose, her full chest rising against the linen of her shirt. She looks me dead in the eye, her sky-blue gaze unblinking.
"He should have returned the property to you when the lease ended. He didn't. He was sick, he was scared, and he didn't tell anyone. For that, I apologize. It was a mistake, and my family doesn't deal in stolen land."
I look down at the blue deed, my thumb tracing the edge of the cardstock. "An apology doesn't change the fact that your old man has been sitting on my mother's property all this time without informing me about the agreement in place. That's a son-of-a-bitch move for a neighbor."
"I know," she says, her voice sharp as a razor. "Which is exactly why I'm standing in your yard today. I'm here to fix it."
"How do you intend to do that?"
"Since the lease is over and the title is technically cloudy, I want to buy you out.
Name your price, Jax. I'm an architect, I know the market value of coastal prairie land in this county, and I'm willing to compensate you significantly above the appraisal rate to transfer the deed to my father's name permanently. "
I look at her, and the first real stirring of unease twists deep in my gut. I can smell trouble coming off this situation from a mile away, and for some reason, looking at the hard, stubborn set of her clean jaw, I know this woman isn't going to give up easily.
I knew the land belonged to my mother initially. I knew she had some old, handshake deals with the neighbors before she passed, but because I was young, the details got blurry. I didn't know the exact lease agreement that was in place with the Becketts.
But now that I'm standing here holding the official title deed, there is no way in hell I'm letting go of it. I don't care if the Pope walks into my yard asking for that dirt. It stays mine. It's Rowe land, it's my mother's legacy.
Regardless of the fact that the woman asking for it is the same woman who made my pulse redline in a Galveston motel room, and even now.
"Name my price?" I repeat, a low, humorless laugh escaping my teeth.
I step closer, until I'm towering over her, my shadow blocking out the sun on her white shirt. "I don't know what the hell you've heard. But this land isn't for sale. I wouldn't sell that eastern fifteen acres for a goddamn fortune."
Her blue eyes narrow, the shock completely gone now, replaced by a fierce, volatile determination that matches my own grit milligram for milligram. Her boots stay planted in my gravel, her full hips tilting as she squares her shoulders against my chest.
"Every piece of land has a price, Mr. Rowe," she says, her voice dropping into a smoky, dangerous whisper that hits me like a dare. "You're running a salvage business. You understand capital. Give me a number."
"There is no number!" I growl, my patience snapping, the rough, crude language of the clubhouse slipping out before I can restrain it. "I don't care how many zeros you put on a check. The answer is no."
She looks at me for a while, the silence between us turning thick and loaded with a different kind of friction. The sexual heat from the bar is still there, vibrating beneath the surface like a live wire, but now it's wrapped in an iron coat of war.
She finally reaches out, her fingers snapping the blue folder out of my hand. She clutches it back against her chest, her chin lifting high, her midday sky-blue eyes burning through mine under the hot Texas sun.
"I don't plan on folding, Mr. Rowe," she whispers, the dare landing between us like a physical blow. "My family is staying on that land. I don't intend to give up either. See you around, neighbor."
She turns on her heel, her charcoal-grey trousers shifting against her thighs as she walks toward the gate, her red hair catching fire in the wind.
I stand there, my knuckles tightening into fists, watching her cross the yard.
She came here to fight for something.
I don't know what yet.
But whatever it is, she'd bleed for it.
I know that look too.
I see it every morning.
The chain-link gate screeches shut behind her.
"Son of a bitch," I mutter into the empty yard, my heart hammering dangerously against my ribs.
She's gone.
The yard smells like motor oil and burnt steel again.
And clover.
Faint.
Almost gone.
Not quite.