“Right now, I’m working on the house. But it’s a ranch. Or a farm.” She shrugged. “I remember that, when I was a kid, there were cows and horses and a bit of tilling of the earth. My great-great-grandfather, Jonas Powell, settled our piece of land in the 1870s. I didn’t realize how much the place meant to me until I came back, when I found out my dad was sick.” She hadn’t really opened up much to anyone. She’d shared a bit with Jenny and Tammy and Bailey but just a bit with each of them. Talking about her feelings, about her heritage, now just felt right. “But I knew that first morning when I stepped out on the porch to greet the day—something I recall my mother always doing—that the house, the land, it was my legacy. And somehow, it was in my blood. Do you know what I mean?”
Michaela didn’t think she imagined that trace of wistfulness she saw in Lewis’s eyes, for all that it lasted but a heartbeat.
“I do. We both do,” Lewis said. “We thought we had that back in Montana, but we were wrong. Searching for that is why we’re here.”
“Having something like that down deep in the soul—that’s a powerful thing to have in common,” Randy said. “Don’t you think?”
The truth of Randy’s words hit deep. In the face of that, how could she go on pretending there was nothing between them? Michaela decided she couldn’t, not any longer. There was so much about these two men that drew her. She mentally threw in the towel. It didn’t matter, really, if they were only here for the short term. She wasn’t looking to build a family with them, or with anyone, for that matter. The ranch had to be her focus. So why not just have some fun along the way? Maybe spending time with Lewis and Randy would teach her something about herself.
“I do. I do, indeed.” It was time for her to just ease up on the roadblocks and see where the real attraction she felt led her.
* * * *
“Well? Did you buy the farm?”
Terry Gowan closed his eyes as he stepped into his house. The sound of his father’s voice, raspy from years of smoking and drinking before he’d been sent to prison, grated on him like a harbinger of hell. In some ways, Devlin Gowan the Second really was Terry’s own personal hell and had been for most of his life.
“Not yet, Dad. It’s more complicated than you know. Michaela Powell doesn’t want to sell.”
“What the fuck! Can’t you do anything fucking right? Nothing ever changes with you, does it? Still a fucking loser.” His last word was cut off by a coughing fit. Terry said nothing, just waited.
His father had arrived a month before, having been released from prison after an incarceration of fifteen years—a sentence that had been, as far as Terry was concerned, not nearly long enough.
Convicted of several counts of theft in Oklahoma, where the man had run off to when Terry had been a teenager, Devlin Gowan had served time in the state penitentiary in McAlester—the place they called “big mac”. Terry had been certain the old asshole would have ended up getting knifed in jail. He’d expected to, one day, get a call announcing the bastard’s death—not one announcing his upcoming release.
That phone call about six months back had started Terry on a quest. His father had said he wanted to buy a house, one about an hour or so west of Waco. He said he couldn’t remember how to get there, but he knew the name of the family who’d been the original owners in the nineteenth century, descendants of whom, it had turned out, still lived there now.
So Terry started looking and, within a week, had located the house in question. As long as he thought he was just doing this one favor for his father, he could cope. He wasn’t particularly happy that the man would be within easy driving distance of him, but just because he’d live closer to him than he had since his dad deserted him didn’t have to change a thing. He had no reason to give his father any more time than he ever had and was pretty damn sure the old man wouldn’t waste a second on him, either.
But since the day he’d opened the door to find his father, wheelchair bound, dependent on oxygen, and a suitcase on his lap, expecting his son to take him in until the house was bought, Terry’s life had truly gone to shit.
“You told me old man Powell had no family.” Devlin had finally gotten some of his breath back. “The place is bound to be auctioned off for unpaid taxes. How hard can it be for you to get your hands on the place?”
“I never said he had no family. I said his only son died in Afghanistan.”
“There’s a difference?”
“He had a daughter who came home a few months back and took care of him during his illness.” Terry didn’t remind his father that this was a conversation they’d had more than once. He knew from experience that would do no good whatsoever.
When Devlin Gowan had contacted him for the first time in many years to ask him about the house, Terry had had no idea he was going to be dragged into…what?
His gut was telling him that whatever the reason was that his father wanted that specific house it couldn’t be a good one. However, Terry was in the real estate business and had often done deals with people he didn’t particularly like.
Under the heading that a commission was a
