Craving My British Cowboy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Hollow Oak
Jemima's rental sinks in the lane, a stranger in her uncle's kitchen says he lives there, and she tears up the neighbor's offer in front of the county; the creek is dry.
The rental car sank to its axles in a lane my great-uncle had called "a little soft in places."
I turned the engine off and listened to the Texas afternoon tick against the roof.
Twenty hours earlier I had been on a Heathrow bench, drafting a lease for a client in Mayfair.
Now I was standing in red mud up to my ankles, in a navy wool coat and white trainers.
I had come to inherit six hundred and forty acres I had never seen.
The farmhouse sat at the end of the lane, limestone and tin, with a screened porch and one lit window.
Somebody was in the kitchen.
I picked my way up the steps with my laptop bag held over my head.
Through the screen door I could smell butter and coffee.
A man stood at my great-uncle's stove with his back to me.
He was tall, lean, and wearing a blue work shirt gone soft at the elbows.
He cracked eggs one-handed into a skillet.
"Excuse me," I said.
He did not jump.
He turned his head, slowly, and looked me up and down from my wet hair to my ruined shoes.
His eyes were the grey-blue of the sea off Cornwall.
"You'll be Jemima," he said.
His voice was English.
The voice was as posh as a Radio 4 announcer.
"You're English," I said.
"So are you." He turned an egg. "It's a pity neither of us is any use at it here."
"Who are you, and why are you in my kitchen?"
"Rex Carew." He nodded at a mug on the counter, and then at the chair at the head of the table.
"I live here. Orville's chair, by the way. I wouldn't sit in it. He'd come back and haunt you."
"You live here."
"In the bunkhouse. The September hail took the roof off it, so Orville put me in the spare room."
"And since Orville died?"
"The spare room."
He said it without apology.
I opened my bag and pulled out the solicitor's letter.
"I was told the house was vacant."
"I was told you were in your fifties," he said. "Orville talked about his great-niece for twenty years. I pictured a lady with a Labrador."
"I'm thirty-two."
"I can see that now."
His eyes did something quick and not at all polite, and then went back to the pan.
My face went hot, which was ridiculous, because I was furious.
"Mr. Carew."
"Rex."
"Mr. Carew, I am the sole legatee of this property, and I must ask you to..."
Tires crunched on gravel outside.
Then a second set, and a third.
Rex looked out the window and turned off the flame.
"That'll be the casseroles," he said. "And Lamar."
I went to the door.
A white pickup had stopped behind my sunk car, and four more trucks were parked behind it.
Five women in church dresses climbed out, each holding a foil-covered dish.
They lined up on my porch.
A tiny white-braided woman in the middle looked me over and said, "You're Orville's girl. Zelma Rudd. I brought you pecan pie."
A broad man in a pressed white shirt and an enormous belt buckle came last, chewing a toothpick.
"Lamar Ullrich," he said, and shook my hand for too long. "Your uncle's neighbor. I'm real sorry for your loss."
"Thank you."
"Folks said you'd be tired. So I'll make this quick and kind." He pulled a folded paper from his shirt pocket.
"One point two million. Cash. The whole parcel, as is."
He smiled.
"You can be back in London by Sunday, little lady."
All five casserole ladies went very still.
Behind me, in the kitchen, I heard Rex put the skillet down.
I looked at the paper.
I had spent nine years in acquisitions.
It was a number built for someone who would never look at the land.
"Mr. Ullrich," I said. "Have you seen the land?"
"Ma'am?"
"Your offer is two thousand dollars an acre for a creek-fed property in the Hill Country. The comparable sales are four times that."
His smile stayed where it was.
"Comparables," he said. "Hear that, Zelma? She brought a calculator."
"I brought a brain," I said.
I tore his offer in half.
Then in half again.
Then I let the pieces fall onto the porch boards between his boots.
"Hollow Oak is not for sale. Not to you and not by Sunday."
Somebody in the choir whispered, "Lord."
Zelma Rudd smiled.
Lamar's toothpick moved from one side of his mouth to the other.
"You'll learn," he said pleasantly. "Everybody does."
He tipped an invisible hat and walked back to his truck.
When the last taillight had gone, Rex came out onto the porch holding a mug of coffee.
He put it in my hands.
"That was either brave or very stupid," he said.
"Which one do you think?"
"I haven't decided." He looked at the torn paper. "Come with me. Before it gets dark."
He took me around the barn to a stock tank the size of a swimming pool.
The tank was empty.
The bottom was cracked into pale plates.
"This is fed by the creek," Rex said. "It's been full for as long as Orville owned the place."
He knelt and picked up a handful of dry silt and let it run through his fingers.
"Your creek's been dry since Tuesday," he said. "Somebody's put a gate on it."
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