Chapter One
Sometimes a man needed to mind his own damn business.
Seth Stallard kept telling himself that very thing even as he walked across his lawn and ducked under the split-rail fence that inevitably led to the high grass adjoining Lindsey Leland’s front yard. Each step he took was one step closer to facing a spitfire of a woman who might tell him to turn around and walk right back the same way he came.
Still, he kept right on moving. Maybe he was glutton for punishment. At the same time, he was downright concerned.
Sheriff Crass Ass, better known as Sheriff Lenny Ray, had been at Lindsey’s place the week before. Threats had been exchanged, and from what Seth’s brother Beck had said, Lindsey only had a short period of time before the sheriff returned again with orders to remove her from the property.
Farmer’s Lending held the note on the place. The suits behind the business acted like they wanted to help her, but in truth, they wanted her farm. They didn’t give a damn about lending an extra hand.
Now, Crass Ass had returned. His deputies with their nondescript white box-style sedans were lined up in her driveway. Hell, it looked like they were there for a lynching. They didn’t have an ounce of discretion, but they sure carried that pound of judgment.
They wanted everyone in their small East Tennessee town to know. They were there to seize. They were there to take. If anyone held power in their small town, or in the whole state for that matter, it was Sheriff Ray and his boys.
What a joke.
Seth and his brother were embedded in the farming community, and if Seth had seen it once, he’d witnessed it a dozen times. These cops with their twenty-five-thousand-dollar annual income—and the holstered guns they seldom drew—would suddenly become ten feet tall and bulletproof, all because they were able to serve the orders that stripped one man—or woman—of the place they called home.
If Seth had learned one important lesson in life, it was this—people were basically bad. If someone wanted to find a good heart or desirable trait, they had to peel away the layers of crud and peer underneath a mountain of stone. They needed to work after it.
The local sheriff and his dutiful soldiers swarmed Lindsey’s porch. They pounded on her door screaming a mix of “We know you’re in there, Miss Leland!” to “Come on out here. We’ve got our orders!”
Orders, hell.
Seth took longer strides. If they wanted Lindsey, they’d go through him first.
The sheriff saw him coming and tried to block his path. “Now Seth, I know what you’re thinkin’, but back on up, son.”
“I ain’t your son, man,” Seth grated out, darting around him with precision and speed. He bumped a deputy’s shoulder in passing and entered Lindsey’s country kitchen. “What’s going on here, Linds?”
Lindsey looked like she could cry a bucket of tears. “I can handle this, Seth. Go home.”
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sp; “I’m not feeling it. Besides, I’m not in any hurry.” Seth stood his ground. He glanced at the legal paperwork scattered across her kitchen bar. The words foreclosure and forthcoming auction jumped out at him. He winced at the thought of Lindsey’s place going to the highest bidder. The last few farms that were sold in Greene County had been sectioned off for subdivisions.
Gaudy, pastel-colored houses had littered the land where horses once roamed and cattle had leisurely grazed. The developer was from Florida and possessed about as much talent as a two-year-old with a box of crayons.
Backed by a local bar owner and a few other investors, Mr. Sunshine had an endless stream of cash and a penchant for pouncing on landowners in trouble. He was like a damn vampire waiting to suck the very life out of those who needed a real break. Then again, the Florida developer was crooked. Some said he kept a firm hand on all the right shoulders. Given the number of Greene County farms that had gone belly-up and the developer who had snatched them for the right price, Seth believed it.
“We need Miss Leland to vacate the premises,” the sheriff said, rubbing his belly and fiddling with his absurd belt buckle. The darn thing had a cornstalk on it with the word “Grow” splattered in the center. Right underneath it read “Support your local farmers.”
Seth balked at that. The sheriff didn’t know what manual labor was. He could serve his damn papers and wear his belt buckle to make himself feel better, but the wording was a tad much.
Cornstalk? Try chickpea.
Shaking his head at the thought, he turned to Deputy Bill Bingley. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Bill. Your momma and daddy would roll over in their graves if they knew what you were doing here.” His eyes watered as he remembered how the Bingley family had been ousted by the community. “Guess you figure turnabout is fair play, huh, Bingley? Your daddy didn’t deserve what he got from Farmer’s Lending and neither does Lindsey. You ought to bow your head in plain old shame.”
The sheriff put his hands up. “Seth, now listen here. Before you say something you regret, Lindsey knew this day was a’comin’.”
The sheriff didn’t know him very well. If Seth commented on something, he rarely wanted to take it back. “Lindsey will have plenty of time to ‘vacate the premises’ because I’ll go talk to the boys at Farmer’s Lending first thing Monday.” Seth turned to Lindsey. “Linds, what can I do to help?”
She shrugged and her big blue eyes flooded with dime-size tears. The poor thing didn’t have a clue. She was too young, far too green, to know how to deal with issues like these or the men who were there to enforce the laws behind their badges. Unfortunately, that eviction notice clutched in the sheriff’s hands probably held more weight and merit than Lindsey could even imagine.
“Can I speak to you privately, Linds?” He’d given her the nickname back when they were kids. She pretended to hate it and he loved that she did.
“Seth, you go on back over to your place.” Deputy Frank Bright let the front door slam behind him. “We’re here to do a job and I reckon we’ll do it or die trying.”