Though this guy was no usual city slicker, I could tell that. I wiped my hands as I strode up the gravel drive towards him, tuckin’ the hand towel into the back of my tight daisy dukes as I got close to him. Though as I studied him, his dark, piercin’ eyes turned to peer right back into me in turn.
“Are you the owner of this place, ma’am?” He asked, his voice so deep and gravelly, despite his glossy, well-kept appearance.
He kinda had me on edge a little. You know, like when you meet someone that seems better off and more educated and you’re just waitin’ to be made the fool of? Yea, that was me, ‘cause he had everythin’ that the books told me was bad news. He was all calm and cool, and chose his words all careful like, and he was sexy to boot. So I knew I was in trouble.
But I smiled at him all the same, like a polite girl does, and nodded my head. “Yea, sure do. All the land from here to there,” I said, pointin’ out the boundaries.
He listened real closely and all that, but I could tell he had somethin’ important on his mind from the get go.
“Got some bad news for you then, little lady,” he said, and truly I was lil’ compared to him! He was well over six feet tall, and I was well over a foot shorter’n him. “I recently acquired the local creditors to consolidate into a branch of my business,” he said, reaching into his car and pulling out a thick stack of papers. “And it turns out your place is well in arrears on payments. As in, about forty years,” he said, holding out the document to me. “I don’t know why the debt has been put aside for this long, but it showed up after my acquisition.”
“What?!”
I mean, I half understood most of what he said, but I did understand that we were in debt for forty years? I mean, that was even before my parents took over probably... I didn’t have time to think on the math just then.
I pushed my fingers through my hair, fixing my ponytail before I grabbed the papers, lookin’ at them like I might be able to figure out what’d happened.
He undid the front of his blazer, the only sign he wasn’t fully comfortable in the hot midday sun, and stepped in a lil’ closer to me. He set his sunglasses atop his head, and those dark eyes studied me somethin’ fierce.
“It’s all there. And the bank is set to foreclose on your place within the week. But that’s why I came out. I wouldn’t want to set a woman out of house and home without at least first meeting her,” he said so calmly, so smoothly, as if nothin’ ever fazed him.
“Foreclosed?” I asked, my jaw dropped open. “But my ma and pa owned this place outright, and they gave it to me in their will,” I protested. I couldn’t lose my house! My farm! I didn’t have anythin’ else, not in this world.
He looked me over with that hard gaze of his, and I knew then and there he had all the world in his pocket. Rich as they come, he could buy and sell people like me clear and easy. He took his time, took out a cigarette and lit it up, the grey smoke carryin’ on the air before me, fillin’ my nostrils with its acrid tang.
“Maybe you and I can come to some sort of accommodation, however,” he remarked in his low, growling voice.
“Accommodation?” I said with a bit of a growl. I couldn’t believe what I was hearin’! This was my home, and had been since I was born!
My hands were tremblin’ like I couldn’t believe, and I was breathing hard and fast, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was talkin’ about.
He offered up his silver cigarette case, a lone smoke pokin’ out towards me in offerin’. “Go ahead, it’ll help you relax as we sort this lil’ mess out between you and I.”
I had anger boilin’ in me, but there was somethin’ about that man, and I had no idea what it was, but it made me feel a lil’ calmer. As cold and impersonal as he looked, so tall and well-dressed, with his finely groomed appearance, I got the feelin’ from him that he was a safe man to have as a friend. Or whatever you could get close to bein’ a friend.
So I took the smoke, and I held it to my lips as he lit it with his fancy lighter.
I was still in shock, but he was right. It made it a little easier. And it weren’t like it was his fault, what was happenin’. He couldn’t have known any better than I did.
“I just don’t understand. My family’s had this farm since long ‘fore I was born...”
“I guess one of your grandparents must’ve mortgaged the place out way back, and it got lost in the mix,” he said, taking a slow drag upon his cigarette, one hand tucked into his pocket as he looked around. “I don’t want to take your farm from you though. But I have a rule that’s served me well in business: never give something away for free that you could cash in on.” He looked me over again, nice an’ slow.
I crinkled my nose.
“I only make enough to just keep afloat,” I admitted in a soft voice between the puffs of the cigarette. Everythin’ was racin’ through my head, that fear and anxiety windin’ me up tight, but that calm way he was lookin’ at me made me feel it mightn’t be all bad news. At least, I hoped...
“You’re a very beautiful woman,” he said so calmly, reaching his hand out of his pocket and up to lightly brush his fingers over my ponytail. “You live out here by yourself? No man in your life?” he asked, smoking so casually as he leaned back against his shiny black car.
I could see clear as day that beneath his white pressed shirt, he was a man who take care of himself. His fitted clothing didn’t do much to hide the bulk of muscle beneath the surface.
It surprised me, what with him bein’ a businessman or accountant or somethin’. Most of them were scrawny as anythin’. At least around where I grew up.
And really, that little touch, his softer words, they relaxed me. Did a world of wonder, really, and I nodded my head. “Just me, Mister,” I said. My green eyes found his, takin’ him in a new, calmer light.
His full lips spread ever so slightly into a soft smile, and he reached up, cuppin’ my chin in his large hand. He had a way about him, some sorta commandin’ authority that made him seem so in charge, and it was comfortin’ as well as unsettlin’.
“I bet you always were the kind of gal that wanted to be a mother though, weren’t you?” he asked in his low voice, strokin’ his thumb along my smooth cheek so tenderly.