Big Man

He keeps his voice cold and formal, but I don’t miss the way his gaze drops over my body, lingering on my chest and my hips. I dressed the same way I do every day this morning — to kill. The tight pencil skirt and the designer top that hugs me just close enough to display a hint of my curves isn’t the worst thing I could be caught wearing by a handsome blast from the past. Serves him right for not putting the pieces together. If he’s on this farm, he has to have some inkling of my identity. Doesn’t he?

I shake myself back to reality. What am I thinking? This jerk is trying to order me off my own lawn. I don’t give a damn if he remembers me or finds me attractive.

“No shit it is,” I reply, shifting my hands to my hips and drawing myself up to my full height. I’d be taller with the damned heels on, but… “It’s my private property, so I’ll ask you again. What are you doing here?”

“I have just as much rights to this land as you do, Sasha.”

The sound of my name stuns me silent for a second. Okay. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he does still have a few fond memories of me.

Then he keeps talking and spoils the illusion. “That is who you are, right? Sasha Bluebell, only ungrateful daughter of Maryanne Bluebell?”

Okay. That does it. I ball my fists. “Listen, Mister —“

“Grant Werther,” he answers, butting across me.

I laugh that off. He thinks I’m as forgetful as him? Fine. “You can’t just come storming in here acting like you own the place. I have the deed to this land —“

“And half of that deed belongs to me, you’ll find.”

That draws me up short. I finally process what he said earlier, before my name. I have just as much rights to this land as you do. What does that mean?

Grant wipes his palms on his jeans and reaches into his back pocket. There’s a rustle as he unfolds a piece of paper, then crosses the grass to my side, paper extended before him.

I accept it with a pointed glare.

“My father loaned your mother money seventeen years ago,” he’s saying. “In exchange for 50% ownership of the farm.”

I ignore him and skim the paper instead. Dealing with Mama’s accounts has left me better versed in legalese than I’d like to be. But unfortunately, the contract in front of me, signed and notarized in Mama’s unique handwriting, agrees with everything he’s saying.

“Pop left me his share when he passed,” Grant is saying, his tone irritatingly arrogant. “Which means I own his half.”

I refold the paper, mouth pressed into a thin line. I don’t want to admit he’s right. I don’t want to concede defeat. So I just pass him back the paper and fix him with another long glare. “Fine. So we’re both part owners. That doesn’t mean you can stand here on the lawn where I grew up and insinuate things about my relationship with my Mama or act like you know the first damned thing about me.”

His eyebrows rise, just a little.

“Ungrateful daughter,” I say, for emphasis, in case he forgot the insult.

But far from looking reprimanded or taught his place, he only seems to look more… amused. “That’s me told, then,” is all Grant says.

For some reason, that irritates me even more. I cross my arms and lean on one leg, heels still dangling from one hand. His gaze darts to the shoes in my fist, then my bare feet, but if he has anything to remark about my state, at least he keeps it to himself. “What’s your intention with your half of the share?” I ask. “Because my plan is to clean the place up as best I can, as fast as I can, and then sell it for whatever I can get.”

He tears his gaze from me at last — an event that both relieves and frustrates me at the same time, for reasons I don’t want to think too hard about — and eyes the house behind me. For a moment, it seems like there’s something else in his expression. A cloud I can’t quite read or understand. Then he shakes his head. “Clean the place up. Sell it for whatever we can get, once we’re ready. Sounds good to me.”

I press my mouth into a thin line, even as relief floods me. At least he wants the same thing I do. “Good,” I reply. “Then we’re agreed. We have the same goal, make this place look as good as she possibly can, and sell her to the highest bidder. Equal split to both of us for whatever we make.”

He nods.

“That makes us partners, then,” I continue. “We should work together.”

A short, cursory laugh escapes him then. He glances at me once more, but this time his gaze lingers on my heels, my skirt, my bare, pale feet which haven’t seen sunlight since my last beach trip, way back at the beginning of the summer because I never found time to go again. “I doubt you can do much work at all,” he replies, smirking.