There were two other men with him, but they stayed in the truck cab, faces obscured by cowboy hats.
I’d not been allowed inside when he and Uncle Jim talked, but as I’d tried to listen from outside the kitchen window, I’d certainly heard my name enough times, along with things like “only temporary,” “only option,” and “owe more than just the bank.” Still, it wasn’t enough to let me know what was up.
Eventually, the kitchen porch door opened, and he stepped out, followed by my uncle, looking ashen-faced.
“So, this must be Johanna!” He’d smiled that dark, cold smile at me, making me shiver again as his eyes wandered over me pretty freely.
“I’ve heard a lot about you Johanna, and I gotta say, you’re every bit of what I’ve been told.” He winked at me, and I felt my stomach knot.
“Jo, this is Mr. Pike, and he has an offer for yo— well, for us. For the family.” Uncle Jim was anxiously looking everywhere but my face as he stammered. “He’s got this fa—”
“I run a farm of sorts, little miss,” the cowboy said, cutting off my uncle. “And you can call me Jeb.”
“A farm?”
He seemed more a cowboy, less an actual working farmer.
“It’s — well it’s a might different that some of the other farms y’all might be familiar with. But honey?” He turned that chilling smile back to me. “Oh, I think it’s going to be aperfectfit for you.”
I frowned, looking at my uncle for answers.
“He wants you to work for him, Jo, and he’s gonna pay us all well for it.”
My eyes went wide.
Uncle Jim was my dad’s half-brother, and I’d been with him and his wife Mary for the last five years, after my parents had died in the car crash. There wasn’t a whole lot of family on either side, and as it turns out, Jim and Mary — as distant and as relatively strangers as they were to me — were the closest thing I’d had to family. They’d taken me in and given me a place to live and grow up after the crash, and in exchange, I worked on their farm and helped take care of my three much younger cousins. It wasn’t thewarmestof Hallmark family situations, but it worked, and it’d certainly been better than God knows what I would have done without them. Plus, it kept me in the country, where I’d always been.
I looked at my uncle, my face falling. “You mean,leavehere?”
“Tell you what, little lady,” Jeb said in his overly-friendly, yet cold-sounding voice. “What if you were to just come out and try it out? You come on out, be my guest of honor for a few days, and see if it’s for you. If it ain’t, I’ll bring right on back home.” He winked at me, and his eyes momentarily flitted from my face down to the open top button of my plaid shirt.
I shivered, and he winked again.
“Ipromise.”
I bit my lip, my eyes darting to my uncle, who was carefully looking away.
“But, I’ve got a pretty good notion that you’re gonnaloveit there. You’re aperfectfit for the place.”
I shifted again under his roaming eyes. Yes, part of it was that I wasn’t used to men looking at me, since I pretty much spent all time way out here on my aunt and uncle’s small farm. But it was also the icy intensity of his gaze — the way it felt like he was sizing me up, like Uncle Jim did when he went to market to buy a new calf or something.
“It’ll let us keep the farm, Jo,” Uncle Jim finally said, his voice stoic. “I mean, Mary and I have done a lot to take you in and all.”
This was the line he and my auntbothused when they wanted me to do something. Like Iowedthem something, despite being family. I mean, Igotthat they had helped me out, and that they hadn’t been expecting a fourth kid to look after, but it always felt like they were trying to leverage me or something.
“You really want Karen, Amy, and Susie to have to move away from their home?”
I looked down, feeling my gut twist at the thought of my three little cousins leaving the only place they knew as home.
“Okay,” The word tumbled from my lips before I could even think, and I saw my uncle swallow heavily and exhale slowly.
“Atta girl, little lady.” Jeb grinned broadly at me before turning and clapping my uncle strongly on the shoulder. “Mr. Carson, pleasure doing business with you.”
I frowned.Business?
“We’ll be by in a few days to collect her.”
I started to open my mouth to ask what exactly I was going to bedoingfor this man, but just then, the truck pulled around to the side of the farmhouse. The engine idled, the doors opened, and suddenly, the two men who I hadn’t really got a look at before stepped out.