Page 1 of Property of the Woodsman

Chapter One

Atlas

It’s just land. Dirt. Trees. Grass. If I could convince myself that were true, I wouldn’t be trying to negotiate with a woman who’s part bombshell, part hurricane.

“This land is important to me too.” She readjusts her little black dress and leans against the old maple tree my dad planted when he and my mom first moved in. If she thinks she can bat her eyelashes and make me go away, she’s wrong.

“Yeah? You’ve been here for six months. How can you say this place means more to you than it does to me?”

“I didn’t say that,” she snaps, rolling her eyes before heading up toward the house. “Men are all the same. None of you listen.”

“Whoa.” I follow behind with an inappropriate laugh in my throat. “Who the fuck burned your biscuit?”

“Look,” she twists back dramatically, her long dark hair blowing in the late evening breeze, “I may have only been here for six months, but it’s the first purchase I made after my divorce, and that means something to me.”

Divorce. Now it makes sense. She hates all men.

“I appreciate that,” I force my kindest voice, though I’m pretty sure it sounds fake, “and I’m sure the divorce was hard on you, but my family owned this land for fifty years. I grew up here. Every memory I’ve ever had has ties to this place.” I nod out toward the treeline in the back of the house. “My sister and I would get lost in those trees from sunup to sundown. We’d eat blackberries off the bush like survivalists, and we’d look for fossils in the creek beds. That lilac bush in the yard over there, it came from Grandma’s cabin out in Rusty Mills.”

The woman nods toward the porch. “And that’s where I had my first glass of tea post-divorce with a bundle of your grandma’s lilacs in a mason jar next to me.” She draws her amber glare up slowly as though she wants to see my reaction to her smart-ass remark.

I don’t react, though. I don’t react at all. Reacting is what people want, and I usually refuse to give people what they want. You give them what they want once, and they own you.

“Anyway,” she sighs when I don’t respond right away, “I need far more than you’re offering to buy this place.”

If I could get into the house, I could get more money. I’m certain that my father left a box of cash in the bedroom wall of my sister’s room. He swore he was keeping it there in case the government went crazy and tried to seize bank accounts. He kept rifles in every room for the same reason.

“Maybe you could at least let me see the place one last time then.”

The woman breaks out into some kind of hysterical laughter. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Me, a single woman, in the middle of nowhere, is going to invite a big, huge, rock of a man with a record into my home to look around.” Her eyes roll back. “I’ve kind of had enough of this back and forth with you. Maybe your looks get you what you want with other women, but it won’t with me.”

I laugh abruptly. “My looks? Are you flirting with me?”

She exhales loudly. “Umm… what? I just told you I didn’t want anything to do with you.”

“And you also said I was attractive.”

“I didn’t say you’re attractive, I said your looks get you what you want. That could mean you’re intimidating.”

I grin. “It didn’t, though, did it?”

There’s an audible huff in her throat as she leans over the porch rail, her full breasts spilling from her dress as she stares out at the aspen and maple turning color. “You know you’re not the only one that’s lost things.”

“Yes, but isn’t a divorce supposed to be cleansing or something?”

“Not the divorce. The land. People die, land gets sold, then new people buy it, and the cycle starts again. I didn’t make the rules.”

“No, you didn’t,” I pause, “but I’d bet you have a heart, and maybe that heart knows what it’s like to lose something so important.” I glance down at the porch rail. “You know my father built this entire place himself? Brick by brick, board by board, every nail is his blood, sweat, and tea—”

“Tears.” The woman rolls her eyes. “I get it. It’s sad, but that’s life. You think something is yours, then stuff happens, and reality gets rearranged.”

Clearly, we’re not talking about land anymore, or maybe we are. This is probably why women say men don’t understand them.

“You know this place isn’t easy to take care of,” I say, nodding toward the treeline. “There are bobcats that hunt to the west, a group of foxes to the north, and these carpenter bees that—”

“Very cute,” she says, crossing her arms over one another. “I see what you’re doing, but I’m a very capable woman. I was also raised in the woods, and guess what, my family’s twenty-two-acre lot was sold last year to a buyer in Wyoming who turned the place into a subdivision. So… I get what you’re feeling, but at least you have the solace in the fact that this won’t be a pile of cookie-cutter homes with a manufactured lake in the center of it all. This place will be me, the bobcats, and the carpenter bees.”

“I’m sorry about your family’s land. Why did they sell?”