Page 102 of Devoted

"Owen."

"I'm not spending your mother's money."

"You'll have to. She'll ask you."

"Then I'll tell her I bought something with it."

"She'll ask what."

"I'll have thought of something by then."

She laughed into his arm.

"Owen."

"Mm."

"Friday. When you got up off that stool." She hadn't moved her hand off his chest and she wasn't looking at him. "Were you scared?"

"Yes."

"Good," she said, and left her hand there.

A while after that she said, "There's a cow of yours going to want feeding at six."

"There is."

"I'm not getting up for her."

"Nobody asked you to," Owen said, and pulled the sheet up over the both of them, and her truck sat out there in the sun where anybody on that road could see whose it was.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Charla Denton rang at twenty past eight on Monday morning.

"Is your mama up?"

"She's up."

"Then go somewhere she isn't."

Olivia took the phone out on the porch and shut the screen behind her. The yard was already hot. Duke had his head over the barn door watching her the way he watched everything now, like he'd been promised something.

"Go on."

"He's out."

"Out."

"The Big Spring man. You signed Thursday and he never did. His lawyer went through the county records Friday and rang me Saturday and I've had all weekend to work out how to tell you." Charla let a breath go. "There's a complaint filed with the state about the water under that place. Filed in May. It's open."

Olivia didn't say anything.

"Honey, nobody buys four sections of grass with a state file open on the water. Not him, not anybody, not till it's settled. That could be a year. It could be three."

"I know what's in that complaint."

"Then you're ahead of me, because I've been on the phone since Saturday finding out." Charla said it the way she said everything, which was why Edna had picked her out of four of them. "It's got a name on it. It's a Royston."