He’d talked to Alex last night, and neither one of them could riddle out a way to get water or electricity through the forest—not with any level of security, at least.
Alex had at least sat on the phone with him for a half-hour while they brainstormed different ways Brandon might be able to get water to Lenore’s property, what a reasonable fee might be to draw from Alex’s well, and all about that pesky wind in the Panhandle. That alone made stringing electrical wires downright impossible—especially through trees.
No, if Brandon wanted power near the homestead, his options had narrowed to one: solar.
He’d spent last night watching videos on his phone until it had almost died, as there were plenty of people documenting their off-grid life on YouTube. The cheapest he’d seen anyone get power to their place was eighty-five hundred dollars.
“But they had to buy the panels,” he said. “And we don’t have to do that.”
Unfortunately, the panels weren’t the most expensive part of a solar system. That honor belonged to the batteries and the inverter that took the power from the sun and converted it into the correct wattage that someone could use inside their home to turn on lights, run a vacuum, or power a refrigerator.
Brandon didn’t particularly enjoy calling anyone on the phone, but he’d spent more time making phone calls this week than he probably had all year. Yes, he could get everything he needed for the solar system at the IFA store. He’d called Benny just to make sure and to see what they had in stock.
To split the power into two houses would require two inverters and most likely two banks of batteries, which only doubled the cost.
You won’t be living here long term,he told himself as he finally found a shirt in a size bigger than the one he’d been wearing. He pulled the dark gray number over his head and tucked it into his jeans.
He’d come inside for lunch today and to make several phone calls, but he didn’t want to stay here and eat his peanut butter and honey sandwich alone. So he returned to the kitchen, grabbed his lunch off the counter, and headed next door to Lenore’s.
After their walkthrough only five days ago, they’d been eating breakfast and lunch together. Well, Brandon had coffee when he stumbled up to Lenore’s front door around nine o’clock in the morning, and to him, that counted as breakfast.
He wasn’t sure exactly what was going on between them, and he hadn’t held her hand again since that first day. She hadn’t cried either, because Lenore had more determination than most people Brandon had met.
As he jogged down the front steps, he looked to his right where the tarped area sat. They’d been pulling everything out of the barn and moving them in from various piles and dumping spots around the homestead to one central location. Brandon wanted to see what supplies he had to work with, and they’d laid out as many tarps as they could find in the area behind the barn.
Those tarps now held tires, pallets, machinery, old rope, bags of feed, equipment like rakes, shovels, and brooms, the solar panels, the wheels Lenore’s daddy had planned to use to make a tilting system, and so much more.
Brandon had fixed the door on the barn, and he’d gone to town last night to pick up the equipment he’d rented from the hardware store. When Jean had found out that he was workingon Lenore’s land, she’d given him the skid steer and the power washer for free.
He hadn’t exactly told Lenore that yet, but…she hadn’t asked either.
Now that he had the equipment, he planned to use the skid steer to move the greenhouse from the north side of Lenore’s cabin to the south, and clear the land surrounding the chicken coop and underneath it to give the chickens fresh soil to live in.
He hadn’t told Lenore this either, but he planned to bulldoze the current chicken coop and rebuild it from the ground up.
He’d gone to Hidden Hills and collected two chainsaws that he and Lenore would use to cut the lumber that they needed, and he’d already arranged with Calvin Irwin to use his planking machine for eight hours on Monday—another phone call Brandon had made, and another person who’d been willing to donate the machine for Lenore’s use at zero cost.
Brandon’s stomach growled and pinched at the same time as he walked toward her cabin. He’d only met Lenore a couple of weeks ago, but he knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t like accepting charity. Her pride seemed to be made of iron, and she wanted to make this homestead work on her own terms.
Brandon was pretty sure he could make a few more phone calls and have a well-drilling truck on the property free of charge by next week.
“So how do I talk to her about this?” he asked. Admiral lifted his head from where he and Susie-Q were lounging in the shade of the front porch, as if Brandon had asked him the question.
“Howdy, woofers,” Brandon said, and they both got up, stretched, and came to greet him. He grinned at them and gave them a scratch behind their ears before continuing up to Lenore’s cabin.
He knocked on the door a few short times and then twisted the knob and entered. “It’s just me,” he called, actually wondering who else it would possibly be.
Lenore groaned as she sat up on the couch where she had obviously laid down.
“Are you napping?” he asked, the flirtatious side of himself emerging. He definitely liked Lenore. Had he met her in any other circumstance, when he wasn’t on a female fast, he definitely would have asked her out.
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “Have youseenhow much work we’ve done this week?”
Brandon grinned at her and went around the couch and sank into her recliner. The rustling of his brown bag filled the cabin as he reached inside and pulled out an apple. “I called the city.”
He took a big bite of his apple, feeling his whole demeanor darken. Hope entered Lenore’s eyes, but Brandon shook his head.
Her countenance fell, and she wiped both hands through her hair. “Well, we tried,” she said.
