Page 14 of Maggie’s Match

“Nothing.” She handed him the paperwork. He took it and tucked it under his arm. “When does Mrs. Tillerson say your rent will go up and by how much?”

“Doubled,” Becca jumped in. “The day that we’re supposed to open our doors.”

He frowned. “I thought you were buying the building.”

“We had plans to do a rent to own,” Becca explained.

“There’s no other place available?” he asked.

“Two, but they didn’t want to rent to me,” Becca answered.

“Us,” Maggie added, taking her cousin’s hand.

“Me,” Becca said a little more firmly. “They don’t like my kind. I was surprised Mrs. Tillerson agreed.”

“Your… kind? Women?” he asked with a slight frown.

“Aren’t you sweet,” Becca said dryly. “No, dark-skinned women with the last name Barrantes.” She sighed.

Rick glanced over at Maggie, who quickly shook her head. “Leave it,” she warned.

Then he remembered Bryson’s conversation the day before and understood where he’d heard the name Tillerson before.

“Son of a…” He set the folder down and started pacing the small porch as a string of curse words flew from his mouth. “As if it’s not enough that someone’s been poisoning your cattle, now they want to ruin your business before it even begins.”

“So, it’s true? Someone is killing our cows?” Becca asked. He nodded, and both Becca and Maggie sighed at the same time. “Well, on the upside, we gave away more than three hundred sweets this morning,” Becca added dryly.

Chapter Six

Maggie couldn’t understand how the small town of Bottle Creek could in the past year turn on the family that had been living there for three generations.

Why, suddenly, did they have a problem with them? To her knowledge, the Barrantes kept to themselves. They tended their land. Spent their hard-earned money in town like the rest of the citizens.

Hell, most of the meat and dairy products sold in the local stores had the Broken B’s logo on them.

“Why suddenly does everyone in town seem to have problems with your family?” Maggie asked before taking a sip of a cold beer that Becca had retreated into the house to get moments earlier.

Becca shrugged. “It’s the newly elected mayor and sheriff. They’re brothers. Rumor has it that they’re card-carrying members of the local chapter of Proud Boys. They, along with their many cousins, have spent the year running out most anyone with a drop of”—she held up her fingers and air quoted—“dirty blood.”

“Sounds like they need to be kicked out of office,” Rick said firmly. “Run out of town themselves.”

“A lot of townspeople were unhappy when they made it into office. But they did.” She waved her free hand and then took a sip of her own beer. “So we get to deal with the changes. It’s interesting to see so many others in town follow their footsteps. The only reason, I believe, that Gloria Tillerson originally agreed to rent us the place was because it was Maggie that dealt with her and signed the lease. She didn’t know I had anything to do with the business until she saw us the other day, handing out our baked goods.”

“Since, legally, I’m the business owner, I’ve been the one talking to her,” Maggie said. “Once the shop is up and running, Becca will be left in charge when I head back to Fairplay.”

“I’m sure that it wasn’t until she noticed that I was working there that she started thinking about raising the rent,” Becca added. “Mrs. Tillerson’s second cousins with the mayor and the sheriff.”

“I can’t believe this bullshit still happens,” Rick said under his breath.

“It’s Texas. The south,” Becca pointed out.

“You haven’t had to deal with things like this your entire life, have you?” Maggie asked.

Becca shrugged. “Some. Nothing this bad before.”

Maggie was quiet for a while. She’d never thought of her cousins as anything other than family.

Becca’s mother and Maggie’s dad Billy were half-siblings. Billy Jackson Sr. had been a real SOB. He’d been killed, shot in the head by the son of a man that he’d killed years before in a bar fight. He’d died shortly after Maggie had been born. From what her parents had said about the man, the world was a better place without him. Becca’s grandmother Birdie and her husband Robbie had stepped up as grandparents for Maggie and Aubrey.