A Place to Call Home (Harlequin Heartwarming) (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

“T
OLD
YOU
that girl was moving fast. Here, have some more rice and peas.”

Before Brandon could stop Uncle Jake, the man had dumped a clump of sticky rice and some field peas onto Brandon’s chipped stoneware plate. A cook Uncle Jake most definitely wasn’t, not that he could afford better food.

“Yeah, well, I’ve been busy these past couple of weeks, Uncle Jake. Not only have I been working my regular nightshift, but we’re short during the day, too.” Brandon tried but failed to keep the defensive note out of his voice. If only he’d come up with the land swap idea sooner, before she’d re-roofed the place, maybe then she’d have been more receptive.

“I know. You’re always busy. That sheriff of ours keeps you bustin’ your chops. Hardly ever see you these days.”

Uncle Jake flopped back in his chair. After a moment of silent concentration, he attacked his own second helping of rice with gusto.

Brandon knew that look. He’d seen it often enough since he and his mom had moved in when Brandon was a skinny ten-year-old and his brother was an even skinnier eight-year-old.

“You’re thinking I was wasting my time, aren’t you?”

The old man looked up from his dinner plate. “Well...folks don’t want to split up their land, especially not a woman who’s got a house set down.”

Brandon snorted. “Not much of a house if you ask me.” But then, with eyes that would see it like a stranger would, he saw his uncle’s dining room, with its stacks of books and newspapers, its yellowed white walls and the vinyl rug curling up in one corner. Uncle Jake took up more time repairing his pigpens than he did his own place. Since Brandon’s mom had passed away three years ago, Uncle Jake had sure let the place go. The house wasn’t much of an improvement over Penelope Langston’s bungalow.

“I won’t lie, son. It’s that ‘no-never’ that gets you every time, the idea that I won’t ever see a plow of mine on that land now.” Uncle Jake paused in his eating, his rheumy old eyes far away. “I still remember the day I signed the papers to buy that land where she’s put her house. I knew it was good for growing, and I couldn’t wait. I didn’t even have a tractor of my own yet, ’cause I’d spent every penny I’d saved just for the down payment. So I borrowed my daddy’s old Massey Ferguson and broke ground that same day.”

Brandon had heard the story a hundred times at least, but he didn’t interrupt. A man had a right to grieve, after all. When his uncle finished, the two of them sat in silence.

“An artist, you say?” Uncle Jake asked suddenly.

“Yeah. Big metal abstract pieces. She wants to put up a barn to work in.”

“You and the FFA kids gonna help her?”

He did a double take at his uncle. “Why should I help her put more things on that land that I’ll have to tear down when I finally get it?”

“Son, it is obvious you don’t know much about women.” Uncle Jake took a swig of his iced tea and scarfed up the last of the peas.

“Oh, and you, the lifelong bachelor, are an expert?”

His uncle grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “Why you think I never married?” But then he sobered. “See, with a man, you could have offered to swap my field, I mean
her
field, for that section with the hardwood, and he would have considered it. But a woman? Nope. She’s got an idea in her head about how things are going to be. She’s picturing this dream...house’ll be here, the picket fence, there, the flowers over yonder... Takes something big to dynamite that picture from a woman’s head.”

Brandon thought back to how elated Penelope had been that first day. She’d even used the word “dream.” Maybe Uncle Jake was right.

But he couldn’t just give up on this.

“How serious can she be?” Brandon asked. “How long can she last? Whoever heard of a sculptor living here, anyway?”

“There’s that fellow that does chain saw carving. He makes a living at it.”

Brandon snorted. “He’s retired from the military. Of course he’s not starving.”

“But this one’s got grit.”

“Huh?” Brandon saw the frown on his uncle’s face and quickly amended the “huh” to “Sir?”

The frown cleared. “Want some apple pie? I bought a frozen one from the store.”

Brandon’s stomach leapt in anticipation of actual, edible food. “Where is it? I’ll get it.”

“Fridge. Bottom shelf.”

As Brandon retrieved the pie—burnt on one side, but still an improvement over the rice and peas—he prompted his uncle. “What do you mean, she’s got grit? You’ve never met her, have you?”

“Nope. Been here a week now, and she ain’t introduced herself. If Geraldine hadn’t been doin’ so poorly, I’d have gotten round to going over there, being neighborly...”

Brandon dug into the pie and tried not to smile as his uncle digressed into a long and sorry tale about his prize sow.

“So how do you know she’s got grit? Penelope, I mean.”

His uncle looked startled by Brandon’s change of subject. “You said it yourself. She’s got that place livable. She’s doing all the work herself. And if she’s doing outdoor sculpture, she’s got to be handy with a welder. That’s a girl who ain’t afraid of hard work.”

“How do you know about sculpting?”

Uncle Jake waved a hand at the crammed bookshelf on one wall of the dining room. “Some book I read sometime. I forget what. Talked all about it.”

“She didn’t say anything about welding.” But Brandon didn’t argue the point.

“She pretty?”

“What?”

“I say, is she pretty?”

An image of tanned legs and dark curly hair spilling over bare shoulders shot into Brandon’s mind. “I guess you’d call her pretty.”

“Well, then.” Uncle Jake beamed. “Maybe she’s got a fellow somewhere who wants her back. Or maybe she’ll get bored with country boys and head on back to the big city for what she’s used to. If she sells out at a decent price, we could get that land back.”

A woman like Penelope was attractive enough to have a long list of guys interested in her. Brandon pushed the plate of pie away and wondered why his uncle’s idea didn’t cheer him up. Maybe it was because he didn’t want to have to wait for Penelope to give up and get lost.

His uncle began clearing the table. Brandon fell into step, not saying anything in response to his uncle’s idea.

“What are you so quiet about?” Uncle Jake asked. “Did I say something?”

Brandon dropped the plates into the sink. “No, sir,” he replied in a voice he injected with a good measure of cheerfulness.

“Look, Brandon, you gave it your best shot, that land-swapping idea. And there’s nothing wrong with hoping she’ll give up and go on somewhere else. But you’re not dreaming of any shenanigans, are you?”

“Shenanigans?”

“You know, revenge on Murphy. Stealing that land back. Something like that. If I can get my land back fair and square, that’s okay. It was my fault I didn’t keep that receipt. I should have known better. You pay in cash, you need to be double sure you keep the proof you paid. And yeah, Murphy and Melton took sore advantage of me. Melton is a lying dog, saying I didn’t pay that tax debt.” Uncle Jake slammed the refrigerator door shut. “But I’ll tell you like that doc told me when I had my heart attack over all this. You got to move on, or it will kill you. Toting a grudge will eat you alive.”

Brandon said nothing. Let Uncle Jake think what he wanted. He didn’t want to admit to Uncle Jake he’d been thinking about how pretty Penelope was or how many lucky guys she had at her fingertips.

No, Brandon wouldn’t be one of the guys on Penelope Langston’s list. She wasn’t the right sort of woman. Couldn’t be. Not when she was standing square in the middle of the road to what Brandon was after.

* * *

P
ENELOPE
JABBED
the calculator’s keypad with the ground-down eraser on her pencil. She’d figured her money three times—and all three times it had agreed.

She’d come up short.

She clenched the pencil, unclenched it, then clenched it again. She glanced over at the single sheet of paper that had laid waste to her plans.

I regret to inform you that we must cancel the commission we’d agreed upon and surrender to you the ten percent deposit already paid. I trust that this comes to you before you’ve ordered materials...

What a day. First that crazy deputy calling Grandpa a thief, and now
this.
The writing hadn’t changed, not in the thirty seconds that had passed since Penelope had last read it.

Fifty grand. Gone up in smoke.

She’d been counting on that money. She’d emptied her checking and savings accounts to pay for the land and the house. Her grandmother had matched her dollar for dollar. An art investment, Grams had called it as she signed the check with a flourish. Penelope had borrowed more money for the studio and renovating the house. That money was spent, and Penelope had borrowed still more money for the studio...

Her brain refused to process anything beyond how this could have happened. She’d played by the rules. She’d got an agreement. She’d done her financial homework.

And yet here she was, caught on the tracks with a mortgage payment bearing down on her—and no way to pay it.

Two months. She had two months before the first payment was due. Penelope said a silent prayer of thanks that she’d taken up the mortgage company’s offer for delayed payments.

Theo wound around her legs and yowled for attention. She ignored him. Think. She had to think.

If this company didn’t want her sculpture, somebody else would—she’d just have to get out there and sell it. And in the meantime, she’d have to come up with a way to survive without touching the borrowed money in her checking account.

Penelope had survived before. She’d eaten mac and cheese from scratch-and-dent sales and taken on untold numbers of jobs to pay the rent—bartending, car washing, waitressing, even a short stint at a Cineplex, selling popcorn until the smell nauseated her.

One thing she wouldn’t do: breathe a word to her parents. She’d learned the hard way that if they even suspected she was going through lean times, they’d be wiring money to her checking account or asking the landlord to check her fridge for food.

She hated the way they’d held her failures over her head as a way to persuade her to join the family business.

Real estate. Land, land, land. Buying, selling, leasing, commercial, residential, option clauses. She’d grown up with it, and it numbed her. When Grandpa Murphy had told her about this land, had suggested she try to buy it and keep it in the family, it had seemed the perfect solution. This property had been the only land she’d ever gotten excited about. Land far enough away that her parents couldn’t lie and say,
We stopped by on our way to—

A knock on the front door cut into Penelope’s conflicted thoughts. She frowned and made her way up the hall to the living room.

A glance out the windows told her it was Brandon Wilkes. Her mouth tightened. Wouldn’t
he
be glad to know about her commission being canceled?

Penelope threw open the door. “Yes? What do you want now? Me to move to the moon?”

Brandon blinked. “Uh, well...I guess I deserved that. What with my crazy offer. I just—” Brandon broke off. “I came by to apologize. I was taking out my disappointment on you. If...er...if you need a hand with anything, all you have to do is let ’em know at the sheriff’s department. I work mostly nights, but they’ll find me during the day.”

He turned to make his way down the cinder blocks she’d stacked up as impromptu porch steps.

“Wait!”

Brandon paused, turned to her slowly.

“Are you simply being polite? Or do you mean it?”

“Mean what?”

“Your offer.” Penelope’s mouth went dry. “To help.”

“Sure, I mean it. What do you need?”

A wave of uncertainty swamped her. What did she need? A stiff drink, for starters. A sale for a project she’d already ordered the materials for. Any way to save money.

“That barn you were talking about,” she said. “The pole barn. Can you help me
build it?”

CHAPTER FOUR

“M
E
? H
ELP
YOU
build a barn?”

Brandon’s lowered eyebrows and his shocked expression told Penelope all she needed to know.

“Forget it. Just forget it.” Her hope turned into a leaden lump of disappointment in her stomach. She turned for the door.

He added, his voice heavy with incredulity, “Let me get this straight. You want a pole barn? And you want me to help you?”

“Well, you needn’t be so snippy about it. You were the one who mentioned the pole barn. You sounded nice the other day, before you got all bent out of shape about my grandfather—” She choked off the words, not able to repeat his accusation. Her grandfather a thief. Right. That was about as true as the fraud charges they’d railroaded him with in this federal indictment.

“Yeah, before I got all bent out of shape about your grandfather being a crook. I take it you don’t know him that well.”

She bristled. “I know him better than you do. He is my grandfather, after all.”

Brandon’s lips curled in disdain. “Well, you must see him in a whole different way than I do, then. Maybe with both eyes closed.”

She gasped. “I don’t have to listen to this!” Penelope headed for the door. She tried to turn the knob, but a tanned hand with long fingers wrapped over hers. She jumped at the contact and looked back over her shoulder.

“Hold it!” Brandon was so close, she could have kissed him. If he wasn’t such a jerk.

I don’t have time for this, not with a man who thinks my grandfather—I’ve got a financial disaster raining down on me...

Before she could protest, Brandon stepped back. “Sorry. I didn’t want you to go stomping off into the house. Not before I had a chance to, well, show you something.”

“Who says I’m interested?”

“Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking. It’s out here, behind where you’ve put your house.”

Penelope narrowed her eyes and assessed him.

What the heck. What could it hurt? “Let me get my cell phone,” she said. If he turned out to be as big a nut as she suspected, at least she could call for help.

Phone in hand, she returned to the porch. “Okay. I’m ready for show-and-tell.”

He struck out down the porch and led the way to the back of the house. She had to
double-time it to keep up with his long strides over the uneven field. Brandon didn’t speak, though, not until he reached a fence splitting her acreage from the neatly harrowed field next to it. The contrast, her untended land adjacent to the cultivated field, couldn’t have been more stark.

“This is it? You wanted to show me a fence? It’s the land line. Are you going to argue that it’s not accurate? Because, let me assure you, I had a new survey done to confirm it,” Penelope said.

Brandon put his hands on his hips. “It’s in the wrong place, all right. It shouldn’t be there at all.”

Penelope rolled her eyes. Not more about this land business. Grandpa Murphy said people were out to get him, and this guy was proof of that.

“I bought this land at a public auction. The bank loaned me money on it. I can prove the title is clear.”

“Well, let me tell you a little about this land.” Brandon couldn’t seem to get his next words out. Penelope saw raw pain in his eyes.

It caught her short. She didn’t turn and walk off as she’d intended to. Instead, she waited to see what he would finally say.

“My uncle farmed this land. This was the first acreage he ever owned.” Brandon swept an arm over the expanse of the field. He pointed out Penelope’s house. “Where your house is now, that’s where he first plowed, the day he bought the land. You ought to hear him tell the story.
He didn’t even have a tractor to plow with, so he borrowed—”

He didn’t finish, but looked embarrassed. “Anyway, like I said, this land has been Uncle Jake’s since he was just out of school. And then a couple of years ago—” Now Brandon clenched his jaw, along with his fists.

“He needed the money, so he took what Grandpa Murphy offered him,” Penelope supplied. “Look, I’m sorry—”

Brandon exploded. “He needed the money because Murphy defrauded a bunch of landowners in this county. His brother-in-law—I guess that’s your family, too, huh?”

“Uh, no. Grandpa Murphy divorced my grandmother years ago and he remarried. Why am I explaining this to you? My grandfather is not a crook—”

“Tell that to the federal investigators itching to indict him.” Before she could protest, he said, “Murphy and the tax commissioner, who just happened to be his wife’s brother, handpicked a few of the old farmers who tended to pay with cash. It was common knowledge in this county. When the tax commissioner suddenly turned up with a tax notice in his hand, my Uncle Jake couldn’t produce a paid receipt. That’s when Murphy jumped in with his oh-so-convenient ‘help.’ It nearly killed Uncle Jake to lose this land. But what choice did he have?”

“Forgive me if I find it hard to believe your version of events.” Penelope gazed around the open land and saw how carefully it had been tended on the other side of the new fence. She thought about how proud she’d been of her purchase. How hard it must have been for the person who had lost it.

Sympathy softened her voice as she said, “Listen, I know this must be difficult for you. I think it’s admirable that you’re trying to look out for your uncle.”

“This fence...I plowed a tractor over this land many a day. I never dreamed...” Brandon shook his head. “My uncle’s not in the best of health. He’s old, and he lost half of his farm to Murphy. Before then, he and I were partners. He still farms—well, I do most of the heavy work—but it’s just really small-time. See, this summer Murphy planted dodder vine in Uncle Jake’s cotton, and he didn’t have crop insurance.”

Penelope folded her arms across her chest. “Grandpa Murphy’s told me all about the way the federal government is saying that he’s some sort of criminal mastermind, all because some noxious weed got brought in by a drifter from Texas.”

Brandon’s chuckle was bitter. “Yeah, right. I’m sure the way Murphy tells it, he didn’t have a thing to do with either coercing JT Griggs into bringing dodder vine here or swindling Uncle Jake. But let me tell you something—Richard Murphy’s no sweet old grandfather. He’s always working the angles.”

Brandon’s tone was so scornful that Penelope ignored his yammering about people she didn’t know and concentrated instead on the situation at hand. “Okay, so let’s use logic on this. Why on earth would my grandfather go to all that trouble? Land’s land, right? Why would he risk going to jail to get this particular tract?”

Brandon lifted his shoulders. “I gave up trying to figure out Murphy a long time ago. But my idea is that pond over there.”

“The pond?” Penelope squinted. She shaded her eyes and took in the large pond that stretched back from the land’s dip toward the creek and an old abandoned rail spur. “What good would that do him?”

“Irrigation. That’s a natural pond, and there’s a stream that ends up in a small creek. It’s what my uncle used to irrigate this section of his farm. Your grandfather used it for a water supply for his migrant workers and to deprive my uncle of a way to water his crops.”

“So that’s what this is about?” Penelope compressed her lips and kicked at the dirt. “You want the water? Fine, run irrigation from it. I’m not using it. But a piece of advice—next time you want to sweet-talk someone into letting you access her water, don’t accuse her grandfather of being a crook.”

“It’s not just the water. I want the land. The land is ours, well, Uncle Jake’s. I want it back for him. I tried to buy this land for him at auction, and
you
ran the cost up. I should have known Murphy had something to do with it. You certainly don’t need thirty acres of prime farmland.”

She stood stock-still, the solution to her money crunch within her grasp. “I don’t need all this land, you’re right. If you want it so badly, then maybe we can work out a deal. I’ll sell you all but, say, five acres.”

If she’d expected Brandon to extend a tanned forearm in a glad handshake and say
Sold!
he didn’t. Instead he muttered under his breath and shook his head.

“Hey, you want it. I’m offering. I’ll even—” Penelope shrugged. “I’m fair. I’ll sell it for what I paid for it. You can’t beat that, can you?”

Brandon’s eyes darkened. “What you paid for it was at least twice what Murphy paid my uncle. He paid him, to the dime, the taxes and penalties and interest the county said he owed.”

“Well, why didn’t your uncle fight it?”

“He did. How do you think he lost what he did? Rotten lawyers took his savings and then in the end, he didn’t have proof that he’d paid. My uncle’s—” Brandon winced. “Ah, forget it. I thought I could make you understand.”

“Brandon...” Maybe it was the way his pain and loss seemed at odds with his big frame. But something made her reach out and touch his arm. “I can’t pretend to understand what your uncle went through. But I know how I feel, seeing my grandfather losing all his land and in so much legal trouble. I know how helpless I feel. It must be twice as bad for you.”

“I do feel helpless. I want to fix it, you know?” Brandon pushed his fingers through his hair then dropped his hand. He shrugged. “I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

“Maybe you haven’t. I’m serious about selling part of the land.” Penelope couldn’t meet his eyes as she recalled the letter she’d received earlier in the day. “Let’s just say I’m in sudden need of money.”

“But—” Brandon frowned.

“But what?”

“What about your sculpture? I thought all you had to do was weld three pieces of stainless steel together and, presto, you were fifty grand richer.”

She sighed. “They canceled the commission. I’ve already bought the materials, and if I returned them, I’d have to pay shipping and a hefty restocking fee. So I’m going to build it anyway. But I need money. You want the land. Why not make everybody happy?”

Brandon nodded, and she could see from his expression he was considering it. She clenched her fists in anticipation, slipped her index finger across her middle finger.

Please, please, please, buy this land.

But then his eyes lit on the fence again, and his expression hardened. “Okay. On two conditions. One, you have to sell it to me for fair market value
before
you ran up the price—that’s all the bank would lend me. And two, that not one dime of my money goes to Richard Murphy.”

“Are you out of your tree? You can’t tell me what I do with the money after you get the land, any more than I can tell you what to do with the land.”

“So I’m right, then? That’s why you need the money? For Murphy?”

“No, I need the money to survive on, to pay my bills. But if my grandfather needs help, you can bet I’ll share what I have. He’s old, Brandon, and frail and I don’t want him in prison.”

“Frail? Richard Murphy frail? He’s healthy as a horse—no, make that an ox. You make him sound like he’s on his last legs.” Brandon narrowed his eyes. “No. As bad as I want this land back in my family, I will not pay Richard Murphy, not a red cent. And I sure won’t add to his legal defense fund. He may be your grandfather, but he belongs in jail. And I’ll do everything I can to make sure he ends up there.”

With that, he stalked back toward the house and his truck, leaving Penelope speechless.