“Brandon Wilkes?”
“Yes.” Some of her humiliation faded. “How did you—”
“Your grandfather doesn’t think too much of him. He says he’s a bad influence.”
“Oh, well, Mom, it’s complicated.”
“But then, your grandfather is not the most credible judge of character.” This last was delivered with a crisp edge. “In fact, that’s one reason I worry so much about you. Down there. With your grandfather. Who’s probably yanking your chain like nobody’s business.”
Penelope winced. “Listen, I’d love to continue this conversation. But I have a man who I just flashed on my porch, my cat’s outside, and I’m wearing no clothes. Can I please, please, please call you back later?”
“If you will call me back later. But will you?”
“I swear. Solemnly. By the light of the moon. By my firstborn child. By…sheesh, Mom. I’ve gotta go. Love you!”
“I’ll be waiting. Love you.” Her mother hung up.
Now. Brandon. Penelope put a palm to her forehead. “Are you still there?” she called out.
“Yep. Still here. Is the cat supposed to be out?”
“He goes out. First thing in the morning. But watch him, okay? Or he’ll wander off.”
“So should I bring him back in? You decent?”
“Not so much. Hold on.” Penelope made another mad dash. She flung open drawers until she laid her hands on a pair of jeans and shimmied into them. “Bra, bra, bra, where are you? Ah, there you are!” she muttered under her breath as she retrieved one from another drawer. With lightning-fast fingers, she finished dressing, ran a brush through her hair and then stopped. She had to get hold of herself.
Penelope closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath of air. In through the nose, out through the mouth, like her yoga instructor had taught her. Center. Calm. Peace.
The traitorous peace left her, though, as soon as she opened her eyes again.
No two ways about it. She had to face Brandon.
BRANDON LEANED against the porch post, tried to keep an eye on that cat, and failed miserably to erase the image of Penelope’s curves from his brain.
Man, but she was hot.
Focus. Focus.
Hot. Really, really hot. Nipped-in waist. Hips that flared out just enough for a man to have something to hold on to.
He pinched himself on the thigh. This woman would drive him crazy if he let her. He hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before, feeling by turn guilty that he was actively planning to take advantage of her financial situation and hating that she couldn’t see what a crook her grandfather was so that he could feel free to…
What? Sweep her off her feet?
The cat cast a glance over his shoulder. Then he took off running for the open field. Brandon leaped off his perch and made a grab for him. Yowling and hissing, the cat communicated loud and clear that he didn’t appreciate being manhandled.
Now what to do? Brandon eyed the cat, who struggled in his hold. “Oh, no, you don’t, buster. And don’t you even think about scratching me. I have orders, and they are not to let you wander off.”
Hoping he’d made his point, Brandon put the cat down on the porch. The cat whirled around and hiked his tail up toward Brandon. It was as if he were saying, If I were a skunk, you’d be sprayed now, buddy.
The cat sat down and regarded him with blue eyes narrowed to slits.
“You don’t care much for me, do you?” Brandon toed the new lumber that had been used for the back steps. “Well, truth be told, I am more of a dog person. But I usually get along with cats. So, what is it?”
The cat swished its tail like a whip.
“Oh. You’re like Uncle Jake. You think I’m up to no good, huh?” His stomach roiled, and he couldn’t be sure whether it was the hard-as-a-brick biscuit Uncle Jake had cooked that morning or Brandon’s uneasy conscience.
“Hey, it’s not like I’m the one who lost her sculpture sale for her,” Brandon muttered.
The cat flattened its ears. It was as if the damn thing knew what he was plotting. “If you don’t like me, you’d really hate Murphy. He won’t have an animal on his place that he can’t eat.”
He took in the shape of the barn against the horizon. What he’d said yesterday, in her defense, had felt heavy on his tongue. He’d seen the confused looks the other guys had given him. But how could he explain, Hey, look, guys, this is for me, really. You’re not helping her. I’m just letting her subsidize the materials, and I’m going to pick up the whole thing for a song. He couldn’t.
And then Uncle Jake had said his piece, and Brandon had felt even more of a jerk. But dammit…this was their land. He should be breaking it up for winter wheat, not standing on the porch steps of a totally unnecessary house that took up the most fertile part of the tract. All because some woman wanted her “dirt and a house.”
She could have had her dirt anywhere. Why did she have to have this dirt? His dirt?
The back door swung open. Brandon looked up and saw Penelope, this time fully clothed. Part of him was disappointed at the cover-up—she definitely was hiding her light under a bushel—but the saner part of him was glad of it. If he wanted to get her off this land, then he didn’t need any part of him wanting her to stay.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“AHEM.” Penelope plastered a big smile on her face and looked at Brandon. Theo streaked back inside as if Brandon was the type to tie a bottle rocket to his tail.
Hmm. If Theo doesn’t trust him…
“Well. I see you are decent, after all.”
Penelope felt her smile falter. He could have been gentleman enough to ignore her faux pas. Undeterred, she forced the corners of her mouth back up.
“Yes. Yes, I am. Can I interest you in some coffee? I just put a pot on.”
Brandon gazed off across the field and up into the sky, as though he was gauging the time of day by the position of the sun. “Kind of late for your first pot of coffee, isn’t it? Or is that how you artists do things?”
She folded her arms against her chest. “Don’t you ever go to work as a deputy?”
“I do. At night. In the morning when I get off, I farm. Or at least I try to farm. You, on the other hand, obviously sleep in.”
She ground her teeth at his snarkiness…“I never claimed to be a morning person.”
“You’d never make it in farming then, would you?”
“Just what is your problem?” she couldn’t help snapping. “I was bothering no one, and I open my back door to let my cat out and there you are, lurking around my back steps. And now you—you—”
“That how you always let the cat out? I think it’s only fair to warn you—even though you are in the country, word will get around. Your place might become a popular destination.”
Penelope opened her mouth to speak, then shut her lips tight. A moment later, she managed a much more subdued, “Are you always this grouchy this early? Or is it just me who has this effect on you?”
His eyebrows shot up. She’d found her mark, or maybe hit too close to home.
“I see.” Penelope clasped her arms tighter around herself. “I do apologize for upsetting your equilibrium.”
Brandon’s eyes flashed. “You do not have any sort of effect on me. None. I’m…the day is wasting, that’s all. I have to go in at lunch today, and I’ve spent more time than I care babysitting that damn cat of yours. The thing doesn’t like me.”
“An instinct I trust implicitly, thank you very much.”
Brandon threw up his hands. “Look, let’s start fresh. Good morning or day or whatever it is at nearly ten. I wanted to tell you that I would be working in the field back here. That’s all.”
Oh. What had she expected? Him to say, Didn’t sleep a wink, either, and came here so I can give you a proper kiss?
I need my head examined.
“Okay. You want to work. I have no problem with it.”
“Well, then, you wouldn’t mind moving your car, now would yo
u?”
“My car? It’s in the front and you want—”
“Because it’s in the driveway. Blocking my path. The county dragged such a deep ditch alongside the road, I can’t get the tractor through here except up your driveway. Which was stupid of the county because before you moved in, I could have accessed it at any point.” He closed his eyes, and she could tell he was trying to contain himself.
“Oh.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Let me get my keys.”
A few minutes later, she parked her car out of the tractor’s path. It was a big, old thing, dented and gouged with streaks of rust. Unlike her Grandpa Murphy’s tractors, sold off at auction to pay off the notes on them, Brandon’s didn’t have a climate-controlled enclosed cab, which meant no CD player. No plush upholstered seat. The one accommodation to the operator’s comfort was a car radio attached with ratty blue wires to the steering wheel’s column and a rigged-up box of speakers behind the metal seat.
“What now?” Brandon snapped over the thrum of the engine.
“Nothing. I was—your tractor is—older than I would have expected.”
“It’s older than I am, but it still works. Unlike some people, I don’t borrow to the hilt for flashy equipment.”
The comment stung. Sure, her grandfather had borrowed operating capital, but you had to spend money to make money. If you didn’t invest back…
But before she could even finish the thought, he’d started pulling away.
“Wait!”
Brandon worked his jaw and stopped the tractor from its slow roll. “Yes?”
Penelope had no idea where the next words came from. “I’ve never been on a tractor. Can you give me a ride?”
She was sure, from his expression, that he was going to bang his head against the steering wheel.
“Now?”
She grinned. “Uh, no time like the present?”
She saw composure settle his expression like a curtain dropping at the end of a show.
Somehow Penelope liked the barely contained anger better than his carefully schooled expression.
“Sure,” Brandon replied. “No time like the present. But it will have to be a quick one, because I really do need to get some ground broken.”
He hopped off the tractor. With impersonal hands, he assisted her as she got up. She felt the seat warm from his body heat as she dropped into it.
“Okay. Just put it in gear and go,” he said, jumping to the ground.
Penelope yanked her hands from the wheel as if it was on fire. “No! That wasn’t—I mean, I can’t drive a tractor!”
“Why not? I learned how to drive one before I could drive a car.” Now she saw his thinly disguised amusement.
“Well, I don’t want to break it. Or tear it up. Or something. I thought you’d drive it.”
To her relief, his composure started fraying at the edges. Yes. That was better. Not so condescending.
He put his hands on his hips and surveyed her. “I had no idea you’d go all girly on me. You weld. And build stuff.”
“But I can’t drive a tractor. At least,” she said, and smiled again, “not until you show me how.”
He pursed his lips, the same lips Penelope had fantasized about way too much the night before.
He shook his head and swung up beside her.
“Scootch up. This seat’s not big enough for us to sit beside each other.”
With his legs wrapped around her, she found herself leaning against the rock-solid chest she’d admired the evening before. His arms came around her middle and he took hold of the steering wheel just above where her own hands had settled.
Her pulse rate ratcheted up with each successive point of physical contact between them. Penelope gripped the wheel.
This was playing with fire.
The tractor jerked forward and Brandon leaned down to her ear. “Hold on! It’s going to be a bumpy ride!”
BRANDON WAS going out of his mind.
He breathed in a gasp of diesel-infused exhaust to counteract the floral smell that wafted up from her hair. Insane. He was insane. She was purposefully driving him nuts so that he couldn’t—
Wait a minute. She didn’t know, did she? She didn’t have any idea that he was trying to encroach on her—his—land. Or did she?
Maybe she had her own agenda. Maybe she and Murphy together had some plot hatched that would put his to shame.
And then she laughed, that rich bubbly laugh that, in combination with all the body parts he was touching, nearly sent him over the edge.
“This is fun!” Penelope shrieked. He took in her flushed cheeks, warm brown eyes, parted lips that absolutely begged to be kissed. No artifice there, or if there was, she was such a good actress that he couldn’t tell.
“So which knob do I pull to put the, er, thingamabob down?” she asked.
Brandon dragged his brain out of the gutter and guided her hand to the proper lever. She cried out in surprise as the tractor jerked when the turning plow dropped into the soil. He put a reflexive hand on her waist to steady her, felt the way her body fit neatly into his hand.
“Easy,” he told her. “Now, we go a little slower, especially in this hard ground, or else the tractor can buck up.”
Brandon couldn’t help but appreciate the way Penelope seemed to soak up everything he said, listen intently to his instructions.
“You’re sure you’ve never operated a tractor before?” he asked as they got up to speed.
Penelope looked back over her shoulder. “My first time ever, but it’s fun! I can see why you like it.”
“Yeah, right, see how fun it is after you’ve been bounced around from sunup to sundown.” But he said it without conviction. He couldn’t fathom anybody wanting to do anything else. The air was cool against his arms, the tractor felt sure and steady under his hands. And he was plowing land he hadn’t turned in more than two years. With a pretty girl along for the ride, to boot.
He grinned down at her. What the heck. Enjoy the moment. Enjoy the ride.
But looming on the horizon ahead of them was Murphy’s fence.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE SUN GLITTERED off the dewdrops caught in spiderwebs along the wire fence. The sight of it carried Brandon back to the morning he’d first seen that fence carving up his uncle’s land.
It had been ugly then. It was still ugly now.
“Hey, what’s wrong? What did I do wrong?” Penelope asked.
Brandon couldn’t even frame his thoughts to put them into words. He popped the clutch on the tractor and slowed his approach.
“Oh! The fence, I get it.”
Did she? Brandon didn’t think so. She couldn’t possibly understand how that boundary line rankled him. It was all he could do not to floor the accelerator and plow through it.
It wasn’t just that it was a reminder of what Murphy had taken. In real, concrete ways, it meant that he’d lost even more land to Murphy, because he had to figure in the turnaround space for the tractor. At least, though, no trees or brush grew up along it. He’d made sure he’d sprayed it these past three years with herbicide to keep it clean.
Because one day that fence was coming down.
“So we just turn around? And plow back across the field?” Penelope was asking.
“Yeah, that’s about it.”
What did she expect of him, anyway? She’d imposed herself on him this morning.
Be honest, bud. You were enjoying it yourself. You could have said no.
He hated that. This woman was fast becoming a weakness for him.
“I’m taking you back, because I need to get some work done.” This time, Brandon didn’t wait around to be bamboozled. He lifted the plows, pointed the tractor down alongside the fence and headed back toward her house and the barn.
When he pulled to a stop near the barn, he switched off the engine. “So there you are, back where you belong,” Brandon said after he’d helped her down.
Penelope didn’t look convin
ced. “Right. What will you plant out there?”
“You’re interested?” He paused after he’d swung one leg back over the tractor seat.
“Of course.”
Was she trying some Scheherazade technique, stalling him in his effort to get this land prepped for planting? Brandon discarded the notion as plain and simple paranoia.
“Since you asked, strawberries.”
Penelope blinked. He had no clue what she’d expected him to say, but obviously, it hadn’t been that.
“Strawberries?”
“Yeah.” He put his hand to the ignition, but her puzzlement kept him from firing up the engine.
“But you don’t have any packing sheds.” She frowned. “Do they even grow here in the winter?”
“You can plant them until mid-October, which means I’ll have to get my butt in gear. I won’t be packing and shipping them. It would be a pick-your-own kind of deal.”
“Twenty-five acres of pick-your-own strawberries? You guys must really like them.”
Brandon shook his head again. “I’ll only plant part of it in strawberries, just enough to test out the idea. The rest I’ll plant in winter wheat.”
“Wait a minute. You’re going to plant a pick-your-own-strawberry patch back here? But how will people access it?” Comprehension dawned in her face. “Oh, no. No, no, no. You are not going to have people trekking by my house with their buckets and baskets, asking me how to get strawberry stains out of T-shirts. No way. How on earth can I work with—”
“Hey. Harvest time isn’t until spring. By then…” Brandon shrugged his shoulders. “Anything can happen.” He fired up the engine and let the tractor gently chug past her.
By then, maybe you’ll be long gone.
That’s what he wanted, right? So why didn’t the idea appeal to him as much as it used to?
PENELOPE STOMPED back up the porch steps and walked in the back door. Of all the presumptuous, arrogant—
“Hey, Penny-girl.”
She froze. Grandpa Murphy sat, a newspaper spread out on her dinette table, cup of coffee in hand.
Not on Her Own Page 8
