A Place to Call Home (Harlequin Heartwarming)

by Reese, Cynthia

  Uncle Jake cleared his throat. “So, okay, Melton gets convicted, put in jail where he belongs, and we go to court and sue Murphy. What happens to Penelope?”

  Brandon wheeled around and scrutinized his uncle. He was gratified to see that his uncle really did care about Penelope, but shocked that he himself didn’t want Penelope tossed out on her backside.

  Maybe it’s because you’ve seen how it hurt Uncle Jake. It wasn’t Penelope’s fault.

  Aloud, though, he theorized, “Well, just like you didn’t have to sell it to Murphy—at least, the way the state sees it—Penelope didn’t have to buy the land. Maybe the state would see it as caveat emptor.”

  His uncle waved away Brandon’s words. “Becca? What about Penelope?”

  “At that point, if they returned the land to you, Uncle Jake,” Becca said, “Penelope would have to sue Murphy’s creditors to get her money back. But that’s a lot more iffy than my situation. For one, the creditors could say they acted in good faith and that Uncle Jake agreed to the land sale. For another, if they did say the land sale was fraudulent, they might limit their liability to Penelope by valuing it at the pre-auction fair-market value. In that case, she wouldn’t get all her money back.”

  Uncle Jake furrowed his brow. “Sounds like a whole lot of cross-your-fingers-and-do-some-serious-hoping mess to me. And I wouldn’t want to see that girl suffer because of me. Murphy, now, I’d love to see him with the short end of the stick. But Penelope shouldn’t have to pay for her grandfather’s sins.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  PENELOPE COUNTED back the correct change to Jim Coursey, who took it and the receipt she’d offered.

  “Thank you kindly, ma’am,” he told her. He bent down to pick up the tractor part she’d welded for him. “That was quick work, and a good price, too.”

  “You’re welcome,” she replied. “I’m glad I could help out. Please pass the word to anyone else who needs my services.”

  Coursey inclined his head. “Yes, ma’am, I surely will.”

  He turned to go, but Penelope couldn’t resist asking, “Who can I thank for referring you to me?”

  “Why—” Coursey looked surprised by the question.

  Penelope held her breath. She’d had a steady stream of welding customers in the past week. Small jobs, nothing big, but certainly enough to give her hope that she could make it until she sold a project.

  She had a growing suspicion that it could only be Brandon.

  “I don’t mean to put you on the spot.” Penelope thought of a reasonable excuse. “I’ll give them a twenty-percent discount on the next job they bring me. Same goes for you, too, if you refer me new customers.”

  “Oh, well, then.” Coursey smiled. “I don’t guess he’d mind in the slightest. It was Jake Wilkes. He was telling me how you helped him and Brandon when their third link stripped out.”

  “Oh, okay.” Penelope hoped her smile didn’t betray her disappointment. “I’ll be certain, then, to put Mr. Wilkes down for a discount.”

  “And I’ll pass on the word. Good welding! Shuman had better mind his p’s and q’s,” Coursey said, taking his leave.

  Penelope followed him out. She stood in the clearing in front of the open barn doors and stared at the fence.

  Brandon had apparently stopped work on tearing it down. She couldn’t fathom his reasons. Maybe he’d decided he had been in the wrong. Maybe he’d felt sorry for her. Whatever his motivation, he’d gone back to planting.

  And, except for a curt hello, he hadn’t spoken to her in the week since.

  Sometimes, in the mornings, she’d get up at the first chug of the tractor by her bedroom window, slip into her clothes and stand on the back porch in the predawn darkness. Penelope would let Theo out and drink her coffee, watching as Brandon made the short rows across the field.

  He and her mom were right—he spent half his time turning around. It would make more sense to have the fence down.

  The strawberry plants were in the ground now, with irrigation pipes running along the black plastic mulching. Penelope recalled the day Brandon and his helper, Prentice, had planted them. She shook her head now as she remembered how little help Brandon had from Prentice.

  Prentice at least had spoken to her. He’d wanted to know all about her sculpture, all about the welding she was doing.

  Brandon? Tight-lipped, the quintessential man of few words, he’d gone about his business without much more than a nod.

  His cool silence had been harder to bear than his previous insults to her grandfather. He seemed to have adopted an indifferent attitude toward her, hard to comprehend after that mind-blowing kiss.

  That’s what really irritates you, how Brandon can turn it on and turn it off.

  Where was that switch, she wondered. Because if Penelope could find it on herself, she’d flip it off.

  She’d been awake at five o’clock, waiting to hear his tractor.

  It hadn’t come.

  Sighing, she turned back to the shop and the jobs that waited for her. If she hurried, she could get them all done and work the rest of the day on her sculpture.

  No point dreaming away the day on a man who can’t forget who you are.

  * * *

  BRANDON RUBBED his temples and frowned down at the inmate report. He liked the money being chief deputy brought him, but he could do without the paperwork. And the headaches. This week, the first time back on days in a while, had proved especially claustrophobic.

  Or maybe you miss seeing Penelope.

  Of course he didn’t miss Penelope. He hadn’t spoken to her, right? He’d seen her on the back porch in the mornings when he’d set to work on her field—Uncle Jake’s field, not hers. He couldn’t help noticing her. She was like a wounded dog that lurked in the brush at a distance.

  In the week since the fence snafu, he’d tried to make amends in his own way. He’d stopped with the fence. He’d sent her business, but he’d told his friends to say Uncle Jake had sent them. No point giving the wrong message.

  The phone on his desk buzzed, and he picked it up, thankful for the distraction.

  “Deputy Wilkes, how may I help you?” he asked.

  “Is this Brandon Wilkes?” The woman’s voice was Yankee, but the inflections were Southern enough. And the voice seemed vaguely familiar to him.

  “Yes, ma’am, it is. How may I help you?”

  “Well.” An embarrassed laugh punctuated the moment of silence. “I’m Marlene Langston.”

  His stomach lifted, then settled back. “Oh. You’re, uh, Penelope Langston’s mother, then.”

  “That’s right, that’s exactly right. I had some paperwork that Penelope wanted me to do for her and I needed to fax it to you.”

  “Paperwork?” Suspicious, he stopped doodling on the legal pad he kept by the phone.

  “Yes, the rental agreement. Penelope said she’d never bothered to get one done, and I thought I’d take care of it for her.”

  “Well...we had a verbal agreement.”

  “I know, I know, Penelope said as much. I need to finish up some details. I understand you are renting the land for...how much an acre?”

  “She hadn’t named a price.” Now that he had the field planted, Penelope was intent on squeezing out every nickel she could.

  “What exactly did she say?”

  “That I could use the land. She said she wasn’t using it.”

  A laugh that sounded so much like Penelope’s came across the line. “That’s my daughter for you. Absolutely no business sense. But okay, I’ll put it in the agreement that the only recompense she’ll get is for you to replace the fence when you’re done.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Brandon dropped the pencil on the desk and fumbled to get it back.

  “The fence. You took i
t down so that you could plow?”

  “But I haven’t. Penelope said—” Brandon broke off.

  “She said what?”

  “Don’t you two talk? I mean, haven’t you discussed this if you’re preparing her rental agreement?”

  “Well, truth be told—” Marlene laughed again, “—Penelope’s hard to reach sometimes. She gets caught up in her latest project...well, you know.”

  Brandon didn’t know, but there was no point in saying so. He waited out the silence and was rewarded by Marlene clearing her throat.

  “Ahem, yes, so the latest information I have is that the fence can come down as long as you agree to put it back up when the agreement expires. Is that okay with you?”

  Brandon couldn’t answer. If he said yes, his long-range backup plan of getting the land back through adverse possession was toast. If he didn’t...

  She’s meeting you more than halfway. Don’t be a jerk about it.... Yeah, she can afford to be generous. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.

  But Marlene had moved on. “I’ll fax over the agreement and anything you and Penelope have discussed, you can add as an addendum, how about it?”

  “Okay. That sounds...okay. Honestly, Penelope seemed to feel strongly about the fence. I’d want to talk to her about it before I signed it.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Now, there’s another little matter.”

  Man, he could tell Marlene was Southern, despite her Yankee accent. She could beat around the bush like nobody’s business. The way she said “little matter” signaled to Brandon there was nothing little about it.

  “Yes?” he prompted when she didn’t elaborate.

  “This is embarrassing. But I understand you don’t particularly care for my father.”

  “Richard Murphy? That’s a polite way of putting it. No offense, ma’am.”

  “None taken. My father is a difficult man at his best. But he can be very charming. And that’s why I’m so concerned about Penelope.”

  “She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.”

  Marlene’s uneasy chuckle told him she didn’t agree. What had Penelope said? Something about her parents not taking her no for an answer? He could see that about Marlene.

  “Would you say that the federal indictment against him is an inevitability? It’s certainly taking a long time if it is.”

  Brandon glanced back at the reports still waiting to be filled out and tried not to grind his teeth. “The feds are thorough, and the U.S. attorneys are protective of their conviction rate. So they don’t move forward with an indictment unless and until they believe they have an airtight case. If you get a federal indictment handed down against you, it’s a fair assurance you’ll be convicted. It’s almost a one-way ticket to the federal pen.”

  He heard a clicking noise, as though Marlene was tapping a pen against her teeth. “I see. Did he do it? This farm scam? Is he guilty?”

  “Up to his neck in it, ma’am. I’m sure sorry to tell you that, but it’s the truth. He’s been defrauding federal crop insurance programs for years on a smaller scale, but this past year, he moved up to a new level and he involved a lot of farmers in the area. He wanted my best friend to get involved, and when Ryan wouldn’t, he conspired with the tax commissioner to force a property sale.”

  Marlene hissed. “That would be that horrid Melton, wouldn’t it? The man is a crook. How he keeps getting elected is beyond me.”

  “You remember your Brazelton County history, then, I guess. But Melton’s not smart enough to have come up with this on his own.”

  “No, leave it to my father to dream that up.”

  “Ma’am, if you don’t mind me asking, why is it that you hate your father so much, yet Penelope is one of his biggest champions? Doesn’t she know what kind of person he is?”

  Marlene sighed. “That’s to my unending regret. I tried, you know, to do the right thing. I wanted to be fair. I wanted her to be able to grow up and see him as he was, without my...prejudices getting in her way. She knows I don’t get along well with him. I suppose, though, that she discounts it as fallout from my parents’ divorce.”

  “It’s not just that?” Reports could wait, Marlene might have some information he could use. He poised the pencil over the legal pad.

  “Not exactly. There were things my father did, things I’m ashamed of. I didn’t know about them at the time, or at least I didn’t understand them, but later they were...illuminating. I never could view him in quite the same light.”

  “And Penelope knows whatever it is he did?”

  “Oh, no. Like I said, I was trying to be fair.”

  “Well,” Brandon said drily, “looks as though that went well.”

  “I had no idea he’d talk her into buying a piece of property that close to him! I thought I’d die of shock when she told me. I tried so hard to talk her out of it, but once Penelope gets her mind set, there’s no changing it.”

  “So Murphy contacted her then?”

  “Oh, yes. He actually tried his luck with Trent first, but Trent didn’t buy his con for a minute.”

  “Why exactly are you telling me all this? What do you think I can do?”

  Again her laugh told Brandon that Marlene was clearly embarrassed. “Well, you know, he calls me from time to time, my father does. And he seems quite concerned about your influence over Penelope.”

  “My influence over Penelope? That would be zip.”

  “No, no, I don’t think so. One thing my father could always do was spot a potential weak link in any plan he was putting together. He tried to convince me that you meant to harm Penelope. So I figure, if he’s up to his old tricks, you’re the person who could come closest to helping her.”

  “Don’t mind me for saying so, ma’am, but that’s a big leap.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that. But Penelope seems to like you when you’re not— Anyway, to get to the point, one of my points, of this call, I was wondering if you had any vacation time coming up.”

  Brandon tried to follow the conversation’s change in direction but couldn’t. “Ma’am?”

  “Vacation time. Personal leave?”

  “I have some built up, but why do you ask?”

  “My son—I mentioned Trent a moment ago—is getting married. In a week. And I was wondering...”

  “Uh-huh?” Brandon held his breath. He had an inkling what was coming and wasn’t sure what his answer would be.

  “If I bought your ticket, could you fly out with Penelope? To attend the wedding.”

  “To Oregon?”

  “Yes. It wouldn’t be for long. The wedding is on a Saturday, so you’d fly in late Thursday and fly out Sunday morning.”

  “Uh, ma’am, I appreciate the offer, but I’m not real keen on flying.”

  “You see,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “I’ve tried so hard to convince Penelope that there’s no good in helping out her grandfather. She won’t listen, and I’m terribly afraid she’s about to do something she’ll come to regret.”

  Brandon groaned. He had no interest at all in getting in the middle of an old family quarrel. He started to protest, again, that Penelope was old enough to make her own mistakes. “Perhaps you—”

  But Marlene steamrolled on. “I’d like to talk to you, show you some things to do with my father that perhaps should go to the authorities investigating him? But before I did that, I’d want to meet you. In person. Can you understand that?” she pleaded. “This is a big thing I’m doing, a momentous decision. And I haven’t...it’s hard, bringing my family’s dirty laundry out in the open. I need to know what sort of person you are before I share some very painful things with you. So can you come?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “YOU DID what?” Penelope’s near-shriek sent Theo skittering toward
the hall. “Mom, how could you? How could you invite that man to Trent’s wedding?”

  “It seemed like a perfectly good idea. I did warn you that you’d need a date. After all, it’s a long flight, and who better than your friend from Georgia to keep you company?”

  Penelope seethed at her mother’s mild-mannered answer. The innocence reeked of conspiracy. This was the same attitude Mom had had when she’d arranged with Penelope’s landlord—landlords, plural, because it had happened more than once—to inspect her fridge for food. Well, dear, they were on the way to the market themselves, and I thought...

  “Mom, he’s not my friend.” Penelope stared down at the e-ticket in her hand and closed her eyes at the sight of Brandon’s name. “Didn’t I tell you he was trying to take down the fence between our properties? A friend does not do that.”

  “Oh, pish-posh, Penelope! He was simply tired of driving that tractor on the open road. He seems like a very nice fellow. You should give him a chance. You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

  “Is this a matchmaking trip?” Now Penelope really lost it. “Mom, I swear—”

  “Honestly. What is the problem? I get to invite who I want to invite. And I’ve decided Brandon is as good as anybody. Why do you object? Is he horribly disfigured in some way?”

  “No,” she admitted. “The opposite in fact. He’s...” Her mind’s eye traveled over Brandon’s dark eyes, his chiseled features and broad shoulders.

  “He’s what?”

  “He’s good-looking. Enough. I guess. If you, uh, like them that way. But it’s not that. Even if he were, how’d you put it, horribly disfigured, that wouldn’t matter to me. You know that.”

  “But he is nice. I had quite a long chat with him on the phone, and I thought, why not?”

  Penelope rubbed her forehead. Why was it that every time she talked to her mother on the phone, she got a headache? She ought to invest in Excedrin stock. “I don’t get this. You won’t have Grandpa Murphy at the wedding, but you invite the man who hates him? The one who’s trying to put Grandpa in jail? And is conspiring to take my property? Mom!”