A Place to Call Home (Harlequin Heartwarming)

by Reese, Cynthia

  “Not a problem.” He ducked his head in curt acknowledgment to Murphy. “I’ll let you two say your goodbyes.”

  In the bedroom, he spotted a hugely obese overnight bag on the bed. As he shoved down on the bag’s lid to manage the zipper, Theo came out from under the bed just long enough to startle Brandon, wind around his ankles and scoot back under.

  “Oh, so we’re friends now?” Brandon asked in a low voice. “You took to heart that business about Murphy not having any animals he couldn’t eat? Uncle Jake’s the one you’d better be nice to. He’s feeding you.” The zipper slid home and Brandon set the bag on the floor.

  Hushed voices floated down the hallway, but Brandon couldn’t make out what was being said. He waited another minute or so in the hopes that Murphy would leave before he went back into the kitchen.

  Theo came back out for another guerrilla rub on the ankles, and this time Brandon risked reaching down to stroke the cat on the back. “Glad you’re seeing things my way, finally. You reckon you could talk to your mistress?”

  The cat’s purr sounded like an engine with a bad knock. Then as abruptly as Theo had come out, he ducked back under the bed. Brandon glanced at his watch. No more time to wait around, and Murphy hadn’t budged.

  Brandon hefted the bag. The low voices didn’t get any clearer as he approached the kitchen door, just got lower and more intense. When he crossed the threshold, Penelope cast an anxious smile his way.

  Taking in Murphy’s glower, Brandon set his jaw. This time, he would not lose his temper. The sorry excuse for humanity wasn’t worth it. “Are you ready, Penelope?” he asked. “We’re cutting it close.”

  “Oh, good, you got my suitcase zipped.” Again Penelope exuded a false brightness. “Let me pet my cat and we’ll be out of here. Grandpa, I’ll talk more about this on Sunday when I get in, okay?”

  Murphy didn’t take the hint. He remained in the chair, stolid and sour.

  Penelope gave it another go. “I wish we had more time to discuss this, but I really do have to go.”

  Murphy narrowed his eyes. “Well, go on, then. I’m sure not stopping you. Go on and leave me.”

  Penelope rubbed her eyes. “I need to lock up, Grandpa.”

  Brandon saw Murphy’s right fingers drum out a near-silent tattoo on the dinette table, and he knew, in an instant, that Murphy was waiting her out. The old buzzard wanted her to leave him in the house. It was some sort of power play.

  “I’ll lock ’em. When I leave. I’m just going to sit here for a while. Maybe make some of that good coffee of yours, Penny-girl.”

  Now Penelope’s face betrayed her displeasure. “No, Grandpa, let’s all leave together. I need to lock up. I’ll worry about it, you know?”

  “Can’t you trust me?” Murphy asked her in a low voice.

  Just say it, Penelope. Say you don’t want him in your house. Tell him no, and mean it.

  “Sure, I trust you, Grandpa.” Penelope gestured to the back door with her hand. “But I’ll follow you out.”

  “You’re gonna turn an old man out? When all he wants is a chance to get his breath back and drink a cup of coffee? Are you serious? You think I’m going to steal some of your stuff? Ha! You’re worrying about the wrong guy. That one you’re hauling off to Oregon with, now, he’s the one you need to worry about.”

  Brandon clamped his fingers in a death grip on Penelope’s bag and wished it was Murphy’s neck instead. Still he said nothing, just clenched his teeth shut so no words could escape.

  “Grandpa. I have to leave now. And you know I’m going to miss my flight if I don’t go. So could you please leave?”

  Murphy looked from Penelope to Brandon, and Brandon could swear he saw him calculating behind those eyes.

  “No. I got a right to be here.”

  That was Brandon’s breaking point. He dropped the bag and crossed to Murphy. “Listen, you—you—” He bit off the words he wanted to use. “She’s asked you to leave, a lot nicer than I would have. She wants you out of here. Now. So it’s either you leave on your own free will or I call in another deputy, and he’ll take you off my hands. I won’t lie. It’d be my pleasure to put you in a patrol car myself, even if I did miss my flight.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  PENELOPE SEETHED as she sat between Uncle Jake on her left and Brandon on her right. Her thoughts raced.

  Why did Grandpa put me in that position?

  Didn’t Brandon think me capable of showing my own grandfather out?

  If it were anyone but Brandon, Grandpa wouldn’t...

  Brandon, for his part, let a smug smile play at the corners of his mouth. He was happy, happy that he’d strong-armed an old man.

  If Grandpa had left when you asked him...

  Uncle Jake interrupted the silence and Penelope’s tumultuous thoughts. “Got something I want to show y’all.”

  “We’re running out of time, Uncle Jake,” Brandon pointed out, “especially with you driving.”

  “Won’t take a minute, and it’s on the way. And then, if you’re in such an all-fired-up hurry, I’ll swap with you and you can risk body and bone. Besides, this way is almost a shortcut to the interstate.”

  Five minutes later, the truck bumped down a washboard dirt road. Uncle Jake pulled to a stop at a grove of pine trees. He opened the truck door. “Well, c’mon. Y’all are in a hurry, right?”

  Muttering under his breath, Brandon slid out and offered Penelope a hand. She wasn’t sure she wanted it. She wasn’t sure she ever wanted him to touch her again.

  But she took the hand he offered and maneuvered her way to the ground.

  “Watch that hole,” he warned and, instead of letting go, guided her around it. The contact of his skin on hers reminded her too much of their kiss. But the easy, impersonal way he let her go once the hole was negotiated hurt more.

  Rounding the truck, Brandon asked, “What’s so important for us to see?”

  “This here,” Uncle Jake answered. He pointed his sun-spotted hand at an old tractor, with strange metal wheels, stuck between two pine trees.

  “Uncle Jake! We could have seen this anytime. I’ve seen it before,” Brandon protested.

  “Ah, but you need to hear about it.”

  Penelope succumbed to curiosity. “This tractor’s been here a while if two pines grew up on either side of it. That’s what happened? Someone abandoned the tractor and the pine trees grew up around it?”

  “Exactly!” Jake beamed his approval, much like a teacher to a prize student. “See, this ol’ thing’s flywheel got busted. Farmer who owned it didn’t have the time or the money to fix it, so he just wound up kicking the tar out of it, which helped his frustration a smidge, but that’s ’bout all.”

  Uncle Jake walked over and slid a hand along the hood of the tractor. “He could have asked his neighbors to help. But his pride got in the way, like pride is wont to do. And so first one thing and another happened. Life had a way of getting away from him, and when he finally came back to fix the tractor, these trees had grown up.”

  “What did he use for a tractor?” Penelope asked. The surreal arrangement of antique tractor and two pines on either side of the driver’s seat appealed to the sculptor in her.

  “Not important.” Uncle Jake waved away the question. “The important thing is—why didn’t he cut the trees down?”

  She met Brandon’s gaze and saw the same aha-why-didn’t-I-think-of-that in his eyes that she was feeling.

  “I give up. Why not?”

  “Simple.” Now Uncle Jake patted one of the trees. “These pine trees were just doing what pine trees do—growing up. And the man realized that it was all his fault anyway. Instead of kicking the tires on the tractor, he could have dispensed with his pride and asked his neighbors for a hand. Why cut down two pine trees th
at didn’t mean no harm? So here it sits, this monument to human stubbornness and to how a problem ignored just gets worse. You leave something to be fixed later, and you’ll come back to see it stuck between two pine trees.”

  Penelope instantly got Uncle Jake’s meaning, and from Brandon’s glum expression, she could tell he did as well. Her earlier anger dissipated. “You’re a regular Aesop, Uncle Jake.”

  “I been told that.” He hitched up his overalls with more than a glimmer of pride. “Now that I’ve said my piece, let’s get y’all to that airport.”

  * * *

  UNCLE JAKE’S PARABLE had left Brandon silent all the way down to Savannah. Penelope had attempted to draw Brandon out a couple of times, but he’d answered her questions with a distracted yes or no. Then he’d gone back to staring out at the miles of pine trees blipping by on

  I-16.

  When Uncle Jake had hefted her carry-on bag out from behind the truck seat, he looked as though he was going to say something to Brandon. Penelope waited, but in the end, Uncle Jake just shook Brandon’s hand, gave her a hug and bade the two of them goodbye and good luck.

  They spent another near-silent forty-five minutes waiting on their flight to Atlanta. Brandon had bought them some lunch at a fast-food place, but beyond “Need some ketchup?” or “Can I get that straw for you?” he didn’t say much of anything.

  It unnerved Penelope. Was this the way it was going to be the whole time?

  On the airplane, he tightened his seat belt, checked it again and then glanced around. She saw more than a little panic in his expression.

  “Hey.” Penelope slid her fingers through his. “Remember? Hand-holding therapy?”

  Brandon squeezed her hand in response with fingers damp with sweat. “I told you I hate flying. I cannot imagine what possessed me to get on this plane.”

  “It will be okay,” she assured him, deciding that now would not be the time to remind him he had at least two more plane changes ahead of him.

  The plane began meandering down the taxiway, then made the turn and started gathering speed for takeoff. Brandon shut his eyes tightly.

  “It’s worse if you have your eyes closed,” she whispered. “Just look at me.”

  And he did. Though his hand was still damp and his jaw was clenched tight, he gave Penelope a level stare. She smiled at him, and he returned a green-around-the-gills grin. The plane grabbed at air, bounced with turbulence that Penelope would never have noticed if Brandon hadn’t been so nervous beside her. His gaze darted around wildly.

  Penelope reached up and touched a finger to his chin. It brought his attention back to her. “Hey, trust me,” she whispered. “The worst part’s almost over.”

  “Uh, if you say so.”

  Then the ascent smoothed out, though the climb was still steep. Brandon’s breathing eased and his death grip on her hand slackened.

  “Feel better?” she asked.

  “Amazingly enough, I do.”

  “Good!” Impulsively she pressed a kiss to his jaw, which made him jump.

  “I’m sorry.” Penelope drew back.

  But he held on to her hand and laid his other one on top of hers. “No. It’s fine. It surprised me, that’s all. I’m a nervous wreck from this flying business. I must have completely missed out on Uncle Jake’s genes.”

  “His genes? I don’t understand.”

  “You didn’t know? He flew a fighter plane in World War II, loved flying. He was offered a job flying for an airline when he came home. But he loved farming even more than flying.”

  He frowned and stared down at his knees, which were jammed into the tight space coach afforded them. Penelope patted the knee closest to her with her free hand. “I like your uncle. He’s unexpected, in a lot of ways. That country-bumpkin act is a mask, isn’t it? His send-off was much better than my grandfather’s. I’m sorry you felt you had to get involved.”

  He raised his gaze back up to meet hers. “I suppose I should apologize. Murphy didn’t look as though he was going to listen to you. It made me mad, him not respecting you enough to—”

  Whatever he would have said, he didn’t finish. Brandon abruptly said, “Let’s forget it all. The land, Murphy, the fence, every bad word you and I have ever said to each other. For this trip. Let’s just have a good time.”

  She waited for him to explain the sudden truce he offered. When he didn’t, she nodded and smiled. “Sounds good to me.”

  * * *

  THEY LANDED in Portland in a steady downpour that Penelope had trouble negotiating in her economy rental car. The headlights illuminated a dark city just saying goodbye to another fall day of rain. Penelope missed the sunshine and blue skies she’d left behind in Georgia.

  “So we’re, what, driving over to the coast tonight?” Brandon asked.

  “Yeah, it’s still—how do you Georgia boys put it? A ways away?” She cast him a quick smile. “Like I said, I couldn’t get us a later flight out tomorrow, so I decided we do this now. I wanted you to see the Pacific.”

  “And how do we get to Bend?” Brandon shifted in the tight confines of the Corolla. “We’re driving?”

  “No. I was going to, but my worrywart mother thinks we wouldn’t get there in time for the rehearsal dinner tomorrow night. Something about bad weather over the mountains. So we’ll stay at my grandmother’s tonight, then head back here to Portland to catch a flight to Redmond.”

  “Oh, joy. More planes. If there’s supposed to be bad weather, wouldn’t we be safer with our feet on the ground?”

  Penelope laughed. “Obviously you haven’t driven along a mountain pass in bad weather.”

  “My gut is telling me to avoid any plane if at all possible, but I defer to your judgment. I’d hate to get stuck in a blizzard in the mountains.”

  “Wouldn’t be a blizzard, not this time of year. Well, I guess anything’s possible. But still it can be nasty.”

  Brandon yawned and leaned back against the headrest. The yawn reminded Penelope of how tired she was. “So your grandmother. Is this Murphy’s ex-wife?”

  She jumped at Brandon’s mention of her grandfather and felt a swirling amalgam of guilt and irritation when she recalled how she’d left Grandpa Murphy.

  Penelope shook her head. “No, Granny Lou lives near my parents in Bend. You’ll see her at the wedding. And actually, Grams—my dad’s mom—doesn’t live in her house anymore. She’s in a retirement home in Bend. But she still has the house in Tillamook, and we can stay there. If you don’t mind.”

  “Hey, I’m just along for the ride. What’s she like, anyway? Do you take after her?”

  “You’d like her. She’s a lot like Uncle Jake—full of stories that always have a moral. She and my grandfather ran a farm for years, until he passed away. It’s beautiful.”

  “Yeah? She farms? And you didn’t inherit her green thumb?” Brandon teased.

  “It was a dairy farm. Milk cows, now, I know a little something about. And butter and cheese. But growing stuff beyond my vegetable patch? Nada.” She laughed. “A total dunce when it comes to planting for market. I think that’s what’s so interesting about seeing you farm my land—how you tend it, coax things to life on it. Those strawberries, you’ve put a lot of work into them.”

  Brandon was silent. A look his way told her that he was back to staring out the window. What had she said to plunge him back into moodiness?

  “It’s hard for me to think of it as your land,” he said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “You said, ‘seeing you farm my land.’ I’ve always seen it as my uncle’s and—maybe, one day in the hopefully very distant future—mine.” Brandon turned back to her. “I know, I said no talk about any of that. But it’s never far from my mind.”

  “You’re never going to see the loss of it as anything but my
grandfather’s fault, are you?” Penelope tightened her grip on the wheel.

  “No. I’m sorry, Penelope. But no, I’ll always blame Murphy.”

  And then Brandon went back to staring out the window.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE RAIN HAD SLOWED to a drizzle by the time they’d made the long drive across to Tillamook and out to Penelope’s grandmother’s farm. For the most part, Brandon had feigned sleep as a way to avoid having to talk with her. And to get a chance to think.

  Now, as the car slowed, he sat up and peered through the evening’s darkness. He could see a gate blocking the driveway and a paint-peeled Langston Dairies sign on the fence beside it.

  “Need me to get out and open the gate?” he offered.

  He must have startled her, because she jumped. Penelope gave him a decidedly unfriendly look. “It’s a combination lock, and a stubborn one at that. I’ll probably have more luck with it.” She reached in the backseat and got her yellow rain slicker. Then without another word, she pushed open the car door and slammed it behind her.

  Brandon watched her in the beam of the headlights as she bent over the lock, rain drizzling down on her. At first, he swallowed his discomfort and his natural inclination to help a woman out.

  As the minutes wore on and Penelope seemed to have no success with the lock, the urge to step in became harder to ignore.

  When he opened the car door, Penelope lifted her head. “Wait in the car!” she called. “I’ve almost got it!”

  Brandon hesitated for a moment more. Then he yanked the thin poncho he’d bought at the airport over his head and sprinted for the gate. “Here, you’re getting soaked.”

  She looked up at him, eyes blazing. “I said I could get it!”

  “What’s the big deal, me helping you?”

  “Maybe I don’t want to take any more help from you. Or maybe I’m insulted that, once again, you think I need rescuing.”

  “But you do.”

  “No!” She dropped the lock, which banged against the metal gate, and straightened. The hood of her slicker fell back, leaving her dark hair uncovered. When Brandon tried to put it back on her, she blocked him. “Don’t pretend to be nice to me, Brandon, not after giving me the silent treatment the whole car ride over here. Your niceness is...I don’t know, Southern manners, a reflex, because you must not trust me or like me. I don’t even know why you came along for this trip. I don’t know why I wanted to show you the ocean.”