“I might have just the thing for you, then. If you don’t need that entire tract of land, you interested in selling part of it?”
She cocked her head to one side and stared at him. “Is it something in the air?”
“What do you mean?”
Penelope hesitated. “Brandon Wilkes came—”
Grandpa Murphy uttered a foul word.
Penelope laughed uneasily. “I take it you don’t have any more warm, fuzzy feelings for him than he does for you.”
“Busybody deputy. It was him and Ryan MacIntosh and that Becca Reynolds MacIntosh hooked up with—all of them got me in this jam I’m in. They’d like nothing more than to see me rot behind bars, Penelope. You stay away from them.”
“That won’t be a problem. I’ve not been the one looking for Brandon, that’s for sure.” The dark expression on Brandon’s good-looking face came back fresh and clear. He’d been so self-righteous about the whole thing, as though there were no doubt that her grandfather had orchestrated the loss of his uncle’s land.
He really believed it, too. Penelope had seen the way his expression had softened when he talked about his uncle, had seen pain in his eyes. That pain had driven her here, to be sure that she wasn’t profiting off something that hadn’t been on the up-and-up.
“Grandpa Murphy?” Penelope struggled to couch the question in a nonaccusatory way. “About how you got the Wilkes property…”
Grandpa’s lips thinned. “Told you, girl. I told you all that when I first called you about the banks calling in all my notes and my entire place going on the auction block. Damn banks, getting all my money. I got the land when Jake Wilkes’s old tax debt finally caught up with him. A man doesn’t think he has to pay taxes and then makes up all kinds of stories about how he paid it. Well, why can’t he produce proof, I say?”
“Brandon said there were other—”
“You listening to that Brandon Wilkes? You believe that lug of a deputy over me? Your own flesh and blood?” he thundered, his face turning purple.
Penelope held up a hand. “Whoa, calm down, Grandpa. Of course I believe you. I wanted to be sure, that’s all.”
She could see a storm of emotions swirl over him, but finally his expression settled into an uneasy calm. “Yeah. Yeah. That Brandon can spin a sad tale, that’s for damn sure. I can see why you felt the need to ask, although, I can’t lie. It cuts that you doubted me, your own grandfather.”
“I’m sorry, Grandpa. I meant…I wasn’t questioning…well, I guess I was, wasn’t I?” Penelope chuckled, but that didn’t ease the tension.
“It’s okay, Penelope. I understand. But listen, about your money problems.”
The abrupt shift in topic confused her for a moment. “That’s okay, Grandpa, I’ll figure—”
“No, no. I want to hook you up with some people, some folks who will give you good money for your land. They’ve been after it for a while. Before the banks started calling in their notes, I was about to sell the land you’ve got now to these people.”
“If they wanted the land, why didn’t they bid against me at the auction?”
“Didn’t know about it. It all happened so fast. Penny-girl, I hope you never have to see all you worked for being bid off on the auction block. It’s a horrible thing.”
She wrapped her fingers around his again and squeezed. The twist of his lips reminded her of Brandon’s when he’d tried to explain his uncle’s loss. “I feel really awful, Grandpa, that I managed to profit off your misfortune.”
He pulled his hand from hers and pressed his fingertips to his eyes. “Well, if I had to lose it all, I’m glad some of it went to you. That’s why I told you. You’re family, Penny-girl, and I knew you’d want to help out. I knew you wouldn’t want to see everything I’d worked for gone.”
“I do want to help.” Penelope dropped her gaze from him and busied herself with straightening her grandfather’s bottles of medicine in the center of the kitchen table. Did he have to take so much?
“Then talk to these people. They have this solid-waste facility company, based out of Florida. They do all this gee-whiz stuff to garbage and recycle it, all with robots and stuff. Hardly a human hand touches it.”
“Solid waste?” Penelope set down the bottle in her hand. “Oh, Grandpa, I don’t know. That doesn’t sound like—”
“It’s all real, what do you call it? Green? Keeps it out of landfills and stuff. I figured that’d be right up your alley, Penny-girl, as big on the environment as you are. And these guys are so hot for it that they’re willing to pay three times the market value. Why do you think I didn’t tell ’em about the auction? I figured you and me, we could sell it together.” He leaned forward in his chair, his face alight with excitement. “And then…well, no lie, Penny, I need every dime I can get for those vultures I call lawyers. I can’t face going to jail. You said you wanted to help me.”
Penelope struggled for the words to tell him no without hurting him. Solid waste? A company that, from the sound of it, used hardly any employees?
“Don’t say no. If you can’t say yes right now, say you’ll think about it, okay? Don’t say no,” Grandpa Murphy urged her. “Just think about it. There’s no rush. No rush at all.”
“I offered to sell to Brandon,” she confessed.
Again he let loose a foul expletive. With visible effort, he reined his temper back in. “He can’t beat this deal, Penny-girl. And remember, you can’t trust him. Not one whit. He’s the reason I’m in this mess to begin with.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“YOU’RE UP to something.”
Uncle Jake’s statement stopped Brandon in his tracks as he was coming out of his uncle’s toolshed. He looked down at the stakes and twine he held. His guilt made them feel poker-hot in his hands.
“No. I’m just helping out a neighbor,” Brandon said.
Uncle Jake narrowed his eyes and, with the hand not holding a bucket, shifted his cap. It was a move Brandon knew well, a gesture that signaled Uncle Jake’s keen mind was in full gear, calculating angles and motives. When Brandon had been in high school, that cap-shifting move meant Brandon was about to get busted, whether it was for sneaking out to join his buddies at the river or for a less-than-stellar grade he hadn’t told his mother about.
This time was no exception. “Hmm. That there is my surveying twine and my line level. And my stakes. Looks like you’re all set to help someone stake out a foundation.”
“A cement slab for a pole barn, actually.”
Uncle Jake got that “ah-ha” glint in his eyes. “Penelope Langston’s barn? You gonna help her with that after all?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mind if I ask why you’re all het up to help her? A mighty quick change of heart, just saying.”
“I could say that’s how you and Mama raised me.” Brandon fidgeted with the spool of twine in hope that his hedged words would distract his uncle.
It didn’t happen.
“Right. You all of a sudden remembering your raisings, and all that. Way I see it, it’s got to be one of two things.” Uncle Jake set the bucket by his feet and propped himself against a nearby fence post. “Either she’s prettier than you’ve let on, or else you’re making some other kind of move on her. ’Cause the Brandon I know doesn’t forgive and forget and build pole barns.”
“I guess I should have asked, Uncle Jake, if you minded me helping her, but you should know, it’s not—”
“Mind? Son, that land is gone. It’s not ours anymore. Not one smidge of it. I knew that the day I realized I couldn’t find that paid receipt for my taxes. My mistake. My carelessness played right into Murphy’s and Melton’s hands. They tried it on a bunch of us, and the ones who’d kept their receipts—well, they’ve still got their land, now don’t they?”
“But Uncle Jake, if it hadn’t have been for Murphy, you would—”
“Uh-huh, you are up to some scheming. I didn’t think you had gotten rid of all that vinegar you were spewing.”
Brandon shifted his hold on the twine, stakes and the level. He looked down at them and leaned the stakes against the shed. What would he accomplish by helping Penelope? “I started thinking. She’s got money troubles. She won’t be able to hold on to the land that much longer, and we’ll be able to buy it. Plus, Becca MacIntosh is still working on proving the original sale wasn’t legal, so it may revert back to you without a penny being swapped. And, worse comes to worst, there’s the possibility of that adverse possession Sean was talking about. One way or another, we’ll get it back, Uncle Jake. Why shouldn’t I go ahead and start improving the land? We can always use another barn.”
Uncle Jake’s face creased in a frown. “Brandon, that most certainly is not the way your mama and I raised you. Your mama would be spinning in her grave like a chicken on a spit if she could hear you. You know how bad it hurt me to lose that land.”
“Which is why I’m trying to get it back.”
“And there’s that girl, ain’t hurt so much as a fly, and you’re scheming to diddle her out of the land same as Murphy diddled me out of it. I tell you, that land is cursed, Brandon. You’d do well to leave it alone.” Uncle Jake shook his head and looked off into the distance.
After a moment of silence that Brandon couldn’t figure out how to fill, his uncle snatched up the bucket and brushed past him. “I expect, though, as hardheaded as you are, you’ll have to figure that one out for yourself. But don’t say I didn’t warn you when this comes back to bite you on the butt.”
AT THE SOUND of a vehicle coming along the driveway, Penelope looked up from the hole she was digging with her handheld spade to see a familiar dust-covered truck and knew Brandon was at the wheel. She tensed. What could he want now?
She rose to her feet. If he was here to malign her grandfather, he could hit the road.
Brandon had just slid one booted foot out of his truck door and onto her driveway when she rounded the front of his truck.
“Back to insult my family some more? Or are you still insisting I should give this land to you?”
He paused, one hand on the open window. Then he reached behind him and pulled out a bundle of stakes and a ball of twine.
“Oh, that’s rich,” she said, recognizing the items for what they were. “You’re already acting like it’s your land!”
“Whoa.” Brandon eased around the truck door and slammed it shut. “Can’t you even give a guy a chance to apologize?”
“Apologize?” Penelope didn’t bother to keep her suspicion out of her voice.
“Yeah. Okay, so I got a little hot under the collar. I’m not usually like that. It’s just this land.” Brandon clamped his mouth shut. He started again. “Anyway, it’s like Uncle Jake pointed out a few minutes ago. It’s his fault, ultimately. He was the one who couldn’t produce the receipt that proved he’d paid the taxes. My uncle’s never been much for paperwork, and this time it cost him. So about how I acted—to, er, make it up to you, I thought I’d help you out with your barn.”
“You what?” Her hold on the spade loosened and she dropped it.
“The pole barn. The one that you asked me to help you with?”
To cover her confusion, she knelt to retrieve the spade. “Why?” Penelope asked.
“Like I said. I want to make it up to you. The way I reacted.”
She straightened, realizing how tall he was when she only came to mid-chest. It was a very broad, very well built chest, which stretched the cotton knit T-shirt tight. “Look, it was stupid and more than a little insensitive of me to ask you for help. I appreciate the gesture, but I’ll figure something out.”
“What are you doing over there? Planting flowers? It’s late in the year for flowers. I know it’s still hot now, but fall’s first hard frost won’t be too much longer.”
She followed his gaze to her garden plot. “No. Winter vegetables. I’m going to build a cold frame to go over them.”
“Not much of a garden if you’re doing it with that thing.” Brandon glanced dismissively at the spade in her hand. “Why don’t you let me bring my uncle’s tractor over here and I’ll break you up a proper garden spot, one big enough to do you some good?”
“This is enough for me. It’s called square-foot gardening.”
“Humph. This I’ve got to see.” Brandon took long strides over to the plot, with its grids laid out in string. “Two winter squash plants? That bit of spinach? You must have the appetite of a bird.”
“No, see, you use the space over and over. Once a square has produced all it will, you pull that plant up and plant something else.”
“I still think you’d be better off with a bigger garden.”
“This is actually a much better, more intensive use of the land. It’s kinder to the environment, doesn’t require as much fertilizer. And you do it all organically.”
“Right.” The corners of Brandon’s mouth twitched. “Well, if you change your mind, we’ve got enough time to break you a bigger spot for, say, turnip or mustard greens.”
“Turnips. Those are the things with the purple roots? Or am I thinking of rutabagas?”
“No, you’re right, turnips are purple. But you eat the tops, too.”
“Oh. Like spinach?”
“Yeah, only cooked. Turnips are too peppery to eat raw in a salad.”
Standing here with him, talking about gardens and vegetables, she’d found herself getting lost in his easy, open grin and pulled herself up short. Her grandfather’s warning rang in her ears.
What if he was here to buy the land? She’d agreed to it, but now Grandpa Murphy had asked her to at least talk to these solid-waste guys. Truth be told, she’d rather sell to Brandon, if he wouldn’t put ludicrous strings on the way she spent her money.
“Here I am. Ready to help you get it prepped for a concrete slab. Or if you’re really tight on funds, you can keep a dirt floor in it for the time being, have the concrete poured later.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Just tell me where you want the barn. I’ll lay it out and then I’ll get the FFA members to help me put it up.”
“FFA members?”
“Uh, Future Farmers of America? Well, that’s what they used to be called, but now I don’t think the initials really stand for anything. Anyway, it’s a high school agricultural class and a club, and they get extra credit for projects like this. I’m one of the community advisors, so I can get the ag teacher to lend us some young strong backs.”
Penelope shook her head. “What’s in it for you?”
Brandon reacted as though he’d been slapped. “Nothing.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you, but you have to admit it’s perplexing. One day you’re here, saying you’ll do anything to see my grandfather in jail and that this land is really yours, and the next day you’re here offering to help me build a barn?”
“Your grandfather,” Brandon said between gritted teeth, “is a thief and an extortionist and his ethics leave a lot to be desired. If you want my help, you’d best not remind me why I don’t have this land to begin with.”
“Fine. Surely there are other people around here who know how to build a pole barn. And maybe my being Richard Murphy’s granddaughter won’t matter so much to them.” Penelope folded her arms across her chest.
She could admit to herself—but only to herself—that she was being childish. But Brandon’s high-handedness irritated her.
He shrugged but his eyes belied his indifference. “Suits me. But I wouldn’t bank on finding anybody in this town who feels warm and fuzzy toward anyone related to Richard Murphy. He stepped on a lot of people on his way up, and he can take a lot of his buddies with him on his way down. Plus, I’m the one who can help you get that cheap labor you were after. But it’s up to you. If I were really as bad as you’re thinking, I wouldn’t lift a finger. I’d just wait for the foreclosure sale. Or for you to get even more desperate.”
Her anger melted away. She was being childish. He’d offere
d to help, and she was only reminding him of all the reasons he’d be better off not helping her.
“I’m sorry. You’re not catching me at my best today. Can we start over?” She stuck out her hand. “Hi, I’m your new neighbor, Penelope Langston, and I’d like to invite you to a barn raising. That’s right, isn’t it? A barn raising?”
Brandon’s tense expression dissolved into amusement and he clasped her hand in his. “I guess. We don’t worry too much around here about how we say things.”
He didn’t let go of her hand, just held it snugly in his and gave it a squeeze. When he did release her fingers, she missed the comfort that squeeze had given her.
“Did you mean what you said the other day? That I could use the land and the irrigation pond?” Brandon asked.
For a moment, suspicion niggled at her. But she had offered and, even if her grandfather would explode—it was juvenile to say no. The man was offering to help her with her studio, which in turn would help her generate revenue.
“Of course. I’m not using it. I’ll certainly rent it to you. I do, however, object to things like tobacco being planted on it.”
Brandon threw his head back in a belly laugh. “You’d negotiate a stickup guy out of his gun, wouldn’t you? You just don’t give up. Relax. I don’t grow tobacco or any other thing you could find objectionable. It’s not even the right time of year for that. You don’t know beans about farming, do you?”
“A country girl I’m not. It would, um, be pushing it to insist you use organic principles?”
“Yeah. It would. But if you can figure out a way to make that pay, I’m all for it.”
Penelope bit back her speech about pay it now or pay it later and committed herself to finding information on the evils of pesticides and chemical fertilizers so she could educate him instead. “Okay, then. What’s next?”
“What’s next is we pick out a spot for your barn. I talk to the FFA instructor for you, and I figure out a list of materials we’ll need to build this. And then you really get to see a barn raising.”
Not on Her Own Page 5