Not on Her Own

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

“Y OU’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.”

A T 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.”

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