Penelope had survived before. She’d eaten mac and cheese from scratch-and-dent sales and taken on untold numbers of jobs to pay the rent—bartending, car washing, waitressing, even a short stint at a Cineplex, selling popcorn until the smell nauseated her.
One thing she wouldn’t do: breathe a word to her parents. She’d learned the hard way that if they even suspected she was going through lean times, they’d be wiring money to her checking account or asking the landlord to check her fridge for food.
She hated the way they’d held her failures over her head as a way to persuade her to join the family business.
Real estate. Land, land, land. Buying, selling, leasing, commercial, residential, option clauses. She’d grown up with it, and it numbed her. When Grandpa Murphy had told her about this land, had suggested she try to buy it and keep it in the family, it had seemed the perfect solution. This property had been the only land she’d ever gotten excited about. Land far enough away that her parents couldn’t lie and say, We stopped by on our way to—
A knock on the front door cut into Penelope’s conflicted thoughts. She frowned and made her way up the hall to the living room.
A glance out the windows told her it was Brandon Wilkes. Her mouth tightened. Wouldn’t he be glad to know about her commission being canceled?
Penelope threw open the door. “Yes? What do you want now? Me to move to the moon?”
Brandon blinked. “Uh, well…I guess I deserved that. What with my crazy offer. I just—” Brandon broke off. “I came by to apologize. I was taking out my disappointment on you. If…er…if you need a hand with anything, all you have to do is let ’em know at the sheriff’s department. I work mostly nights, but they’ll find me during the day.”
He turned to make his way down the cinder blocks she’d stacked up as impromptu porch steps.
“Wait!”
Brandon paused, turned to her slowly.
“Are you simply being polite? Or do you mean it?”
“Mean what?”
“Your offer.” Penelope’s mouth went dry. “To help.”
“Sure, I mean it. What do you need?”
A wave of uncertainty swamped her. What did she need? A stiff drink, for starters. A sale for a project she’d already ordered the materials for. Any way to save money.
“That barn you were talking about,” she said. “The pole barn. Can you help me build it?”
CHAPTER FOUR
“M E ? H ELP YOU build a barn?”
Brandon’s lowered eyebrows and his shocked expression told Penelope all she needed to know.
“Forget it. Just forget it.” Her hope turned into a leaden lump of disappointment in her stomach. She turned for the door.
He added, his voice heavy with incredulity, “Let me get this straight. You want a pole barn? And you want me to help you?”
“Well, you needn’t be so snippy about it. You were the one who mentioned the pole barn. You sounded nice the other day, before you got all bent out of shape about my grandfather—” She choked off the words, not able to repeat his accusation. Her grandfather a thief. Right. That was about as true as the fraud charges they’d railroaded him with in this federal indictment.
“Yeah, before I got all bent out of shape about your grandfather being a crook. I take it you don’t know him that well.”
She bristled. “I know him better than you do. He is my grandfather, after all.”
Brandon’s lips curled in disdain. “Well, you must see him in a whole different way than I do, then. Maybe with both eyes closed.”
She gasped. “I don’t have to listen to this!” Penelope headed for the door. She tried to turn the knob, but a tanned hand with long fingers wrapped over hers. She jumped at the contact and looked back over her shoulder.
“Hold it!” Brandon was so close, she could have kissed him. If he wasn’t such a jerk.
I don’t have time for this, not with a man who thinks my grandfather—I’ve got a financial disaster raining down on me…
Before she could protest, Brandon stepped back. “Sorry. I didn’t want you to go stomping off into the house. Not before I had a chance to, well, show you something.”
“Who says I’m interested?”
“Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking. It’s out here, behind where you’ve put your house.”
Penelope narrowed her eyes and assessed him.
What the heck. What could it hurt? “Let me get my cell phone,” she said. If he turned out to be as big a nut as she suspected, at least she could fire off a 911 call.
Phone in hand, she returned to the porch. “Okay. I’m ready for show-and-tell.”
He struck out down the porch and led the way to the back of the house. She had to double-time it to keep up with his long strides over the uneven field. Brandon didn’t speak, though, not until he reached a fence splitting her acreage from the neatly harrowed field next to it. The contrast, her untended land adjacent to the cultivated field, couldn’t have been more stark.
“This is it? You wanted to show me a fence? It’s the land line. Are you going to argue that it’s not accurate? Because, let me assure you, I had a new survey done to confirm it,” Penelope said.
Brandon put his hands on his hips. “It’s in the wrong place, all right. It shouldn’t be there at all.”
Penelope rolled her eyes. Not more about this land business. Grandpa Murphy said people were out to get him, and this guy was proof of that.
“I bought this land at a public auction. The bank loaned me money on it. I can prove the title is clear.”
“Well, let me tell you a little about this land.” Brandon couldn’t seem to get his next words out. Penelope saw raw pain in his eyes.
It caught her short. She didn’t turn and walk off as she’d intended to. Instead, she waited to see what he would finally say.
“My uncle farmed this land. This was the first acreage he ever owned.” Brandon swept an arm over the expanse of the field. He pointed out Penelope’s house. “Where your house is now, that’s where he first plowed, the day he bought the land. You ought to hear him tell the story. He didn’t even have a tractor to plow with, so he borrowed—”
He didn’t finish, but looked embarrassed. “Anyway, like I said, this land has been Uncle Jake’s since he was just out of school. And then a couple of years ago—” Now Brandon clenched his jaw, along with his fists.
“He needed the money, so he took what Grandpa Murphy offered him,” Penelope supplied. “Look, I’m sorry—”
Brandon exploded. “He needed the money because Murphy defrauded a bunch of landowners in this county. His brother-in-law—I guess that’s your family, too, huh?”
“Uh, no. Grandpa Murphy divorced my grandmother years ago and he remarried. Why am I explaining this to you? My grandfather is not a crook—”
“Tell that to the federal investigators itching to indict him.” Before she could protest, he said, “Murphy and the tax commissioner, who just happened to be his wife’s brother, handpicked a few of the old farmers who tended to pay with cash. It was common knowledge in this county. When the tax commissioner suddenly turned up with a tax notice in his hand, my Uncle Jake couldn’t produce a paid receipt. That’s when Murphy