And then it hit him. Her name.
“Did you say Langston?”
“Yes. Penelope Langston. That was very sweet, what you did for me a moment ago—”
“As in Langston Holdings?”
He couldn’t keep the edge out of his tone.
“Yes. That’s my company.”
A bitter taste coated the inside of Brandon’s mouth, a wash of nausea flooding him. Langston Holdings. The mysterious holding company that had bid up his uncle’s land when it went to auction—again—and Brandon had been unable to save his uncle’s farm. Again.
Uncle Jake tried to keep a stiff upper lip about losing half the acreage he’d farmed all his life, but Brandon knew the way he’d lost it had been the real kicker. Richard Murphy, a big-time area farmer, had colluded with the county tax commissioner to dummy up tax debts.
That’s what had happened to Uncle Jake and Brandon. Brandon had been a full partner in his uncle’s small farming operation when the tax commissioner sent them a bill they couldn’t prove they’d paid. The tax commissioner had handpicked farmers like Uncle Jake, who, in years past, before computers, had tended to pay tax bills in cash and in installments. A few of the farmers had been able to produce ancient, yellowed receipts. Uncle Jake and at least one other farmer hadn’t been such good record keepers. And Murphy had offered to stave off a sheriff’s sale by buying part of the farm at a rock-bottom price.
Then—and here Brandon couldn’t conceal a satisfied grin—Murphy himself had fallen on hard times. He was facing a federal indictment on charges a mile long on government crop insurance fraud. The corrupt farmer had seen his own land, including the acres he’d swindled out of Uncle Jake, sold by auction.
Brandon had tried to buy his uncle’s property back, but a holding company out of Oregon had outbid him at the auction. Langston Holdings.
This was the enemy? This woman? She was what, late twenties? And she could go around snatching up tracts of prime farmland?
If Penelope Langston saw his reaction, she didn’t act like it registered. Nope, she was as bubbly as a kid at her birthday party, ready to unwrap presents. A dimple jumped in her cheek as she grinned.
“So, where’s your car?” he growled.
“Oh, back there.” Penelope gestured with a thumb in the direction the house was moving. “I guess I didn’t think things through, but I did want to get a picture of it. Wasn’t it awesome, coming down that hill? Can you give me a lift? You are here to direct traffic, right?”
He didn’t bother to suppress a snort. Traffic? Here? In South Georgia? The only traffic jams he knew of were when people had to slow down behind an old-timer like Uncle Jake or a creeping tractor.
“You’re obviously not from around here. This road isn’t traveled that much.” He glanced from Penelope’s animated face to the house and blew out a breath. “C’mon. I’ll give you a ride.”
“Great!”
He would have figured her for a chatterbox, but in the cruiser, she proved him wrong. Maybe it was because she was absorbed in her big day.
Brandon felt the tiniest bit churlish for thinking ill of her. So she’d beat him out of the land. It had been an auction fair and square. And at least she was putting a house on it. It wasn’t as though she was turning it into a subdivision.
He turned off on a dirt road and negotiated the Crown Vic over the washboard surface.
“I thought…” Penelope frowned.
“I’m taking a shortcut. This comes out near my uncle’s—your land.” The correction ate at him. He forced himself to be civil and polite. “What brings you here?”
“Well, the land, of course. I’d found the house, oh, ages ago, on the Internet, believe it or not. It came from North Georgia, and the owners were selling it cheap to anyone who would move it. But I needed a square of dirt to put it on.”
Square of dirt? Thirty acres of the best cropland on this side of the county was more than a “square of dirt.”
“And you’re originally from…?”
“Portland, Oregon. You know, I can’t get over how flat everything is here. No peaks. No mountains. No hills, even. But the pine trees look like home.”
“Oregon, huh? What, you hear about the land on the Internet or something?” Brandon’s curiosity got the better of him. He’d tried, without success, to dig up information on Langston Holdings and the people behind it.
Never in a million years would he have thought the people behind it would be just this slip of a woman.
“Oh, no. Family.” She didn’t offer more in the way of explanation, instead pointing. “Look! They’re turning in! Wow! Oh, I want to get another picture!”
He turned back onto the paved road and parked on the shoulder. “Well, uh, where are they putting the house? They’re not putting it there, are they? They’re putting it farther back, right?”
She paused in the act of opening the car door. “Yeah. That’s the prettiest spot on the whole thirty acres. Why? Do you know something I don’t? It’s not wetlands. I checked it out. And, see, there’s a rise, but it’s not high on a hill.”
“That’s the best part of the tract, the most fertile. Heck, we didn’t even have to put half the fertilizer on that section that we did on the rest.”
“You worked for Grandpa Murphy?”
His head snapped around from his view through the windshield. “ Grandpa? You mean Richard Murphy? You’re related to Richard Murphy?”
“Of course. That’s how I knew about the land. He’s my mother’s dad.” Penelope hopped out of the car. She ducked her head back in. “And anyway, as far as the land’s fertility goes, it doesn’t really matter. I mean, can you see me farming?”
Her laugh bubbled up, rich and throaty. The double whammy of the day left him numb to it.
It was bad enough Penelope was indifferent about putting something as permanent as a house on the best farming land in the area.
But to find out she was the granddaughter of the guy who’d forced Uncle Jake off his land?
She slammed the door and crossed the pastureland. The breeze caught the skirt of her sundress and with each step the heels of her shoes dug into the earth.
Two years ago, Brandon had planted soybeans here, soybeans that had produced double what the rest of his uncle’s farm had produced. Now, danged if he didn’t see a pine seedling or two popping up out of the ground. Another two years lying fallow, and this land would be a piney thicket.
Suddenly the confines of the patrol car closed in on him. He had a good job, sure. He liked being a deputy, helping people.
So what if it wasn’t farming? So what if most days he spent writing out speeding tickets along the interstate and the only time he felt the wind in his face and the sun on his back was when he was changing some traveler’s flat tire? So what if the only thing he grew these days was the odd tomato plant on the excuse of a back deck he had at his apartment? He was hardly there, anyway. He spent so much of his time off at Uncle Jake’s. Probably he should give up the cramped little place altogether.
Being a deputy paid the bills, right? It took care of Uncle Jake, and Lord knows Uncle Jake didn’t have two cents to rub together these days.
Face it. This farming gig was just a pipe dream. You’re thirty. It’s time to grow up, put away childish things.
Brandon blew out a sigh and heaved himself from the cruiser to cross the field he’d once plowed.
Penelope stopped short of where the transfer truck