Free A Place to Call Home (Harlequin Heartwarming) by Cynthia Reese

this moment, had always thought it was because her mom was ashamed of her South Georgia roots.
    Some of the men standing in the semicircle facing her shuffled their feet and stared at the ground. One of them suddenly straightened, removed his baseball cap and wiped at his face in the early morning mugginess.
    “Well, I reckon I’d better get on out of y’all’s way,” he said. “Just came by to wish you well on that pole barn. Got a heap of my own work to get to.”
    Penelope saw Brandon’s and Uncle Jake’s surprise and realized the man was making excuses he hadn’t felt the need to make earlier.
    She forced a polite smile. “Thank you so much. I appreciate you coming by this morning. It means a lot to me.”
    The man replaced his cap, tipped it at her and strode off to his truck. A moment of silence stretched thin, followed by another defector making the walk to his truck.
    When the third man started to speak, Brandon interrupted him.
    “Jarvis, I know you don’t have a bit of lost love for Murphy, but you were saying not five minutes ago how you were here to help. Now, I think you should hear Penelope out at least, give her that courtesy.”
    Penelope caught her breath at Brandon’s defense of her. Her wonderment grew when Uncle Jake spoke up.
    “Out of everybody standin’ here, I reckon I got done as dirty by Richard Murphy as any of us, ’cept maybe Ryan and his grandma. Pardon me, Miss Penelope, if I don’t mince my words about your kinfolk, but the truth’s the truth. The rat stole my land, this land we’re standin’ on right here. And he did even worse to Ryan’s grandma than just run her out of the house she’d lived in for sixty years or more.” Uncle Jake paused, stared at Penelope.
    Again, she was so shocked at the vitriol her grandfather could engender that she was rendered speechless.
    Uncle Jake pushed on. “But a girl has to be loyal to her family. If she’s not, well, then, she won’t be loyal to anybody. Now I say—” he tapped his finger on the bib of his overalls “—this stops here. We don’t take out our anger on a man’s children or his children’s children, not unless they’re picking a fight with us. Miss Penelope, you can settle this once and for all. Why’d you come here?”
    “I just wanted...dirt and a house. It seemed like a good opportunity.”
    “And it is,” Uncle Jake declared. “Ain’t no better place on earth than Brazelton County to call home. Now, time’s a-wasting, and I got to go feed the hogs this evening. Brandon, what do you need me to do?”
    The other men seemed mollified by Uncle Jake’s pronouncement and his offer to help. As talk once again dissolved into the nuts and bolts of the job before them, a yellow school bus jounced up the driveway.
    Penelope felt a touch on her arm. She glanced away from the boys now bursting off the bus and saw Brandon smiling. “We’ll get it done,” he promised.
    * * *
    T EN HOURS LATER , twilight gathering and the heat of the day cooling off, Penelope offered a tired farewell wave to Uncle Jake and Jarvis and the other farmers who’d come to help. The schoolboys had left hours ago.
    Now only Brandon remained. But where was he? She glanced up at the shiny metal roof on her new barn, amazed at how much work they’d accomplished in a day’s time. The pole barn had, with all the labor available, been almost a shazam-now-you-see-it feat.
    Sure, the doors still weren’t hung, the water supply and electricity weren’t hooked up, and the inside shelves she’d planned weren’t installed, but it was shelter. A place to work. A place to make her dreams come true.
    She walked around the corner of the house to see Brandon, shirtless, standing at an outside spigot, water rushing into his open hands. He didn’t hear her at first as he splashed the water on his face, arms and chest.
    The twilight revealed his well-built body, not an ounce of spare fat anywhere. She didn’t see the gym-sculpted, steroid-assisted