A Place to Call Home (Harlequin Heartwarming) Read Online Free Page A

artist, you say?” Uncle Jake asked suddenly.
    “Yeah. Big metal abstract pieces. She wants to put up a barn to work in.”
    “You and the FFA kids gonna help her?”
    He did a double take at his uncle. “Why should I help her put more things on that land that I’ll have to tear down when I finally get it?”
    “Son, it is obvious you don’t know much about women.” Uncle Jake took a swig of his iced tea and scarfed up the last of the peas.
    “Oh, and you, the lifelong bachelor, are an expert?”
    His uncle grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “Why you think I never married?” But then he sobered. “See, with a man, you could have offered to swap my field, I mean her field, for that section with the hardwood, and he would have considered it. But a woman? Nope. She’s got an idea in her head about how things are going to be. She’s picturing this dream...house’ll be here, the picket fence, there, the flowers over yonder... Takes something big to dynamite that picture from a woman’s head.”
    Brandon thought back to how elated Penelope had been that first day. She’d even used the word “dream.” Maybe Uncle Jake was right.
    But he couldn’t just give up on this.
    “How serious can she be?” Brandon asked. “How long can she last? Whoever heard of a sculptor living here, anyway?”
    “There’s that fellow that does chain saw carving. He makes a living at it.”
    Brandon snorted. “He’s retired from the military. Of course he’s not starving.”
    “But this one’s got grit.”
    “Huh?” Brandon saw the frown on his uncle’s face and quickly amended the “huh” to “Sir?”
    The frown cleared. “Want some apple pie? I bought a frozen one from the store.”
    Brandon’s stomach leapt in anticipation of actual, edible food. “Where is it? I’ll get it.”
    “Fridge. Bottom shelf.”
    As Brandon retrieved the pie—burnt on one side, but still an improvement over the rice and peas—he prompted his uncle. “What do you mean, she’s got grit? You’ve never met her, have you?”
    “Nope. Been here a week now, and she ain’t introduced herself. If Geraldine hadn’t been doin’ so poorly, I’d have gotten round to going over there, being neighborly...”
    Brandon dug into the pie and tried not to smile as his uncle digressed into a long and sorry tale about his prize sow.
    “So how do you know she’s got grit? Penelope, I mean.”
    His uncle looked startled by Brandon’s change of subject. “You said it yourself. She’s got that place livable. She’s doing all the work herself. And if she’s doing outdoor sculpture, she’s got to be handy with a welder. That’s a girl who ain’t afraid of hard work.”
    “How do you know about sculpting?”
    Uncle Jake waved a hand at the crammed bookshelf on one wall of the dining room. “Some book I read sometime. I forget what. Talked all about it.”
    “She didn’t say anything about welding.” But Brandon didn’t argue the point.
    “She pretty?”
    “What?”
    “I say, is she pretty?”
    An image of tanned legs and dark curly hair spilling over bare shoulders shot into Brandon’s mind. “I guess you’d call her pretty.”
    “Well, then.” Uncle Jake beamed. “Maybe she’s got a fellow somewhere who wants her back. Or maybe she’ll get bored with country boys and head on back to the big city for what she’s used to. If she sells out at a decent price, we could get that land back.”
    A woman like Penelope was attractive enough to have a long list of guys interested in her. Brandon pushed the plate of pie away and wondered why his uncle’s idea didn’t cheer him up. Maybe it was because he didn’t want to have to wait for Penelope to give up and get lost.
    His uncle began clearing the table. Brandon fell into step, not saying anything in response to his uncle’s idea.
    “What are you so quiet about?” Uncle Jake asked. “Did I say something?”
    Brandon dropped the plates into the sink. “No, sir,” he replied in a