Page 7 of Kinsey

Pulling up the background check she’d done on the men, there was no point in getting through all this to find out she’d made a big mistake with a few con artists.There, on the first one, was a picture of Kinsey Pennington in his uniform for the United States Army.

He had a boyish look about him.His hair was under his cap, so all she could see was that it was dark.Even with his pressed shirt on, he looked well-toned.The cords in his neck muscles looked delicious to her.Wondering where that thought had come from, she clicked out of the file and closed down her computer.Her mind was just tired, she thought, and she was exhausted and too full of sweet stuff for her to be thinking of men and their neck muscles.

Getting ready for bed, she thought of him a couple more times and got angry with herself for thinking of a man that she knew next to nothing about other than what she’d been able to pull up in a background check.Though it was really good, his check had been, she knew that he was just too perfect for what she’d been reading.

“There has to be a flaw somewhere on his body.”Her face heated up when she realized that she’d been talking to herself, something that she thought she’d outgrown years ago.“Get him out of your mind, Meggie Gold, before you start putting him in scenarios that will get you into trouble.”

Crawling into bed, she was determined to keep him out of her dreams.She was acting like a schoolgirl with her first-ever crush.While he was a really good-looking man, she knew that he’d be wanting her to quit her job and start being a stay-at-home wife.Something that she knew she’d hate.

But would she?

She’d thought about being just that when her parents were alive.They were forever gone to work when she was little, and she spent more time with her nannies than her own parents.Grannie was always there for her, but she wasn’t the same as having her mommy and daddy around.

Grannie tried to make up for it by going to lunch and other fun dates with her, but it was never the same.Now that they were both gone, all she had were memories of them kissing her goodbye when they left in the morning and sending her off to bed when they got home.She was brought up with the knowledge that children were to be seen but never heard from.That rule had made her want to be a stay-at-home mommy when she had kids someday.

Someday she might want to do that, but for now she was happy enough—barely so at working herself into a frenzy.She wasn’t even dating right now.There was plenty of time for that nonsense later when she had all her life set up the way that she wanted it.Any man that she married would have to understand that business was first until she had children, and that was one rule that she’d not break for anyone.

Chapter 4

Mr.Howard was the only one who knew about the sale and was having a good time teasing him about it.Kinsey had to admit that he was excited.Even doing the roof was fun, knowing that it was going to be keeping someone else’s family dry and warm.

“Company coming.”He looked over his shoulder and saw the big car pulling into the drive.He didn’t know who it was, so he stayed on the roof with the other three.Whoever it was had to wait on them today.They were nearly finished with the roof, and if they had to come down off of it one more time, they were going to be a whole day behind again.As it was, they’d been working on it for four solid days now, and he wanted out of the hot sun.

“Mr.Pennington?”All four of them said yes, and the man looked like he thought it was funny for some reason.“I’m looking for Kinsey Pennington.I’m a courier for Ms.Gold.I have the signed contracts with me.”

“I’ll take them.”Wylie was the closest to the ladder and went down to get the paperwork.“I’ll just set them in the house on the table, Kinsey.That way we don’t all have to come down and look it over again.”

They’d been bombarded with paperwork since this thing began.Not that it wasn’t important, the paperwork, it was just that there was a lot of it.They’d spelled his name wrong on the first one, and then the second batch of paperwork had left out Wylie.Since they were all going to benefit from the sale, he wanted all their names on the contract.This was the third set of contracts that they’d been given, and he hoped that they were correct.The man left them with the contracts, and they finished up the roof in record time, as it was going to rain this evening and they wanted to see if the place stayed dry inside.

Almost as soon as they were finished cleaning up the mess that had been made with the roofing, the skies opened up and the rain came down in what appeared to be buckets.They all stood on the porch and listened to the rain hit the tin roof and loved the sound of it.Kinsey even sat in the old rocker to enjoy the rain hitting the dry dirt while it flooded the yard with the much-needed rain.

“This will make the garden grow more.”Wylie sat down next to him.“I saw that the lettuce was coming up nice enough that we could have a good salad off of it in a couple of days.Maybe we can have steaks tomorrow with a nice fresh salad.”Kinsey just looked at his brother.

“Have you noticed that we talk about food a great deal?I mean, we can be getting up from the table, and one of us will mention that the next meal should be great.Why do you do that, you suppose?”Wylie said that it was about all he had to look forward to.“Well, that’s about the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.Really?That’s all?”

“Pretty much.I didn’t even have that until recently.You’ve become quite the househusband.I do want to complain about my socks, though.They weren’t mated properly.”The other two teased him about their laundry, and he had a good laugh over it.He loved his brothers and was so happy that they were going to get to do this together.Selling off the land was going to hopefully make them closer still.“But seriously, we’re all going to have to learn some of the food recipes that you’ve been cooking so that we can impress our wives when and if we ever get one.”

Going to bed that night, he had to be careful of all the little cuts he’d gotten from the roof installation.He’d not thought of gloves when he’d started out and had cut his fingers up really badly.All of them had.By the second part of the day, they were all searching for heavy gloves and wearing bandages to keep the cuts from bleeding through.But the roof was on, and they didn’t have to worry about it any longer.

On Monday, just three days from now, the farm was going live, as Meggie called it.Therewould be lots of signs posted both around the land and on every site that had to deal with the sale of farmland.Meggie told them that they’d be overrun with people trying to get a better deal than had been advertised as well.He was both nervous and terrified about it.But deep in his heart, he knew that with all the plans they’d been making about the sale, it wouldn’t sell.He just knew that there wasn’t going to be any interest in the place at all, and they’d gotten all this work done for nothing.

Kinsey didn’t tell his brothers that.But he had a pretty good feeling that they were thinking the same thing.That their plans of having their own home and family somewhere else were going to be for nothing.Not that they couldn’t have a family, but they’d be raising them on the Pennington land the same as he’d be doing.Some nights, he went to bed feeling sick about his thoughts.There wasn’t anyone that he could talk to about it either.

Milking the cows the next morning, he tried his best not to think about anything.Finally, after getting the milkers going and having had enough of his gloom and doom thoughts, he called Meggie.He’d been talking to her off and on for the past month, and he thought that she’d be honest with him if he asked her about the sale.For all he knew, she could be having the same feelings, that they were all getting their hopes up too far, and nothing would come of it.

As soon as she answered the phone, he could tell that something had happened with her.He thought he knew her well enough to know that she’d been crying too.After getting her to tell him, all she did was sob about how she wasn’t having a good day and that one of her foremen had quit because he’d gotten a better-paying job somewhere else.

“I could have given him more had I known he was looking.I’m not a monster.”He said he knew that.“I didn’t even know he was looking.He’s been with me for ten years, and this other company is giving him more money and a better position.I could have done that.He only had to tell me that he was thinking of leaving.”

“You’re a good boss.It’s all on him leaving you.That’s sort of a shitty thing to do, to up and leave you like that.Did he at least give you notice?”She told him that he’d not.That his job was there only if he took it right then.“Well, something is up with that.No one would want a person to leave without giving notice.They’d not want that to happen to them, I’m sure of it.Yeah, I’ll say it again, that was a shitty thing to do to you.”Her little laugh caught him off guard.

“You would be nice to me.I was just getting ready to call you when you dialed me.What did you want now that I’ve sobbed all over you about my day?”He told her that it didn’t matter now.He felt better about the sale.“Are you worried about the sale?Don’t be.I have three people right now waiting for it to go live so that they can put in the first offer.It’ll sell if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“My brothers and I have all these plans that we’re going to be doing with the sale.I know we shouldn’t have done that, but it’s hard not to know what to do with the money when it sells.”She told him that even bringing in a realtor wasn’t going to take that much money from them.“Oh, we’re not worried about the money.You’ve made it clear about what we’ll make if the sale goes through.I’m worried that it’s going to be years and years before it sellsifit sells.”

“You need to be more positive.”He told her that he was positive that it wasn’t going to sell.“You’re silly.I promise you that as soon as I have someone on the line to buy it, I’ll let you know.I don’t think you’re going to be unhappy with any amount that it ends up being.This is going to put you six on the map and me with a bit of money too.I’ve been thinking about my end, too.”

“I guess we’ll know in about three days whether or not we’re going to be working the land for the rest of our days or not.Even Raphael is coming home early tomorrow to be here when it sells.They’re all that confident.I think.”She asked him if he thought his brothers were doing the same thing that he was doing.“I don’t know, to be honest.We haven’t been talking about the sale at all.I mean, a question will come up, but that’s about all.If nothing else, we got a new roof on the house, and that made it worthwhile.”

---