Page 6 of Kinsey (Pennington Family #1)

“You do know a lot about us. Yes, our dad lost about three thousand acres about fifteen years ago when he was losing at poker. We’ve gotten most of it back, but for a few hundred of them, my brother has been looking into it.

Farming isn’t what it used to be. From what I’m to understand about our dad is that he was never any good at it and shouldn’t have been playing the cards at all. ”

“Do you have access to a fax machine?” He told her that he did, and they had a landline in the house.

“So do I in my own home. All right. You fax me whatever paperwork you have on your place, mineral rights, any renters’ agreements that you have, and I’ll get back with you on Saturday, if you’ll allow me to be at the meeting. ”

“I’d have to ask my brothers. They don’t know that I’m calling you yet.

So you understand, right now it looks as if they all want out, but I think hearing what we can get for the place might be the kicker into it.

Only my name is on the deeds. It was left to me when my grandma died.

The others know that but have been helping me run the thing since we’ve been alone.

” He cleared his throat, and she could hear papers being shuffled around.

“I have everything here. When we were able to get the land back from others around, it was put into my name as well. I don’t know why we did it that way, but there you have it.

If you give me a number, I can send this right over to you.

It’s about fifty or so sheets in case you have to load your paper up. ”

The fax machine started to work almost as soon as she gave him her number.

It looked like he had the deeds first, then she was waiting for the other work to come through.

While it was spitting out the papers that he was sending her, she began calculating what five thousand acres would be to the men.

It was going to make Kinsey very wealthy, and if he split it six ways like it sounded like his plan was, they’d all be making a great deal of money off the sale of the land alone.

By the time the last sheet came out of the machine, she’d already figured out about how much was going to be coming from the sale of the place.

In addition to the cattle sales and the equipment sales, there was a considerable amount of money coming from the sale of the house, too.

Even if it was in poor shape, it would be worth a great deal as it was sitting in the middle of all the land that was prime selling land in the middle of Ohio and into other surrounding states.

Calling her grannie after getting an address from Kinsey, she told her what was going on.

She was excited for the boys, as she continued to call them and hoped that they could broker a good deal for them.

She told her grannie that she could sell the land to one buyer and be done with it, but she was going to put a for sale sign on it and let the highest bidder take it all.

“You won’t divide it up?” Meggie told her that she didn’t think she’d have to, that it would sell like it was. “Have you ever had a sale go for as much as this one is going to be?”

“No. Have you?” Grannie told her no, she’d not, but worried that people would be pissed about her not being a realtor. “I’m brokering a deal, not selling houses. Do you think that would make a difference?”

“I don’t know love. But before Saturday, I’d look into this to see if there are any rules about you doing this for them.

” She said that she would and was glad that she’d brought it up.

“You look into it, and I’ll ask around about things, too.

I’m sure that the cattle will be nothing to get rid of.

It’s the house and the barns that might cause some trouble with people.

If they want the land, then they might not care at all if there are houses and barns on the land. Understand?”

“I do. I’m glad I called you.” She was making notes as her grannie told her things that popped into her head. There were other things, too, that she had questions about. Like, if it was all in Kinsey’s name, why didn’t he just sell it if he wanted out?

Meggie thought she had the answer to that.

He was a good man, and his family was important to him.

The numbers she was getting told her that all of them were going to be wealthy men if they decided to go through with this, and she’d make a bit off of it too.

But she’d have to ask her grannie about that.

Maybe they had a deal where all the money went to the Pennington family.

Making a note to ask her about that, she dug into the paperwork and decided that she wanted to do this over everything she had going on today.

It was something different from what she usually did, she told herself, and that was why she was having so much fun.

Here of late, it was difficult for her to get her head into working because she was bored.

Meggie couldn’t remember the last time she had a date.

So long as she didn’t count the men who would escort her to functions, it had been years.

Usually, she would ask her foreman to go with her, but he’d gotten married last month and it took him off the market for her.

Not that she was romantically involved with him, but he was a big enough man that others wouldn’t bother approaching her if they were together.

She was bored out of her mind with the day-to-day work that she was doing.

The same stuff day after day, and there was no end to the amount of paperwork that she had to shuffle around.

Usually, it was just going over contracts for this or that company.

Doing a buyout for another company or two.

The place practically ran itself. She would swear that her secretary was giving her things to do so that she’d look like she was needed.

Later that afternoon, she told her grannie that she was going to go to the Pennington home for the family meeting.

She asked her if she wanted to go, just to meet the boys that she’d only heard about.

While she said she shouldn’t go, Meggie could tell that she really wanted to and talked her into it—it didn’t take much to persuade her to go, so she was happy that she’d not be going alone.

By the time Friday rolled around, not only did she have a better understanding of what had to be done to sell off the land that lay across five states, she had all the rules and regulations ticked off on which rules she could bend a little and which ones that she couldn’t bend at all.

Excited to be leaving the office for this trip, she even booked herself and her grannie rooms at the local bed and breakfast that was in town.

There were even places that she wanted to go to while there and couldn’t wait to take a little side trip to Amish country with her grannie.

She’d heard so much about the place and she was going to make sure that she was able to get some much-wanted cheese and jerky.

Oh, she just couldn’t wait to get the meeting going, and then their trip to Berlin County for the rest of the day.

They were driving to the Pennington home, and she had a good idea of where she was going when she got out on the road.

It wasn’t a long trip, about forty-five minutes, but it was an adventure for the two of them.

She had called before they left her house to see if the meeting was still on, and Kinsey told her that they were set to talk at noon. Would she be there?

“Yes, we’re staying in town, so you can call me at this number and we’ll come over. My grannie has come with me to meet you boys as she’s called you forever.” He said his grandma did the same thing even though they were all grown men. “Good. Then I’ll see you when you call me. Thank you for this.”

“No, thank you. I’ll talk to you later.” She felt herself getting giddy with the upcoming meeting. She didn’t even care if they decided not to sell. She’d had so much fun finding answers to questions she thought that they might have. It was going to be fun no matter how it turned out.