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Matchmaking with a Mission
B.J. Daniels
Who was the handsome stranger?The most stubborn of the Bailey sisters is back in town, and determined to start a horse ranch. She’s set her sights on the long-deserted Harper House and no one is going to change McKenna’s mind — not even enigmatic Nate.Now the sinister rumours plaguing the house have begun to resurface. And though McKenna refuses to be scared away, someone is trying to run her off the property. Yet gorgeous mystery man Nate has sworn to protect her.Could this stranger be about to become a permanent fixture in Whitehorse?
“I’m not after your house,” Nate said.
“Then what are you after?” McKenna asked.
He took a step towards her, closing what little distance there’d been between them, his brown eyes blazing. Suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the room. She felt a hitch in her chest, but she held her ground.
“I am jealous, all right?” Nate was within inches of her now, his gaze locked with hers. “Ever since I first saw you, you’ve been a thorn in my side. I wanted you. I want to ride off with you. I still want you and you’re the last thing I need right now.”
Before she could move or breathe or speak, his warm palm cupped her jaw and his mouth was on hers…
BJ Daniels wrote her first book after a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist and author of thirty-seven published short stories. Since then she has won numerous awards, including a career achievement award for romantic suspense and many nominations and awards for best book.
Daniels lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, and two springer spaniels, Spot and Jem. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards, camps, boats and plays tennis. Daniels is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Thriller Writers, Kiss of Death and Romance Writers of America.
To contact her, write to BJ Daniels, PO Box 1173, Malta, MT 59538, USA or e-mail her at bjdaniels@mtintouch. net. Check out her web page at www.bjdaniels.com.
Matchmaking
With A Mission
By
BJ Daniels
MILLS & BOONВ®
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)
This one is for George “Clem” Clementson. A man who understands the power of love and friendship.
Chapter One
He’d known where she was for almost two weeks. He’d been watching her house, watching her. He just hadn’t felt a need to do anything about it.
Until now. Fate had forced his hand. He didn’t have much time left. He had to use it wisely. Take care of all those loose ends in his life.
As he pried at the flimsy lock on the side window he thought about how he had loved her. Idolized her. Thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Unfortunately she hadn’t felt the same way about him.
The lock snapped with a soft pop. He froze, listening even though he knew she wouldn’t have heard it. Usually by this time of the night she’d finished off enough cheap wine that she would be dead to the world.
Dead to the world. He liked that. He’d been dead to the world thanks to her.
He’d planned this for so long and yet he felt uneasy, a little thrown by the fact that he’d had to break in tonight. All the other nights, she’d forgotten to lock up. Why tonight, of all nights, did she have to remember to lock the damn doors?
A few days ago he’d waited in the overgrown shrubs outside, watching her shadow move behind the sheer curtains in the living room to turn off the television before she stumbled down the hall to bed.
When he’d been sure she’d passed out, he’d slipped inside the house, wanting to take a look around, to know the layout of the house. Not good to bump into something and wake her up on the night he planned to finally finish it.
So he’d poked around, looking into her things, seeing how she’d been doing since he’d last seen her. He’d made a point of testing to see just how deep a sleeper she was. He couldn’t have her screaming her head off when the time came, now could he?
For some reason tonight, though, she’d locked the doors. He tried not to let that worry him. But he was superstitious about crap like that. It was her fault. She’d put all that hocuspocus stuff in his head, her and her horoscopes, palm readings and psychic phone calls. She wouldn’t cross the street without checking to make sure her stars were aligned.
Except when she was drunk. Then she threw caution to the wind. He hated to think he was a lot like her that way. Except he didn’t have to be drunk.
So, as much as he hated it, he was leery as he hoisted himself up and over the windowsill to drop into the bathroom tub. He landed with a thud and froze to listen.
Maybe she’d remembered to lock the front door because her horoscope told her that she should be more careful today. Or she could have spotted him watching the house, he supposed. But wouldn’t it also be possible, given the connection between them, that she’d sensed he was here?
He liked the latter explanation the best. That would mean that she had occasionally thought of him, wondered what had happened to him.
A shell-shaped night-light next to the sink made the bathroom glow pink. She’d done the whole place in a tropical motif. The shower curtain was plastic with huge palm trees. What the hell had she been thinking? As far as he could tell, she’d been landlocked all her life and never even seen an ocean, let alone a real palm tree.
He wasn’t sure why, but it made him even more angry with her, this pretending she lived in a beach house. Did she also pretend he’d never existed?
The shower curtain made a soft swishing sound as he brushed against it. Again he froze and listened. A breeze wafted in with the smell of the river.
He thought he heard a noise from the bedroom. The creak of bedsprings as she rolled over. Or got up to come find out what the noise had been in the bathroom. Had she bought herself a gun?
He waited behind the shower curtain, hidden by the fake palms. I’m right here. Right here. Just waiting for you.
It surprised him how nervous he was about seeing her again. He’d anticipated this moment for so long he’d expected to be excited. But as he drew the switchblade from his pocket, his fingers were slick with sweat. He wiped them on his jeans and blamed the hot, humid night.
It reminded him of other hot nights, lying in bed, afraid he wouldn’t live until morning. The only thing that had kept him going was imagining this day, the day he found her and made her pay for what she’d done to him.
He wanted her to know that kind of fear before this night was over. He glanced at his watch in the glow of the shell night-light. He had plenty of time before her husband came home.
She’d married some guy who worked the graveyard shift as a night watchman. The irony of that didn’t escape him as he got tired of waiting in the bathtub and peered around the edge of the shower curtain.
No movement out in the hall. No sound coming from the vicinity of the bedroom. Gently he slid the curtain aside to step out onto the mermaid-shaped shag rug.
He felt hatred bubble up as he noticed she’d bought herself a pretty new mirror since he was here just a few days ago. The mirror was framed in seashells, and it was all he could do not to smash it on the tile floor.
It wasn’t the mirror. Or even the stupid seashore stuff. It was that she’d done just fine without him. Better than fine once she’d dumped him.
The realization was like acid inside him. It ate away at the hope that she’d missed him. That she’d been sorry she’d left him.
He thought of the seven-year-old boy he’d been. He could smell the dust her car tires had thrown up as she’d torn across the dirt lot of the filling station. He’d run out of the restroom, thinking she hadn’t realized he wasn’t in the car, and had called after her. Running, tears streaming down his dirt-streaked face, until he’d stumbled and fallen and lain bawling his heart out as her car had grown smaller and smaller on the two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere.
The memory jarred him into motion. Stepping through the bathroom doorway, he stopped to wait for his eyes to adjust. Her bedroom door was closed. That was odd. It had been open when he’d been here a few nights before.
Worry knifed through him. The hallway was lit by another shell night-light. The cramped space smelled of stale beer and old cigarette smoke.
He inched down the hall, anticipation thrumming in his veins. At the door, he stopped, suddenly worried what he would do if for some reason she’d locked it.
His hand shook as he reached out and took the knob in his damp fingers. He closed his eyes, knowing it couldn’t end here, with him locked out of her room, and that it would end very badly if he had to break down the door. She would be able to call the police before he could get to her. He should have cut the phone lines, he realized now.
The knob turned in his hand.
He slumped against the doorjamb for a moment, his relief so intense it made him light-headed. He was sweating hard now, his T-shirt sticking to his skin, and yet he felt a chill as he looked into her bedroom.
The bed was one of those California kings he’d heard about—and damned near as big as the bedroom. He could make out a small form under the covers. Another one of those stupid shell night-lights glowed from a corner of the room.
He stepped in. The only sound was her drunken snores. She was curled on her side, her back to him on the edge of the bed farthest from him. All he could see was the back of her head on the pillow. Her hair was darker than he remembered it. He realized she probably dyed it because she could be getting gray by now.
It finally struck him: he was going to come face-to-face with the mother who had abandoned him at a gas station twenty-four years ago.
A memory blindsided him. A memory so sweet it made his teeth ache. The two of them sitting on the couch watching her favorite soap opera. A commercial came on for hair color. Him telling her she would look beautiful no matter what color her hair was, even gray. And her smiling over at him, tears in her eyes as she kissed his cheek and pulled him into her arms for a hug.
She’d held him so tightly he couldn’t breathe. But he hadn’t complained. It was the last time he remembered her touching him.
He crept around the perimeter of the bed, feeling as if he were floating. It all felt so surreal now that he was finally here, finally ready.
She stirred and he froze. She let out a sigh and drifted off again. He edged closer until he was standing over her.
He couldn’t see her face. Not the way he wanted to. He knew he was going to have to turn on the lamp beside her bed. He wanted to look into her eyes—and have her look into his. He wanted her to know.
As he turned on the lamp, his fingers brushed the stack of old magazines next to the bed. The magazines toppled over, hitting the floor with a whoosh that startled him as much as the brightness of the lamp as it came on.
She jerked up in bed onto one elbow, blinking against the brightness of the light.
He could see that for a moment she thought he was her husband. She’d aged. It shouldn’t have shocked him. But she’d been only twenty-three when she’d left him at that filling station in Montana. She wasn’t even fifty, and yet she looked a lot older.
He’d always wondered if she’d grieved over what she’d done. Her life’s road map was etched unkindly in her face, but he knew that the very worst she’d had wasn’t even close to what he’d been through.
She blinked, that moment of mistakenly taking him for her husband turning to confusion, then fear. Her mouth started to open as she clutched the sheet to her throat.
“Don’t scream,” he said and touched the knife in his hand, the blade leaping out to catch the light. “Don’t you dare scream.”
Surprisingly, she didn’t. Only a small sound came out of her as her eyes met his and he saw the recognition.
That should have given him some satisfaction.
She knew him even after all these years.
He used to have this dream that she would fall to her knees and beg his forgiveness. He’d always wanted to believe that she’d come back for him but it had been too late. He’d thought about her searching for him for years, her life as miserable as his had been because of what she’d done.
The dream popped like a soap bubble when she opened her mouth again. “So you found me.” Her voice was rough from years of cigarettes and late-night boozing, bad men and barrooms.
“So what now?” she asked with a shake of her head. Her eyes flicked to the switchblade in his hand and something came over her face. A hardness that he now remembered from when he was a boy.
What he saw in her eyes was not the remorse he’d hoped for. No sorrow. No guilt. Not even fear anymore. Her gaze was challenging. As if telling him he didn’t have what it would take to kill her.
“You think I haven’t always known that you’d turn up one day?” she said as she sat up in the bed and reached for her cigarettes and lighter on the nightstand. She lit a cigarette and took a deep drag.
He stared at her. He’d often wondered if that day at the gas station she’d looked in her rearview mirror. Now he knew that answer. She hadn’t looked back. Not even a glance. He guessed he’d always known that.
“Don’t you want to know what happened to me?” A seven-year-old boy abandoned like that. He wanted to tell her about the man who’d picked him up and eventually dumped him just the way she had. Dumped him at a place with an innocuous name: Harper House.
He and the others, though, they’d called it Hell House.
Her eyes narrowed at the question, cigarette smoke curling around her. “What? You want to swap horror stories?” She let out a laugh that turned into a cough. “I could tell you stories that would make your hair curl.”
She must have seen his hurt. “Hoping for a heartwarming reunion, were you?” She flicked another glance at the knife. “Or were you thinking you could get money out of me?” She let out another laugh. “Sorry, but you’re going to be disappointed on both counts.”
He shook his head. What had he expected from a woman who’d abandoned her only child the way she had? “Just tell me why.”
She blew out a cloud of smoke. “Why? That’s it? That’s all you want to know?” She gave a drunken nod of her head. “Because I knew you were going to turn out just like your father. And—you know what?—I was right. I should have gotten rid of you like he wanted me to before you were even born.”
He’d wanted to make her suffer, but in the end it had all gone too quickly. Still, he’d thought that once she was dead he would feel some release, some measure of peace. Instead he felt empty and angry, just as he had for years.
He’d just finished her when he heard someone coming in the front door of the house. The husband coming home early.
It often amazed him the way things happened—as if they were meant to be. He waited until the husband came down the hall. Killing him was too easy.
Taking the credit cards and checkbooks, along with what cash he found in the house, proved a little more satisfying.
As he climbed out her bathroom window after smashing the shell-framed mirror to sand, he walked to his pickup parked down the block and told himself he wouldn’t find the peace he’d spent his life searching for until everyone who’d hurt him was dead.
He didn’t need to check the map. He knew the way to Whitehorse, Montana. Unlike his mother, he’d spent more time there than what it took to put five dollars worth of gas into the tank and drive away.
He’d spent the worst years of his life just outside of that town. And now he was going back for the first and last reunion of Harper House. It would end where it started.
But first there were a couple of stops he needed to make along the way. There couldn’t be any loose ends.
He checked to make sure he had the switchblade he’d cleaned on her tropical-print sheets and told himself it had been destined to end this way.
Still, as he drove away it nagged at him. What kind of mother just drove off and left her son beside the road? He eased his pain with the thought that the babies must have been switched at the hospital. His real mother was out there somewhere. She’d spent her life looking for him, feeling that something was missing.
He felt a little better as he drove west toward Montana. By the time he reached the border he’d convinced himself that he’d been stolen from his real parents—a mother who loved him and a father who would never have run out on him.
He had to believe that. He couldn’t accept that he’d killed his own mother. Otherwise, it might be true what she’d said about him being like his father.
Chapter Two
McKenna Bailey rode her horse out across the rolling prairie, leaving behind Old Town Whitehorse. The grass was tall and green, the sky a crystalline blue with small white clouds floating along on the afternoon breeze.
She breathed in the warm air, wondering how she could have stayed away from here as long as she had.
The ride south toward the Missouri Breaks was one she knew well. Even before she was able to sit alone in a saddle she’d ridden hugging the saddle horn, in front of her older sister Eve.
Lately she’d felt antsy and unsure about what she wanted to do with her life. So she’d come home to the one place that always filled her with a sense of peace. But since she’d been home she’d realized this was where she belonged—not opening her own veterinarian clinic as she’d planned since she was twelve because she loved animals. Especially horses.
On impulse, she angled her horse to the east and watched the structures rise up out of the horizon ahead, an idea taking shape.
The barn came into sight first, a large weathered building with a cupola on top and a rusted weather vane in the shape of a horse. As she drew closer she heard the eerie moaning sound of the weather vane as it rotated restlessly in the breeze. It was a sound she remembered from when she used to sneak over here as a young girl.
As she rode closer, the house came into view. The old Harper place. She felt a rush of adrenaline she’d never been able to explain. Something about the house had always drawn her—even against her father’s strict orders that she and her sisters stay far away from the place.
Chester Bailey had said the property was dangerous. Something about it being in disrepair, old septic tanks and uncovered abandoned wells. Things horses and kids could get hurt in.
McKenna had never gone too close, stopping at the weathered jack fence to look at the house. The structure was three stories, a large old ranch house with a dormer window at each end. An old wooden staircase angled down from the third floor at the back. A wide screened-in porch ran the width of the house in the front.
Her gaze just naturally went to the third-floor window where she’d seen the boy. She’d been six. He’d looked a couple years older. She had never forgotten him. He’d disappeared almost at once, and an old woman had come out and run her off.
As she stared up at the window now, sunlight glinting off the dirty glass, she wondered what had happened to that sad-looking boy.
Whoever had lived there moved shortly after that, and the house had been occupied by Ellis Harper, an ornery old man who threatened anyone who came near. He kept a shotgun loaded with buckshot by the backdoor.
McKenna had heard stories about the house. Some of the kids at the one-room school she’d attended in Old Town Whitehorse had whispered that Ellis Harper stole young children and kept them locked up in the house. Why else wouldn’t he let anyone come around? For years there’d been stories of ghosts and strange noises coming from the house.
McKenna didn’t believe in ghosts. Even if she had, she doubted it would have changed the way she felt about this place. She’d ridden over here even when Ellis Harper had been alive, but she’d never gone farther than the fence. Too many times she’d seen his dark silhouette through the screen door, the shotgun in his hands.
As she sat on her horse at the fence as she’d done as a child, she realized she’d always been so captivated by the house and its occupants that she’d never noticed the land around it.
The breeze rustled the new leaves on the copse of cottonwoods that snaked along the sides of the creek and through the rolling grasslands. Good pastureland and, unless she was mistaken, about forty acres worth. There were several old outbuildings a good ways from the house, and then the big old barn and a half dozen old pieces of farm machinery rusting in the tall weeds.
While the idea had come to her in a flash, she knew it had been in the back of her mind for years. She had always been meant to buy Harper House and the land around it.
She just hadn’t known until that moment what she planned to do with it.
NATE DEMPSEY SENSED someone watching the house and looked out in surprise to see a woman astride a paint horse just on the other side of the fence. He quickly stepped back from the filthy second-floor window, although he doubted she could have seen him. Only a little of the June sun pierced the dirty glass to glow on the dust-coated floor at his feet as he waited a few heartbeats before he looked out again.
The place was so isolated he hadn’t expected to see another soul. Like the front yard, the dirt road in was waist-high with weeds. When he’d broken the lock on the back door, he’d had to kick aside a pile of rotten leaves that had blown in last fall.
As he sneaked a look, he saw that she was still there, staring at the house in a way that unnerved him. He shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun off the dirty window and studied her, taking in her head of long blond hair that feathered out in the breeze from under her Western straw hat.
She wore a tan canvas jacket, jeans and boots. But it was the way she sat astride the brown-and-white horse that nudged the memory.
He felt a chill as he realized he’d seen her before. In that very spot. She’d just been a kid then. A kid on a pretty paint horse. Not this one—the markings were different. Anyway, it couldn’t have been the same horse, not considering the last time he had seen her had been more than twenty years ago. That horse would be dead by now.
His mind argued it probably wasn’t even the same girl. But he knew better. It was the way she sat on the horse, so at home in a saddle and secure in her world on the other side of that fence.
To the boy he’d been, she and her horse had represented freedom, a freedom he knew he would never have—even after he escaped this house.
Nate saw her shift in the saddle, and for a moment he feared she planned to dismount and come toward the house. With Ellis Harper in his grave, there would be little to keep her away.
To his relief, she reined her horse around and rode back the way she’d come.
As he watched her ride off he thought about the way she’d stared at the house—today and years ago. While the smartest thing she could do was stay clear of this house, he had a feeling she’d be back.
Finding out her name should prove easy since he figured she must live close by. As for her interest in Harper House…He would just have to make sure it didn’t become a problem.
“I THOUGHT WE’D ALREADY discussed this?”
McKenna Bailey looked up from the real-estate section of the newspaper the next morning as her sister Eve set down a platter of pancakes.
“You don’t need to buy a place,” Eve Bailey said as she pulled up a chair and helped herself to a half dozen of the small pancakes she’d made. “You can live in this one and use as much of the land as you need for this horse ranch you want to start.”
McKenna watched her older sister slather the cakes with butter before drowning them with chokecherry syrup. “Are you nervous about getting married next month?” she asked, motioning at Eve’s plate.
Eve looked up, a forkful of pancakes on the way to her mouth. “No, I’m just hungry.”
“Right,” McKenna said. “Like the way you’ve suddenly started holding your fork with your left hand?”
Eve looked down at the fork, then at the engagement ring on her left hand and smiled. “It is beautiful, isn’t it?”
McKenna nodded, smiling at her older sister across the table, the same table they’d shared since they were kids.
“I am doing the right thing, aren’t I, marrying Carter?” Eve asked with a groan as she pushed her plate away.
“You love Carter and he loves you,” McKenna said. “Be happy. And eat.”
“You’d tell me if you thought I was making a mistake?”
McKenna nodded, smiling. Carter Jackson had broken her sister’s heart back in high school when he’d married someone else. That marriage had been a disaster, ending in divorce. McKenna had no doubt that Carter loved her sister as much as Eve loved him. For months the poor man had been trying to win Eve back; finally at Christmas he’d asked her to marry him. The Fourth of July wedding was just weeks away now.
Eve pulled her plate back in front of her and picked up her fork. “I really am hungry.”
McKenna laughed and went back to studying the real-estate section of the Milk River Examiner. But none of the houses interested her. There was only one place she wanted, and even though she’d heard the owner had died recently, she didn’t see it listed. Maybe it was too soon.
“I’m serious,” Eve said between bites. “Just live in this house. With Mom and Loren living in Florida, it’s just going to be sitting empty.”
McKenna looked around the familiar kitchen. So many memories. “Dad doesn’t want the house?”
Eve shook her head. “He’s moved in with Susie, and they’re running her Hi-Line Café. He seems…happy.”
“Do you know if anyone has bought the old Harper place?” McKenna asked.
“You can’t be serious.” Eve was staring at her, her mouth open. “Harper House?”
“Did you leave me any pancakes?” their younger sister, Faith, asked as she padded into the room in a pair of pajama bottoms and a T-shirt and plopped down at her chair. “What about Harper House?”
Eve shoved the platter of pancakes toward Faith without a word and gave McKenna a warning look.
“Is anyone going to answer me?” Faith asked as she picked up a pancake in her fingers, rolled it up and took a bite. She looked from Eve to McKenna and back. “Are you guys fighting?”
“No,” Eve said quickly. “I was just telling McKenna that she could have this house,” she said with a warning shake of her head at McKenna. There was a rule: no fighting, especially when Faith was around.
The youngest of the three girls, Faith had taken their parents’ divorce hard and their mother’s marriage to Loren Jackson even harder. Because of that, both Eve and McKenna had tried to shelter their younger sister. Which meant not upsetting her this morning with any problems between the two of them.
“It would be nice if someone lived here and took care of the place,” Eve said.
“Not me,” Faith said and helped herself to another pancake.
“It’s our family ranch,” Eve said.
“That’s why I want a place of my own close to here,” McKenna said.
Faith shot her a surprised look. “Are you really staying around here?” Since high school graduation she and Faith had come home only for holidays and summer vacation from college.
“I think I’m ready to settle down, and this area is home,” McKenna said.
Faith groaned. “Well, I’m not coming back here to live,” she said, getting up to pad over to the kitchen counter to pour herself a cup of coffee.
“I don’t want to see this house fall into neglect, either,” McKenna told Eve. “But I want my own place. This house is…”
“Mom’s and Dad’s,” Faith said as she came back to the table with her coffee, tears in her eyes. “And now, with Mom and Dad divorced and her married to Loren and living in Florida, it just feels too weird being here.”
McKenna knew that Eve had come over this morning from her house down the road to cook breakfast in an attempt to make things more normal for her and Faith. Especially Faith.
“Where are you and Carter going to live after you’re married?” McKenna asked Eve.
“My house.” Eve had moved into what used to be their grandmother’s house when Grandma Nina Mae Cross had gone into the rest home. “We’re going to run cattle on the ranch, as always. It’s what put us all through college. It’s our heritage.”
Faith shot McKenna a look that she knew only too well. Here goes Eve, off on one of her legacy speeches.
The ranch had always been intended for the three of them. Since Eve had returned she’d been running the place and sending both McKenna and Faith a share of the profits.
“So what happens to this house?” Faith asked, clearly trying to cut Eve off before she got started.
“I guess if the two of you don’t want it, the house will just sit empty,” Eve said, giving McKenna one of her meaningful big-sister looks.
“That’s awful,” Faith said. “Someone should live here.”
McKenna watched her little sister run a hand along the worn tabletop and smiled. She didn’t know what it was about this part of Montana, but it always seemed to bring them back. She’d watched friends leave for college, swearing they were glad to be leaving, only to return here to raise their children.
It was a simpler way of life. A community with strong values and people who knew and looked after their neighbors.
She, too, had left, convinced there was nothing here for her, but here she was. And, like Eve, McKenna figured the day would come when Faith would return and want the house, since she seemed to be the most attached to it.
“If you want your own house, you could build on the ranch,” Eve suggested. “There’s a nice spot to the east….” Her voice trailed off as if she realized she was wasting her breath. McKenna had already made up her mind.
“Did I hear you mention Harper House?” Faith asked as if finally coming full awake. “My friend who works for the county said it’s going to be auctioned off.”
“When?” McKenna asked.
“This Saturday, I think.”
McKenna couldn’t help her rush of excitement. This was obviously meant to be.
Faith laughed. “You always liked that place. I remember when you used to sneak over there even though Dad told us not to.” She grinned. “I used to follow you.”
“You used to ride over there?” Eve asked with a shake of her head. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?”
“We never believed that story about old wells on the place,” Faith said. “I think Dad didn’t want us around the people who lived there. They weren’t friendly at all. But they sure had a lot of kids.”
Eve shot a look at her youngest sister that McKenna recognized. It was Eve’s can-you-really-be-that-naive? look.
“Harper House was a place for troubled boys,” Eve said. “That’s why Dad didn’t want you riding over there. I can’t believe you did it anyway,” she said to McKenna. “Do you have any idea what could have happened to you?”
“Why didn’t Dad just tell us that?” Faith asked, frowning.
“Because he knew the two of you,” Eve said as she rose to take her plate to the sink. “You’d have gone over there just to see if the boys were really dangerous.”
“Well,” McKenna said with a sigh, “it’s just an old, empty house now that Ellis Harper has died. But there’s forty acres with a creek, trees, a barn and some outbuildings. It’s exactly what I’m looking for and it’s adjacent to our ranch land to the east.”
Eve shook her head, worry in her gaze. “I think you’re making a mistake, but I know how you are once you’ve made up your mind.”
“I’m just like you,” McKenna said with a grin.
Eve nodded. “That’s what worries me.”
Chapter Three
McKenna called her Realtor friend right after breakfast to find out what she knew about Harper House.
“You heard about the auction? Minimum bid is what is owed in back taxes, but I don’t expect it to go much higher than that given the condition of the house. It’s really a white elephant. Why don’t you let me show you some houses that don’t need so much work?”
“Don’t try to talk me out of it,” McKenna said with a laugh. It amazed her that April sold anything the way she always tried to discourage buyers. “If the price doesn’t go too high, I intend to buy it.”
She had worked all through college, saving the money her parents and Eve had sent her. She also had money from a savings account her grandma, Nina Mae Cross, had started for her when she was adopted into the family.
“With auctions, you just never know,” April said. “But I can’t imagine there would be that many people interested in the place. The property isn’t bad, though. The fences are in pretty good shape, and it does border your family ranch, so that is definitely a plus. The barn needs a new roof. But you might want to just tear down the house and build something smaller on the land.”
McKenna couldn’t imagine doing that. Something about that house had always interested her. She had just hung up when her cell phone rang.
“Have I got good news for you,” a female voice said.
She was about to hang up, thinking it was someone trying to sell her something, when she recognized the voice. “Arlene?”
“Who else?” Arlene Evans let out one of her braying laughs. She was a gangly, raw-boned ranch woman who’d had her share of problems over the last year or so, including her husband leaving her alone with two grown children still living at home and her oldest daughter in the state mental hospital.
McKenna had signed up for Arlene’s rural online dating service at a weak moment—following a wedding and some champagne. She now regretted it greatly.
It wasn’t a man she needed but the courage to do what she’d always wanted: start a horse ranch. She’d loved paint horses from the first time she’d seen one. Descended from horses introduced by the Spanish conquistadors, paints were part of the herds of wild horses that once roamed these very plains.
With paints becoming popular with cowboys for cattle work, McKenna believed she could make a good living raising them. If she could get the Harper property for the right price at the auction Saturday. It was all she could think about.
“I’ve found you just the man,” Arlene gushed. “He’s perfect for you. I hear wedding bells already.”
“Slow down,” McKenna said, wishing she’d read the small print to see how she could get out of this.
“He’s handsome, a hard worker, loves horses and long walks and…did I mention he’s handsome?” Arlene laughed again, making McKenna wince. “He’s going to be out of the cell phone service area until Saturday night, so he’ll meet you at Northern Lights restaurant at seven. You’re going to thank me for this.”
McKenna groaned inwardly. There was no backing out at this late date, especially since calling him sounded like it was out of the question. But suddenly she was more than a little afraid to find out who Arlene Evans thought was her perfect man.
She only half listened to Arlene rattle on about the man as she thought of the auction and her plans for the future: a man was the last thing on her mind.
It wasn’t until after she’d hung up that she realized she hadn’t caught her date’s name. Great. She thought about calling Arlene back but didn’t want to put herself through another twenty minutes of hearing about how perfect this guy was for her.
In a town the size of Whitehorse, spotting the man should be easy enough at the restaurant Saturday evening.
McKenna quickly forgot about her date. The house would be open for viewing before the auction, but she couldn’t wait. She had to take another look at the place, and this might be her only chance to spend a little time there alone.
ARLENE EVANS GLANCED away from her computer screen to see her daughter Charlotte sprawled on the couch.
Just moments before that Arlene had been feeling pretty good. Her Internet rural dating service had taken off. Several of the matches she’d made had led to the altar. She’d always known she had a knack for this, even if she’d failed miserably with her own children.
For years she’d tried to find someone for her oldest daughter, Violet—with no luck at all. A lot of that was Violet’s doing, she had to admit now. Violet was crazy—and dangerous—so no wonder no man had wanted to take that on.
Now Violet was locked up in a mental institution—hopefully never to be released, if Arlene had anything to do with it.
Bo, Arlene’s only son, had been engaged to Maddie Cavanaugh. The two had been all wrong for each other from the beginning. Unfortunately, since the breakup, though, Bo hadn’t shown any interest in finding himself a good woman to spend the rest of his life with. In fact, when Arlene had offered to line him up with one of her clients, he’d told her it would be over his dead body. It broke her heart, since Bo had always been her favorite.
And then there was Charlotte, the daughter that Arlene had thought would never have any trouble finding a husband.
Arlene scowled as she studied her youngest child—and Charlotte’s huge protruding belly. For months Arlene had been trying to find out who had fathered the baby now growing inside her daughter. The baby was due next month, and Arlene was no closer to discovering the name of the father than she’d been when she’d found out about the pregnancy.
Charlotte took perverse pleasure in keeping it a secret. If her daughter even knew, Arlene thought with a silent curse. Other mothers considered their children blessings. Arlene had come to see hers as a curse.
Not for the first time, Arlene saw a silver SUV drive past. She couldn’t see the driver, not with the glint of the June sun on the darkened side window, but she had the impression it was a woman behind the wheel.
Arlene frowned, trying to remember how many other times she’d seen the vehicle. Strange, since not much traffic ever came down this road. She put it out of her mind. She had a lot more important things to worry about.
When she turned back to her computer, she was surprised to see that she had a potential new client. She completely forgot about the silver SUV as she clicked on the man’s e-mail and felt a small thrill that had nothing to do with success or money.
Since my wife died, I find myself deeply needing the company of an interesting woman. I want someone who would like to travel the world with me. Someone who wants to share my final years.
Travel the world. What woman wouldn’t want to do that with an attractive older man? A man only a little older than Arlene herself.
She e-mailed Hank Monroe back, promising to find him the perfect woman and set up a time to meet.
BEHIND HARPER HOUSE, Nate Dempsey leaned on his shovel to rest for a moment and listened to the sound of the wind in the trees. A hot, dry wind that made his skin ache. The years must have distorted his memory. He’d been so sure he was digging in the right place.
But the land looked different than he remembered, and it had been a long time ago.
He began to dig again, turning over one shovelful of dirt after another, trying to gauge how deep the body would have been buried.
As he dug, he tried not to think about that hot summer night. Not the sounds he’d heard. Nor the fear he’d felt knowing he could be next. What he hadn’t known was who they were burying out back. He didn’t know that until the next morning. Until it was too late.
The heat bore down on him. He stopped digging for a moment to look up at the blue wind-scoured sky overhead and catch his breath. Standing there, it was impossible not to think of the past. Had a day gone by that he hadn’t remembered this place?
He’d spent years looking over his shoulder, knowing whose face he would see that instant before he felt the blade. But now he was no longer that skinny, scared boy. Nor was he a man willing to run from his past any longer. It would end here.
He began to dig again. Had it really been twenty-one years since he’d left this godforsaken place? Coming back here, it felt as if it had only been yesterday.
His shovel hit something that made the blade ring. He shuddered at the sound as he looked down, expecting to see bones. Just a rock. No body buried here.
He stopped again, this time the skin on the back of his neck prickling. As he had earlier, he felt someone was watching him. Carrying the shovel with him, he strode back to the house and stripped off his shirt to use it to wipe the sweat from his eyes.
For a moment he stood at the back door, surveying the land behind the house, the tall, old cottonwoods that followed the creek bed, the weather-beaten barn and outbuildings, the rolling grassy hillsides.
He couldn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean Roy Vaughn wasn’t there. He was the man Nate had to fear now, just as he had as a boy.
Stepping inside, he turned on the faucet at the old kitchen sink, letting the water run until it came up icy-cold, all the time watching out the window. He could almost convince himself he’d only imagined that someone was watching him.
Discarding his shirt, he scooped up handfuls of water, drinking them down greedily. Johnny’s remains were out there somewhere. With all his heart he wished it wasn’t true. That Johnny had run away, just as he’d been told. But he knew better. Johnny would have come back for him if he’d gotten away. Johnny wouldn’t have left him at Harper House. Not when Johnny had known how dangerous the place was for Nate.
As he turned off the faucet and wiped his wet hands on his jeans, he gazed out the back window again.
Ellis Harper hadn’t let anyone near the house in years. That meant no one else would have had a chance to dig up the body and hide it, right? He’d come as soon as he’d learned of Harper’s death. But had he come too late?
Bare-chested, he went back out and began to dig again in a different spot, the heat growing more intense. He dug down deep enough, turning over a final shovelful of dirt, and looked down into the hole seeing nothing but more earth.
This was the area where he’d thought they’d buried the body. He’d stake his life on it. Hell, he was staking his life on it.
There was just one problem.
The body was gone. If it had ever been here.
CRICKETS CHIRPED IN the tall grass as McKenna dismounted, loosely tied her horse and slipped between the logs of the jack fence.
The grass brushed her jeans, making a swishing sound as she moved through it toward the house. She listened for the sound of a rattlesnake, telling herself not only was she trespassing but her father could have been right about the dangers—including snakes.
A stiff breeze at the edge of the house banged a loose shutter and whipped her hair into her face. She stopped to look around for a moment, feeling as if she was being watched. But there was no vehicle parked in the drive. No sign that anyone had been here in a very long time.
She tried the screen door on the front porch first. The door groaned open. The wind caught it, jerked the handle from her fingers and slammed the door against the wall.
McKenna thought she heard an accompanying thud from inside the house, as if someone had bumped into something. She froze, imagining Ellis Harper coming out with a shotgun. But Ellis was dead. And she didn’t believe in ghosts, right? “Hello?”
No answer.
“Hello?” she called a little louder.
Another thud, this one deeper in the house. She stepped to the front door, knocked and, receiving no answer, cupped her hands to peer through the window next to the door.
The house was empty except for dust. That’s why the recent footprints caught her attention. The tracks were male-size boot soles. Someone from the county would have been out to check the house before the auction, she told herself.
The tracks led into the kitchen at the back. What she saw leaning by the back door made her reconsider going inside. A shovel, fresh dirt caked on it, stood against the wall. Next to it was a plaid shirt where someone had dropped it on the floor.
Her horse whinnied over at the fence. Another horse whinnied back, the sound coming from behind the house.
Someone was here.
Not someone from the county, who would have driven out and parked in front. Someone who’d come by horseback. Someone who didn’t want to be seen? Just like her?
Ellis Harper’s funeral had been earlier this week. Anyone who read the paper would know the house was empty.
But why would that person be digging?
She retreated as quietly as possible across the porch and down the steps. As she angled back toward where she’d left her horse, she glanced behind the house.
There appeared to be several areas on the hillside where the earth had been freshly turned. She hadn’t noticed it earlier; all her attention had been on the house. As she reached the fence and quickly slipped through, her horse whinnied again. The mare’s whinny was answered, drawing McKenna’s gaze to the hillside beyond the barn in time to see a rider on a gray Appaloosa horse.
From this distance she could see that the rider was a man. He was shirtless, no doubt because he’d left his plaid shirt in the house where he’d discarded it along with the shovel.
She caught only a glimpse of him, his head covered by a Western straw hat, as he topped the hill and disappeared as if in a hurry to get away.
She wondered who he was. Obviously someone who wasn’t supposed to be here—just like herself. She hadn’t gotten a good enough look at him and knew she wouldn’t be able to recognize him if she saw him again, but she would his horse. It was a spotted Appaloosa, the ugliest coloring she’d ever seen—and that was saying a lot.
As she swung up into her saddle, she couldn’t help but wonder what the man had been digging for—and if he’d found it.
ARLENE CALLED HANK Monroe to confirm their appointment to sign him up for her rural dating service before she headed into Whitehorse. The first thing that had struck her was his voice. It was deep and soft and sent a small thrill through her. Had any man’s voice ever done that before? Not that she could remember—but then, she was no spring chicken anymore.
She knew she was setting herself up for disappointment. The man couldn’t be as good as he sounded either in his e-mail or on the phone.
“I’m looking forward to meeting you,” he’d said. “I have to confess, I’ve never done anything like this before. You know, dating online. The way my generation did it was gazes across a crowded room. I’m a little nervous.”
She’d assured him there was nothing to it.
But Arlene was nervous herself when she reached the Hi-Line Café where they’d agreed to meet.
The moment she walked in and spotted Hank Monroe sitting at one of the booths her heart began to pound wildly. Never in her life had she experienced such a reaction.
She’d been pregnant with Violet when she married Floyd Evans. It had been the result of a one-night stand. She’d said she was on the Pill so he wouldn’t take her right home. Floyd had been good-looking and popular, and she’d thought she could fall in love with him—and him with her if he’d give her a chance.
She’d also erroneously thought that she wouldn’t get pregnant.
She’d been wrong on all counts.
But when she’d discovered she was pregnant, Floyd had seemed as good a bet as anyone. He had a farm down in Old Town Whitehorse and, while reluctant, he had agreed at the urging of his parents to stand up and accept his responsibilities.
She’d known she was no looker. It was one reason she’d learned to cook at an early age. She’d realized she needed more to offer than other girls. She’d thought her cooking and cleaning would make Floyd fall in love with her. She’d still dreamed of the happily-ever-after romance she hadn’t found with Floyd or any other boy.
She’d been only seventeen when she and Floyd had married. He’d been twenty-eight. Now, at fifty-one, Arlene had long ago given up on love, let alone romance.
Hank Monroe looked up just then. He wasn’t handsome, not by anyone’s standards, but there was something about him that had her pulse pounding as she made her way to his booth.
“Arlene?” he asked hopefully as he got to his big feet.
She could only nod and smile. “You must be Hank.”
He nodded with a laugh that resembled a donkey’s bray. She laughed then, too, and they exchanged a look that made Arlene feel seventeen again.
“I like your laugh,” he said and grinned.
By the time she had him signed up for her dating service she had a date with him for Saturday night and was on her way to buy herself something special to wear.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this excited. But at the back of her mind she heard her mother’s nagging voice warning her that this feeling wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. Because Arlene didn’t deserve to be happy.
HAD VIOLET EVANS known what her mother was feeling at that moment, she would have joined her deceased grandmother in warning Arlene not to count on a future—let alone a happy one.
If Violet had her way, her mother wouldn’t be around long. And from what the doctors were saying at the mental hospital, it looked as if Violet was going to get her way.
And not even Arlene—who’d seen through Violet’s ruse—could stop her. In fact, Arlene Evans might be the only person alive who knew how sick—and dangerous—her daughter really was.
But while Violet hadn’t fooled her mother, she had her doctors. As Violet sat next to the window and looked over the hospital grounds, she could almost taste freedom. It wouldn’t be long now. She’d played her role perfectly. All those case histories of psychosis had given her the script. Now she was nearing the final act, the one that would get her released.
It didn’t surprise her that her mother was fighting her release. Arlene knew what Violet was capable of and, worse, had an inkling of what she would do once she got out of this place. Violet’s great sin, she believed, was that she’d shamed her mother by not being marriageable.
She’d been born unattractive and hadn’t grown out of it. Even her mother—who Violet resembled—had snagged a man. Arlene’s endless attempts at marrying her off had only made matters worse. Violet hated her for it. Hated that she’d taken after her mother, unlike her two siblings.
“Violet? Is everything all right?”
She turned to find her doctor watching her closely, a slight frown on his face.
“I was just thinking about some of the awful things my mother said I did,” she covered quickly as she realized he’d seen her true feelings when he’d walked up on her.
She really had to be more careful.
He sat down beside her. He was a small man with small hands. “Does that make you angry?”
“Only with myself,” she said piously. She’d worked so hard to hide what was really going on inside her. She would have to remember not to think about her mother.
“I am getting better, aren’t I, Dr. Armond?” she asked pleadingly.
“Yes, Violet. I am very pleased with your prognosis. Very pleased. In fact, that was one reason I came to find you.” He paused and smiled. “I’m recommending your release.”
Violet’s heart leaped. “Oh, Dr. Armond. Are you sure I’m ready?”
“Yes, Violet. I’ll recommend some outpatient visits, of course, but there is no reason you can’t be an active member of society again. I’d hoped you would be excited.”
“Oh, I am. I can’t wait. To think that I have my whole life ahead of me…” Her eyes brimmed with tears and he covered her hand with his.
“I’m so glad to hear that because I’ve set your release for next month.”
Next month? She’d been planning on getting out sooner than that. What was wrong with the stupid old quack?
She was careful not to let her disappointment or her anger show. She tried to calm herself. What was another thirty days here? Nothing compared to what she’d been through. But it still felt like a lifetime, she was so anxious to get out.
“I wanted you to have enough time to prepare for reentering that world,” he was saying. “I think it would be unhealthy for you to return to your mother’s home given the way she feels, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you could prepare by working here in the hospital office. You’ll also need income. I’ll help you put together a résumé for when you’re released.”
The imbecile. She wasn’t going to need a job when she got out. “That is so kind of you,” she said. “How can I ever thank you?” She could think of several ways she’d like to thank him, all of them involving his pain.
“You being well and getting on with your life will be thanks enough,” he said as he removed his hand from hers and rose to leave. “I want you to be a survivor, Violet.”
She nodded and smiled. “I intend to be.” She couldn’t say the same for her mother and the others who had made her life a living hell.
She tried not to shudder at the thought of the mediocre life she would have on the outside if it was up to these doctors. Some dismal job, a cramped apartment, several cats and nothing to look forward to at night but television and a frozen cheesecake.
A woman as smart as she was? Not a chance. She’d been foolish in the past. She’d let them catch her. She wouldn’t make that mistake again..
She thought about her mother’s face when she saw her oldest daughter again. Payback was a bitch, she thought with a secret smile as she looked out the window.
Thirty days. And counting.
Chapter Four
The auction was held in front of the Harper House on a bright blue-sky June day. Someone had mowed part of the weeds in the front yard the night before. The air smelled of fresh-mown grass and dust from the county road out front.
As McKenna mounted the steps to the open front door, she saw that the footprints she’d seen yesterday evening in the thick layer of dust had been trampled by the half dozen people who’d traipsed through the house this morning.
April had been right. The house needed work. But that wasn’t what surprised McKenna. She’d always been enthralled by the house. She’d just assumed she would feel the same once inside. The interior had a dark, cold feel even with the warm sun shining through the dirty windows, and she found herself shivering as she walked through the rooms.
She noticed the shovel and shirt she’d seen by the back door yesterday were gone. On the third floor, when she looked out a small back window, she couldn’t see the places where the man had dug. They’d apparently been covered with cut weeds. Had she not caught the man in the act yesterday, she would never have guessed anyone had been digging on the hillside.
It still made her wonder what he might have been looking for, but she turned her attention to the house as she wandered from room to room, trying to imagine herself living here. It was hard given the condition of the house. It would take days just to clean, let alone paint. She knew exactly what her sister Eve would say.
Raze the house and start over.
McKenna had heard several such comments from the other people who had gathered for the auction.
“There’s a nice building spot upon the hill once the house is gone,” she’d heard one man say.
But the rooms were spacious, and she told herself once the house was cleaned up, painted and furnished she could be happy here. Anyway, the house was the reason she’d always wanted the place, wasn’t it?
At one fifty-five she gathered with the others in the front yard as the auctioneer climbed the porch steps and cleared his throat to quiet the small crowd.
McKenna glanced at the group around her, surprised that some of the people who’d toured the house earlier had left. Just curiosity seekers. She recognized only one elderly man and his wife, Edgar and Ethel Winthrop. The couple lived about two miles to the north. McKenna was surprised they’d stayed, since she doubted they would be bidding on the place.
She didn’t recognize any of the others waiting. Three of the men appeared to be in their early thirties; the fourth man, in his forties, was on a cell phone. She figured he was here bidding for an investor and turned her attention to the other three men.
One, clearly a local rancher, wore a Mint Bar cap, a worn canvas coat and work boots and had a toothpick sticking out the side of his mouth. The second was dressed in a dinosaur T-shirt, jeans and athletic shoes. The third man wore jeans, cowboy boots, a Western shirt and a gray Stetson.
As the auctioneer described the property and the county auction requirements, she saw another man, one she hadn’t noticed before. He’d parked on the county road some distance from the proceedings and now stood, his arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the front of his pickup truck, his battered Western straw hat pulled low against the sun.
He’d obviously just come to watch. He was dressed in work boots, jeans and a white T-shirt that called attention to his tanned, muscular arms. There was a toolbox in the back of his truck and a construction logo of some kind on the cab, but she couldn’t make out the name from where she stood.
“If everyone’s ready, let’s begin,” the auctioneer said, drawing her attention back to the front.
The cowboy glanced over at her as the auctioneer began the bidding. He was good-looking enough to make her do a double take.
“I can’t believe anyone would buy that house,” Ethel Winthrop whispered behind McKenna.
“Not everyone cares about a house’s history, Ethel,” her husband whispered back.
“Who would like to start the bidding?” the auctioneer inquired.
When no one responded, the auctioneer started the bid high and had to drop the price when there were no takers.
McKenna waited as the man on the cell phone bid along with dinosaur-shirt man and the local rancher. The cowboy hadn’t bid either, she noticed, apparently waiting as she was. Or maybe he’d just come to watch.
As the price rose, the man on the cell phone quit bidding and left. It had come down between the rancher and dinoshirt man when the cowboy jumped in. McKenna feared the men were going to drive the price up too high for her.
The rancher quit. It was down to the cowboy and the dino-shirt man when McKenna finally bid.
The cowboy shot her a look and raised her bid.
She bid two more times, dino-shirt dropping out, so it was just her and the cowboy. One look into his dark eyes and she realized he was enjoying himself—at her expense.
“The young woman has the bid,” the auctioneer said after they’d gone back and forth.
Time seemed to stop, and then the cowboy tipped his hat, his dark eyes flashing. “It’s the lady’s.”
McKenna couldn’t believe it.
The auctioneer closed the bidding. Edgar Winthrop stepped up to congratulate her and ask her what she planned to do with the house as the remainder of the small group dispersed.
“I’m going to live here,” she said and saw his wife’s expression.
“Not alone, I hope,” she said.
“Ethel,” the husband said in a warning tone.
“Edgar, she should know about that house,” the elderly woman insisted. “If she moves in and then finds out…”
The husband took his wife’s arm. “You’ll have to excuse my wife. All houses have a history, Ethel.” He smiled at McKenna. “I wouldn’t concern yourself with local gossip. What’s past is past, right?”
McKenna smiled, too excited to care about the house’s history. Anyway, she figured the woman was referring to the troubled boys who’d lived on the place when she was a girl. They couldn’t have been any worse than she and her sisters.
“Congratulations, I’m sure it will make you a fine home,” Edgar said.
“I’m sure it will, too,” she agreed.
He tugged at his wife’s elbow, but Ethel grabbed McKenna’s sleeve. “If you need us, we live up that way as the crow flies.” She pointed north.
“Thank you,” McKenna said as Edgar Winthrop took his wife’s hand and led her toward their car.
“You remember what I said,” Ethel called over her shoulder.
“I will, thank you.” She turned, looking for the cowboy who’d given up the bid to her, but he’d apparently left right away.
As she moved up to the porch to take care of the paperwork, she noticed the man who’d parked on the road and watched from a distance also leaving. While she couldn’t see his face in the shadow of his Western straw hat, she had the impression he was upset.
IF NATE DEMPSEY HAD been superstitious, he would have gotten the hell out of Whitehorse the moment he’d seen the blond cowgirl again.
When he’d seen her in the small crowd that had gathered for the auction, he’d hoped she was here out of curiosity and nothing more. Ultimately he’d hoped that no one would bid on Harper House or that the minimum bid would be too high and that the house would remain empty just long enough for him to finish what he’d come here to do.
But that hope had been shot to hell the moment the young blonde began to bid. He’d seen her interest in the house when she’d come around the place before.
When she kept bidding, he knew she was determined to have Harper House.
When the dust settled, the bidding done, the blonde had the house. McKenna Bailey. He’d discovered he’d been right about her living nearby. Her family owned the ranch adjacent to the property. The Bailey girls, as they were known in these parts, had a reputation for being rough-and-tumble cowgirls with a streak of independence that ran as deep as their mule-headedness.
McKenna Bailey had proven that today.
Not the kind of woman who would be easily intimidated.
But as he drove away from Harper House he knew he had to find a way to make sure McKenna Bailey didn’t get in his way. He’d waited so long to end this, and now she had unknowingly put herself in the middle of more trouble than she could imagine.
He cursed the way his luck was going as he raced north toward the small Western town, ruing the day he’d ever laid eyes on Whitehorse, Montana—and McKenna Bailey.
BY THAT EVENING McKenna was actually in the mood for a date—even a blind one—as she walked into Northern Lights restaurant. She was still floating on air from the excitement of her purchase earlier that afternoon, although she hadn’t had much time to look the place over after signing all the papers.
She couldn’t wait to take her horse out and ride her property.
Northern Lights restaurant had been opened just before Christmas by McKenna’s friend Laci Cavanaugh and her fiancé Bridger Duvall. It was the place to eat in Whitehorse. The fact that her date had chosen it gave McKenna hope.
She was instantly disappointed, though, when she was told by a young waitress she didn’t know that Laci wasn’t working tonight and that Bridger was swamped back in the kitchen.
“Are you dining alone?” the waitress asked.
She certainly hoped not. As she glanced around the restaurant, she spotted a lone male sitting off in one corner. He raised his head and got to his feet when he saw her.
He was the good-looking cowboy who’d bid against her at the auction earlier that day. Just her luck. And his.
“Small world, huh?” he said with an ironic smile.
This was her date? She remembered the way he’d tipped his hat to her when he quit bidding. She was pretty sure that had been anger she’d seen in his dark eyes.
“You look like you could use a drink. I know I could.” He motioned to the waitress before turning back to McKenna. “What’ll you have? Hell, you probably want champagne to celebrate, don’t you? Give us a bottle of your best.”
The waitress took off before McKenna could stop her. The last thing she wanted to do was have dinner with this man, let alone celebrate with him.
He held out his hand. “Flynn Garrett.”
His hand swallowed hers. “McKenna—”
“Bailey,” he finished for her. “Yeah, I know.” His smile broadened as he seemed to take her in. “The woman who bought herself a house and forty acres today. No hard feelings. You won fair and square. So let’s celebrate.”
He pulled out a chair for her and waited.
She tried to think of a good reason to break the date, but then the champagne arrived and she found herself taking a seat as the cork was popped and Flynn made a show of pouring them each a glass.
“To you, Miss Bailey,” he said, tapping his glass against hers.
His dark eyes never left hers as he took a sip. “Hmm, not bad,” he said, although she was almost positive he would have rather had another beer like the one he’d been nursing when she’d arrived.
She tried to relax. Blind dates were nerve-racking enough without her ending up having dinner with the man she’d outbid. A very handsome man, she might add.
“You’re a tough woman to beat at her own game,” he said, his gaze hard to read. She’d put her money on him still being angry. She’d bet he was the kind of man who didn’t like to lose.
“If it makes you feel any better, you drove the bid up so high I have very little money left for improvements.”
He appeared shocked. “You aren’t considering doing anything with that house?”
“Yes. Why?” She watched the way he nervously took a drink of his champagne. “What had you planned to do with it?”
“Burn it down.”
Now it was her turn to be shocked. “You aren’t serious.”
“I just wanted the land. The house is in such bad shape…” He frowned. “Sorry, I’m sure you don’t want to hear that.”
“It needs work, I’ll admit, but structurally—”
“You planning to do the work yourself?”
She bristled. “I’ll have you know I’m capable of doing just about anything I set my mind to.”
He nodded slowly, eyeing her with an intensity that made her a little nervous. “I bet you are.”
The waitress brought the menus and he disappeared behind his. McKenna told herself that he was still angry with her for outbidding him and that he wouldn’t have bid so high if he hadn’t wanted the house as well as the land. What he said about the condition of the house was just sour grapes.
“How are the steaks here?” he asked over the top of his menu. His eyes were almost black. “You look like a woman who could handle a steak.” He put down his menu as the waitress appeared and grinned at McKenna. “Am I wrong?”
She ordered a rib eye, rare, which made him chuckle. He ordered the largest T-bone the restaurant served, also rare.
“So tell me about McKenna Bailey,” he said, leaning forward to rest his forearms on the table, those dark eyes intent on her again.
“And bore you to tears?”
He shook his head. “There is nothing boring about you, and we both know it. Why Whitehorse? Come on, I really want to know.”
“I was born and raised here.”
His eyebrow shot up. “No kidding.”
“Well, that’s somewhat true,” she amended with a smile. “I was adopted when I was born. My adopted family lives in Old Town Whitehorse. That’s where I grew up.”
“You’re adopted?” That seemed to interest him.
“I didn’t find out until recently.”
“No one told you?”
She shook her head. “If you knew my adoptive mother, that would make sense to you. She said the moment she laid eyes on my sisters and me we were hers and nobody else’s, and that’s why she didn’t tell us. Lila Bailey Jackson is a very strong, determined woman.”
“Like her daughter.” He took a sip of his champagne, then frowned. “Lila Bailey Jackson?”
“She recently married Loren Jackson. It’s a long story, but apparently they were in love for years.”
“Jackson,” he repeated softly. “Like the sheriff?” He refilled her glass. She hadn’t realized she’d emptied it already. Nerves.
“The sheriff is Loren’s son and my sister Eve’s fiancé. It’s a small town,” she added with a laugh and realized she was starting to enjoy herself. And why shouldn’t she? She did have something to celebrate, and her date was just as handsome as Arlene had said.
She hadn’t dated all that much, too busy between school and a job working for a local veterinarian in Bozeman while she’d attended Montana State University. It felt good to be in the company of an attractive cowboy.
“So tell me about you.”
He shrugged. “Not much to tell. Raised on a ranch, like you.”
Had she told him she was raised on a ranch? She couldn’t remember.
“I’ve worked all over, wrangling and doing odd jobs. Once you turn thirty you can’t help but think about planting roots. Not too deep, though,” he quickly amended. “I like being a free spirit. When I leave here I’m thinking of going to South America. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. You know, they robbed a train up here right before they went to South America.”
Allegedly. But she didn’t tell him that. She knew Flynn Garrett’s type. He liked to think of himself as an outlaw. He’d used his looks to get him through life, always taking the path of least resistance. She’d dated a few boys like him in college. They were fun. At least for a while.
“So why did you bid on the old Harper place?” she asked and took a drink of her champagne. She might as well celebrate because she’d just bought herself a house and forty acres.
He shrugged in answer. “I like competition.”
She eyed him over the rim of her champagne glass. Yeah? But he wasn’t as good at losing as he was at pretending, she thought. The question was: had he wanted Harper House or did he just not want anyone else to have it?
“What will you do now?” she asked.
“I don’t know. You’ve forced me to change my plans.” He smiled at her as if he thought he could con her into thinking she owed him. Not likely.
“Sorry,” she said with a grin, “but I’ve always wanted that place.”
“Really? Why?”
She shook her head. “I wish I knew.”
Flynn seemed lost in thought for a long moment, and she wondered if he understood the pull of Harper House more than he was admitting.
She felt a kinship with him because of the house. It was odd. She’d just met him earlier today and yet it was as if she’d known him a lot longer. Which made this date a little sad, since she didn’t think she would be going out with him again.
Flynn poured them both more champagne, emptying the bottle. “Don’t worry about me,” he said as if there hadn’t been a lag in the conversation. “I’m a man who always lands on his feet, one way or another. Meanwhile, I’m having dinner with a beautiful, fascinating woman.” His expression was so intense she was glad that the waitress appeared with their salads.
The conversation turned to horses during dinner and that awkward moment passed. McKenna realized that he’d either guessed about her love of horses or someone had told him. But then, that would mean that he’d asked around about her. Arlene. How had McKenna forgotten that Arlene had set this up?
She recalled how Arlene had been so confident this man would be perfect for her. She really should cancel her membership in Arlene’s dating service first thing in the morning. If only she’d read the contract more closely.
The evening passed quickly, and suddenly they were at that uncomfortable end of the date where he walked her out to her pickup and she feared he would kiss her.
And feared he wouldn’t.
His kiss was nice. Soft, sweet, tentative. What surprised her was that she sensed a vulnerability in him when he kissed her that he’d kept well hidden in the time she’d been around him. Flynn Garrett didn’t have it all together as much as he wanted everyone to believe.
He drew back from the kiss, and she was surprised to see regret in his gaze. As he turned and walked away, she could only assume she wouldn’t be seeing him again.
Chapter Five
The ringing of her cell phone wrenched McKenna out of a terrifying dream in which she was running for her life.
She jerked up in the bed, her heart pounding, her night-shirt stuck to her skin with sweat.
“Hello?”
“McKenna, I wanted to catch you before you took off this morning.”
She glanced at the clock. It wasn’t even six o’clock. “Arlene?” If she was calling to see how McKenna’s date had gone—
“I didn’t want you to feel bad about what happened last night. These things happen, although I was surprised. He seemed like such a nice young man. And he was so interested in you I couldn’t imagine why he’d cancel.”
“What?” She was still caught in the dream; danger hunkered in the room like dense fog, making everything seem surreal.
“I just feel bad because I couldn’t get hold of you to tell you. I tried your cell. You must have had it turned off. And when I called the restaurant to give you a heads-up—”
“Arlene, what are you talking about?”
“Your date last night. I just hate that he stood you up, but I have someone else who I think—”
“Wait a minute.” McKenna sat up straighter and rubbed her free hand over her face as she tried to make sense of what Arlene was saying. “I wasn’t stood up.”
“You mean he changed his mind and met you at the restaurant after all?” Arlene let out a relieved laugh. “Good, I wasn’t wrong about him. I told you Nate Dempsey was perfect for you. I’m so glad he showed up. I do wish he’d let me know, though. If he’d read the dating service agreement, he’d have—”
“Nate Dempsey?” McKenna repeated.
“Your date.” Arlene laughed. “It must have been some night if you don’t remember his name.”
Arlene was mixed up. McKenna regretted the day she’d signed up for the online dating service.
“Arlene, my date was with Flynn Garrett. Not anyone named Nate Dempsey.”
Silence. An anomaly for Arlene.
McKenna felt her first sense of unease. “My date was with Flynn, right?”
“I’ve never heard of a Flynn Garrett,” Arlene said at last. “Who did you have dinner with last night?” she asked, sounding horrified.
It was too early in the morning for this. “Arlene, I have to go.” McKenna hung up and replayed the scene at the restaurant. She’d just assumed that Flynn was her date. Now that she thought about it, he’d never mentioned the online dating service—and neither had she.
She felt a little foolish. But, then again, no harm had been done. She’d enjoyed dinner and Flynn Garrett.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t help but wonder who this Nate Dempsey was. And why he’d canceled his date with her at the last minute. Arlene said he’d been “so interested” in her?
Not that it mattered, she thought as she gave up on returning to sleep and headed for the shower in an attempt to throw off the remnants of the nightmare she’d been having before Arlene’s phone call. Her legs felt weak as if she really had been running for her life. The dream emerged again. She had a flash of Harper House. It had been dark in the dream. She’d been running away from the house, she thought with a chill, because someone had been chasing her.
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