Читать книгу Stampeded - B.J. Daniels - Страница 9

Only two of the vehicles were still parked in front of the old Wellington mansion, the red sports car and the white SUV, Marshall Chisholm noted as he rode his horse by the house. The former street was no more than a narrow dirt lane with rows of huge, old cottonwood trees on each side.

The sports car had California plates, while the SUV was licensed out of Washington State. Neither rig looked as if it might belong to drug runners out of Canada hiding out here. The expensive sports car had a Montana State University sticker on the bumper. College students?

As he came out of the trees, he got his first close-up view of the house. He’d never paid much attention to the old place. Truth is, there was something about it that had always put him off. That and no doubt the stories he’d heard over the years.

Even up close, the mansion still didn’t draw him. There was nothing in its design or the size of the place that made him want to stop and look. It was the three vehicles he’d seen here that had him curious. He wondered where the black SUV had gone.

As he circled around the place, he looked up at the blank windows, thinking he should probably just go knock at the huge front door and introduce himself as the only neighbor.

He was chewing on that idea when suddenly a young woman with long, dark, curly hair, wide violet eyes and the heart-shaped face of an angel appeared on a second-floor balcony.

But it was what he saw behind her that startled him. His horse suddenly snorted and jerked her head, eyes wild as she reared up. His western hat fell off as he fought to stay seated. He’d never seen the mare react like this before and knew he was lucky he hadn’t been bucked off.

As he regained control of his mount, he glanced up again. The young woman was still standing there, but the image he’d seen behind her was gone.

She stood in the morning light, lithe, wraithlike against the darkness behind her. A vision. Her hair floated around her face, falling about her shoulders in stark contrast to the white of the blouse she wore.

His dog, Angus, barked, making him start again. Everything about being here was making him jumpy as hell. He told himself he was letting his imagination run away with him. That and the stories he’d heard about the mansion—even though he’d always said he didn’t believe a word of it.

“Hang on a minute, Angus,” he said, glancing at the impatient mutt before looking back at the mansion window. The woman was gone.

Marshall felt a knot form in his belly as he continued to stare at the window for several long moments, trying to assure himself he hadn’t imagined her any more than he’d imagined that other image standing behind her.

He wished to hell she would reappear just to prove to himself that she’d been real though.

You don’t really believe that was a ghost you saw.

Of course, he didn’t. But still there had been something about her, something ethereal, angelic. While what he’d seen behind her … He spurred his horse, chuckling at the strange trail his thoughts had taken. He didn’t believe in ghosts or haunted houses. Or evil spirits.

But as warm as the summer morning felt with the sun hot on his back, he felt a chill.

“ALEXA, DID YOU HEAR what I said?”

She stepped back into the room, but she couldn’t shake the rush of sensations she’d felt when she’d seen the handsome cowboy’s face. A strange, wanton desire—and darkness.

Both frightened her by their intensity. She recalled how desperate she’d been to see his face. How she had needed him to look at her.

She shuddered, shocked by what she’d felt as much as by the force of it. Often she got sharp first impressions, but she’d convinced herself that other people got them too and often didn’t recognize them. Everyone met people and in an instant decided if they liked them or not, and never questioned why.

Plain old intuition. She’d even convinced herself that her mother had probably merely been good at reading people, so of course her daughter had picked it up as well. Alexa wanted to believe that rather than the other possibility.

Since she was a girl she’d been haunted by the memory of waking to find her mother standing over her, telling her to look at something at the end of her bed.

Just the thought of it after all these years gave her chills, but she’d convinced herself that what she’d seen was nothing more than her imagination. Or part of a bad dream.

Unfortunately sometimes she felt things, sensed things, she didn’t want to know about. She’d found it easier not to get too close to anyone. As long as she kept her distance and her defenses up, she could live blissfully oblivious about the people around her and their fates.

None of her earlier sensations, though, had ever been as powerful as what she’d felt when she’d seen the cowboy’s face. Desire and darkness.

“Are you all right?” Landon asked as he touched her arm and she flinched.

“Yes.” She shook her head as if she could shake off what she’d felt moments before. It had been so potent. “I’m just tired. It was a long drive.”

“I hated to ask you to come….”

“No,” she quickly reassured him. “I’d been wanting to come for a visit.” Her brother reminded her of light. There was something so pure and innocent about him. He was loving and devoted, open and trusting.

Unlike her brother, she had never been open or trusting.

“You sounded strange on the phone,” she said as she drew him over to the loveseat between the two highboys. “I was concerned.” Alexa still worried why he had invited her here, almost pleading with her to come.

“I didn’t mean to trouble you,” he said, but looking at him she could tell something was wrong and said as much.

“Like I told you on the phone, it’s the house.”

“If you don’t want to remodel it for a bed-and-breakfast then—”

“It’s not that.” He seemed to hesitate, his gaze locking with hers. “You’re the only person I can tell this to who won’t think I’m crazy. The house is trying to hurt me,” he said dropping the words like stones into the room.

“What?” Alexa said, thinking she must have heard him wrong.

“You asked about my arm? A cabinet fell on me, but there have been other near misses since we got here.”

“Landon, do you realize what you’re saying?”

He nodded. “Do you remember when we were kids and Mother used to ask you if you saw … things that the rest of us couldn’t see?”

As if she could forget. Alexa got up and moved to the open French doors again. There was no sign of the cowboy she’d seen earlier. “Landon, I’ve told you. I don’t have the sight.”

“Mother was convinced that you blocked it. That you were simply afraid of it but that if you let yourself—”

“Mother was wrong,” she said, turning to face him. “This is all her fault,” she continued with a wave of her hand that encompassed the house. “If not for her beliefs, then you would never be thinking that because of some isolated accidents …” The rest of her words died in her mouth as she saw her brother’s crestfallen face. “This is why you got me here? To tell you whether or not this house is haunted?”

Her brother suddenly looked so young, so vulnerable, her heart nearly broke for him. “Something is wrong in this house,” he said with obvious fear.

Before she could question him further, there was a knock at the door.

“Please don’t say anything about this to my wife,” he whispered hurriedly.

Alexa felt sick to her stomach. She couldn’t believe this is why he’d gotten her here.

“So how do you like your room?” Sierra asked as she stuck her head into the doorway.

“It’s lovely,” Alexa told her, though still upset from her conversation with her brother. She was angry with him for getting her here under false pretenses and, at the same time, worried about him. Landon was scared. But he also had enough of their mother in him that he was prone to overreaction and flights of fantasy. His hasty marriage to a woman he barely knew and getting involved with this white elephant of a house were two perfect examples.

“You did a beautiful job,” she said to Sierra. “I really think you have a talent for this.”

Her sister-in-law beamed at the compliment. “I can’t tell you what that means to me.” She let out a pleased sigh. “Supper is ready. Afterwards I will give you a tour of the house. You really have to see it to appreciate how amazing it is.”

Landon followed his wife out of the room, hesitating only long enough to say to his sister, “We’ll talk later.”

As Alexa stepped out into the hallway, she felt a winterlike draft that stole her breath. She suppressed a shudder as she saw her brother watching her and realized Sierra was also intently focused on her.

Of course her brother would have told his wife everything about his family—Alexa included.

“HAS ANYONE HEARD ANYTHING about the people who are staying at the old Wellington place?” Marshall asked as casually as possible during supper at the Chisholm ranch that evening.

While he and his five brothers all had their own houses, they still had breakfast most mornings at the Chisholm Cattle Company main house—and were always expected for supper unless they were out of town or dead.

Their new stepmother, Emma, had a hard-and-fast rule about them being at the table on time, showered and shaved and without any manure on their boots. So tonight they were all seated at the table, his father, Hoyt, stepmother, Emma, and his five brothers, Dawson, Colton, Zane, Logan and Tanner.

“I heard something in town about a bunch of hippies moving into it,” Colton said as he helped himself to more roast beef from the huge platter in front of him. “You want Halley to check on it?” Deputy Halley Robinson was Colton’s fiancée.

Marshall chuckled at the hippie remark. Anyone from California with relatively long hair was considered a hippie in this part of Montana. The word covered a lot of territory.

He thought of the woman he’d seen at the window. “I think they might have bought the place.”

“That’s news to me,” his father said, frowning. “I’d have known if it had come on the market. I’ve been trying to buy it for years and was told the family wasn’t interested. Since the old woman who lived there died, the place has been tied up in the estate.”

“I wonder then if the people I saw over there might be related to the original owner,” Marshall mused.

“What is your interest anyway?” Zane asked, studying him.

“Just curious,” Marshall said, feeling all eyes at the table on him. He was a terrible liar and they all knew it. “I can see the place from my house. I noticed activity over there, three cars, and just wondered what was going on. As I was driving in for supper, I passed a local hardware truck headed out that way with a lot of supplies in the back.”

“You think they’re remodeling it?” Hoyt said. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to live in such a huge place. Unless they have something else in mind for it.”

“Are you talking about that old mansion north of here?” Emma asked. “I’d hate to have to heat that place in the winter. Why, it must have thirty bedrooms.”

“I heard the old woman who lived there last stayed in just a small part of the house, boarding up the rest,” Hoyt said, still frowning.

“Was it once a hotel or something?” Emma asked.

“That might have been the original plan,” Hoyt said, “but the community of Wellington died when the railroad came through twenty miles to the south. I still can’t believe anyone has moved in there with the idea of staying.”

In the silence that followed, Tanner said, “The place has a dark history. I had some friends who went out there one night. They said they heard a baby crying and when they left they were chased by a pickup truck that disappeared at the edge of town. Just disappeared.”

“I’ve heard stories about the Phantom Truck,” Logan said.

Emma laughed. “Oh, posh. You aren’t trying to tell me that the place is haunted or something silly like that.” She glanced around the table. “Hoyt?”

Her husband sighed. “Let’s just say that if a building can be haunted, it would be that one. The Wellingtons had their share of tragedies.”

“Ghosts are said to have been born out of tragedy,” Logan added and grinned mischievously.

Emma shook her head and turned to Marshall. “What do these people who have moved in look like?”

“I only saw one of them,” he said, then remembered the image he’d seen behind the woman and felt a chill snake up his spine. “She could have been a ghost.”

Emma shot him a disapproving look. “I’m asking if they seem like decent enough people and if they do, I think as their only neighbor you should go over there, introduce yourself and be neighborly. I’ll bake something for you to take.” She was already on her feet.

Hoyt was shaking his head. “You might want to get the lay of the land before you do that. Who knows who might have moved in there? We’ve had trouble with drug runners from Canada, escaped prisoners from Deer Lodge, criminals crossing the border through some barbed-wire fence and heading for the first house they see. Until you know who you’re dealing with—”

“Hoyt!” Emma chastised. “I’m sure all those instances were rare. I’ve read the local paper. There is hardly ever any crime up here. And Marshall is no fool. He’ll go over and meet them and make up his own mind. I’m sure they’re fine people if they’re remodeling the place and determined to live here.”

They all loved Emma’s positive attitude, no matter how naïve. But Marshall found himself poking at his food, his appetite gone as he remembered how his horse had spooked—not to mention his own reaction to what he’d seen just inside that balcony.

SUPPER AT WELLINGTON MANOR was served in the warm kitchen at a long, old table with mismatched chairs and dishes. The casserole that Carolina had fixed was delicious, and Alexa did her best to relax.

Carolina was a twenty-something, soft-spoken, pretty woman with blond hair, green eyes and porcelain skin. Her father, Sierra had said by way of introduction, had made his fortune in the hotel business. Carolina seemed shy and clearly embarrassed by Sierra’s introduction.

Her husband, Archer, was boisterous and big, a bodybuilder who apparently had been a football star until an injury had sidelined him. His father was a producer in Hollywood, his mother a lawyer.

The other couple, Gigi and Devlin, seemed cut from the same expensive cloth, both with parents who had retired to Palm Desert, California. Gigi’s long white-blond hair was pulled up in a ponytail, making her blue eyes seem even larger, her tiny nose all the more cute. A slender, athletic-looking young woman, she was in her twenties but could have passed for sixteen with her sweet, innocent face.

Her husband, Devlin, was a beach-boy blond with blue eyes. He laughed when Sierra introduced him as a rich kid whose parents owned a couple of vineyards in northern California. He’d had some wine shipped from home, which he poured with enthusiasm.

The lone wolf of the group was Jayden Farrell, whose father was an unemployed actor in Los Angeles, according to Sierra. Unlike the others, he was thirty-something and apparently hadn’t been raised privileged. But he was as movie-star handsome as the others, maybe even more so because there was intelligence behind his blue eyes that Alexa found both appealing and disturbing.

Not only that, Jayden also seemed to set himself apart from this group, watching them almost with amusement. Alexa doubted the rest of them had noticed the disdain for them that she glimpsed in his gaze. What was this single man doing here with these married couples, especially when she sensed he didn’t like them?

As the group around the table talked and joked, she and Jayden remained silent, she noted. She listened to them talk about their many university degrees, extended European trips and the benefits of growing up in sunny California.

None seemed to have professions, at least no jobs that kept them from helping their friends Sierra and Landon with their mansion, Jayden again being the exception. He’d made a point of saying that he’d studied business finance and would have to leave this fall to pursue his career.

The others seemed to see this Montana bed-and-breakfast venture as a lark, a great adventure, something to tell their friends about when they returned to their real lives. Jayden was more serious, which made Alexa all the more curious about his motives for being here.

Through all the laughter and camaraderie during the meal, Alexa found herself studying her brother. If she hadn’t known Landon so well, she might have thought he felt at ease with the assembled group, even though his roots were nothing like theirs. It was clear that Sierra had come from their world, though, rather than the one Alexa and Landon had grown up in. This made the reporter in Alexa curious, since Sierra had said she had been raised by a single mother in what she made sound like the Los Angeles projects.

Something was definitely wrong with that story, Alexa thought as she watched Sierra interacting with her friends. There was a gaiety to their stories. These young people had no worries—unlike her brother who seemed to be working hard not to show his.

Alexa also sensed tension within the group but couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it was coming from. All she knew for sure was that her brother’s forced merriment tonight didn’t fool her for a minute. If only their mother was here. Tallulah Cross would have sized up this bunch in an instant and known exactly what was going on.

Alexa hated that she felt bombarded by conflicting sensations in this house. Something was trying to break through the wall she’d built to keep these kinds of sensations out. For years, she’d feared she’d lied as much to herself as she had to her mother and brother. She felt things, things she didn’t want to feel. But if she truly had her mother’s gift, she was terrified of it, didn’t know how to use it and had done everything she could to block it for so long that she had no control over it.

Coming here had been a mistake and yet even as she thought about leaving, she knew she couldn’t abandon her brother. Not when she knew something was wrong in this house. He’d said he’d already had a series of accidents. What if he was right about something—or someone—wanting him out of the mansion?

By the time supper was over, Archer had the flushed face of a man who’d consumed more wine than anyone else. Sierra was in a friendly debate with Carolina and Gigi about the best sushi restaurants they’d ever gone to outside of California. Archer and Devlin excused themselves, saying they were going to try to catch the baseball game on television.

Alexa rose to help with the dishes.

“It’s Gigi and Landon’s turn to do the dishes,” Sierra insisted. “Come on. I want to show you the house.”

“Go on,” Landon said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

Alexa had hoped to talk to her brother after supper and wished the two of them could have done the dishes together, but Sierra was determined to show her the house.

“You have to see this,” she said as they passed through the huge living area. She pushed open two large carved wooden doors. “The library,” she announced with a grand gesture. The books on the shelves had been moved and stacked as if someone had gone through them, the thick layer of dust that coated the room disturbed.

“We have so much to do before the house is restored,” she said. “But I love this room and can’t wait to get to it.”

Closing the doors, Sierra led her down a hallway, pointing out the servants’ quarters, most of the rooms empty except for one that Jayden was using. In another wing there was a music room with an old piano, and finally the ballroom.

All of the rooms looked as if a little work had been done in them. Alexa had the feeling, though, that not much was getting done—at least from what she’d seen so far.

“Let’s take the back stairs,” Sierra said and led Alexa up to a wing of the second floor.

Alexa felt a little turned around and said as much.

Sierra laughed. “It does get confusing. That’s why I ask that you not go exploring on your own. It is too easy to get hurt, and who knows how long it would be before anyone found you?” She laughed as if delighted by the size of this place.

Alexa thought of her brother’s accidents and wondered how long it had been before he’d been found.

“We are in the north wing. Your room is in the east wing, Gigi and Dev have a room on the west wing, Carolina and Archer are on the south wing, Jayden’s on the first floor in the servants’ quarters. His choice,” she added quickly. “We decided we might as well stretch out and have our own space.”

She remembered at supper how she’d felt the others occasionally studying her with interest. She realized with a start that Sierra had probably told her friends about Landon’s sister’s “sight.” She groaned inwardly at the thought that everyone in this house would be watching her now.

“Jayden’s kind of a loner.”

Alexa mentioned her surprise that he had wanted to be here with three couples, as Sierra led her along a long, dark hallway.

“He’s one of the gang,” Sierra said. “I guess I was a little surprised too that he came with us. But we all loved him the moment we met him. Isn’t the house in great shape for how old it is?”

“Some relative of yours lived here most recently?” Alexa asked.

“My great cousin lived here until she died,” Sierra said. “I never knew her. Most of the rooms were closed off while she lived here. She stayed in one of the maids’ rooms downstairs, where Jayden is on the first floor.” She chuckled again. “The old maid in the maids’ quarters. It’s pretty funny. I doubt she even came up to these rooms.”

Alexa couldn’t help but wonder why Jayden preferred one of the small rooms for maids rather than the opulence—not to mention the views—of an upstairs bedroom. Maybe he didn’t hold himself apart only at supper.

As they left the catacomb of rooms and hallways to return to the main hall, she saw that the kitchen was empty. Gigi and Landon had finished the dishes. Alexa couldn’t wait to get him alone to talk to him again.

“Do you know where I can find Landon?” she asked.

Sierra shrugged. “I’ll tell him if I see him before bedtime.”

She got the feeling Sierra had no intention of telling him. “Thank you for the tour.”

“My pleasure, although I do wish you had waited until the house was done before coming for a visit,” Sierra said.

“Landon asked me to come now.”

Her sister-in-law raised a brow. “Did he? I wish he’d discussed it with me first.” She smiled and let out a small, humorless laugh. “I guess it isn’t that big of a deal. I just wanted everything to be perfect the first time you saw it.”

With that, Sierra gave a wave and disappeared down a hallway.

Alexa looked around the huge living room, thinking that her brother had made a mistake calling her. Not only had he upset his new bride, but also, she thought, spotting a Ouija board on the coffee table in front of the huge fireplace, he’d called the wrong person.

Landon would have been much better off trying to reach their mother.