Читать книгу High-Stakes Homecoming - Suzanne Mcminn - Страница 9

Total panic, that’s what Penn read in Willa’s eyes. Willa…North these days. She’d married Jared North. Five weeks and three days after Penn had left Haven, not that he’d counted or cared or paid much attention at the time. Liar.

But he’d certainly made a heroic effort to forget about her after that. At least until tonight. There was no driving down Laurel Run Road without thinking about Willa, but running into her—Literally. That he hadn’t expected.

He was stunned, knocked off balance by a barrage of feelings—regret, anger, pain—as he stared for one pounding, frozen moment into her pale, shocked face, while the storm seemed to recede around them, leaving them on a planet all by themselves. She stood there in the light, and he was speechless.

It was her, it was really her. She was a mature woman now, not a teenage girl, but all he could see in those lost, scared, hazel eyes was the girl he’d once held in his arms.

He’d thought she was perfect fourteen years ago. Delicious, sweet, innocent Willa, with her apple cheeks, sparkling river-green eyes, ribbons of wavy, gold sunshine tumbling around her shoulders. Totally oblivious to her power over every boy in town—especially the boy who lived up the road and watched her picking corn, riding her horse, swimming in the river…. Walking down the road to the river right past his granddad’s farm in her itsy-bitsy bikini, carrying a damn parasol, for Christ’s sake, like she’d just stepped out of a wet dream and into real life.

It’d been all in fun at first, then it had turned so wild, so hot, that they’d burned each other to the ground in the end. And what a bitter end it had been. He wasn’t proud of his own behavior, but there was nothing good he could have said about hers.

He didn’t have any excuses to give for the past, but neither did Willa. She had betrayed him, not the other way around.

She was still gorgeous. Drop-dead gorgeous. And she still had it—that regal air, that natural elegance, even as she stood there soaked to the bones in jeans and a work shirt that did nothing to hide the fact that her body had lost little in the translation from teenage girl to mature woman.

He felt a buzz, like some kind of electrical charge zapping through him. He hadn’t felt that kind of buzz since….

No, don’t even go there. He wasn’t that stupid. His body might be that stupid, but not his brain. And he was no teenage idiot anymore.

“You’d better start walking.” Willa whipped around—oh yeah, she was still regal—and headed for the piece of crap pickup truck in the beaten-down rock drive.

“Not so fast.” He was on her in a heartbeat. Penn took her arm, stopped her in her tracks. In the past, he knew what her game had been then, or had by the end of things. She was a player, a user, a cheater. What her game was now—that’s what he was going to find out.

A shocked breath escaped her at his grip.

“Get off me,” she yelled at him, trying to shake off his grip.

She was surprisingly strong, but she wasn’t stronger than him.

Rain lashed down. “I think we need to talk.”

“I don’t think so,” she spat. Those green eyes rolled hot at him. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but this is my farm. Go back to New York City or wherever you came from, Penn Ramsey. Leave. Turn around and walk away! You’re good at that!”

That shine in her eyes almost looked like tears, and that socked him hard. He shoved the feeling back. This was some kind of scam. Otto P. Ramsey had died six weeks ago while Penn was working on an overseas account, his last trip for Brown and Sons. He hadn’t made it back for the service. The executor of the estate had sent him a letter and Penn had gotten in touch with him immediately on his return. He’d had the will for a few months. Otto had sent him a copy before his death, and he’d been too busy to do more than briefly argue with the old man over the phone about its details. The executor’s warning had convinced him to give up fighting the residency clause. He’d spent the last month arranging his life so he could give up thirty days to fulfill the requirements in the will before coming out to West Virginia. He’d shuttered his apartment, handed in his resignation, and gotten on a plane.

There had been nothing in that document about Willa North. Hell, he had no idea what Willa North had to do with Otto at all.

“I want to know what the hell is going on here, Willa, and I want to know now. This is my farm. I’m here to claim it. If you’ve been squatting here, that doesn’t make it—”

“I’m not squatting anywhere! This is not your farm, it’s mine. I live here, and I’ve been living here for over a year, and if you were ever in touch with your grandfather, maybe you’d know that.”

If she was trying to make him mad, she was doing a fine job. Yeah, he’d been out of touch much of the time, but not completely, and his grandfather had never mentioned Willa.

And on top of that, he was almost speechless at her gall. Or maybe he just liked being angry with her. It felt good. Better than guilt. He had plenty to be angry with her about, going back fourteen years, so it was no effort.

“When I did or didn’t talk to my grandfather is none of your business. What is my business is this farm. Who else is living here? Jared?”

Wow, bitter, that tone in his voice. He hadn’t expected that from himself. Anger, yes, but bitterness? Jared could have her.

“No. Not that it’s any of your business,” she told him through gritted teeth.

He barely caught her voice over the storm. Maybe they were both crazy, standing there arguing in the pouring rain. And what did she mean by that response anyway? Were she and Jared divorced then? Not the point, he reminded himself.

“I want you to leave,” she repeated. “If you want to contest the will—” She looked terrified and determined all at once. Her hair—short, not long like he remembered it—plastered to her cheeks. Her clothing soaked to her body. “Then fine. You do that, hotshot! Talk to my attorney.”

Like she had an attorney. He could tell she was bluffing on that one by just looking at her frightened face. She was driving some beat-up piece of crap and squatting on a farm that didn’t belong to her.

Maybe she really had been living with his grandfather. The old man kept secrets, he knew that. Or maybe she’d moved in after he died. She was an opportunistic excuse for a human being, he knew that, too. Maybe she thought he’d never show up to claim his property and she’d live there for free forever.

She had another think coming. He was smarter than she’d bargained for, fourteen years ago and now.

“Brilliant, Willa. Just brilliant.” He dropped his hold on her arm, suddenly unable to bear the contact. “Now, why would I contest anything? The farm is mine. And if I have to go to the legal system to get you removed, I’ll do it.”

“It is not your farm.”

“Are you crazy?” He was on the verge of losing his temper completely.

But she was so insistent, he could almost believe for a second she was telling the truth—or thought she was telling the truth—and the feeling bugged him. What if she really did have mental issues? She didn’t look crazy. She looked angry and upset and scared. But what did he know—other than that he was going to be a hell of a lot more pissed off if he had to walk six miles back to town in the rain.

“The farm was left to me in the will.”

It took him a full thirty seconds to realize that it wasn’t just he who had said those words, she’d said them at the same time.

Their gazes locked. He felt the shock roping between them.

“You are the crazy one,” she breathed, so raw and soft he couldn’t hear her. But he saw her lips move, knew what she said. She was shaking, visibly now, and white as a sheet. “Get out of here!” She yelled that. There was no missing it.

She tore off suddenly, leaving him stunned just long enough for her to get in the old Ford. The engine rattled to life and, in the light from the dash’s interior, he could see her reach first one way, then the other, slamming down manual door locks.

The truck rammed backward, sliding on gravel in the drive, then reared forward. Was she trying to run over him? He jerked back, almost losing his balance in a dip in the gravel drive, and sidestepped out of the way.

Red taillights disappeared up the hill.

Son of a bitch. He started walking.

The house was pitch black.

“Birdie?”

Willa slammed the side door of the farmhouse as she barreled inside, turned back just as quickly to hit the bolt, then ran for the front door and then the back door, making her way by perfect memory, and bolted those, too. She wouldn’t put it past Penn to come charging in here, since he seemed to think he owned the place.

“Birdie!” she yelled again.

She heard the telltale sound of Flash’s doggy nails padding through the house toward her. A second later, the hound—part basset, part whatever—was pawing at her legs, then dropping down to go check his food dish.

The old house creaked in the wind outside. Had to be a tree down somewhere. Electricity was the first to go out here. Phones next. She fumbled for a phone, checked the line. Dead, as expected.

Cell service was only a fantasy in the country, so the isolation was quick and complete.

If Penn came stomping up here, she’d have no way to call for help. She stood there in the old house, a shiver crawling up her spine.

Creepy, that’s what this house was sometimes in the dark, in the storm, during lonely nights. Yet she loved it, every crumbling inch of its Gothic architecture. She’d moved in the week of the Haven earthquake, and sometimes the town’s collective, overly active imagination about the consequences of that so-called “perfect storm” of low pressure, dense moisture, and geologic instability, niggled at her mind.

She’d seen the bursts of red lights right here on the farm, the same mysterious lights that had been talked about in town and on cable news, when a paranormal detective had been interviewed. Foundational movement for oncoming paranormal activity, the spokesperson for PAI, the Paranormal Activity Institute, had claimed. Nonsense, of course.

Most people had been scared that night, but for some reason, Willa had felt folded in, protected. Nothing on the farm had been damaged. The house, with all its aged faults, had held its ground, while the building in town where she and Birdie had rented an apartment, had crumbled. She had come to this house at just the right time, and the house had saved her. She knew that was fanciful dreaming, not anything supernatural, though. And those moments when she got a little creeped out? That was just the insidious whispers in town about strange happenings getting to her…and the dark, sometimes lonely nights.

The house breathed history, history she didn’t have on her own, and to her, it also breathed the future. It was hers! Penn and his cousins had been treated fairly in the will. They had nothing to complain about.

Where had any of them been during Otto Ramsey’s dying days?

Who had cared for him out of love, not money?

Not a one of his grandchildren. And she had loved the old man, despite his sins. He had been like her own grandfather, the one she’d never had in her own, torn-up, far-flung, dysfunctional family.

She called Birdie again, headed through the dark house for the kitchen, Flash at her heels. Maybe Birdie was sleeping. She needed a flashlight. And she didn’t even want to think about Penn Ramsey, much less how much trouble she was going to be in if she had to come up with the cash to fight for what she’d been given. She didn’t want to think about how awful it had felt right down to her bones to see him, either. What he’d said about the house being left to him in the will…

Total crap.

Maybe he had an old will. Otto Ramsey had written a new one, and left the farm to her. He’d left investment money to his niece Jess, and the same to Penn. Another old family property had gone to his other grandson, Marcus, who’d moved into a house out there years ago and didn’t care about Limberlost any more than Penn and Jess ever had.

What if she was the one with an outdated will, and Penn had a newer one? No, no, she was so not going to think that way. She couldn’t believe Otto Ramsey would do that to her.

Not after what had happened. Not after how he’d promised her to make up for it.

She owned this farm. She and Birdie. He’d promised it to Birdie as much as he’d promised it to her. He’d doted on the girl. He wouldn’t do this to Birdie.

Willa reached the kitchen, called Birdie and held carefully still, listening to the old house breathe. Birdie was a light sleeper. Surely she would wake up as she’d called her. But…

No patter of little socked feet. No, “I’m in here, Mama.” She felt an anxious tightening in her stomach.

What if…?

She dropped the pickup keys on the scarred farmhouse table in the kitchen where she now stood. She pulled open a drawer where another flashlight was kept, then headed for the stairs, ordering herself not to panic. Birdie wouldn’t have gone anywhere….

Would she? She’d told her to stay put. Willa’d looked out the window a few hours ago, seen through the leaf-barren trees in the dusky light that cows were in the road below. By the time she’d rounded up all but the one recalcitrant calf and gotten the fence fixed, it’d been long past dark.

She’d left Birdie watching TV. Birdie always got scared when the lights went out. Storms scared her, too. Birdie was like her. Or like she had been, once: timid, innocent, often shy. She hoped her daughter wouldn’t have to toughen up the way she had. She wanted so much for Birdie, so much more than she’d had.

Willa pushed down the lump that swelled in her throat and took the stairs in bounds. The house was filled with old, original wood paneling that made dark corners everywhere in the dead of night, though it could be beautiful by day. The flashlight bounced gold globes of light as she raced up, Flash right behind her. The wall was lined with old photographs, some in sepia, some in black-and-white. It was a wall of eyes, and sometimes she thought it was the creepiest part of the farmhouse.

Birdie’s room was the first one to the right. Bed, empty. She whirled, ran to her own room to see if Birdie had gone in there.

“Birdie!”

Her bed—empty, too.

She called her daughter’s name again. Flash barked, as if picking up on her distress. No response. Dammit, dammit, dammit! And she’d been down there in the road, worrying about a calf.

Willa flew back down the hall, down the stairs, past all those eyes, back into the front parlor, nearly tripping over Flash in the process. No Birdie.

She could hear the boom of her heart.

Birdie’s favorite stuffed horse lay at the foot of the antique rocker in one corner. Interlocking blocks scattered across the green and blue-rag area rug between the stone fireplace and the old, brown suede sofa. Crayon drawings and worn-down colors occupied an old camp box that served as a coffee table.

Panic shifted to full throttle.

What if Birdie had gone outside to look for her—fallen down, gotten hurt? Maybe she was even unconscious. Dead in a ditch. Her mother’s mind leaped to every worst-case scenario. She wanted to call the police, but surely that was silly. She hadn’t even looked outside yet.

And the phone was dead anyway.

She could drive out for help; but what if Birdie came back? She had to be here for Birdie. She had to find Birdie. Alone, in the storm. Oh, God. She ran for the door.

A sudden, heavy pounding on the front door nearly had her jumping out of her skin. She stopped short. Penn. She’d totally forgotten about Penn.

“Willa! Open up!”

She didn’t want to talk to Penn. She didn’t want to see Penn. No way was she opening that door. There was no pretending she was all big and bad, when she was in a total panic.

Tears, absolutely unallowable, pathetic, weak tears burst right down her cheeks. She swiped at them roughly. Birdie. She had to think about Birdie.

She forced her feet to eat up the last few steps, flung the door wide.

“Willa—”

“My daughter’s missing,” she interrupted him.

“What?”

“My daughter is missing! I’m afraid she went outside. I’m afraid she went looking for me. I’m afraid…”

Tears, clogging her throat. She didn’t want Penn Ramsey’s help. She didn’t want anyone’s help, but least of all his. And he was staring at her like she was out of her mind.

Which, of course, she was.

She pushed past him. Screw him. Stupid of her to think he’d help.

Powerful arms hauled her back. Back against a chest so hard, so warm, so…Oh God! So capable—so what she needed right now. A strong, capable man, when she was in a panic.

What was wrong with her? A man was the last thing she wanted ever again, for the rest of her life. Stop falling apart, she ordered herself.

He turned her in his arms and he was right there, a breath away. Her arms were mashed to his chest, the flashlight pointed upward, illuminating the cut of his jaw, the straight line of his nose, the disturbing intensity of his eyes.

Her pulse thumped off the charts.

“Do you have another flashlight?” he demanded.

She shook—fear, or something else, she had no idea. Her brain had up and quit. Flashlight. He asked for a flashlight. He was going to help her find Birdie. And she was going to force herself to let him, because Birdie was more important than her pride or her self-sufficiency or even this house.

“I—yes.” She ran to the kitchen, flung the drawer open so hard it fell on the floor. She dropped to her knees, using the flashlight to find the flashlight, scattering fallen kitchen tools and notepads and nonsense out of her way.

She bounded back to her feet and nearly barreled right into Penn. He took the other flashlight out of her trembling hand. She felt the warmth of his fingers brush hers, electric.

Scary.

She felt tears on her cheeks again.

“Willa.” His voice, searingly soft now, froze her to the worn, hardwood floor. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll find her.”

She swallowed hard, nodded. “Of course.” She had to find Birdie. Had to. And would. No other outcome was tolerable.

But she didn’t believe everything was going to be okay. Not so long as he stayed.