Oklahoma Christmas Blues

by Maggie Shayne

  * * *

  Kiley left that fancy saloon like she was walking on a cloud. She was going to do it. The ranch was practically hers!

  Rob McIntyre was polite and sweet and charming, and according to that bumblebee-like real estate agent Betty Lou Jennings, who loved to gossip while showing potential buyers like Kiley around properties, he was very interested in buying the old Kellogg place. He’d be at that auction tomorrow for sure. All she had do was get there ahead of him and wait.

  He was more handsome than she’d expected. Yes, she’d seen him from a distance, because she’d been researching him. But up close, it was like being pulled by the force of his gravity or something. He had the sweetest face she thought she’d ever seen. Thick, full lips and a wide broad smile that made his eyes crinkle up. Dark hair that wanted to curl, and just enough scruff on his face to send her hormones into overdrive.

  He was so over-the-top nice to her that she’d have suspected he was running a con of his own if she didn’t know he was rich. Rich folks could afford to be polite and charming for no reason, she guessed. But it would have been easier if he’d been a jerk to her. Or if he looked like an ogre. Or if his smile hadn’t just about made her forget how to breathe.

  This was gonna be hard. It would work, but she almost wished it didn’t have to.

  Kiley Kellogg was turning over a new leaf, going straight, creating a respectable life in her small hometown the way she’d always secretly dreamed of doing. Being that her father was in prison and her sister was dead, she didn’t think the message could’ve been any clearer; she needed to change her life if she didn’t want to end up like they had.

  But going straight required capital, and she only knew one way to make bank. She’d never been worth a damn at it, nowhere near as good as her dad and Kendra. A constant source of disappointment to them both, as a matter of fact. But if she wanted her home back, she was going to have to up her game.

  She had to con a billionaire cowboy into handing her half a million dollars. And she had to do it in a way he would never suspect had been a con at all, because she wanted to go on living in this town once the ranch was hers again. She might even consider paying him back.

  She got into her beaten and barely road-worthy car, and then drove it home. It was all of five minutes if you took your time. Right out of the parking lot of The Long Branch Saloon, two miles down, then right onto Pine Road. The ranch her mother had inherited and her father had pissed away, included both sides of Pine road, a full thousand acres of it, wide flat meadows and scrubby woodlots, generously watered by the Cimarron.

  Home.

  Her battered car’s headlights lit the rutted driveway and picked out what remained of stonework pillars on either side. There used to be a gate attached, but it was long gone. Just the rusted hinges remained, their orange-brown decay staining the stones.

  She shut the headlights off before driving on through. It wasn’t exactly legal to be squatting on the property before she’d bought it, but she couldn’t afford much else. The trip from New York had cleaned out most of her cash. Besides what she’d set aside for the auction.

  She had five hundred thousand dollars in cash, stuffed into a duffle bag, crammed behind the wall in the back of a bedroom closet. She and Kendra used to hide their diaries in there.

  She pulled all the way up to the house, and then drove around behind it, cut the engine and got out. Then she just stood there for a minute, looking around. The sky was so much wider here than in New York, a blanket of twinkling stars, spread as far as you could even see. No moon tonight, and hardly a cloud, either.

  When she was a little girl, she and Kendra used to sneak out on nights like this. They’d wander down to where the river meandered through the meadow, and spin until they were too dizzy to stay upright. Then they’d open their arms and fall backward into the deep grass and wildflowers, giggling until it was hard to breathe. When the laughter ebbed, they’d keep lying there. That was the best part. Lying there in the silence of an Oklahoma night, listening to the bullfrogs and grasshoppers and nightbirds, and gazing up at all those stars. Sometimes a fish would jump and splash in the river, or a bullfrog would croon a baritone lullaby.

  It would be good to reclaim her home, to be able to live there legally. Good to turn it into what she and Kendra had talked about as kids.

  She felt close to her sister there. Closer than she’d felt to her in years. They’d struggled so hard to stay in touch when their father had gone to prison and they’d gone into the system, moving from one foster home to another, never in the same one together. They’d made sure they never fell out of contact back then.

  And then they’d turned eighteen and had been booted out on their own. Kendra wanted to run games, con the wealthy, and get rich quick. Kiley wanted to take classes and learn how to make an honest living, so she only grifted when she had no other choice. They’d run one or two fairly successful games together, but they just didn’t see things eye to eye. Kiley felt guilty, which made Kendra feel judged. Angry fights ensued, and they’d drifted apart.

  She slid her hand into her big handbag and closed it around the black leather drawstring pouch that held Kendra’s ashes. “I’ve just gotta run this one last game to get the rest of the money for the ranch, Sis. Once it’s mine and no one can take it, I’ll spread your ashes here. Down by the big boulder on the riverbank.”

  Guilt gnawed at her belly. It was always the same. If she ran a game and failed, which happened more often than not, she hated herself for not living up to her dad’s expectations and her sister’s phenomenal skills. If she ran a game and succeeded, she felt even worse.

  All those people who’d sent her money through Go-Fund-Yourself.com for her non-existent Chihuahua’s make-believe prosthetic legs, haunted her dreams at night. It had been the most successful con she’d ever played. And it was still only half enough to buy her home back. To fund her dream.

  And that was why she had to go straight. She had never been any good at the game anyway. And if she started to get good at it, she thought that would be even worse. She just wasn’t cut out to be a criminal.

  One more game, and she’d have enough to get her home back. And that was it. No more.

  Kiley nodded, affirming to herself that all of her dreams were about to come true, and then she went inside, crawling through the same window she’d been using for the past few nights. The house was empty, but had been spruced up for potential buyers. She trailed her fingertips over the fresh paint as she went upstairs to the bedroom that had been her sister’s, walked into the closet and pulled away the board that covered up the hollow spot in the wall. Just inside the dark opening her sleeping bag waited, all neatly rolled up. The smaller green duffle contained most of her worldly possessions. Clothes and toiletries, mainly. The bigger green duffle held the cash. She hauled everything out except the cash, and dropped it all onto the bedroom floor.

  Her styrofoam ice chest full of food and bottled water stood in the farthest corner from the bedroom windows. There was no electricity turned on in the place, and it was summer and hotter than hell by day. But the century-old farmhouse stayed remarkably cool. Would stay cooler still once she put some curtains in the windows.

  She unrolled her sleeping bag, gave it a shake, in case of visitors, then stripped off her clothes, and crawled inside, tired and lonesome, but closer than ever before to her dreams coming true. She just wanted to snuggle down, close her eyes, and imagine how it was going to be.

  So she did.