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.
Chapter Two
* * *
When Kiley opened her eyes again, smiling lazily and stretching her arms, the sun was way higher than it ought to be, and blazing at the wrong angle through the bedroom window.
“Holy smokes!” She crawled to her clothes, rummaged through them for her cheap cell phone, and flipped it open. Five minutes to nine. The auction was at ten.
There wasn’t time for her usual early-morning bath in the river down back. She snatched clothes and makeup bag out of her rucksack, grabbed two bottles of water from the cooler, and ran for the second floor bathroom. Shoving the stopper into the sink, she poured the water into the spotless basin and did a fast wash-up. Face first, body second. Hair...ah, hell, hair.
It was a mess. She pulled a large-tooth comb through her curls, then piled them up on top and snapped a pretty clip into place. Then she slapped on a coat of makeup, and ran back to the bedroom and into the closet for the cash. She unzipped the duffle just to verify it was still there, and she hadn’t dreamed it. Stacks of banded bills and a waft of money-smell confirmed that it was indeed for real. She tugged the bag through the opening, and knocked a banded stack off the top of the pile. It tumbled further into the dark compartment.
“Dang! I don’t have time for this now.” She set the bag aside, and reached way into the opening. The stack of bills was there, on top of something else. Either two bundles had fallen or her money had multiplied overnight.
She pulled both items out into the light. A banded stack of bills, and a small book, with a lock and a tiny keyhole. It was purple with the words My Diary on the front in pink glitter.
Kendra’s. Kiley’s had been just like it, only pink with purple glitter. She had no idea what had happened to it. But this was definitely Kendra’s.
She landed on the floor, on her butt, and held the small book in hands that shook a little. Her throat went tight, and her eyes burned. She could’ve opened it without the key. Just a solid tug would do it. Or she could pick the lock with a hairpin, if she didn’t want to damage the thing.
But instead of doing either of those things, she just sat there, holding that little book in her hands, blinking down at it, trying to keep the hot tears from spilling over and ruining her mascara. “Dammit, Kendra, why did you have to die before we got the chance to make up?”
Sniffling, she put the diary into her purse. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’d give anything for another chance to say I love you.”
She got to her feet, brushed herself off. The auction would begin in a half hour. She needed to wash her hands one more time and get there before Rob McIntyre. No time to roll up the sleeping bag, repack her dirty clothes, or carry the rucksack and cooler down to the car just then. She left it all just as it was, hefted the money duffle by its shoulder strap, and ran to the car like her feet were on fire.
* * *
Rob McIntyre was having a mental tug of war inside his own mind. He didn’t quite know how he could bid against Kiley Kellogg for her childhood home. That girl seemed to want it way more than he did. But she�
�d also seemed full of blue mud, as his stepmother Vidalia would say, when she’d been talking about some priceless family heirloom that was going to fund her cause. She was a liar, and a very bad one. And while he couldn’t think of a single reason why she would lie to him, a perfect stranger, about some non-existent piece of priceless jewelry, he was sure she had.
He didn’t like dishonest women. He’d been badly burned by one, and he’d vowed to live his own life as honestly as possible from then on. He’d given up lies, even little white ones, and it felt good. He was waiting for a woman who was as honest as he was.
But for some reason, he liked Kiley. She was young, early twenties if he had to guess. And maybe he was drawn to her because she was all alone in the world, or maybe because she’d recently lost her sister. He’d seen the truth of that pain in her big topaz-blue eyes. Maybe it was because of the way she lit up when she started describing her plans for the ranch, or maybe it was because those plans were so unusual and creative and intelligent.
Or maybe it was just because she was pretty enough to knock the wind out of him every time she smiled.
He hadn’t slept a wink or stopped thinking about Kiley and the ranch all night long.
Knowing he’d see her at the auction gave him some kind of a thrill in the pit of his stomach and a case of the jitters at the same time, and he was pretty sure it also influenced him to put on his brown Stetson at just such an angle, and check himself in the bathroom mirror twice before heading out of his room and down the staircase that spilled into the dining room.
His younger brother Joey was already at a table in the empty dining room, his long legs stretched out from his chair, working on a chest-high stack of flapjacks. “Hey, Rob. Grab a bite before you go? I got more here than I can eat.”
“You’ve got more there than both of us could eat,” Rob said, veering off course to head to the table. He didn’t sit down, just grabbed a pancake, wrapped it around a sausage and swiped it through the half inch-deep syrup on his kid brother’s plate.
Joey lived in one of the rooms above the saloon, same as Rob. Their older brother Jason had bought a run-down place just beyond the west end of town, and was living there while fixing it up. Together with their father, Bobby Joe, they ran The Long Branch Saloon and brought tourists and their dollars into Big Falls.
“You gonna do it?” Joey asked. “Gonna buy that ranch?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I’m a little bit torn.” He took a big bite of his hack-job breakfast sandwich and said, “Guess I’ll decide when I get there. Wish me luck, little brother.”
“I’ll do more than that. I’ll be there for moral support. I’ll be over soon as I finish packing this breakfast away.”
“For a normal person, I’d say the auction would be over by then, but for you—I give it ten minutes.” Rob shoved the other half of his breakfast-roll-up into his mouth, then headed out to his big red pickup truck.
He drove into town with only fifteen minutes to spare, sticking to the speed limit over Main Street, though it killed him, then finally speeding up at the far end of the village. He was almost to the firehouse where the auction was being held, when he caught a glimpse of something in his periphery and then heard a big thunk on the passenger side fender.
He stomped the brakes so damn hard his body lurched forward. The seatbelt would’ve bruised him, if he’d remembered to buckle it. Slamming the shift into park, he dove out of the truck with his heart hammering, dreading to see what he’d hit.
Kiley Kellogg was just pushing herself up onto her hands and knees on the pavement. Her palms were scraped, and her eyes were tear-filled. “What the—” Then she looked up. “You?”
“Are you okay?” He reached down to help her up, and wished his heart wasn’t pounding a mile a minute. “I didn’t see you! Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, I’m just—” She patted herself down, then widened her eyes, and looked around as if on the verge of panic. “No, no, no. Oh, no!” She turned in a slow circle, then started pawing through the grass along the side of the road. “Oh, no, please, not now, not when I’m so close!” she cried.
“Kiley?”
She kept searching until he caught hold of her shoulders and made her stop, raising her gently up onto her feet again. “What are you looking for?”
“The ring!” She wasn’t looking him in the eyes, but still scanning the ground. “My grandmother’s ring. It must have flown out of my hand!” She pulled free of him and started looking again. “Oh my God, there’s a drain! What if it went down there?”
“Then you’re not gonna find it in time for the auction,” he said. “Not sure how you were gonna sell it in Tucker Lake and get back here with the funds in time either, but—”
“The jeweler’s meeting me here with a cashier’s check. Oh my God, what am I gonna do?”
Then she went silent for a minute and looked at him. “Wait a minute, why are you here? Are you here for the auction?”
“I uh...was interested in the ranch too,” he admitted. Even though he had a pretty strong hunch she already knew that.
“You didn’t tell me that last night.”
“Seeing how bad you wanted it, I was reconsidering.”
She lowered her head. “That was sweet of you, but now it’s over. Without that ring, I can’t afford it. Unless…I mean, would you...could you…maybe…loan me the money?”
“Loan you the money,” he repeated.
She shifted her gaze, lower and to the left. “You did hit me with your truck. I mean, look at me. You made me lose my grandmother’s ring.”
“I did, huh?”
She pulled out her phone. “Call the jeweler in Tucker Lake. Go ahead, it’s Skilman’s. He’ll tell you what he offered for it based on the pictures I sent him, providing the stones were real, which he was going to verify when he got here.”
Rob had no doubt the jeweler would do just that. But he wasn’t just handing her five hundred thousand dollars based on photos she’d sent to a jeweler. She could’ve got photos of a priceless ring off the internet, for crying out loud. He wasn’t an idiot.
And in that very moment, it became clear to him why she’d told him about the ring in the first place. To set him up.
And yet, he couldn’t quite bring himself to call her on her bullshit and walk away. There was so much hope, so much need in her eyes. And there was also a pretty significant chance he was jumping to the wrong conclusions based on his history, painting her with the old Paula brush. Probably not, but it was possible.
“How old are you, Kiley?” He blurted the question without thinking first, and knew it was rude as hell. But once it was out, it was out.
She blinked. “I thought cowboys were polite.”
“I’m only an aspiring cowboy.” He stood there, watching her and waiting.
She gnawed her lower lip, didn’t meet his eyes. “Twenty-three. What does that have to do with anything?”
It had a lot to do with everything, he thought. She was young. She was trying to con him, and she was terrible at it. But she was also beautiful, and heartbroken, apparently all alone in the world and desperate to reclaim her childhood home. Something about that just grabbed hold of his heart and twisted.
He was pretty sure he was about to do something really stupid. But everything in him was telling him it was the right move. He probably should have taken time to mull on it some, but there wasn’t really any time to take.
“I’m not gonna loan you the money,” he said.
“But—”
“But I am gonna help you.”
Her frown got even deeper. “Help me how?”
She sounded like she was accusing him of being up to no good. He thought it over for a long minute, waiting for the voice of reason to kick in and outshout his impulsive decision, but he found himself counting those freckles across her nose instead of counting the ways this could go terribly wrong.
“The auction’s gonna start any minute, Rob McInt
yre, so if you have some magic way to save me without giving me the money you just cost me, then spit it out.”
He figured he’d probably kick himself later. “You said you have enough for half, right?”
“If it doesn’t go for more than I think it will.”
He nodded. “Okay then. We buy it together. We go in as partners.” He watched her face.
She seemed to be casting around inside her brain for some kind of counter offer. Then someone stepped into the open firehouse doorway and called, “Auction begins in ten minutes!”
Kiley sent a desperate look skyward, chewing her bottom lip and getting teary eyed.
“My operation wouldn’t interfere with yours at all,” he said.
“I don’t even know what your operation is.”
“Horses. Quarter horses. I want to breed them, raise them, train them. There’s plenty of acreage for both. I’ll use the bigger barn for stables. You want the little one anyway. We could do this.” Then he shrugged. “But I get to live in the house. For now, at least.”
“But…we don’t even know each other.”
“It’s that or nothing,” he said.
“But…my grandmother’s ring!”
“Yeah, too bad about that,” he said. “Tell you what—if you find it, you can buy me out.”
“But…but that’s not fair.”
“Seems fair to me.” People were filing into the firehouse, taking up their seats. “Look, I’m just gonna go on inside now, get a good spot up near the front. I can buy the whole place myself. I don’t need a partner. If you’re not interested, I’ll just—”
“All right, all right!” she said quickly. “Okay. I’m in.”
“And I get to live in the house?”
“Yes, yes, yes.” She extended a hand his way. “Deal.”
He shook her hand, then said, “I’ve got to get the truck out of the road.”
Oklahoma Moonshine (The McIntyre Men #1) Page 2