Matchmaking with a Mission

by B. J Daniels

  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 siste
r 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 h
ow 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.