Surprise Inheritance

by Charlotte Douglas

  “Jennifer, is that you?”

  Just the sound of his voice made her feel safer. She took a deep breath to stop her teeth from rattling. “I’m at the farm. Remember that Expedition you were looking for yesterday? I think it’s here.”

  “At the house?” The alarm in his voice sent her pulses racing again.

  “In the northeast field. Two men are walking around out there. I don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “I had Vickie drop me off.”

  She heard a muffled curse before he spoke again. “I’m on my way. Lock the doors and don’t let anyone in. Take Henry’s rifle from over the mantel and make sure it’s loaded. You know how to use it if you need to.”

  His tone had changed to calm reassurance, quieting her fears.

  “Maybe I’m overreacting—”

  “I’d rather check out a false alarm than have anything happen to you, sunshine. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  The phone clicked, closing the connection. Jennifer exhaled a sigh of relief. Luke was on his way. She had nothing to worry about.

  She crossed to the living room window, pulled back the dusty curtain and gazed toward the northeast field. The two men were still there, making sweeping gestures with their arms and occasionally pointing toward the house. Remembering Luke’s instructions, Jennifer hastened to the front door, threw the dead bolt, then returned to the living room.

  She went to the mantel and took down the Winchester hanging there, noting with dismay the trace of rust on its barrel. Henry O. Faulkner, Grandpa’s great-grandfather, had brought the gun to Montana over a hundred years ago when Cottonwood Farm was homesteaded. Jennifer recalled many winter nights in front of the fire when Grandpa had cleaned the rifle diligently and oiled it until the shiny barrel reflected the flickering flames.

  “The gun that won the West,” he’d proudly claimed for the Winchester, “and it’s saved many a Faulkner from wild animals—and a few wild humans.”

  Jennifer didn’t know whether the strangers in the northeast field qualified as “wild humans,” but she wasn’t taking any chances. Working its lever action, she chambered a bullet in the rifle the way her grandfather had taught her, tucked the gun in the crook of her arm and returned to the window to stand watch until Luke arrived.

  LUKE PRESSED the accelerator to the floorboard, coaxing every bit of speed from his vehicle’s high-powered engine. He started to turn on the light bar and siren, but decided against it. He didn’t want to scare the intruders off before he had a chance to question them.

  On the other hand, scaring them off before they had a chance to harm Jennifer would be a good thing. Not that he should be worried about Jennifer. Her grandfather had been a good teacher. Even after Luke’s weapons training at the academy, she had remained a better shot than he was.

  But she wasn’t accustomed to handling a firearm under pressure. If the men threatened her, would she be able to shoot to defend herself?

  Luckily, roads in this part of Montana were straight, flat and built for speed. Within minutes of leaving town, Luke was careening onto the dirt road leading to Cottonwood Farm. With the SUV throwing up a cloud of mud and water behind it, he barreled down the drive and screeched to a halt in front of the house. He jumped from the car.

  The front door flew open, and Jennifer raced to meet him.

  “They’re gone,” she said.

  “When?”

  “Just a few minutes ago.”

  “Which way?”

  “Northeast, over the hill. They could still be there now. I just can’t see them.”

  “Hop in.” He couldn’t leave her alone while he searched, in case the men doubled back to the farmhouse with mischief in mind. Besides, he was happy for any excuse to have Jennifer with him.

  She didn’t argue. With the Winchester in one hand, she wrenched open the door with the other. She was fastening her seat belt as he started the engine. If she was frightened, she didn’t show it, but either excitement or the rapidly dropping temperatures had reddened her cheeks to a rosy hue.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Just curious. Why would a couple of strangers be so far off the highway on private property?”

  “Could be they’re lost.” He steered onto the dirt road that ran alongside the creek, toward the rise in the northeast field where she had last spotted the strangers.

  Jennifer shook her head. “I can’t imagine who or what they’d be looking for in the middle of a fallow beet field.”

  Luke’s SUV crested the rise, but the strange black vehicle was nowhere in sight. Fresh tire tracks, how ever, were evident in the soil still soggy from melting snow. The ruts led to a road on the other side of the field. Luke followed them out to the main highway, where the residue of mud on the blacktop indicated they’d turned north, away from Cottonwood Farm and Jester.

  Luke turned north, too, but after traveling several miles at seventy miles an hour, he still hadn’t caught sight of the black vehicle. With a frustrated sigh, he pulled into a side road, turned and headed back toward Cottonwood Farm.

  “They obviously didn’t hang around,” Jennifer said. “They’ve probably crossed into South Dakota by now.”

  “If they were lost, maybe they’re trying to make up time in their schedule,” he said in his most reassuring tone.

  “Or maybe they realized they’d been spotted and were trying to get away.”

  At the fear in her voice, he shook his head. “Sorry. My paranoia over the millionaires must be catching.”

  Jennifer shivered. “Can’t remember ever having trespassers at the farm before. And I can’t help wondering what they were doing out there.”

  A sleeting rain had begun to fall and ice was forming on the windshield. Luke frowned at the worsening conditions and turned on the defroster.

  “Probably just tourists off the beaten track,” he said with an air of confidence, but his gut didn’t believe it for a minute.

  “Tourists in Jester? In late March? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Mayor Larson and some of the council are under the delusion that Jester could be a year-round tourist draw. Stranger things have happened.” He kept the banter light, but his attention was on the road, which was icing up fast in the slushy downpour. They’d be lucky to reach the farm before ending up in a ditch.

  “Like the pavilion collapsing?” she said. “Then catching fire?”

  “Wish you hadn’t brought that up.” He could feel his teeth grinding and the tension building inside him. Between the deteriorating driving conditions, the disappearance of the strangers and his residual resentment over Jennifer’s long-ago desertion, his anger was building like magma in a volcano, ready to blow. “I talked with the engineer from Billings. He said it will be several days before he can make his inspection, and Bobby Larson’s still on my case to have the park cleared.”

  The wheels lost their traction momentarily on a patch of ice. The SUV slid toward the opposite side of the road, and Luke cursed loudly.

  Jennifer gasped in alarm and grabbed the dash board. “Looks like we’re in for an ice storm.”

  Luke maneuvered the steering wheel to keep the vehicle on the road, and scowled through the windshield at the darkening sky. “According to reports, this storm wasn’t due until tonight.”

  They rode in silence, and Luke gave every ounce of concentration to his driving. With relief, he turned off the highway at the Cottonwood Farm entrance. Where less than an hour earlier there had been mud and puddles, now thick ice glistened as far as he could see. After several agonizing minutes on the frozen mud road, Luke pulled up in front of the farm house porch.

  “You’d better gather up your clothes,” he said, turning off the engine. “I’ll wait, then take you back to Gwen’s.”

  “Why?”

  Her question stoked the anger that he’d managed so far to control.

  “Because we don’t know what those strangers wanted and th
is storm promises to be a doozy,” he answered with all the patience he could muster.

  “I’m not ten years old anymore, Luke.” Her flare of temper was more enticing than petulant. “In this weather, those men aren’t likely to return anytime soon. And as for the storm, I can take care of myself.”

  “Alone out here without a car?” He realized that he was being overprotective, but he couldn’t help himself. “And what if the power goes out?”

  “There’s a woodstove in the kitchen and fireplaces in the other rooms. I noticed earlier that Grandpa left plenty of firewood stacked on the back porch.”

  “And if the phone goes out?”

  “Why would I need a phone? I have groceries, water, heat. What more could I want?” She climbed from the car and would have slipped on the icy driveway if she hadn’t grabbed the door handle.

  He raised his eyebrows. “A paramedic to set your broken bones? I think you just proved my point. It’s dangerous here alone.”

  “I’ve been alone for the past ten years.” Anger flashed in her eyes. “Why worry about me now?”

  She whirled on her heel, an amazing pirouette with the ground frozen underfoot, and stalked up the walk toward the front door, slipping twice, but somehow managing to remain upright and maintain her dignity.

  With his own temper blazing, fueled by the anger and blame in her voice, Luke released his seat belt, jumped cautiously from the car and followed her up the icy steps to the front door. She was fumbling with the key and had the door open before he reached her. He followed her inside.

  “When did you get to be so danged stubborn?” he demanded.

  She placed the Winchester and the keys on the hall table, flipped on the hall lights and turned to face him, her cheeks fiery, her eyes wide with outrage. “None of your business.”

  Before he could stop himself, he reached for her and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Then listen good, sunshine, because this is my business. Why did you walk out on me ten years ago, with no goodbye, no explanation, no nothing?”

  Her mouth gaped in surprise before she snapped it shut and shook her head.

  “You might as well tell me.” He kicked the front door shut to block the frigid wind howling in behind him. “Because I’m not leaving until you do.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE WARM, FAMILIAR pressure of his hands on her shoulders made Jennifer want to wrap her arms around his waist and lay her head on his chest, but the hard slap of his words sent her wrenching away in anger instead.

  “I gave you an explanation,” she protested. “You’re the one who never responded.”

  Confusion replaced the fury in Luke’s deep blue eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I left you a letter.”

  “Oh, no you didn’t.” Luke shook his head, anger suffusing his face with a fiery glow. “I specifically asked Henry if you’d left me a message. He said you hadn’t.”

  Stunned by his accusation, Jennifer sank onto the bottom step of the staircase that led to the second floor. She remembered vividly the two pages, hastily scribbled while her hand trembled from the shock of her grandfather’s rejection and her tears blurred the ink. “That’s not true.”

  Luke crossed his arms over his chest and considered her with raised eyebrows and narrowed eyes. “You calling Henry Faulkner a liar?”

  The wind howled around the corner of the house, rattling the windows, and the cold settled deep inside her until her heart felt like a lump of ice. She shook her head. “Grandpa never lied. There must be some other explanation.”

  Luke’s skeptical expression didn’t change. “Like what?”

  “He forgot?”

  “Even when I asked him?”

  Recalling the emotional turmoil of the day she’d left the farm brought tears to her eyes. “He’d just buried Gramma and banished me from the house. He wasn’t in his right mind.”

  “If there was such a letter,” Luke said in a voice laced with bitterness and disbelief, “wouldn’t Henry have run across it eventually and given it to me?”

  Hurt fueled her anger. “You’re willing to believe I’d tell a lie, but my grandfather wouldn’t?”

  Luke ignored her question and shivered in the frigid air of the unheated house, which was becoming colder by the minute. “We’re not going to settle this now or we’ll freeze to death. Get your clothes. We should head back to town before the weather gets worse.”

  She wasn’t going anywhere with a man who doubted her truthfulness. She pushed herself to her feet, marched to the wall thermostat and switched on the electric central heat. When she turned back to Luke, she tilted her chin in defiance. “I’m not leaving, but there’s no reason for you to stay.”

  The stubborn set of his jaw told her she was in for a fight. “I’m not leaving without—”

  A deafening boom shook the floor of the house, as if a bomb had dropped in the front yard. Jennifer grabbed the post at the foot of the staircase in alarm.

  Before the noise had stopped echoing through the house, Luke whirled on his heel, jerked open the front door—and froze.

  “What was that?” Jennifer asked.

  “You’d better come see for yourself,” he answered in a strange tone.

  She sidled past him onto the front porch and felt her mouth drop open in astonishment and despair. One of Gramma’s magnificent giant maples, its bare branches thickly coated with ice, had been uprooted by weight and wind and crashed down across Luke’s SUV, collapsing the roof and buckling the doors.

  Luke eased down the icy steps and skidded along the front walk. He tried in vain to open each of the doors and the rear hatch, but the bulk of the tree and the collapsed chassis prevented any access to the interior of the vehicle.

  The wind-driven ice stung Jennifer’s face. She’d never been so cold in her life. Added to the already unbearable pain in her heart over Luke’s accusations was the destruction of the maple that had been part of her life, a treasured memory of her childhood and grandmother. Jennifer’s misery was unbearable.

  Luke looked as miserable as she felt.

  Then it hit her. She had no car. Luke’s was undrivable.

  They were stranded.

  Alone.

  Together.

  For God-only-knew how long, until the storm ended and the ice cleared.

  What at one time might have seemed a romantic fantasy-come-true loomed before her like a night mare, with both of them mad as hornets and stuck with each other.

  “Looks like you’ll be staying here, too,” she said, struggling to keep her misgivings from surfacing in her voice, and to sound hospitable instead. “You might as well come inside before you turn to ice. That car’s going nowhere.”

  She stepped into the hallway, grateful for the puff of warm air blowing from the heating vent and the welcoming glow from the hall lights.

  Luke followed her and had to place his full weight against the door to close it against the increasingly powerful wind.

  “Can I use your phone to call Pine Run?” he said. “With me stuck here and my radio inaccessible on the front seat of the car, I’ll need a deputy assigned to Jester until this storm’s passed.”

  “Help yourself.” Jennifer gestured toward the phone and turned toward the living room. She stopped short at Luke’s curse behind her.

  “It’s dead.” He replaced the useless receiver in its cradle. “Ice must have downed the lines.”

  “At least we still have electricity.”

  No sooner had the words left her mouth than the lights in the hall went out, plunging the interior of the house into darkness. She could barely make out Luke in the feeble gray light seeping from the living room windows into the hall.

  “Gramma always kept Coleman lanterns in the pantry,” Jennifer said. “Candles, too.”

  She brushed past him, all too aware of the citrusy fragrance of his aftershave, his distinctive male scent and the palpable frustration emanating from him in waves, and headed for the back of the hous
e.

  “I’ll build a fire in the kitchen stove,” Luke said, close on her heels. “Good thing Dolly and Henry were sentimental about that old thing and didn’t throw it out when they bought their first electric range.”

  Jennifer was too preoccupied finding her way in the darkness to deal with the nostalgia of her homecoming, but she found herself listening, half expecting to hear Gramma’s bubbly soprano or Grandpa’s deep bass calling to her from another part of the house. The only sounds, however, were her own footsteps and the comforting tread of Luke’s boots behind her. She hadn’t lied about being able to take care of herself and not minding being alone, but she had to admit that, with the fierceness of the storm, the emptiness of the house and the sad circumstances of her return, she was glad even for Luke’s prickly company.

  Even if he had called her a liar.

  Then the full implications of his words hit her.

  Luke had never received her letter.

  No wonder she’d never heard from him. He believed she’d deserted him without a word of goodbye or explanation. Her heart stuttered at the possibility that he had really loved her, after all. Then despair flooded her again. With Grandpa dead and unable to support her claim, how could she ever convince Luke that she really had tried to contact him? And if he’d really loved her, would he ever forgive her for deserting him without a word?

  She stumbled in the darkness and told herself she’d better pay attention to providing light and heat for the house before worrying about shedding any light on her dilemma.

  When she crossed the threshold, gray daylight flowed into the kitchen from windows on two sides, and she could see more clearly than in the impenetrable darkness of the hall. The achingly familiar room seemed smaller than she remembered as she crossed to the pantry near the back door. Feeling her way in the closet’s blackness, she clamped her hands around the globe of a lantern on the bottom left-hand shelf, just where Gramma had always kept it.

  Jennifer picked up the lantern and was grateful to hear fuel sloshing in its base. After carrying the lamp to the round oak kitchen table, she turned to the shelf beside the woodstove. The container of kitchen matches stood in its usual spot, giving her an eerie sense of never having been gone a day, much less a decade. She grabbed a match and prepared to strike it, and was surprised to find her hands shaking so hard from the cold she couldn’t make them do her bidding.