“It was just a nightmare,” she whispered to herself as she stepped to the window hoping for a breath of air … That’s when she saw him.

He wore nothing but jeans and boots, a towel draped over one shoulder as he sauntered toward the pond.

He disappeared behind the trees. A moment later she heard a splash.

The sound pulled her—just as the thought of the cowboy in the cool water of the pond.

She knew what could happen if she continued down to the pond. Just the thought sent a shiver through her. She took a step, then another. As she walked through the deep shadows of the trees, she felt excitement stir within her—and desire. She began to run.

At the edge of the trees, she stopped. She could see him swimming through the dark water, droplets washing over his brown skin, his back and shoulders shimmering in the moonlight.

She’d never seen a more beautiful man.

About the Author

USA TODAY bestselling author BJ DANIELS wrote her first book after a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist and author of thirty-seven published short stories. That first book, Odd Man Out, received a four-and-a-half-star review from RT Book Reviews and went on to be nominated for Best Intrigue for that year. Since then she has won numerous awards, including a career achievement award for romantic suspense and many nominations and awards for best book.

Daniels lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, and two springer spaniels, Spot and Jem. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards, camps, boats and plays tennis. Daniels is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, Kiss of Death and Romance Writers of America.

To contact her, write to BJ Daniels, PO Box 1173, Malta, MT 59538, USA, or e-mail her at bjdaniels@mtintouch.net. Check out her website at www.bjdaniels.com.

Stampeded

BJ Daniels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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This book is dedicated to Deb Lorene Mallory, a fan and fellow writer who has become a good friend. Thanks again for being such a wonderful guide that weekend in Billings. I had a great time and it was a treat to get to know you better.

Prologue

“Alexa? Alexa, wake up.”

The five-year-old came awake with a start to find her mother beside her bed. Her heart thumped in her tiny chest.

“What is it, Mommy?” she asked, her voice breaking. Just the sight of her mother beside her bed in the middle of the night filled her with panic. She struggled to come out of her sleep. Had she been screaming in her sleep with another nightmare?

Sometimes when she had nightmares, she would wake up to find her mother beside her bed, standing motionless, staring down at her. Like now, her mother would have that strange, eerie look in her eyes, the one she got when she was working with her clients.

“Honey, I need you to sit up and do something for me.”

Alexa loved her beautiful mother with her long, curly black hair, her wide violet eyes so like her own and the face of an angel. But she couldn’t help the shiver that ran through her. Sometimes her mother scared her.

She rubbed sleep from her eyes and pushed herself up, blinking at the shaft of golden light that spilled across the floor from the hallway. Her mother always left the hall light on and the door cracked open a few inches because of Alexa’s nightmares. The light from the hallway illuminated the empty, dark walls of her cavelike room.

“What were you thinking, Tallulah?” Alexa’s father had demanded. “She’s a child, a little girl, she should have a room painted pink with stuffed animals on the bed and clouds painted on the ceiling—not horrible black walls.”

“The black walls will keep away the nightmares,” her mother had argued.

But they hadn’t. And her father had finally given up arguing and left before Alexa’s baby brother had come along, and he’d never come back.

“It wasn’t his spiritual path to be with us,” her mother had told her when Alexa cried for her daddy. She missed the way he would hold her when she was frightened, the way he would smooth her long, wild dark hair with his big hand and the way he would rock her with soothing words until she fell back to sleep.

He used to call what Tallulah did for a living total nonsense. “Don’t let it scare you, Alexa. It’s all just mumbo jumbo, stuff your mother makes up for the fools who are silly enough to pay her.”

“Alexa?” There was impatience in her mother’s tone now.

She loved her mother and would do anything for her. The last thing she wanted was to disappoint her.

But she had seen how happy it made her mother when everyone commented on how much Alexa looked like her. Tallulah Cross wanted her daughter to be just like her in every way, and that was what frightened her more than the nightmares.

“Honey, I need you to look down at the end of your bed. What do you see?”

Her tiny stomach turned. She sensed how important this was to her mother. But Alexa didn’t want to look. She wanted to close her eyes tight and make her mother and whatever might be at the end of the bed go away.

But she always did what her mommy asked her. She was her mommy’s good girl, her precious girl.

Alexa sat all the way up and took a breath, wrinkling her nose. The air smelled funny and she felt the way she did when she rubbed a balloon on her hair—her skin tingly, the space around her filled with static. Her body began to tremble under the covers as she slowly turned to look toward the end of her bed.

Tallulah Cross made her living in a small room at the front of their house. She told fortunes to the tourists who came through town by looking into the future and talking to those who’d gone to the other side. Dead people.

Alexa had overheard her mother telling her friends that her greatest hope in life was that, along with her beauty, she had passed her “gift” on to her daughter. For a long time, Alexa hadn’t known what gift she was talking about.

Tonight, she knew. Just as she understood that this was a test and that if she wanted to be her mommy’s “precious little girl,” she must not disappoint her.

“What do you see, sweetie?” her mother asked, hope and something close to desperation in her voice.

Alexa tried not to flinch as she looked at the man standing at the end of her bed. He was tall. He stood funny, as if one leg was shorter than the other. But it was his face she would never forget, awake or asleep. Half of it was gone.

“You see the man, don’t you, sweetie?”

A sob caught in her throat. “No, Mommy.” It was the first lie she’d ever told and she instinctively knew it would come at a very high cost. But she didn’t want to be just like her mother, even though it would mean she was no longer her mommy’s special girl.

Alexa couldn’t bear to see her mother’s disappointment. Her heart ached as she closed her eyes, lay back down and pretended to go to sleep. It wasn’t until she heard her mother leave the room that she opened them again and looked toward the end of her bed, knowing the man was still there. Nor had he been fooled.

He stared at her with that one dark eye, then he gave her a conspiratorial wink and vanished.

Alexa shut her eyes tight, fighting tears. She didn’t want to see dead people. She didn’t want them to talk to her. She told herself she wouldn’t see them again. Nor would she see the future.

And she didn’t for twenty-three years.

Chapter One

Marshall Chisholm was no carpenter. He was learning that the hard way, he thought. He put down his hammer for the day and turned to gaze out at the Montana landscape through what would one day be his finished bay window.

While he spent most of his days on the back of a horse herding cattle, he’d fallen in love with this house the moment he’d seen it. Not that there was anything special about it—or even the view. The house was a two-story farmhouse that had been built in the late 1930s. But it had good bones, as they say, and it had spoken to him the moment he’d walked in. Not that he would ever admit that.

There was something about the place that appealed to him even though it had been vacant for many years. He’d known it would take a lot of work, but he’d been eager to get started on it.

Along with the house, Marshall liked the view of the rolling prairie. It stretched out across this vast part of Montana as if endless. Out here, he felt on top of the world. Through every window he could see to the horizon with nothing to break that view on three sides but sagebrush and Black Angus cattle—his family’s cattle.

The Chisholm Cattle Company ran more head of cattle than any other in the state and that took a lot of country. He also liked that as far as he could see, this was Chisholm land, most of it running to the horizon.

On the fourth side, the side this upstairs bedroom window faced, there were rolling grain fields and pasture, with only one structure on the horizon.

Marshall squinted as he noticed something different about the old three-story mansion in the distance. He’d looked at it many times since moving into this house. But this time he saw something odd.

Someone was over there.

That was such a rare occurrence that he picked up the binoculars he kept by the window and, peering through them, brought the huge mansion into focus.

He’d heard there had once been a small settlement around the mansion called Wellington, but all the other buildings had been gone for years. The only structure that remained was the monster of a mansion, or Wellington Manor as the locals called it.

The massive, old place must have dwarfed the other buildings that had been there years before and would have been ostentatious even in these times, let alone a hundred years ago. He’d heard stories for years about the family and the house, though he’d never believed them. People liked to think that old places had ghosts.

The last resident of Wellington Manor had died a year ago, an old spinster niece of the original owner, Jedidiah Wellington. Marshall had heard the place was tied up in an estate.

He frowned as he noticed there was a small red sports car parked under the cottonwood trees that flanked the house. The cottonwoods were fed by a small spring-fed creek that ended in a pond at the end of the row of trees. Marshall liked to swim in the pond since it was halfway between his house and the mansion.

As he scanned the scene, he saw that there was also a dark-colored large SUV parked behind the sports car.

How odd, he thought as he lowered the binoculars. Was it possible someone had bought the place? Or could it be squatters? His father had told him that drug dealers coming out of Canada would often stay in abandoned farmhouses, but he’d never seen anyone around Wellington Manor in the past year since it had been empty. The Canadian border was only about thirty miles away. The closest town to the south, Whitehorse, was another twenty miles. So the dirt road up to this part of the county didn’t get a lot of traffic—let alone tourists. He supposed it could be drug runners.

Marshall took one more look through the binoculars and saw yet another vehicle coming up the long tree-lined drive to the mansion, this one a small white SUV.

He didn’t know anyone who’d even been inside the mansion. Apparently Jedidiah Wellington and his family kept to themselves, and so had the old-maid niece who’d been the last one to live there.

His curiosity piqued and tired of carpentry work for the day, Marshall decided to saddle up and ride over to see what was going on.

ALEXA CROSS PULLED UP TO THE monstrous house with growing unease. The house looked like a hotel, looming three stories up with wings off four sides—not what she’d expected at all. When her brother had told her at the wedding that he and his new bride were remodeling her family’s old house in Montana, she’d pictured something smaller, set in the mountains with lots of rock and wood. Not this ugly monstrosity.

As she stared at the house, she thought of his recent call saying he needed her to come out for a visit. She’d heard something in his voice that had scared her.

“What’s wrong? Is it Sierra?”

“No,” Landon had said, clearly irritated. “My wife’s fine. We’re fine.”

Alexa wished now she’d never voiced her misgivings about her brother’s hasty marriage. But she couldn’t help worrying that he’d made a mistake and was now realizing it.

Both university students, Landon and Sierra had met while working in Yellowstone Park for the summer and had fallen in love. Alexa hadn’t even gotten a chance to meet Sierra before the wedding held at the old hotel at Mammoth Hot Springs until the day before the ceremony.

Sierra Wellington wasn’t the woman Alexa would have chosen for her brother, but she’d seen at once what had attracted Landon to the petite, pretty blonde. Landon, like Alexa, had taken after their mother. He had the curly, dark hair, the dark eyes and olive skin of what was rumored to be fortune-telling, gypsy ancestors.

The contrast between Landon and Sierra, Alexa was sure, had been part of their attraction for each other. That and a common denominator called Montana. Both had a tie to the state. Landon’s father had allegedly been born here—at least that was what their mother had told them. Neither Alexa nor Landon had ever met the man. Nor had their mother apparently bothered to get the man’s last name at the time of Landon’s conception.

Sierra’s roots ran deeper in Montana, with several generations of Montanans and a family house that still stood in what had been a town named after her great-great-grandfather.

“It’s this house,” her brother had said on the phone. “There’s something wrong with it.” When Landon had told her about the idea he and Sierra had to turn the mansion she’d inherited into a bed-and-breakfast, Alexa hadn’t shared their enthusiasm.

“You mean structurally?” she’d asked, relieved it was nothing more earth-shattering than a construction problem. Neither her brother nor his wife knew anything about running a bed-and-breakfast, and Alexa questioned the feasibility when the closest town was Whitehorse—apparently a small western town with a declining population. Not to mention that this wide-open prairie part of Montana wasn’t the one most tourists came to see.

She’d kept her reservations about their plan to herself though, fearing alienating her brother, who seemed as excited about the prospect as his wife.

“I know this is asking a lot, but I need you to come out here,” Landon had said. “I want you to see the house and tell me what you think. What do you say, sis?”

What could she say? He was her only family, since their mother had died a year ago. She would do anything for him and he knew it. Also she felt honored that he wanted her opinion.

“I’ll drive out this weekend.” It was a ten-hour drive from Spokane, Washington, where she lived and worked as a reporter. She could get a few days off from the newspaper without any trouble, and she hadn’t seen her brother since the wedding and was worried about him.

“It might take more than a weekend,” Landon had said, adding, “It’s a big house.”

The mansion was indeed big, she thought as she looked up at it. Big and ugly as if built by someone who wanted not to just impress but shock. There was nothing engaging about the structure. All she could hope was that it was more hospitable inside, since she didn’t like old houses. As she stared at it, she feared coming here might have been a terrible mistake.

Alexa climbed out of her white SUV as the front door opened and her brother, Landon, came out to her. He looked so happy to see her that she shoved aside her misgivings.

“It is wonderful to see you,” he said as he hugged her tightly. “Thank you so much for coming.”

She drew back to study him, thinking how much she loved him. Sometimes she forgot how handsome and sweet he was. Their mother had called him her “little prince.” Both of them had adored Landon, but somehow he hadn’t grown up spoiled.

If anything, he was too generous with his money and his love, Alexa thought, as Sierra appeared in the wide doorway.

“Welcome to Wellington Manor,” Sierra said with a grand gesture. “That’s what the locals call it and I think it fits the place. You’re early. Supper’s not quite ready. The others are either napping or in town for supplies but should be back any minute.”

“The others?” Alexa asked her brother.

“We have friends helping get the house ready for guests,” Landon said as he reached into the back of her vehicle for her suitcase. “Only one suitcase?” He looked disappointed as he hooked the strap of her bag over one shoulder.

“I travel light,” she said with a smile and reluctantly let him lead her toward the mansion. She could feel tension between her brother and his new wife and suspected it hadn’t been Sierra’s idea to invite her to come for a stay.

She wondered whose idea it had been to have these friends help get the house ready for guests; after all Sierra and Landon had given up their honeymoon to come here and get started on the bed-and-breakfast.

As they walked toward the front entry, Alexa noticed something that hadn’t registered minutes before. Her brother was rubbing his left arm.

“Did you hurt yourself?” she asked and saw him glance toward his wife before he answered.

“Just me being clumsy.” He put his other arm around Alexa and smiled at his wife in the doorway. Sierra smiled back and disappeared into the house, leaving Alexa with the distinct impression that her brother was hiding something for Sierra’s sake.

The moment she stepped into the house, she felt the cold. It instantly crept into her bones and made her shiver.

“It’s a bit drafty,” Sierra said, no doubt having witnessed Alexa’s reaction.

She could see that both Sierra and Landon were defensive about the house. She fought not to show the effect it was having on her. The mansion had once been opulent, from the marble foyer to the huge sunken living room with its massive stone fireplace to the ornate stairway that swept upward to the floors above. Hallways ran from the living area like spider legs, disappearing in the dim light.

“Isn’t it beautiful,” Sierra gushed. “I just love it. Can’t you see it as a bed-and-breakfast? Wait until you see the rest of it.”

Alexa smiled at her sister-in-law’s enthusiasm. The house had recently been cleaned but there was still a musty smell as if the rooms had been closed up—even though someone had been living here. Only a little light bled through the high leaded-stained-glass windows. Heavy velvet curtains hung next to the lower windows and while the glass had been recently cleaned, even the summer sun seemed to be having a hard time getting through.

“I’m sure you’re tired after your long drive,” her brother said, apparently wanting to talk to her alone. “Why don’t I show you to your room.”

“Oh, you’ll want a tour first,” Sierra said, sounding both surprised and annoyed at her husband’s suggestion.

“I would love one later,” Alexa said quickly. “Landon’s right. I would like to freshen up first.”

Sierra looked disappointed. “I’ve just been so excited to show you the house. My great-great-grandfather designed it, you know.” She gave a little pout but said, “I guess I’ll see how supper is coming instead. I think I hear the others pulling in now.”

“I’d love to see it after we eat, thank you,” Alexa said, relieved her sister-in-law hadn’t insisted. She sensed Landon’s need to talk to her, and whatever this was about, he hadn’t wanted Sierra to hear.

He was quiet as he led her upstairs through what seemed like a maze of hallways before stopping at an end room. Opening the door, he stepped back to let her enter.

“Sierra got the room ready for you,” he said, pride in his voice.

Alexa was reminded how much her brother loved his wife and how careful she had to be around Sierra so she didn’t hurt his feelings. She knew she wasn’t being fair. She barely knew the woman and chastised herself for not giving Sierra more of a chance.

“It’s beautiful,” she said as she entered the room. And it was.

The wood floors were buffed to a golden shine, and the huge canopy bed was adorned in white linens. An array of pillows were piled against the carved wooden headboard. An antique vanity stood against one wall, with two matching highboys and a loveseat and overstuffed chair on the other.

“The house came filled with furniture,” Landon said. “There is even more up on the third floor. The last resident used that floor mostly for storage. The place really is huge, isn’t it?”

He sounded nervous and while she was anxious to know why he’d gotten her here, she warned herself not to push.

“Sierra chose this room because of the view and the peace and quiet,” Landon said. “It’s the farthest from where the construction work is going on. We’re remodeling some of the lower rooms that were built as servants’ quarters.”

“The view is wonderful,” Alexa said as she stepped through the open French doors onto a small balcony. The land seemed vast and endless—just like the clear blue sky overhead. She’d never been to Montana before, but all the stories she’d heard about it seemed to be true. It really was amazing country. She could imagine what it must have been like when thousands of buffalo roamed it.

As she stared out, a cowboy on a horse came into view. Something in her froze. She stood transfixed as he rode from the stand of large cottonwood trees and into the sun and sage. For a moment she’d thought she’d conjured him up from her imagination because he looked so at home in the saddle with this landscape in the background. He wore jeans, boots, a red-checked western shirt and what she thought must be a Stetson resting on his longish, raven-black hair. A brown-and-white mutt of a dog ran along a few yards off to the side of his horse.

Alexa held her breath, wanting him to turn and look in her direction. She desperately needed to see his face.

Just when it appeared he would ride by without looking in her direction, he glanced up at her.

Chapter Two

Only two of the vehicles were still parked in front of the old Wellington mansion, the red sports car and the white SUV, Marshall Chisholm noted as he rode his horse by the house. The former street was no more than a narrow dirt lane with rows of huge, old cottonwood trees on each side.

The sports car had California plates, while the SUV was licensed out of Washington State. Neither rig looked as if it might belong to drug runners out of Canada hiding out here. The expensive sports car had a Montana State University sticker on the bumper. College students?

As he came out of the trees, he got his first close-up view of the house. He’d never paid much attention to the old place. Truth is, there was something about it that had always put him off. That and no doubt the stories he’d heard over the years.

Even up close, the mansion still didn’t draw him. There was nothing in its design or the size of the place that made him want to stop and look. It was the three vehicles he’d seen here that had him curious. He wondered where the black SUV had gone.

As he circled around the place, he looked up at the blank windows, thinking he should probably just go knock at the huge front door and introduce himself as the only neighbor.

He was chewing on that idea when suddenly a young woman with long, dark, curly hair, wide violet eyes and the heart-shaped face of an angel appeared on a second-floor balcony.

But it was what he saw behind her that startled him. His horse suddenly snorted and jerked her head, eyes wild as she reared up. His western hat fell off as he fought to stay seated. He’d never seen the mare react like this before and knew he was lucky he hadn’t been bucked off.

As he regained control of his mount, he glanced up again. The young woman was still standing there, but the image he’d seen behind her was gone.

She stood in the morning light, lithe, wraithlike against the darkness behind her. A vision. Her hair floated around her face, falling about her shoulders in stark contrast to the white of the blouse she wore.

His dog, Angus, barked, making him start again. Everything about being here was making him jumpy as hell. He told himself he was letting his imagination run away with him. That and the stories he’d heard about the mansion—even though he’d always said he didn’t believe a word of it.

“Hang on a minute, Angus,” he said, glancing at the impatient mutt before looking back at the mansion window. The woman was gone.

Marshall felt a knot form in his belly as he continued to stare at the window for several long moments, trying to assure himself he hadn’t imagined her any more than he’d imagined that other image standing behind her.

He wished to hell she would reappear just to prove to himself that she’d been real though.

You don’t really believe that was a ghost you saw.

Of course, he didn’t. But still there had been something about her, something ethereal, angelic. While what he’d seen behind her … He spurred his horse, chuckling at the strange trail his thoughts had taken. He didn’t believe in ghosts or haunted houses. Or evil spirits.

But as warm as the summer morning felt with the sun hot on his back, he felt a chill.

“ALEXA, DID YOU HEAR what I said?”

She stepped back into the room, but she couldn’t shake the rush of sensations she’d felt when she’d seen the handsome cowboy’s face. A strange, wanton desire—and darkness.

Both frightened her by their intensity. She recalled how desperate she’d been to see his face. How she had needed him to look at her.

She shuddered, shocked by what she’d felt as much as by the force of it. Often she got sharp first impressions, but she’d convinced herself that other people got them too and often didn’t recognize them. Everyone met people and in an instant decided if they liked them or not, and never questioned why.

Plain old intuition. She’d even convinced herself that her mother had probably merely been good at reading people, so of course her daughter had picked it up as well. Alexa wanted to believe that rather than the other possibility.

Since she was a girl she’d been haunted by the memory of waking to find her mother standing over her, telling her to look at something at the end of her bed.

Just the thought of it after all these years gave her chills, but she’d convinced herself that what she’d seen was nothing more than her imagination. Or part of a bad dream.

Unfortunately sometimes she felt things, sensed things, she didn’t want to know about. She’d found it easier not to get too close to anyone. As long as she kept her distance and her defenses up, she could live blissfully oblivious about the people around her and their fates.

None of her earlier sensations, though, had ever been as powerful as what she’d felt when she’d seen the cowboy’s face. Desire and darkness.

“Are you all right?” Landon asked as he touched her arm and she flinched.

“Yes.” She shook her head as if she could shake off what she’d felt moments before. It had been so potent. “I’m just tired. It was a long drive.”

“I hated to ask you to come….”

“No,” she quickly reassured him. “I’d been wanting to come for a visit.” Her brother reminded her of light. There was something so pure and innocent about him. He was loving and devoted, open and trusting.

Unlike her brother, she had never been open or trusting.

“You sounded strange on the phone,” she said as she drew him over to the loveseat between the two highboys. “I was concerned.” Alexa still worried why he had invited her here, almost pleading with her to come.

“I didn’t mean to trouble you,” he said, but looking at him she could tell something was wrong and said as much.

“Like I told you on the phone, it’s the house.”

“If you don’t want to remodel it for a bed-and-breakfast then—”

“It’s not that.” He seemed to hesitate, his gaze locking with hers. “You’re the only person I can tell this to who won’t think I’m crazy. The house is trying to hurt me,” he said dropping the words like stones into the room.

“What?” Alexa said, thinking she must have heard him wrong.

“You asked about my arm? A cabinet fell on me, but there have been other near misses since we got here.”

“Landon, do you realize what you’re saying?”

He nodded. “Do you remember when we were kids and Mother used to ask you if you saw … things that the rest of us couldn’t see?”

As if she could forget. Alexa got up and moved to the open French doors again. There was no sign of the cowboy she’d seen earlier. “Landon, I’ve told you. I don’t have the sight.”

“Mother was convinced that you blocked it. That you were simply afraid of it but that if you let yourself—”

“Mother was wrong,” she said, turning to face him. “This is all her fault,” she continued with a wave of her hand that encompassed the house. “If not for her beliefs, then you would never be thinking that because of some isolated accidents …” The rest of her words died in her mouth as she saw her brother’s crestfallen face. “This is why you got me here? To tell you whether or not this house is haunted?”

Her brother suddenly looked so young, so vulnerable, her heart nearly broke for him. “Something is wrong in this house,” he said with obvious fear.

Before she could question him further, there was a knock at the door.

“Please don’t say anything about this to my wife,” he whispered hurriedly.

Alexa felt sick to her stomach. She couldn’t believe this is why he’d gotten her here.

“So how do you like your room?” Sierra asked as she stuck her head into the doorway.

“It’s lovely,” Alexa told her, though still upset from her conversation with her brother. She was angry with him for getting her here under false pretenses and, at the same time, worried about him. Landon was scared. But he also had enough of their mother in him that he was prone to overreaction and flights of fantasy. His hasty marriage to a woman he barely knew and getting involved with this white elephant of a house were two perfect examples.

“You did a beautiful job,” she said to Sierra. “I really think you have a talent for this.”

Her sister-in-law beamed at the compliment. “I can’t tell you what that means to me.” She let out a pleased sigh. “Supper is ready. Afterwards I will give you a tour of the house. You really have to see it to appreciate how amazing it is.”

Landon followed his wife out of the room, hesitating only long enough to say to his sister, “We’ll talk later.”

As Alexa stepped out into the hallway, she felt a winterlike draft that stole her breath. She suppressed a shudder as she saw her brother watching her and realized Sierra was also intently focused on her.

Of course her brother would have told his wife everything about his family—Alexa included.

“HAS ANYONE HEARD ANYTHING about the people who are staying at the old Wellington place?” Marshall asked as casually as possible during supper at the Chisholm ranch that evening.

While he and his five brothers all had their own houses, they still had breakfast most mornings at the Chisholm Cattle Company main house—and were always expected for supper unless they were out of town or dead.

Their new stepmother, Emma, had a hard-and-fast rule about them being at the table on time, showered and shaved and without any manure on their boots. So tonight they were all seated at the table, his father, Hoyt, stepmother, Emma, and his five brothers, Dawson, Colton, Zane, Logan and Tanner.

“I heard something in town about a bunch of hippies moving into it,” Colton said as he helped himself to more roast beef from the huge platter in front of him. “You want Halley to check on it?” Deputy Halley Robinson was Colton’s fiancée.

Marshall chuckled at the hippie remark. Anyone from California with relatively long hair was considered a hippie in this part of Montana. The word covered a lot of territory.

He thought of the woman he’d seen at the window. “I think they might have bought the place.”

“That’s news to me,” his father said, frowning. “I’d have known if it had come on the market. I’ve been trying to buy it for years and was told the family wasn’t interested. Since the old woman who lived there died, the place has been tied up in the estate.”

“I wonder then if the people I saw over there might be related to the original owner,” Marshall mused.

“What is your interest anyway?” Zane asked, studying him.

“Just curious,” Marshall said, feeling all eyes at the table on him. He was a terrible liar and they all knew it. “I can see the place from my house. I noticed activity over there, three cars, and just wondered what was going on. As I was driving in for supper, I passed a local hardware truck headed out that way with a lot of supplies in the back.”

“You think they’re remodeling it?” Hoyt said. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to live in such a huge place. Unless they have something else in mind for it.”

“Are you talking about that old mansion north of here?” Emma asked. “I’d hate to have to heat that place in the winter. Why, it must have thirty bedrooms.”

“I heard the old woman who lived there last stayed in just a small part of the house, boarding up the rest,” Hoyt said, still frowning.

“Was it once a hotel or something?” Emma asked.

“That might have been the original plan,” Hoyt said, “but the community of Wellington died when the railroad came through twenty miles to the south. I still can’t believe anyone has moved in there with the idea of staying.”

In the silence that followed, Tanner said, “The place has a dark history. I had some friends who went out there one night. They said they heard a baby crying and when they left they were chased by a pickup truck that disappeared at the edge of town. Just disappeared.”

“I’ve heard stories about the Phantom Truck,” Logan said.

Emma laughed. “Oh, posh. You aren’t trying to tell me that the place is haunted or something silly like that.” She glanced around the table. “Hoyt?”

Her husband sighed. “Let’s just say that if a building can be haunted, it would be that one. The Wellingtons had their share of tragedies.”

“Ghosts are said to have been born out of tragedy,” Logan added and grinned mischievously.

Emma shook her head and turned to Marshall. “What do these people who have moved in look like?”

“I only saw one of them,” he said, then remembered the image he’d seen behind the woman and felt a chill snake up his spine. “She could have been a ghost.”

Emma shot him a disapproving look. “I’m asking if they seem like decent enough people and if they do, I think as their only neighbor you should go over there, introduce yourself and be neighborly. I’ll bake something for you to take.” She was already on her feet.

Hoyt was shaking his head. “You might want to get the lay of the land before you do that. Who knows who might have moved in there? We’ve had trouble with drug runners from Canada, escaped prisoners from Deer Lodge, criminals crossing the border through some barbed-wire fence and heading for the first house they see. Until you know who you’re dealing with—”

“Hoyt!” Emma chastised. “I’m sure all those instances were rare. I’ve read the local paper. There is hardly ever any crime up here. And Marshall is no fool. He’ll go over and meet them and make up his own mind. I’m sure they’re fine people if they’re remodeling the place and determined to live here.”

They all loved Emma’s positive attitude, no matter how naïve. But Marshall found himself poking at his food, his appetite gone as he remembered how his horse had spooked—not to mention his own reaction to what he’d seen just inside that balcony.

SUPPER AT WELLINGTON MANOR was served in the warm kitchen at a long, old table with mismatched chairs and dishes. The casserole that Carolina had fixed was delicious, and Alexa did her best to relax.

Carolina was a twenty-something, soft-spoken, pretty woman with blond hair, green eyes and porcelain skin. Her father, Sierra had said by way of introduction, had made his fortune in the hotel business. Carolina seemed shy and clearly embarrassed by Sierra’s introduction.

Her husband, Archer, was boisterous and big, a bodybuilder who apparently had been a football star until an injury had sidelined him. His father was a producer in Hollywood, his mother a lawyer.

The other couple, Gigi and Devlin, seemed cut from the same expensive cloth, both with parents who had retired to Palm Desert, California. Gigi’s long white-blond hair was pulled up in a ponytail, making her blue eyes seem even larger, her tiny nose all the more cute. A slender, athletic-looking young woman, she was in her twenties but could have passed for sixteen with her sweet, innocent face.

Her husband, Devlin, was a beach-boy blond with blue eyes. He laughed when Sierra introduced him as a rich kid whose parents owned a couple of vineyards in northern California. He’d had some wine shipped from home, which he poured with enthusiasm.

The lone wolf of the group was Jayden Farrell, whose father was an unemployed actor in Los Angeles, according to Sierra. Unlike the others, he was thirty-something and apparently hadn’t been raised privileged. But he was as movie-star handsome as the others, maybe even more so because there was intelligence behind his blue eyes that Alexa found both appealing and disturbing.

Not only that, Jayden also seemed to set himself apart from this group, watching them almost with amusement. Alexa doubted the rest of them had noticed the disdain for them that she glimpsed in his gaze. What was this single man doing here with these married couples, especially when she sensed he didn’t like them?

As the group around the table talked and joked, she and Jayden remained silent, she noted. She listened to them talk about their many university degrees, extended European trips and the benefits of growing up in sunny California.

None seemed to have professions, at least no jobs that kept them from helping their friends Sierra and Landon with their mansion, Jayden again being the exception. He’d made a point of saying that he’d studied business finance and would have to leave this fall to pursue his career.

The others seemed to see this Montana bed-and-breakfast venture as a lark, a great adventure, something to tell their friends about when they returned to their real lives. Jayden was more serious, which made Alexa all the more curious about his motives for being here.

Through all the laughter and camaraderie during the meal, Alexa found herself studying her brother. If she hadn’t known Landon so well, she might have thought he felt at ease with the assembled group, even though his roots were nothing like theirs. It was clear that Sierra had come from their world, though, rather than the one Alexa and Landon had grown up in. This made the reporter in Alexa curious, since Sierra had said she had been raised by a single mother in what she made sound like the Los Angeles projects.

Something was definitely wrong with that story, Alexa thought as she watched Sierra interacting with her friends. There was a gaiety to their stories. These young people had no worries—unlike her brother who seemed to be working hard not to show his.

Alexa also sensed tension within the group but couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it was coming from. All she knew for sure was that her brother’s forced merriment tonight didn’t fool her for a minute. If only their mother was here. Tallulah Cross would have sized up this bunch in an instant and known exactly what was going on.

Alexa hated that she felt bombarded by conflicting sensations in this house. Something was trying to break through the wall she’d built to keep these kinds of sensations out. For years, she’d feared she’d lied as much to herself as she had to her mother and brother. She felt things, things she didn’t want to feel. But if she truly had her mother’s gift, she was terrified of it, didn’t know how to use it and had done everything she could to block it for so long that she had no control over it.

Coming here had been a mistake and yet even as she thought about leaving, she knew she couldn’t abandon her brother. Not when she knew something was wrong in this house. He’d said he’d already had a series of accidents. What if he was right about something—or someone—wanting him out of the mansion?

By the time supper was over, Archer had the flushed face of a man who’d consumed more wine than anyone else. Sierra was in a friendly debate with Carolina and Gigi about the best sushi restaurants they’d ever gone to outside of California. Archer and Devlin excused themselves, saying they were going to try to catch the baseball game on television.

Alexa rose to help with the dishes.

“It’s Gigi and Landon’s turn to do the dishes,” Sierra insisted. “Come on. I want to show you the house.”

“Go on,” Landon said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

Alexa had hoped to talk to her brother after supper and wished the two of them could have done the dishes together, but Sierra was determined to show her the house.

“You have to see this,” she said as they passed through the huge living area. She pushed open two large carved wooden doors. “The library,” she announced with a grand gesture. The books on the shelves had been moved and stacked as if someone had gone through them, the thick layer of dust that coated the room disturbed.

“We have so much to do before the house is restored,” she said. “But I love this room and can’t wait to get to it.”

Closing the doors, Sierra led her down a hallway, pointing out the servants’ quarters, most of the rooms empty except for one that Jayden was using. In another wing there was a music room with an old piano, and finally the ballroom.

All of the rooms looked as if a little work had been done in them. Alexa had the feeling, though, that not much was getting done—at least from what she’d seen so far.

“Let’s take the back stairs,” Sierra said and led Alexa up to a wing of the second floor.

Alexa felt a little turned around and said as much.

Sierra laughed. “It does get confusing. That’s why I ask that you not go exploring on your own. It is too easy to get hurt, and who knows how long it would be before anyone found you?” She laughed as if delighted by the size of this place.

Alexa thought of her brother’s accidents and wondered how long it had been before he’d been found.

“We are in the north wing. Your room is in the east wing, Gigi and Dev have a room on the west wing, Carolina and Archer are on the south wing, Jayden’s on the first floor in the servants’ quarters. His choice,” she added quickly. “We decided we might as well stretch out and have our own space.”

She remembered at supper how she’d felt the others occasionally studying her with interest. She realized with a start that Sierra had probably told her friends about Landon’s sister’s “sight.” She groaned inwardly at the thought that everyone in this house would be watching her now.

“Jayden’s kind of a loner.”

Alexa mentioned her surprise that he had wanted to be here with three couples, as Sierra led her along a long, dark hallway.

“He’s one of the gang,” Sierra said. “I guess I was a little surprised too that he came with us. But we all loved him the moment we met him. Isn’t the house in great shape for how old it is?”

“Some relative of yours lived here most recently?” Alexa asked.

“My great cousin lived here until she died,” Sierra said. “I never knew her. Most of the rooms were closed off while she lived here. She stayed in one of the maids’ rooms downstairs, where Jayden is on the first floor.” She chuckled again. “The old maid in the maids’ quarters. It’s pretty funny. I doubt she even came up to these rooms.”

Alexa couldn’t help but wonder why Jayden preferred one of the small rooms for maids rather than the opulence—not to mention the views—of an upstairs bedroom. Maybe he didn’t hold himself apart only at supper.

As they left the catacomb of rooms and hallways to return to the main hall, she saw that the kitchen was empty. Gigi and Landon had finished the dishes. Alexa couldn’t wait to get him alone to talk to him again.

“Do you know where I can find Landon?” she asked.

Sierra shrugged. “I’ll tell him if I see him before bedtime.”

She got the feeling Sierra had no intention of telling him. “Thank you for the tour.”

“My pleasure, although I do wish you had waited until the house was done before coming for a visit,” Sierra said.

“Landon asked me to come now.”

Her sister-in-law raised a brow. “Did he? I wish he’d discussed it with me first.” She smiled and let out a small, humorless laugh. “I guess it isn’t that big of a deal. I just wanted everything to be perfect the first time you saw it.”

With that, Sierra gave a wave and disappeared down a hallway.

Alexa looked around the huge living room, thinking that her brother had made a mistake calling her. Not only had he upset his new bride, but also, she thought, spotting a Ouija board on the coffee table in front of the huge fireplace, he’d called the wrong person.

Landon would have been much better off trying to reach their mother.

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