He took her by surprise when he reached out and tucked a finger under her chin, looked at her steady in the eyes.

Her breath caught and she couldn’t move.

“I came all the way from the big city and have to tell you to relax, Willa?” he said quietly.

She didn’t know what to say. Obviously he could tell she was tense and nervous and on edge. Admitting he was what was making her so tense and nervous and on edge wouldn’t help matters, either.

“You’re about to get offended now, aren’t you?” he said. He let his hand drop.

He wasn’t touching her anymore, and damn, she’d liked it. Just that teeny, tender touch. She’d liked it.

She swallowed hard. “No.”

“All right,” he said, his voice still soft. “Then I’m making progress, aren’t I?”

“Progress to what?” she blurted out. Not a question she should really be asking, but there it was. She wanted to know the answer.

Dear Reader,

Something supernatural this way comes…. Anything can happen in one tiny West Virginia mountain town where an earthquake triggered positive ions and a wave of paranormal activity. In High-Stakes Homecoming, Penn Ramsey comes home to Haven to claim the old family farm…only someone else has already claimed it—and she’s one tough competitor in this battle of opposing wills. Willa North is also the love that broke his heart, and soon they’re mysteriously trapped in the old farmhouse together. Is the house enchanted, or is someone with a secret agenda terrorizing them both? Only by discovering the truth can they hope to survive…. and claim the happiness together that is their true inheritance.

This book, in part, as are all the HAVEN books, is based on my own farm in the hills of West Virginia—though I hope nothing this scary ever happens here! It’s far, far more fun to simply imagine, and I hope you’ll come with me as you open the pages of this book.

Romantic, chilling and otherworldly…welcome back to Haven, WV!

Love,

Suzanne McMinn

High-Stakes Homecoming

Suzanne McMinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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SUZANNE McMINN

lives by a lake in North Carolina with her husband and three kids, plus a bunch of dogs, cats and ducks. Visit her Web site at www.SuzanneMcMinn.com to learn more about her books, newsletter and contests. Check out www.paxleague.com for news, info and fun bonus features connected to her PAX League series about paranormal super agents!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Coming back to West Virginia would be a big mistake.

The anonymous text message he’d received on his cell phone just that morning came back into Penn Ramsey’s mind at the exact moment he slammed on his brakes, barely avoiding a six-point buck leaping across the rough, rock-based road, and just as barely avoiding a skid off a sheer, thirty-foot drop in the process. The haunting backcountry, with its thick, wild woods and narrow, twisting byways, was as unforgiving as it was forbidding. Rookie mistake, swerving to spare a deer’s life, when the maneuver could cost your own.

Yeah, coming home was a mistake. He couldn’t argue with that one.

He stared at the buck, where it had stopped frozen in his high beams. A tight beat passed, and then the animal turned, bounded madly up the opposite bank, and disappeared. Penn wondered again who would have sent him that cryptic message, a message that was either a mysterious note of concern or a sinister and veiled threat. He couldn’t come up with an answer now, any more than he could while he’d been sitting on the plane.

Penn waited an impatient beat to make sure Bambi didn’t have company. Despite his mistake, he had grown up in the country, and where there was one deer, there was often another. When none appeared, he pressed the gas. The rented Land Rover bounced on the rugged road. It was just starting to rain, and fog slid phantom fingers across the narrow lane as he came around the next bend.

New York City’s blinking neon, blaring horns, and skyscraping buildings seemed a planet away. The countryside outside Haven, West Virginia, was as he remembered from his childhood, some kind of lushly-forested alternate universe, filled with memories and ghosts, overgrown hills and meadows—and quiet. Way too much quiet.

Quiet in which to remember, reflect; to once again experience guilt.

The fog cleared and he spied a porch light down below the road, saw the mailbox with its cheap, stick-on gold numbers and letters flash in his headlights. The box leaned over as if it had been run into one too many times, but the address remained—2489 Laurel Run Road.

He was four miles from Limberlost Farm, he knew that now. He knew that because he knew exactly how far it was from the old family place to 2489 Laurel Run.

A big, old black walnut tree stood in a curve two miles up, halfway between Limberlost and that house on Laurel Run. The sweet spot. He and pretty Willa used to meet there when he was young and dumb and full of…

He slowed the Land Rover as fog rolled over the road again, windshield wipers slapping at the persistent drizzle outside the vehicle. He passed the black walnut tree as the fog swept in and out, playing chicken with the road. Willa’d gotten married and moved to town, last he heard. Granddad was dead. He’d kept in touch with a couple of his old football buddies for a while, but he’d lost track of them a long time ago.

He’d bet he didn’t know a soul on Laurel Run these days. Not that many souls remained, from what he knew. He hadn’t seen a porch light since he’d passed Willa’s old place, and it was at least four miles since he’d left town after stopping for gas, and had turned down this godforsaken, unpaved road to nowhere.

You can’t go home again. But here he was.

Turning around sounded real good.

The mist cleared away again, long enough for him to see in his beams that, yeah, the bank still fell off sharply to his left and the hill rose just as steeply to his right. No escape. He had a purpose here, and he couldn’t leave till it was done.

Limberlost Farm, its four hundred acres, orchards, fields, ponds and river frontage, was worth something; maybe not a whole lot in a backwater town like Haven, but something. And all he had to do was live in the ramshackle of a farmhouse—that was likely halfway falling off the hill by now—for thirty days before he could sell it. Seed money, that’s what he needed. Limberlost was his seed money.

Damn his cousin, Jess, for getting the money up front in the will. Penn got stuck with the property and its encumbering requirement of a month’s residency to claim his inheritance. He would have fought the ridiculous requirement, but the executor of the estate had warned him that would only complicate the probate process. Penn could complete the month’s requirement before the will even reached the probate judge. Bottom line, he wanted the money. Whatever would get him there quickest.

He’d been the top-producing marketing director at Brown and Sons Ltd. when he handed in his resignation, but he wasn’t a Brown or a Son. Launching his own firm wasn’t just a dream anymore. One month of hell. It was worth it. Then he’d put the place up for sale and take whatever he was offered. Good riddance.

He fought a burst of guilt. He had a right to live his life the way he saw fit. He might have been born here, but he’d gotten out as soon as he could.

The farm shouldn’t be much farther. At least, if he remembered correctly. The wildly wooded bank to his left leveled out as he came down the last rolling hill, where the road would reach the bottom land and open pasture. He saw teetering fence posts, slumping wire. The dark, the gloam, the decaying rural scenery—it was right out of a horror movie.

He saw a flash of light in the mist. An animal sprang onto the road ahead. A calf, this time.

Fog curled in sharp again, blinding him.

He hit the brakes, but the car only picked up speed as it ran down the slope. He slammed harder on the brakes, uselessly—adrenaline shot through his veins. He couldn’t see, couldn’t stop—

No brakes.

The fog cleared. The calf stood straight ahead, staring into his headlights, frozen. Penn swung the wheel to the right. The calf bolted, in the same direction. Penn veered to the other side and—

All he knew was, that wasn’t a calf he struck.

It was a woman.

Willa hit hard, flat on her back. Sprinkles dotted her face. Rain. She lay there for a timeless stretch, aware of only the ominous sound of the growing storm around her. Wind. Cold.

Hands grabbed her shoulders, strong, urgent.

“Are you all right?”

She blinked, desperately working to clear her vision, pushing back tears that sprang out of nowhere. Reaction setting in, almost impossible to believe. Hit. She’d been hit. By a car.

His car. This stranger. She could see nothing of his face, just the gleam of his eyes. Her pulse thumped, kicking into gear out of shock. His voice sounded distantly familiar. Confusion left her blank, even as something deep inside clanged a warning she couldn’t quite grasp.

Beneath her, she felt the rough rubble of the road. She struggled to make sense of her surroundings, remember where she was. The broken fence. The calf. Then—

That car, out of nowhere. Oh, God.

Sick horror gripped her. She pushed up with her hands, fighting past the arms that tried to hold her down. She had to see if she was okay, she had to see if anything was broken. She didn’t have time to not be okay. She had the farm, Birdie, everything—too much. And it was all on her, by herself.

Relief nearly collapsed her backward when she realized her arms and legs were all right.

“I’m okay,” she cried, pushing at the stranger holding her again. “Let go of me! I have to get my calf!”

“Forget your damn calf!” he grated back angrily. “You were just hit by a car! We need to get you to a hospital to be checked out!”

Where was her flashlight? Headlights framed the stranger bending over, leaving his face in darkness. Headlights from some sort of sport utility vehicle that was even now rammed into the stone pillar at the side of her gate. Fabulous. He’d nearly hit her calf, hit her, then hit her gatepost. She was lucky he hadn’t plowed through the fence she’d just finished fixing, or plowed into her while she’d still been fixing it.

Her truck, her beat-up old Ford pickup truck, was still parked in the drive, undamaged. Thank God. She needed her truck.

Rain splashed down on them, harder now. She had to get her calf in. She had to get back up the hill to the house. Her four-year-old daughter was there, alone, waiting for her.

“Get off me!” she yelled, pushing against him with more strength now, even as his firm hands moved up and down her arms, down her body, as if checking her over. She didn’t need checking over. Not by a hospital, and certainly not by him. “I’m fine.”

She scrambled to her feet, managing to slip out from under him with a sudden move. She was fine. She was standing. Dazed, aware of an aching throb through her body, and fearsome rumblings of thunder from the dark sky above. It would be pouring soon.

He came after her, seeming taller and bigger with every step. She almost choked because she’d forgotten to swallow. It wasn’t just his voice. His shape and form were frighteningly familiar. She felt a wave of dizzy fear that made no sense. She couldn’t know him. She hadn’t been expecting anyone.

“I still say you should be checked out at a hospital,” the man said again. “You could have a concussion.” He raised his voice over the buffeting wind.

She struggled to keep her feet, even as her knees wobbled. “I’m fine,” she repeated. “And I don’t really care what you say. I stood up too fast, that’s all.” She didn’t want to admit that maybe she was just a little scared of him, or that her dizzy, sick sensation meant anything at all. She turned slowly, looking for her flashlight. She spotted it at the edge of his beams and went for it.

It was dead, totally dead. She’d dropped it when he hit her, along with the pliers, hammer and staples she’d been using to fix the fence. She reached down and grabbed the rope halter she’d brought to get the calf in.

Swinging around, she looked into the fog swirling past the road, swathing the bank. Her pulse thumped painfully. Dammit, dammit, dammit. She couldn’t afford to lose anything, including that calf. Limberlost Farm was on a perpetual brink of disaster.

“Calf’s gone. You’ll find it tomorrow.”

She swung back at him, irritated mostly because he was right. And arrogant about it.

“Would you leave me alone? Get in your car! Go away! Or get me your insurance information.” How disoriented was she? She’d almost forgotten that vital point. “You hit my gatepost.”

Not that it was some fabulous gatepost. It was old and crumbly. Whatever. He’d run into it.

“I hit you, too.”

“I know that! I’m not going to the hospital. I don’t need to. Nothing’s broken. Just tell me who your insurance people are and your name and back your car on out of here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

Her pulse thumped again. She stepped toward him. He stood just at the edge of the beams. God, he sounded familiar. And looked familiar in that edge of light…. Sheer instinct made her want to shrink back, but she didn’t shrink from anyone, not anymore.

Dangerous, that’s how he looked. Tall, powerfully built, dressed in jeans and a dark T-shirt under a leather jacket. Athletic shoes, not boots. He didn’t look like he was from around here, or sound like it either, and yet his voice rang a bell. His face was all sharp planes and angles cut in shadows. She couldn’t make out the details of his face, but she was almost positive he was good-looking. He was arrogant, wasn’t he?

He definitely looked big and bad, which made her attempt to play at big and bad herself rather emptily.

“What do you mean?”

“My brakes. They’re dead. That’s why I couldn’t stop the car. I tried not to hit the calf and…”

He’d hit her when she’d run into the road after it. Stupid move on her part. She was lucky to be alive, lucky he hadn’t more than struck her with the corner of his bumper, which was just enough to knock her down. He’d swerved into her gatepost to keep from hitting her dead-on. Or she might be…dead.

Then her brain kicked in and she realized what he’d just said. His brakes had failed. He couldn’t get out of here in his car. It was dark and rainy and late.

And stranded. Just what she needed to top off her evening. A stranded stranger.

“Where were you going?” As if she felt like ferrying him anywhere. But she couldn’t leave him here at the side of the road under these conditions. Even if he had just hit her and damaged her property and seriously annoyed the hell out of her.

He jerked his head at the drive. “Here.”

“Uh, what?”

“Limberlost Farm.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s mine.”

Double blink. Had her hearing been affected?

“You’re mistaken.”

“I don’t think so.”

Now she forgot to breathe for a full beat. What was going on here?

“This is my farm,” she said. Rain, soaking her now. She didn’t care. Who was he? She was just about to ask that question but he beat her to it.

“Who are you?” he asked, and stepped toward her into the light from his beams.

Fully into the light.

Before she could open her mouth, he answered for her, his voice oh-so-familiar, and she knew exactly why. Oh yeah, she knew why he was so familiar and why she was so scared. Her head reeled.

“Willa?”

Chapter 2

Total panic, that’s what Penn read in Willa’s eyes. Willa…North these days. She’d married Jared North. Five weeks and three days after Penn had left Haven, not that he’d counted or cared or paid much attention at the time. Liar.

But he’d certainly made a heroic effort to forget about her after that. At least until tonight. There was no driving down Laurel Run Road without thinking about Willa, but running into her—Literally. That he hadn’t expected.

He was stunned, knocked off balance by a barrage of feelings—regret, anger, pain—as he stared for one pounding, frozen moment into her pale, shocked face, while the storm seemed to recede around them, leaving them on a planet all by themselves. She stood there in the light, and he was speechless.

It was her, it was really her. She was a mature woman now, not a teenage girl, but all he could see in those lost, scared, hazel eyes was the girl he’d once held in his arms.

He’d thought she was perfect fourteen years ago. Delicious, sweet, innocent Willa, with her apple cheeks, sparkling river-green eyes, ribbons of wavy, gold sunshine tumbling around her shoulders. Totally oblivious to her power over every boy in town—especially the boy who lived up the road and watched her picking corn, riding her horse, swimming in the river…. Walking down the road to the river right past his granddad’s farm in her itsy-bitsy bikini, carrying a damn parasol, for Christ’s sake, like she’d just stepped out of a wet dream and into real life.

It’d been all in fun at first, then it had turned so wild, so hot, that they’d burned each other to the ground in the end. And what a bitter end it had been. He wasn’t proud of his own behavior, but there was nothing good he could have said about hers.

He didn’t have any excuses to give for the past, but neither did Willa. She had betrayed him, not the other way around.

She was still gorgeous. Drop-dead gorgeous. And she still had it—that regal air, that natural elegance, even as she stood there soaked to the bones in jeans and a work shirt that did nothing to hide the fact that her body had lost little in the translation from teenage girl to mature woman.

He felt a buzz, like some kind of electrical charge zapping through him. He hadn’t felt that kind of buzz since….

No, don’t even go there. He wasn’t that stupid. His body might be that stupid, but not his brain. And he was no teenage idiot anymore.

“You’d better start walking.” Willa whipped around—oh yeah, she was still regal—and headed for the piece of crap pickup truck in the beaten-down rock drive.

“Not so fast.” He was on her in a heartbeat. Penn took her arm, stopped her in her tracks. In the past, he knew what her game had been then, or had by the end of things. She was a player, a user, a cheater. What her game was now—that’s what he was going to find out.

A shocked breath escaped her at his grip.

“Get off me,” she yelled at him, trying to shake off his grip.

She was surprisingly strong, but she wasn’t stronger than him.

Rain lashed down. “I think we need to talk.”

“I don’t think so,” she spat. Those green eyes rolled hot at him. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but this is my farm. Go back to New York City or wherever you came from, Penn Ramsey. Leave. Turn around and walk away! You’re good at that!”

That shine in her eyes almost looked like tears, and that socked him hard. He shoved the feeling back. This was some kind of scam. Otto P. Ramsey had died six weeks ago while Penn was working on an overseas account, his last trip for Brown and Sons. He hadn’t made it back for the service. The executor of the estate had sent him a letter and Penn had gotten in touch with him immediately on his return. He’d had the will for a few months. Otto had sent him a copy before his death, and he’d been too busy to do more than briefly argue with the old man over the phone about its details. The executor’s warning had convinced him to give up fighting the residency clause. He’d spent the last month arranging his life so he could give up thirty days to fulfill the requirements in the will before coming out to West Virginia. He’d shuttered his apartment, handed in his resignation, and gotten on a plane.

There had been nothing in that document about Willa North. Hell, he had no idea what Willa North had to do with Otto at all.

“I want to know what the hell is going on here, Willa, and I want to know now. This is my farm. I’m here to claim it. If you’ve been squatting here, that doesn’t make it—”

“I’m not squatting anywhere! This is not your farm, it’s mine. I live here, and I’ve been living here for over a year, and if you were ever in touch with your grandfather, maybe you’d know that.”

If she was trying to make him mad, she was doing a fine job. Yeah, he’d been out of touch much of the time, but not completely, and his grandfather had never mentioned Willa.

And on top of that, he was almost speechless at her gall. Or maybe he just liked being angry with her. It felt good. Better than guilt. He had plenty to be angry with her about, going back fourteen years, so it was no effort.

“When I did or didn’t talk to my grandfather is none of your business. What is my business is this farm. Who else is living here? Jared?”

Wow, bitter, that tone in his voice. He hadn’t expected that from himself. Anger, yes, but bitterness? Jared could have her.

“No. Not that it’s any of your business,” she told him through gritted teeth.

He barely caught her voice over the storm. Maybe they were both crazy, standing there arguing in the pouring rain. And what did she mean by that response anyway? Were she and Jared divorced then? Not the point, he reminded himself.

“I want you to leave,” she repeated. “If you want to contest the will—” She looked terrified and determined all at once. Her hair—short, not long like he remembered it—plastered to her cheeks. Her clothing soaked to her body. “Then fine. You do that, hotshot! Talk to my attorney.”

Like she had an attorney. He could tell she was bluffing on that one by just looking at her frightened face. She was driving some beat-up piece of crap and squatting on a farm that didn’t belong to her.

Maybe she really had been living with his grandfather. The old man kept secrets, he knew that. Or maybe she’d moved in after he died. She was an opportunistic excuse for a human being, he knew that, too. Maybe she thought he’d never show up to claim his property and she’d live there for free forever.

She had another think coming. He was smarter than she’d bargained for, fourteen years ago and now.

“Brilliant, Willa. Just brilliant.” He dropped his hold on her arm, suddenly unable to bear the contact. “Now, why would I contest anything? The farm is mine. And if I have to go to the legal system to get you removed, I’ll do it.”

“It is not your farm.”

“Are you crazy?” He was on the verge of losing his temper completely.

But she was so insistent, he could almost believe for a second she was telling the truth—or thought she was telling the truth—and the feeling bugged him. What if she really did have mental issues? She didn’t look crazy. She looked angry and upset and scared. But what did he know—other than that he was going to be a hell of a lot more pissed off if he had to walk six miles back to town in the rain.

“The farm was left to me in the will.”

It took him a full thirty seconds to realize that it wasn’t just he who had said those words, she’d said them at the same time.

Their gazes locked. He felt the shock roping between them.

“You are the crazy one,” she breathed, so raw and soft he couldn’t hear her. But he saw her lips move, knew what she said. She was shaking, visibly now, and white as a sheet. “Get out of here!” She yelled that. There was no missing it.

She tore off suddenly, leaving him stunned just long enough for her to get in the old Ford. The engine rattled to life and, in the light from the dash’s interior, he could see her reach first one way, then the other, slamming down manual door locks.

The truck rammed backward, sliding on gravel in the drive, then reared forward. Was she trying to run over him? He jerked back, almost losing his balance in a dip in the gravel drive, and sidestepped out of the way.

Red taillights disappeared up the hill.

Son of a bitch. He started walking.

The house was pitch black.

“Birdie?”

Willa slammed the side door of the farmhouse as she barreled inside, turned back just as quickly to hit the bolt, then ran for the front door and then the back door, making her way by perfect memory, and bolted those, too. She wouldn’t put it past Penn to come charging in here, since he seemed to think he owned the place.

“Birdie!” she yelled again.

She heard the telltale sound of Flash’s doggy nails padding through the house toward her. A second later, the hound—part basset, part whatever—was pawing at her legs, then dropping down to go check his food dish.

The old house creaked in the wind outside. Had to be a tree down somewhere. Electricity was the first to go out here. Phones next. She fumbled for a phone, checked the line. Dead, as expected.

Cell service was only a fantasy in the country, so the isolation was quick and complete.

If Penn came stomping up here, she’d have no way to call for help. She stood there in the old house, a shiver crawling up her spine.

Creepy, that’s what this house was sometimes in the dark, in the storm, during lonely nights. Yet she loved it, every crumbling inch of its Gothic architecture. She’d moved in the week of the Haven earthquake, and sometimes the town’s collective, overly active imagination about the consequences of that so-called “perfect storm” of low pressure, dense moisture, and geologic instability, niggled at her mind.

She’d seen the bursts of red lights right here on the farm, the same mysterious lights that had been talked about in town and on cable news, when a paranormal detective had been interviewed. Foundational movement for oncoming paranormal activity, the spokesperson for PAI, the Paranormal Activity Institute, had claimed. Nonsense, of course.

Most people had been scared that night, but for some reason, Willa had felt folded in, protected. Nothing on the farm had been damaged. The house, with all its aged faults, had held its ground, while the building in town where she and Birdie had rented an apartment, had crumbled. She had come to this house at just the right time, and the house had saved her. She knew that was fanciful dreaming, not anything supernatural, though. And those moments when she got a little creeped out? That was just the insidious whispers in town about strange happenings getting to her…and the dark, sometimes lonely nights.

The house breathed history, history she didn’t have on her own, and to her, it also breathed the future. It was hers! Penn and his cousins had been treated fairly in the will. They had nothing to complain about.

Where had any of them been during Otto Ramsey’s dying days?

Who had cared for him out of love, not money?

Not a one of his grandchildren. And she had loved the old man, despite his sins. He had been like her own grandfather, the one she’d never had in her own, torn-up, far-flung, dysfunctional family.

She called Birdie again, headed through the dark house for the kitchen, Flash at her heels. Maybe Birdie was sleeping. She needed a flashlight. And she didn’t even want to think about Penn Ramsey, much less how much trouble she was going to be in if she had to come up with the cash to fight for what she’d been given. She didn’t want to think about how awful it had felt right down to her bones to see him, either. What he’d said about the house being left to him in the will…

Total crap.

Maybe he had an old will. Otto Ramsey had written a new one, and left the farm to her. He’d left investment money to his niece Jess, and the same to Penn. Another old family property had gone to his other grandson, Marcus, who’d moved into a house out there years ago and didn’t care about Limberlost any more than Penn and Jess ever had.

What if she was the one with an outdated will, and Penn had a newer one? No, no, she was so not going to think that way. She couldn’t believe Otto Ramsey would do that to her.

Not after what had happened. Not after how he’d promised her to make up for it.

She owned this farm. She and Birdie. He’d promised it to Birdie as much as he’d promised it to her. He’d doted on the girl. He wouldn’t do this to Birdie.

Willa reached the kitchen, called Birdie and held carefully still, listening to the old house breathe. Birdie was a light sleeper. Surely she would wake up as she’d called her. But…

No patter of little socked feet. No, “I’m in here, Mama.” She felt an anxious tightening in her stomach.

What if…?

She dropped the pickup keys on the scarred farmhouse table in the kitchen where she now stood. She pulled open a drawer where another flashlight was kept, then headed for the stairs, ordering herself not to panic. Birdie wouldn’t have gone anywhere….

Would she? She’d told her to stay put. Willa’d looked out the window a few hours ago, seen through the leaf-barren trees in the dusky light that cows were in the road below. By the time she’d rounded up all but the one recalcitrant calf and gotten the fence fixed, it’d been long past dark.

She’d left Birdie watching TV. Birdie always got scared when the lights went out. Storms scared her, too. Birdie was like her. Or like she had been, once: timid, innocent, often shy. She hoped her daughter wouldn’t have to toughen up the way she had. She wanted so much for Birdie, so much more than she’d had.

Willa pushed down the lump that swelled in her throat and took the stairs in bounds. The house was filled with old, original wood paneling that made dark corners everywhere in the dead of night, though it could be beautiful by day. The flashlight bounced gold globes of light as she raced up, Flash right behind her. The wall was lined with old photographs, some in sepia, some in black-and-white. It was a wall of eyes, and sometimes she thought it was the creepiest part of the farmhouse.

Birdie’s room was the first one to the right. Bed, empty. She whirled, ran to her own room to see if Birdie had gone in there.

“Birdie!”

Her bed—empty, too.

She called her daughter’s name again. Flash barked, as if picking up on her distress. No response. Dammit, dammit, dammit! And she’d been down there in the road, worrying about a calf.

Willa flew back down the hall, down the stairs, past all those eyes, back into the front parlor, nearly tripping over Flash in the process. No Birdie.

She could hear the boom of her heart.

Birdie’s favorite stuffed horse lay at the foot of the antique rocker in one corner. Interlocking blocks scattered across the green and blue-rag area rug between the stone fireplace and the old, brown suede sofa. Crayon drawings and worn-down colors occupied an old camp box that served as a coffee table.

Panic shifted to full throttle.

What if Birdie had gone outside to look for her—fallen down, gotten hurt? Maybe she was even unconscious. Dead in a ditch. Her mother’s mind leaped to every worst-case scenario. She wanted to call the police, but surely that was silly. She hadn’t even looked outside yet.

And the phone was dead anyway.

She could drive out for help; but what if Birdie came back? She had to be here for Birdie. She had to find Birdie. Alone, in the storm. Oh, God. She ran for the door.

A sudden, heavy pounding on the front door nearly had her jumping out of her skin. She stopped short. Penn. She’d totally forgotten about Penn.

“Willa! Open up!”

She didn’t want to talk to Penn. She didn’t want to see Penn. No way was she opening that door. There was no pretending she was all big and bad, when she was in a total panic.

Tears, absolutely unallowable, pathetic, weak tears burst right down her cheeks. She swiped at them roughly. Birdie. She had to think about Birdie.

She forced her feet to eat up the last few steps, flung the door wide.

“Willa—”

“My daughter’s missing,” she interrupted him.

“What?”

“My daughter is missing! I’m afraid she went outside. I’m afraid she went looking for me. I’m afraid…”

Tears, clogging her throat. She didn’t want Penn Ramsey’s help. She didn’t want anyone’s help, but least of all his. And he was staring at her like she was out of her mind.

Which, of course, she was.

She pushed past him. Screw him. Stupid of her to think he’d help.

Powerful arms hauled her back. Back against a chest so hard, so warm, so…Oh God! So capable—so what she needed right now. A strong, capable man, when she was in a panic.

What was wrong with her? A man was the last thing she wanted ever again, for the rest of her life. Stop falling apart, she ordered herself.

He turned her in his arms and he was right there, a breath away. Her arms were mashed to his chest, the flashlight pointed upward, illuminating the cut of his jaw, the straight line of his nose, the disturbing intensity of his eyes.

Her pulse thumped off the charts.

“Do you have another flashlight?” he demanded.

She shook—fear, or something else, she had no idea. Her brain had up and quit. Flashlight. He asked for a flashlight. He was going to help her find Birdie. And she was going to force herself to let him, because Birdie was more important than her pride or her self-sufficiency or even this house.

“I—yes.” She ran to the kitchen, flung the drawer open so hard it fell on the floor. She dropped to her knees, using the flashlight to find the flashlight, scattering fallen kitchen tools and notepads and nonsense out of her way.

She bounded back to her feet and nearly barreled right into Penn. He took the other flashlight out of her trembling hand. She felt the warmth of his fingers brush hers, electric.

Scary.

She felt tears on her cheeks again.

“Willa.” His voice, searingly soft now, froze her to the worn, hardwood floor. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll find her.”

She swallowed hard, nodded. “Of course.” She had to find Birdie. Had to. And would. No other outcome was tolerable.

But she didn’t believe everything was going to be okay. Not so long as he stayed.

Chapter 3

They were both already soaked to the skin, and going back out into this wild storm was only going to make things worse. But there was no other choice. A dog bounded up behind her, barking.

“Get a jacket, Willa.”

She looked at him blankly, then turned, told the dog to hush and opened a closet near the front door to grab a rain slicker. She put it on, pulling the hood over her head, and moved past him to the door that was still standing open wide, the dog trotting right after her. She avoided meeting Penn’s eyes. She looked small in the oversize slicker. The short, wispy cut of her hair revealed every delicate line of her features, features that looked fragile now, like glass ready to shatter.

But she was tougher than she looked, he knew that.

He followed her out onto the wide, covered farmhouse porch. Old rocking chairs with peeling paint lined up in front of the house, the way they always had. A porch swing’s chains rattled in the wind at the far end.

“How old is your daughter?”

“She’s four.”

Four. God. This wild night was no place for a four-year-old child. No wonder Willa looked like she was about to go crazy.

“You’re positive she’s not in the house?”

“Of course I’m positive she’s not in the house!”

“Where’s the other one?” The other one that should be almost fourteen now.

“What other one?” she asked impatiently. Then…She now met his eyes. “There is no other one.”

She walked away from him.

“Birdie!” she shouted, her voice hopelessly lost in the wind and rain.

There is no other one. He shouldn’t even want to explore that, and now wasn’t the time to find out what had happened to the baby Willa had been carrying the day he’d walked away. It hadn’t been his baby, anyway. And this wasn’t the time to think about that betrayal, either.

He hurried after Willa and the stumpy-legged mutt that kept pace with her. She’d asked for his help, but he was damn sure she didn’t really want it. She loved her daughter—that was clear, too.

Loved her enough to ask him for help.

He caught up with her at the bottom of the porch steps, reached for her arm to stop her.

“It’s important right now not to race off in a hundred directions,” he said grimly. “Does she have any favorite places on the farm? Hiding spots? We’ll search there and the barn, then we go back and call the police if we don’t find her.”

“The phones are out already.”

“Then we go for help in your truck. Or one of us goes for help while the other one stays here,” he added, seeing the resistance on her face before she even opened her mouth. She didn’t want to leave Birdie alone, even if they didn’t know where the child was.

But it was just as obvious that they couldn’t search four hundred acres by themselves. The farm was massive and partly wild. Otto had abandoned any real farming years ago, and much of the land had grown up over time, turned back into woods. In the old days, Otto’s father before him had had all kinds of money, but not from farming. There was oil and gas under this farm, and at the turn of the last century, there’d been drilling everywhere. Most of those wells had been abandoned decades ago, leaving nothing but rusted well sheds and crumbling derricks, not to mention pipes running everywhere, some of them sticking out of the ground or jaggedly cut off.

There were plenty of ways for a child to run into trouble or to get hurt rambling around in the dark while panicked. Plenty of ways for Willa to get hurt, too.

He wondered what kind of name Birdie was, but he didn’t ask. Willa charged off and he kept up with her. In the bouncing flashlight beam, he spied the old herb garden to the side of the house, with its paving stone paths and geometric design, the huge stone sundial in the center. And he saw something new in the shadows beyond it.

Wooden playground equipment. What the hell?

Maybe she had been living at Limberlost for a year, after all. Eighty-two-year-old Otto Ramsey hadn’t put in a slide and swings for himself.

There was a barn on the hill and another below, in the meadow. As far as he was concerned, if they didn’t find her up here, there was no sense heading farther afield before getting help. But he’d have to convince Willa of that.

The wind ripped back Willa’s hood, baring her head as she ran toward the barn. He chased after her, helped her with the heavy wooden latch on the barn door. Inside, their flashlights swerved and crossed. She called Birdie’s name. The barn smelled earthy and like home, and he was stunned for a harsh instant. There were horse stalls up and down the barn, but only one horse poked its ebony head over a stall door.

Willa raced between the stalls, looking into every one. She whirled at the end of the barn, faced him. Raw emotion hit him again, this time with the appalling urge to take her into arms and promise her he’d find Birdie.

He shoved the thought away as he saw the steel under her painful fear.

“Where now?” he asked.

“She has a treehouse. That’s all I can think.”

“Let’s go.”

They left the barn. He latched the door while she tore ahead. He followed the erratic bounce of her flashlight beam in the wind and rain.

Willa climbed the wooden steps nailed to a huge cherry tree before he even got there, and nearly fell down into his arms as she barreled back down.

“She’s not there!” Her eyes flashed a near-hysteria that she was clearly working hard to control.

“Get me the keys to your truck.”

She didn’t hesitate. He raced after her toward the house, but she was back in the doorway with a set of keys before he reached it.

“Please.” Her eyes shone bright in the dark. “Please get help.” She was begging, and clearly past caring who was helping her.

She stood in the door, the light from her flashlight spilling at her feet. The truck was parked at the side of the house. He jumped in, gunned the engine to life, and started to back up when he realized abruptly what felt so strange about the way the vehicle sat.

He got out, slammed the door, and flashed his light down at the tires.

The rear passenger-side tire was flat.

His blood froze in his veins. He knelt down and studied the tire in the light. He couldn’t see any reason for it to be flat, though the rubber was thinning and hadn’t worn well. No obvious puncture, or at least not one he could see in this light. He went for the spare, soaked beyond belief at this point, and stood back, stomach hitting the ground when he pulled it out.

The spare was flat.

He’d never seen so many things go wrong in unison in his whole life—from the failed brakes on the Land Rover right up to Willa’s tires. Maybe that text message he’d gotten this morning had been from the Universe.

But if he hadn’t come to Haven tonight…

Willa would be alone right now. And no matter how he felt about her and the past, the thought of her being alone in these circumstances brought out every protective instinct in his body.

Stupid and incomprehensible and flat-out crazy as that was.

Penn turned, headed for the house, dreading giving her the news. Willa’s daughter was out there, and no matter what had happened in the past or how Willa had hurt him, or even what kind of mess they had in front of them over the will, there was a lost little girl, and that was all that mattered right now.

Willa yanked the door wide before he reached it. He could see the same dread in his gut on her face before he opened his mouth.

“The truck’s got a flat and the spare’s flat, too,” he told her.

“I just drove the truck!” She didn’t want to believe him. In fact, she pushed past him as if she thought he was lying.

He followed her back out into the rain. She ran to the truck, dropped to her knees in front of the tire, then was back up, wheeling to find the spare where he’d left it on the ground.

She looked up at him then.

Her face was so stricken, so pale in the shine of his flashlight, he couldn’t tell the difference between tears and raindrops on her cheeks; but he knew it was a combination of both that he saw.

“Did you do this?” she yelled at him over the storm.

“What?”

“What is going on? Did you flatten the tires?”

“Are you crazy?”

“I’m sorry.” She deflated, pressed shaking fingers to her mouth. She turned away, stared desperately out into the storm-dark woods.

He wanted to blame her for that bit of insanity, but he knew she was out of her mind with worry. Whatever else he didn’t believe about Willa, what he did believe was her love for her daughter. He didn’t know why it stunned him so. Even animals had mothering instincts. Willa didn’t have to be a perfect person to love her child.

Still, it rocked the cold, ugly image he had made up in his mind about Willa’s character.

“I have to find her,” she shouted now, wildly.

“Not alone.”

She stared at him for a long, awful moment. She was terrified, that was clear, and not just of the storm and her lost daughter.

Willa was terrified of him.

That rocked the cold, ugly image, too. She was vulnerable.

“I am alone,” she said with an achy honesty that seared him even deeper.

Again, he wanted to know what had happened to Jared. Why Willa would have been living with Otto. How she came to be alone.

“Not tonight,” he said. “You’re not alone tonight.”

Obviously, she wasn’t thinking clearly, though maybe if she wasn’t scared of him, a man she’d once betrayed, a man she hadn’t seen in fourteen years, she would be certifiable for sure.

“And you can’t just go charging out there,” he went on. “I know there’s a map of the property here somewhere. We’ll get extra batteries and we’ll organize our own grid search. It’s important that you don’t get lost as well. Birdie needs you.”

He saw her throat move in the wild darkness.

“I’m scared,” she finally said. “I don’t understand what’s happening, but something is really wrong. I’m scared!”

And he knew she hadn’t wanted to admit that out loud, knew she regretted it right away. She hated being vulnerable, hated it and wanted to hide it, and she couldn’t. She was too scared, teetering on full-blown panic.

And that’s why he didn’t tell her that he was scared, too. Something was wrong. This entire series of events was bizarre.

The spring wind whipped higher, colder, suddenly, and something hard struck his head, his arms. The hound yelped, hit.

Hail.

Huge, golf ball-sized hail. The kind of hail that could kill a person.

“Run!” he yelled, grabbing Willa’s arm, dragging her in the opposite direction of where he knew she wanted to go.

Penn gave her no choice, forced her into a dead run toward the house, and Willa was terrified her skull was going to be split in two by the hail at any second. And what good would she do Birdie then?

They reached the house and he yanked open the door. Willa ran inside, Flash whimpering at her heels, and she pivoted back to see Penn’s dark figure fill the doorway behind her.

The door shut, blocking the storm and the terrible night, leaving her wet and shaking and scared as he turned around.

“What about Birdie?” she half sobbed, and caught herself.

She was looking to him, Penn, to tell her what to do now. She was so far gone, it was ridiculous. How could so many things go wrong at once?

Penn’s gaze riveted beyond her.

“Willa—” he started.

She felt a prickle at the nape of her neck.

“Mommy.”

The scream that had been clawing its way up Willa’s throat came all the way out.

She dropped her flashlight and swung wildly. There Birdie stood, in her favorite Pooh Bear jammies. Her big hazel eyes gazed up at Willa, so big, so bright, without her glasses. Emotion smashed into Willa. She didn’t remember moving her feet across the short distance that separated them. She was just there, reaching for her daughter.

“Birdie, Birdie, Birdie.” She sobbed her daughter’s name over and over as she clutched her against her chest, dropping down, nearly falling crazily backward as she held her.

Birdie lifted her small face to her, her eyes wide and scared. Willa was scaring Birdie. She had to pull herself together.

“I was worried about you, sweetie. I couldn’t find you.”

“I was sleeping.”

“You weren’t in your bed!”

“I was in your bed, Mama. I was scared of the storm.”

Birdie hadn’t been in her bed! She’d checked! But right now she didn’t care, it was a senseless point. She couldn’t resist tugging Birdie tightly against her one more time. Wherever she had been, she was here now. In her arms.

“You’re wet, Mama,” she mumbled into Willa’s chest, wriggling in her mother’s arms.

“I know. I’m sorry.” She was soaked and she didn’t care. But she didn’t need to soak Birdie, too. She forced herself to let Birdie draw back.

Emotion still shot her pulse off the scale. Birdie was alive, in her arms. She wanted to just sit down and cry and hold her precious daughter.

“Who’s that man, Mama?”

Willa scrambled to her feet, controlling the sudden, silly—she knew it was silly—this urge to push Birdie behind her to keep her safe. As if she needed to protect her from Penn. Penn had been helping her to search for Birdie.

But he was also the one who was here to threaten the very foundation of her and Birdie’s lives, take this farm away from them.

Penn’s gaze, stark in the shadows cast by the flashlight he held directed low, struck her tightly, intensely. Even from several feet away, she felt as if he loomed over her, making her feel short despite her five feet, seven inches. He was…Big was the only word that came to mind.

Yeah. Big and bad. Good-looking and arrogant. A city slicker here to smash her like a bug beneath his steely boot.

That was difficult to remember when she was also grateful to him. And way too emotional.

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