*Pepper strode toward Small Lodge, swinging her arms and inhaling the fragrances of her grandmother’s garden, the aromas coming together like a fragrant melody.
She was back to being on a good footing with Jack and didn’t want to lose his friendship again. Marie was right, they needed to get over what had happened in the diner, and the only way to do that was to upfront ask him. Once that was out of the way, she could concentrate on Ralph and whatever was going on there because it was affecting Jack.
She paused at the gate to Aurora’s property. Yesterday, when they shook hands, he gave what she thought of as his almost-smile. She’d seen it before, in their youth, but as a grown man he wore it differently. A tilt of his mouth, and a warm glow in his eyes that melted its way inside a person.
It was almost flirtatious.
The back of her neck tingled, and a breeze suddenly kicked up the dust on the pathway.
She licked her finger and held it up, but there wasn’t a whisper of wind in the air.
She headed on. “It’s me!” she called to Aurora, who was bent over her laptop.
This wasn’t a social visit and although she didn’t want to discuss the curse, what Jack said had unnerved her. Not a feeling she was used to.
The front door was open, the wood paneling in the hall warm and inviting.
“Does Daybreak Lodge have glass lamps and wood paneling like Small Lodge?” she asked as she stepped onto the verandah.
“You’re not getting the key,” Aurora said, and closed the lid of her laptop.
Pepper sat at the gateleg table, undaunted. “It’s all happening. Have you heard?”
“What I’ve heard is that people around the valley are saying you now have the gift.”
“I said that so I could get on with business things and get people off my back.”
“What you’ve done is packed another heavy suitcase to cart around.”
“I’ll find a way out of it.” She pulled off her cowgirl hat. “I have a number of questions for you regarding my inheritance.”
“I told you, you’re not getting the key.”
Pepper knew this and intended to skirt around the issue.
“Why did all you grandmothers decide to renovate the houses six years ago after them being empty for so long?”
“Can’t say.”
As expected. “Why weren’t me, Molly, and Lauren allowed inside Daybreak Lodge as kids when we were allowed to go into the hacienda and Sage Springs?”
“Can’t say.”
They’d often wandered around the derelict hacienda in Hopeless, and they’d played out fairy tales in Lauren’s Sage Springs turreted house, but they’d never ventured to Daybreak Lodge. They’d been put off by their mothers as well as the grandmothers. They’d never questioned it in their youth, but maybe that was why, as an adult, Pepper was so keen to take possession of her house. She wanted to know the reason for being banned from it.
“Why has Marie given up wearing her bling rings?”
Aurora chuckled. “Don’t worry about Marie. She knows what she’s doing. And I know what you’re doing, you’re steering your questions, trying to trip me up.”
And she wasn’t going to give up. “Why didn’t Marie get any of the spooky genes?”
Aurora shifted on her chair. “Don’t go calling us spooky! You sound like one of the nonbelievers.”
“I am.” But as she said it, she knew it was no longer the complete truth.
She threw her hat onto the table. “Jack said something yesterday and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”
Aurora’s focus altered instantly. Pepper could almost feel the heightened perceptiveness from her grandmother as though she owned it too.
“He felt something bad, and he said it was hanging around both him and me.”
“Were you at the cabin, or the house?”
“Cabin.”
“Did you feel it too?”
“No.” Pepper shuffled closer to the table. She was unwilling to open this next subject but had no one else to ask. No one who was as experienced as Aurora. “Is it the great-grandfathers?” Now that she’d had concerns about having dormant skills of the soothsaying kind, she might as well take an in-depth look at the GGs. She had said, after all, that she was open to everything that might happen and the sooner she knew the crisis, the faster she could ward it off.
“Looks like it,” Aurora said. “There’s nothing we can do until they show their hand.”
Damn this curse. She wasn’t going to get rid of it while everyone kept talking about it. “We haven’t heard from the developers yet so let’s not discount them.” A person could fight real people. Pepper didn’t know how the dead ones dealt with their displeasure, but they were bound to be seriously troublesome.
“How on earth could Donaldson’s send a ghostly chill to surround Jack?” Aurora asked.
“How do you know it was a chill?” He hadn’t said that. He’d said something “bad.”
“I’m a soothsayer. As soon as I’m given pointers, I know what’s happening and how to guide.”
“Well, guide us all through this. Donaldson’s must know I’m home and that I’ll do my best to rejuvenate the last town in the valley.”
“Marie will be on the lookout for all that. Trust her.”
“Where does that leave me?”
“If you want to go looking for anything untoward from beyond the grave, go ahead, but you’re not going to understand it because you’re refusing to deal with all this, which means me and my sisters—and your cousins—are going to have to step in and do it all for you.”
“I cannot believe I’m having this conversation.” But while they were at it… “Why would Jack feel something disturbing and not me?”
“You’re not open to receiving.”
“I’m a Mackillop. I might be susceptible.”
“You say you don’t have the gift.”
“But I might have dormant abilities. Ones I don’t know I’m using.”
“Give me an example.”
This was excruciating. “You told me I could be capable of turning people’s lives around. What if I’m doing it in my sleep when I dream? What if I’m doing it without knowing?”
“Even ordinary people discover a faculty to perceive the future on occasions and some might act on it, not knowing what they’re doing. In your case, it’s likely just the abundance of common sense you possess.”
“Good job I have all that sense, since I’m now opening an emporium, a row of cabin shops and an ice cream parlor.”
“Which you hadn’t considered doing until two seconds after you opened your mouth.”
Cranky, bad tempered…
“I might need to have a word with Jack,” Aurora said.
“Why? Shouldn’t I be the one to know what’s going on?”
“It’s not happening to you. It’s happening to him.”
“But I’m the one who’s supposed to fight off the GGs.”
“I thought you didn’t believe.”
“Oh, come on, Aurora. What’s happening to Jack and why isn’t it happening to me?” If he was experiencing repercussions of something Pepper had denounced, she’d better understand what it was and take it away from him immediately.
He had enough to bear by having to stick around Pepper and deal with Ralph and the ranch. And he was only here a short while longer. It was practically just seconds until the Monday after next, now she considered it, and it didn’t seem long enough. She’d gotten used to him being around.
“Honestly, Pepper, what is it you expect from me?” Aurora said. “You don’t want my guidance or my counsel so I might as well concentrate on Jack.”
“I’m the one you tasked with discovering what his problem was.”
“You won’t be able to do that if you don’t acknowledge the Mackillop gift. You’re leaving the poor man in the lurch.”
“And you’re beginning to sound like Marie. Have you discussed me and the would-be with her?”
“Can’t say.”
The air got hot and clammy and once again, they were on the verge of another verbal disagreement.
Pepper took a breath, and Aurora drummed her fingers on her laptop, grabbing her attention.
“Have you got a website?”
Her grandmother stilled and it was a few seconds before she spoke. “I have.”
“What’s it about?”
Aurora cleared her throat. “I started off doing a bit of googling about whatever abilities you might have so I could assist, but you don’t want my help so I digressed.”
“Into what?”
“Fortune-telling.”
Pepper nearly slipped off her chair. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Never been more serious. I’m having a ball.”
Pepper looked around the crowded furniture on the veranda, in case her grandmother meant a crystal ball. “Aurora, you can’t go experimenting in people’s lives like this! Not over the internet. You might get it wrong.”
“I happen to be very good at it. Got Alice and Ava keen to have a look-see now.”
Pepper grabbed the laptop and opened the lid. The screen lit up, a multitude of muted colors. All mauves and lilacs and lavenders. The mystic’s colors!
Consult with Mystic A and her divine guide
Let the spirits of the afterlife guide you
Free to those who genuinely need help
“It was Marie’s idea, that complementary bit. I ignore the disbelievers. My time is precious.”
“But you’re not a fortune-teller, you’re a soothsayer.”
“I’m redundant,” Aurora said. “I was supposed to be helping you develop your gift, but you don’t want it. What else am I supposed to do with my time?”
“What you’ve always done. Use your alchemy skills to help others. Use your herbs and infusions to enhance the power in people to change themselves. You know very well people have to believe in order to fix whatever’s wrong. It’s the mind that has to be cleared, Aurora, not the body. People are drained. They’re mentally lethargic. You cure that apathy and help them beat their boredom.”
Aurora inhaled deeply. “I know it. But I’ve never told you that.”
“You must have.”
“Not once.”
“Well.” Pepper had an uncomfortable suspicion she’d just allowed herself to be maneuvered. Again. “I must have come to the conclusion simply by being around you all my life.”
“I told you you’d be good at this, if you put your mind to it. Problem is, you’re not willing to see something as it is. You’re stuck in the past.”
“Oh, really?” Pepper said. “That’s Mystic A’s prognostication, is it?”
“Telling fortunes amuses me. People ask for the most ridiculous things.”
Despite herself, Pepper’s interest sparked. “Do you grant them wishes?”
“Absolutely not. They’d get themselves into more trouble, or more debt, or more heartache. I give them a clue about something else they can do instead.”
“Can the Mackillops throw spells?”
“We could, if we wanted to.”
“But we don’t want to.”
“You don’t want to,” Aurora said, “because you don’t want to know how and don’t want to learn, therefore, I’m left with nothing to do to amuse myself.”
Pepper slid the laptop back toward Aurora. “You’re up to something. I know it. You’re trying to get information out of me by not answering my questions and telling me riddles that are going around in circles.”
“And that’s exactly what you were trying to do when you first turned up here. Skirting around issues.”
Pepper thumped the tabletop. “Fine. I’ll work all this out for myself. Using my common sense.”
“Good luck with that,” Aurora said, and made herself more comfortable in her chair. “Pass me my knitting would you? It’s time for my old-woman rest.”
Pepper slapped her forehead. Fortune-telling and spell-throwing. The Mackillop reputation was going to go downhill fast if this news got out.
*
Jack was busy with his uncle’s seventeen horses after working the young, dare-devilish mare then corralling her. Ralph was out—surprise, surprise.
He ran a hand over weary eyes. Could he lease the ranch to Pep? Did he want his home to become a dude ranch? Would Pep cope, along with everything else she was dealing with? Only if Ralph stepped up and helped, or if Jack stayed and got it up and running for her but that was an impossibility.
He’d spoken to his boss in Tucson earlier and promised he’d return by the agreed date. The Tuckers were getting pressured with the workload. Their second hand had just left—out of the blue. Two hands talking about following. Jack couldn’t let them down.
He couldn’t let anyone down. And he only had nine days—no, eight now.
His focus was drawn to the ranch house. It was surrounded by numerous outbuildings and barns, as though they had been the priority, not the house that had never been a true home but it was clean and hospitable. Not bad for a couple of guys who’d lived as bachelors all this time, with not even a housekeeper coming over once a week.
He’d always thought of it as home. As though it would always be here, just waiting for him. Since he’d been back, he occasionally imagined he’d caught a draught of his mom’s perfume. It would fly up in his face as though caught in the fabric of a curtain blown through an open window. After all these years, her memory was still in the house. And so were Jack’s. Even the hard ones.
This place would be lost without a Shepperd on it. It wouldn’t be the same—although nothing was the same now! Hell, Ralph had even started throwing colorful striped blankets over the old furniture. There were new cushions on the sofas. There was a potted plant on the kitchen windowsill. Why do that if he was leaving? Why take fifteen new horses in?
He couldn’t sell it. He just couldn’t.
His cell phone rang.
“Jack Shepperd.”
“It’s Pepper.”
“Hey. Everything all right?”
“I thought I might come over to dinner tonight.”
He paused, his mind fuzzy as he tried to take that in. “You want to have dinner with me?”
“Sure.” She laughed. “But don’t tell Winona, she’ll be furious with me for spending an evening beneath the stars with the man she thinks is hers.”
Oh, jeez. “Pep—”
“Don’t worry. I won’t talk about the lease again if you don’t want me to.”
“It’s not that I don’t think you’d be capable.” And neither was it his main concern.
“I understand, Jack. We won’t talk about it but, to be honest, I don’t believe Ralph wants to sell or even lease the ranch. It’s out of character. Did you discover who he’s seeing?”
“It’s not the kind of conversation we have. It seems too personal, but I know I’m going to have to do it.”
“Let me help. Let me use my womanly wiles on him. I bet I’ll soon find out what’s bothering him.”
What the hell was he going to do here? If it got around town she’d been over for dinner there’d be talk. He couldn’t afford talk, because at some point soon he was going to have to face Ralph not only about his intentions of retiring while purchasing dozens of horses, but about his past. Jack thought himself an unassuming guy, getting through life as best he could without getting involved in other people’s personal issues. Now here he was concealing skeletons in a cupboard that could blow up like a bomb for all the people he cared about if he opened the closet door.
“Can’t we meet up with Ralph in the daytime? In town? Tomorrow morning?”
“Best to get it done. Look, I can’t discuss more now because I’ve got to check in with Walter Wyatt and Mrs. Kenney and get things moving. How about seven o’clock tonight?”
There was no quick or easy way he could get out of this without telling her he didn’t want her over for dinner. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Okay. It’s a date!”
A date? His heart rate skyrocketed. “Pep—” But she’d already hung up.