*Jack parked his pickup at the base of Small Lodge Trail that led to Aurora’s place and took a moment to enjoy the view sprawling toward the canyon.
He was stalling, but he had a few issues to consider.
He also had to get back to his job in Tucson. He’d been more or less running the Tucker ranch the last few years, and the Tuckers were becoming acclaimed. Ten thousand acres, a hundred and sixty fine horses.
When he left his hometown about five years ago, they’d had close to fifty horses at Nightshade Downs. For the last year, there had only been two. Dash and Flame, both coming up to twenty years old. Uncle Ralph had let things slip. Now, he wanted to retire, which shouldn’t worry Jack, but there was something evasive about Ralph’s behavior he couldn’t put his finger on.
Then there was Pep. Coming home and finding her here pierced a dozen memories he didn’t want to linger over.
He felt the squeeze of responsibility for that time in the diner when they’d been teenagers, and the humiliation she’d borne. He’d gotten the blame, but it hadn’t happened the way most people liked to remember. Aurora knew this. Damn, the woman knew everything, probably including his hat size and the first time he’d gotten drunk when he was sixteen. Okay, fourteen.
But why did she want to see him? What did she want from him?
Two thoughts crossed his mind. One, Pep was going to get herself into trouble if she started questioning every new man in town about the possibility of being her prospective husband, because he knew for a fact she’d be on the warpath about it.
And two… what if it was him?
He had to haul in a breath as his chest tightened.
Would Aurora ask him to marry her granddaughter?
There was no way Pep would agree, which settled his fright. She’d laugh in his face. As would the town. Everyone knew they didn’t get along. But if it was what Aurora wanted, how was he going to get out of it?
Jack owed Aurora his existence. For the brain cells inside a boy that turned him into a man instead of a hothead. That was his debt. The sense of self she’d given him during all those years when he’d had no mother, an aggressive father, and eventually only mild-mannered, unassuming Uncle Ralph.
The problem was, none of the Mackillop women knew who their fathers were. It was another oddity to do with the curse, one he was used to and had lived on the boundaries of all his life. But it was the issue of Pep’s father that concerned him.
He fixed his hat more firmly on his head and turned for the track. No matter what Aurora demanded, he wasn’t going to allow himself to be put in the running as husband material. Not even to break a curse. In the few days he had left before he returned to Tucson, he’d do what he could for his uncle and clean up the ranch so there wasn’t so much for him to maintain, or so it could be left as it was if Ralph wanted to retire to town. Perhaps he wanted more company than Dash and Flame could give him. He’d certainly been going out a lot, disappearing during the day and taking himself off for late evening drives. Had he met someone?
That almost made Jack smile. Out here, with under a hundred residents in the entire valley, most of them well over retirement age?
His cell phone beeped with a message, bringing him out of his sudden humor.
Don’t dawdle.
He slammed the phone back into his pocket. “Damn it, Aurora.” The woman knew everything. He hadn’t even told her when he was coming.
*
The midday sky was such a temperate blue it almost cooled Pepper down just looking at it. Like when she saw pictures of snow-covered mountains and felt the need to reach for her socks or heard water running and discovered she needed to find a restroom.
She swiped off her cowgirl hat as she sat on her three-foot-long boulder. She’d been drilling and hammering away at it for over two hours. If she didn’t crack it into smaller pieces soon, she’d give it a name. It could be her pet.
Except it was in her way.
She’d spent most of her time since she came home designing the area to the western side of Daybreak Lodge so she could use it for her produce—Aurora hadn’t said she couldn’t use the land. She’d missed the spring planting window, but she’d cleared out the old brick-walled outhouse that had only a tin roof and two and a half walls and turned it into a makeshift greenhouse. Although so far, June was predicted to be cooler and only slightly wetter than usual, which might give her seedlings a chance. But they were only one day into June, so she couldn’t trust that theory.
She wasn’t particularly trustful of anything or anybody right now. Like Aurora and her cagey attitude about the house. Or the townspeople and their expectations. She didn’t even want to think about the man who was lurking around, possibly already eyeing her up as marriage material. And then there was Jack.
She’d hoped Ralph and Nightshade Downs might come on board with any ideas she had for regenerating the town, since Ralph wasn’t exactly busy. Not with only two horses to look after. But now she’d have to navigate the choppy waters of communicating verbally with his nephew. There wasn’t any business in Reckless anywhere near as opportunistic as the ranch. She’d had thoughts on holding rodeos or campfire cookouts and other cowboy stuff. Would Jack agree to that? Perhaps she should wait until he went back to Tucson and then talk to Ralph. They each owned a fifty percent share of Nightshade Downs, and with Jack out of the way, Ralph could make his own decisions.
But a niggling concern kept biting at her conscience.
She didn’t want to be nice to Jack, but she was using his water. Ralph had helped her lay pipes from Shepperd land next door, since she couldn’t afford her own rain tanks yet. Years ago, Jack cultivated the lakes and ponds around Nightshade Downs, which now provided natural irrigation. Jack was smart, even for a smart-ass.
Maybe a quick thank-you would suffice. She could be nice for thirty seconds.
Why would Aurora insist she be pleasant to him in the first place? Perhaps he did have some troubles, and it could be because of Ralph. There was something not quite right about him when usually he was just… Ralph. He’d looked a lot smarter than she’d ever seen him before, too. His button-down shirt was pristine clean and even ironed.
She rested her chin in hand, her eyes drawn to the house in the distance. There were a lot of questions to ponder. The house being the most pressing.
She hadn’t been in it, ever. Even though it had been promised to her when she was a girl. Neither did she see inside six years ago when all the grandmothers started renovations on their properties—although none of the cousins knew why they’d bothered, since the houses had been vacant for seventy-eight years after the great-grandfathers built them. She’d been at a barista course in Amarillo and missed all the spooky stuff the builders said had gone on, with the GGs haunting each house.
The GGs must have had a compelling hatred of life. Or just Mackillop women.
She stood and stretched her arms high, pulling at the muscle aches in her shoulders. Perhaps it was time to talk to Aurora again and mention the key to the house.
She grabbed her cell phone from her bib pocket.
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Been wondering when you might call to apologize.”
“There’s no apologizing to do, Aurora. We just have to make up and get on with life until the next time we disagree on something.”
“You’re sounding very wise, Pepper Mackillop.”
“Thank you for noticing.” She loved her grandmother and was loved as much in return, even though they weren’t currently seeing eye to eye. When Pepper was ten, a freak rock fall claimed her mother’s life while she was hiking in the valley, looking for unusual and rare herbs. Pepper lost her mother and Aurora lost her daughter. The bond between grandmother and granddaughter went a lot deeper than most.
“I suppose I ought to come see you, so we can make up in person.”
“I’ve got a client coming.”
“Anyone I know?” All the soothsaying grandmothers made enough money from the people who visited them to keep them fed and housed. Pepper always thought Aurora’s hideaway house was the prettiest of the grandmothers’ chosen wilderness spots to live. Flat plains for miles around and all those wonderful herbs and plants surrounding the house.
“You know better than to ask who’s coming,” Aurora said.
Bad-tempered, cranky… Occasionally, even Aurora’s sisters would roll their eyes at Aurora’s tetchy nature. “How come I got you and Molly and Lauren got nice grandmothers?”
“Perhaps because you need a firmer hand.”
Pepper rolled her eyes.
“I’ve got to go,” Aurora said and hung up.
Pepper stared at her cell phone. The call had been so short she hadn’t had time to bring up the subject of the key to the house.
She slipped her phone into her pocket and sat on her rock.
What was waiting for her inside the large abode, and why wouldn’t Aurora at least let her take a look inside?
The railing around the porch had been broken in a few places, and the weatherboard that had been painted gray when Pepper’s great-grandfather built the house had faded to an ash color. The shingle roof had fared well, with hardly any fallen or broken tiles. But every single window had been blown out. Smashed to smithereens.
She pulled a ham, cheese, and butterhead lettuce sandwich out of her bag, and chewed on it contemplatively.
The house must have felt naked all these years, as though some Peeping Tom might be hanging around, waiting to poke his head through the glassless frames and shout, I’m coming to get you!
Just before the cousins were born within a week of each other, family lore said the great-grandfathers had been annoyed from beyond the grave that there were more Mackillop females on the way. Their tempers had been so bad that during a huge storm, the hacienda that was Molly’s inheritance lost its roof, Lauren’s Sage Springs house lost an entire exterior wall, and Pepper’s Daybreak Lodge was left windowless.
The windows were all boarded up now. Hundreds of two-by-fours protecting the interior from prying eyes.
Maybe she’d take a rest from smashing rocks and attempt to break in again. It would give her time to contemplate how she was going to approach Jack to thank him for the use of his water and ask him if he’d mind if she used Nightshade Downs as a dude ranch. He was an adult now; surely, he’d grown into a reasonable man willing to listen if a woman asked for a favor nicely.
*
Jack halted at the end of the track and pulled off his hat.
Aurora sat in a rocking chair on the shady, inviting veranda of Small Lodge, talking on her cell phone.
She was surrounded by potted plants, herbal potions and lotions, and there was a laptop and cell phone charger on the gateleg drop-leaf oak table next to her, its top no doubt still as weathered and scratched as he remembered it.
He’d always liked her hideaway lodge, with its warm, wood-clad interior and old-fashioned gas lamps.
She had her long, graying hair tied in a ponytail and was wearing her signature ankle-length cowgirl’s skirt and a button-down shirt. She wore the same expression she always wore, that of quiet and unnerving intelligence. It was her eyes a person had to watch. That was where her feelings or emotions would show up, but even then, it was never an easy countenance to read, just one that gave a hint of what she was portending, or about to portend.
Would the Mackillop girls end up looking like their grandmothers when they were in their late seventies? It wasn’t a bad look. The grandmothers were all a little ageless. Each with an inbuilt refinement and a thorough knowledge of people and their needs. Aurora beckoned him, slipping her cell phone into the breast pocket of her shirt.
He made his way down the pathway between her herb gardens.
“Nice to see you again, Aurora. You’re looking well.”
“Sit down.”
Jack put his hat onto the table. “I thought it would be nice if we started off pleasant.”
“This is me being my most pleasant.”
He sighed and took a seat on a chair.
“My granddaughter needs guidance,” Aurora said, peering at him with those all-knowing green eyes. “She’s making a mess of things.”
“Like what?”
“She’s being stubborn.”
Aurora was surprised by this?
“I’ll tell you straight, Jack, there’s a man out there waiting for her and he worries me.”
Well, hell, now Jack was worried too. “Who is he?”
“He hasn’t shown himself yet. It’s going to take a strong man to stay at her side with everything she’s got heading her way, and I’m not sure what this man is thinking.”
“So why am I here?”
“It’s time,” Aurora said quietly.
It was like the toll of doom. How could he explain his way out of this without giving over secrets he had no right to know? The Mackillops never talked about their fathers. Never.
His chest tightened again. He didn’t want to mention the word marriage or give any impression he was putting himself up for the job. But he was no coward. “If you’re considering me, I’m not the marrying type.”
“You won’t need to worry about marriage,” Aurora said, with a lowered chin and a look of forewarning in her eye. “Until you need to worry about it.”
He hadn’t expected to ever worry about it. He didn’t envisage himself being anyone’s perfect husband. He’d never asked Aurora for predictions and he’d never gotten any before now. Was she saying he was going to be concerned about it, in the future?
“The problem is,” Aurora said, “she’s going to fall for this man.”
“Even if he’s the wrong one?”
“I didn’t say he was wrong. I said I was worried about him.”
So Pep was going to fall in love. He ought not to think about it, it was none of his business. “What am I supposed to do about it? I’m only here for another week or so.”
“You used to like her.”
“That was years ago.”
“You thought she was cute as a button.”
“We were just kids.”
It was Pep’s smile that had attracted him. When she laughed, it was heartily, her green eyes flashing or her head thrown back, the waves of her chestnut-brown hair spiraling out of control. He might have asked her out one day, not that anybody knew this.
His father warned him off the Mackillops after the diner incident. He forbade him to see Pep. Jack hadn’t known why, but his father had always been a mean-tempered son of a gun, and nobody questioned his reasoning unless they wanted to feel the back of his hand or the sting of his verbal response. Marie Mackillop, Pep’s aunt, had visited, and there had been an argument, but he hadn’t known about what. His father had been pissed at Ralph, too.
A couple of years later, his father got ill and his temper got meaner as the disease took hold. It was the last days of his father’s life when Jack overheard a conversation that had made him take a giant leap back from the girl with the laughing green eyes.
“I can’t follow her around physically,” Aurora said. “Only mentally, but that’s on a plane you won’t understand. So you’ll have to do it.”
Jack refocused. “I’m busy at the ranch—”
“I don’t mean twenty-four seven, I mean whenever you get the chance. Keep your eyes open, stick around her sometimes, guide her if she needs it.”
Guide Pep? He couldn’t imagine any scenario where she listened. Not to him anyway.
“Scared?” Aurora asked.
“The only things that scare me is a rattler under the hooves of my horse, and you.”
Aurora smiled, and it reached her olive-green eyes.
Pep’s eyes were a different shade of green, autumn green, like the brush.
Jack blew out a breath. “All right. I’ll watch out for her.” At least he wasn’t home for much longer. “But I’ll be telling her you’ve instructed me to do this.” She wouldn’t agree to it otherwise.
“I’ll have a chat with her,” Aurora said. “Smooth the way for you.”
“After this, are we done?” They never referred to the debt he owed her, but she’d know what he was talking about.
It was Aurora who’d talked to him when his mom died. He was a nine-year-old kid and pretty emotional from the experience. It was Aurora who’d talked to him when his father died eight years later, because Jack hadn’t known how to care. His father died in a hard manner, losing his mind and punching out at the world and his son as Jack tried to nurse him through the end of his illness, all the time unable to make sense of his mixed feelings of hatred and pity for the mean-tempered man who had regressed to a child, unable to do much for himself except throw a tantrum and a fist.
He stood and picked up his hat. If luck was on his side, this guy would show himself within a week, letting Jack off the leash without having to mention to anyone what he’d overhead all those years ago. “After this, are we done?” he asked again.
Aurora’s handshake was firm, her grip cool. Her expression reminded him of a prairie dog thrown a bone it had known all along had its name on it.
“After this, you’ll be raring to go, Jack Shepperd.”
He didn’t dare ask what that meant.