Suzanne Mcminn: High-Stakes Homecoming

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

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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!

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

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.