Caron Todd - The House on Creek Road

Liz pulled over, as far off the road as she could get. If she parked in the field that was already bumper-to-bumper with cars her escape route might be cut off by people arriving later. She pulled down the sun visor for one last check of her appearance. The view in the small rectangular mirror wasn’t reassuring.

Pretending not to notice the curious faces that had turned her way, Liz lifted a monster salad bowl from the back seat. She could sense anxiety in the air, and restrained excitement, as if people were waiting to see the queen or Santa Claus at the end of a long parade and thought someone might get in their line of vision. Was she the source of all that feeling or had it just been too long between parties?

There was a barrier between herself and the people who’d come to welcome her, and she didn’t know how to cross it. She didn’t want to cross it.

Dear Reader,

I decided to come home to my own province for my second novel. You tend to think of somewhere else, anywhere else, as being a more romantic setting than the place where you live, but it struck me a while ago that the history, geography and population of Manitoba are so varied I could write for the next twenty years without leaving these borders and find a different background for each story. “Three Creeks” is the original, discarded name of a town near mine. It was satisfying to rescue it and give it to my fictitious town.

In The House on Creek Road Elizabeth Robb (a cousin of Susannah Robb from Into the Badland—Harlequin Superromance #1053) returns to Three Creeks to help her grandmother sort through a lifetime’s worth of belongings before selling the family farm. She has mixed feelings about spending time in this rural area dominated by her family and by an incident she can’t forget. Her grandmother’s new neighbor, Jack McKinnon, catches her eye and her imagination right away, but he has a secret that might hurt them both if he can’t keep it hidden.

So many people helped with this book, answering questions and telling stories about rural life, explaining the mysteries of old houses, describing what Jack might be doing with computers and how Liz might make children’s books. Writing a book to deadline for the first time had its challenges. My thanks to Superromance editor Laura Shin whose humor and skill and confidence-building I so appreciate, and to my husband, who, when I was discouraged by the things I don’t like about small-town life, took me for coffee in an old, tinceilinged building in a beautiful, peaceful town not far away, reminding me of the things I like best.

Sincerely,

Caron Todd

P.S. I’d love to her from readers. Please write to me at P.O. Box 20045, Brandon, MB, R7A 6Y8 or ctodd@prairie.ca.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my grandmother, who always won at double solitaire.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“ANYTHING?”

His new partner shook his head. “You never know with these old houses. Nooks and crannies everywhere. Did you get into his files?”

“Nope.”

“We could take the laptop with us.”

“Just to let him know we were here? No, thanks.” A suggestion like that made him wonder. Was this guy dumber or more reckless than he looked, or was it a test? They’d been working together for a week, but they might as well have been standing at opposite ends of the morning bus for all they’d got to know each other. “Anyway, a laptop’s too easy to lose. Not a good place to store something really valuable.”

“Maybe he destroyed it, just like he said.”

“Never.”

“You’re sure?”

“I know him.”

There was a short silence. “We can look again.”

“Right. And when he gets home, he can give us a hand.”

The little guy from town, sniffing and gurgling as usual, came down the stairs from the second floor. “He’s supposed to see an implement dealer in Brandon next Friday. It’s a couple of hours both ways, never mind looking at equipment.”

As hard as it was to believe, the farm seemed to be the real thing. “Friday it is. We’ll have all day. If it’s here, we’ll find it.”

A POOL OF MURKY LIGHT CUT A FEW feet of gravel road out of the darkness. Liz reached over the steering wheel and wiped her already damp sleeve through the condensation clouding the windshield. Trembling beads of water stood on the glass, then slid, in little zigzagging streams, to the bottom. In seconds, the fog began to form again. She cracked open the window. Crisp cold air, full of the smells of fallen leaves and field fires, flowed into the car.

She must have taken the wrong road. Some people might have an internal compass, but she didn’t. North was wherever she was pointing, west and east were always changing places. The turnoff had felt right, though. Her body had seemed to tell her to turn, as if her cells remembered the way even if she didn’t. Since then, not a single landmark. Just miles of bush and empty fields, and the odd furry thing darting in front of the car, evidently sure where it was going. So much for cells.

Liz glanced at the clock on the dash. Two hours since she’d left the lights of the city behind. It felt like ten. If Susannah had been navigating, they’d be warm in their grandmother’s kitchen by now. They had planned to come together, one last visit for old times’ sake, after Susannah had finished her season’s digging for bones and Liz her new children’s book. But Sue had looked up from her fossils long enough to fall in love with the man digging beside her, and instead of coming home to Three Creeks with her cousin, she’d gone off to the Gobi Desert with her new husband. It wasn’t old times without Sue.

“Now, what’s this?” Liz slowed almost to a stop. A few dots of light to her left suggested a house set far back from the road. She could just make out a scraggly grove of bur oaks. It was the Ramsey place! She’d done it, after all. Five minutes stood between her and a gallon of tea.

No need to worry about fogged windows now—she could drive this last section of road blindfolded. A clear view and five minutes of October night air might be safer, though. Liz held one finger on the switch that had seen so much action over the past couple of hours, and the driver’s window hummed all the way down. Above it, she heard another sound. She turned to look. A car was coming right at her.

Her stomach lurched. She wrenched the steering wheel to the right, and floored the gas pedal. Her car surged forward and sideways. The rear tires bit into loose gravel and the back end began to skid. Just a little, then sharply. She heard herself swearing softly even before she saw the deer. On the side of the road. Deep in the ditch. Everywhere.

They bolted. All but one. Sides heaving, knees locked. At the last moment, it leapt away, the white of its raised tail flashing once before it disappeared. The car slid past the place where the deer had stood and came to a jolting stop when it met a rock at the crest of the ditch.

Liz sat, trembling, her hands clutching the steering wheel. Where was the other car? It had come out of nowhere. No headlights. No horn. She fumbled for the recessed door handle. Cold air hit her legs when she stepped out of the car, and her heels sank into soft gravel. Heels. They’d seemed just right in Vancouver.