The House on Creek Road

The House on Creek Road
Caron Todd

When Elizabeth Robb left Three Creeks, she never expected to returnEven after all these years she's not ready to face her painful past, and only a request from her elderly grandmother could bring her back to town. She hopes her arrival will escape notice and that she can leave as quietly as she's come, but she doesn't really expect that to happen. For Elizabeth, there is just too much family and too much history in Three Creeks.But once Elizabeth meets Jack McKinnon, her grandmother's mysterious new neighbor, she begins to believe there might be some good to come from a long journey home. If only Jack didn't have as much in his past as Elizabeth….

Despite the dull browns and grays of late fall, the farm looked beautiful

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.

The House on Creek Road

Caron Todd

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

To my grandmother, who always won at double solitaire.

CONTENTS

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

CHAPTER ONE

“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.