Landon followed his wife out of the room, hesitating only long enough to say to his sister, “We’ll talk later.”
As Alexa stepped out into the hallway, she felt a winterlike draft that stole her breath. She suppressed a shudder as she saw her brother watching her and realized Sierra was also intently focused on her.
Of course her brother would have told his wife everything about his family—Alexa included.
“HAS ANYONE HEARD ANYTHING about the people who are staying at the old Wellington place?” Marshall asked as casually as possible during supper at the Chisholm ranch that evening.
While he and his five brothers all had their own houses, they still had breakfast most mornings at the Chisholm Cattle Company main house—and were always expected for supper unless they were out of town or dead.
Their new stepmother, Emma, had a hard-and-fast rule about them being at the table on time, showered and shaved and without any manure on their boots. So tonight they were all seated at the table, his father, Hoyt, stepmother, Emma, and his five brothers, Dawson, Colton, Zane, Logan and Tanner.
“I heard something in town about a bunch of hippies moving into it,” Colton said as he helped himself to more roast beef from the huge platter in front of him. “You want Halley to check on it?” Deputy Halley Robinson was Colton’s fiancée.
Marshall chuckled at the hippie remark. Anyone from California with relatively long hair was considered a hippie in this part of Montana. The word covered a lot of territory.
He thought of the woman he’d seen at the window. “I think they might have bought the place.”
“That’s news to me,” his father said, frowning. “I’d have known if it had come on the market. I’ve been trying to buy it for years and was told the family wasn’t interested. Since the old woman who lived there died, the place has been tied up in the estate.”
“I wonder then if the people I saw over there might be related to the original owner,” Marshall mused.
“What is your interest anyway?” Zane asked, studying him.
“Just curious,” Marshall said, feeling all eyes at the table on him. He was a terrible liar and they all knew it. “I can see the place from my house. I noticed activity over there, three cars, and just wondered what was going on. As I was driving in for supper, I passed a local hardware truck headed out that way with a lot of supplies in the back.”
“You think they’re remodeling it?” Hoyt said. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to live in such a huge place. Unless they have something else in mind for it.”
“Are you talking about that old mansion north of here?” Emma asked. “I’d hate to have to heat that place in the winter. Why, it must have thirty bedrooms.”
“I heard the old woman who lived there last stayed in just a small part of the house, boarding up the rest,” Hoyt said, still frowning.
“Was it once a hotel or something?” Emma asked.
“That might have been the original plan,” Hoyt said, “but the community of Wellington died when the railroad came through twenty miles to the south. I still can’t believe anyone has moved in there with the idea of staying.”
In the silence that followed, Tanner said, “The place has a dark history. I had some friends who went out there one night. They said they heard a baby crying and when they left they were chased by a pickup truck that disappeared at the edge of town. Just disappeared.”
“I’ve heard stories about the Phantom Truck,” Logan said.
Emma laughed. “Oh, posh. You aren’t trying to tell me that the place is haunted or something silly like that.” She glanced around the table. “Hoyt?”
Her husband sighed. “Let’s just say that if a building can be haunted, it would be that one. The Wellingtons had their share of tragedies.”
“Ghosts are said to have been born out of tragedy,” Logan added and grinned mischievously.
Emma shook her head and turned to Marshall. “What do these people who have moved in look like?”
“I only saw one of them,” he said, then remembered the image he’d seen behind the woman and felt a chill snake up his spine. “She could have been a ghost.”
Emma shot him a disapproving look. “I’m asking if they seem like decent enough people and if they do, I think as their only neighbor you should go over there, introduce yourself and be neighborly. I’ll bake something for you to take.” She was already on her feet.
Hoyt was shaking his head. “You might want to get the lay of the land before you do that. Who knows who might have moved in there? We’ve had trouble with drug runners from Canada, escaped prisoners from Deer Lodge, criminals crossing the border through some barbed-wire fence and heading for the first house they see. Until you know who you’re dealing with—”
“Hoyt!” Emma chastised. “I’m sure all those instances were rare. I’ve read the local paper. There is hardly ever any crime up here. And Marshall is no fool. He’ll go over and meet them and make up his own mind. I’m sure they’re fine people if they’re remodeling the place and determined to live here.”
They all loved Emma’s positive attitude, no matter how naïve. But Marshall found himself poking at his food, his appetite gone as he remembered how his horse had spooked—not to mention his own reaction to what he’d seen just inside that balcony.
SUPPER AT WELLINGTON MANOR was served in the warm kitchen at a long, old table with mismatched chairs and dishes. The casserole that Carolina had fixed was delicious, and Alexa did her best to relax.
Carolina was a twenty-something, soft-spoken, pretty woman with blond hair, green eyes and porcelain skin. Her father, Sierra had said by way of introduction, had made his fortune in the hotel business. Carolina seemed shy and clearly embarrassed by Sierra’s introduction.
Her husband, Archer, was boisterous and big, a bodybuilder who apparently had been a football star until an injury had sidelined him. His father was a producer in Hollywood, his mother a lawyer.
The other couple, Gigi and Devlin, seemed cut from the same expensive cloth, both with parents who had retired to Palm Desert, California. Gigi’s long white-blond hair was pulled up in a ponytail, making her blue eyes seem even larger, her tiny nose all the more cute. A slender, athletic-looking young woman, she was in her twenties but could have passed for sixteen with her sweet, innocent face.
Her husband, Devlin, was a beach-boy blond with blue eyes. He laughed when Sierra introduced him as a rich kid whose parents owned a couple of vineyards in northern California. He’d had some wine shipped from home, which he poured with enthusiasm.
The lone wolf of the group was Jayden Farrell, whose father was an unemployed actor in Los Angeles, according to Sierra. Unlike the others, he was thirty-something and apparently hadn’t been raised privileged. But he was as movie-star handsome as the others, maybe even more so because there was intelligence behind his blue eyes that Alexa found both appealing and disturbing.
Not only that, Jayden also seemed to set himself apart from this group, watching them almost with amusement. Alexa doubted the rest of them had noticed the disdain for them that she glimpsed in his gaze. What was this single man doing here with these married couples, especially when she sensed he didn’t like them?
As the group around the table talked and joked, she and Jayden remained silent, she noted. She listened to them talk about their many university degrees, extended European trips and the benefits of growing up in sunny California.
None seemed to have professions, at least no jobs that kept them from helping their