Dakota Home

Prologue

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 Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue

Four years earlier

J
eb McKenna recognized death, sensed the cold, dark shadow of its approach as he labored for each breath. The will to live was strong, stronger than he could have imagined. Waves of agony assaulted him, draining what little energy he had left. In an effort to conserve his strength, he gritted his teeth and swallowed the groans.

Trapped as he was, he twisted his face toward the sun, seeking its warmth. Stretching toward the light. He refused to stare into the advancing darkness that waited to claim him. But the more he struggled, the weaker he grew. Each attempt to free himself brought unrelenting pain. Barely conscious now, he accepted the futility of his effort and went still as the darkness crept toward him inch by inch.

“Jeb! Dear God in heaven. Hold on, hold on. I'll get help….”

Jeb tried to open his eyes but had become too weak. An eternity passed before he felt his head gently lifted and cradled in caring arms.

“Help is on the way…they'll be here soon. Soon.”

It was Dennis, he realized, Dennis in a panic, his voice shaking and raw. Jeb couldn't see what his friend was doing, but felt the tightening pressure of a tourniquet as Dennis secured it around his thigh.

Jeb wanted to thank him, but it was too late and he knew it, even if his friend didn't. He was grateful to Dennis; he didn't want to die, not alone in the middle of a wheat field, lying in his own blood, feeling the land slowly, surely swallow him.

He didn't want his father—or worse, his sister—to discover his body. At least now they would be spared that agony.

So many regrets, so many mistakes.

“Hold on,” Dennis said, “hold on.”

Jeb heard a piercing sound—a siren—followed by raised voices and shouted orders. Then the pain returned, pain so agonizing that he sought death, begged it to take him. Anything to end this inhuman suffering.

The next thing he heard was his sister's sobbing. It was the first time he could remember hearing Sarah cry. She'd always been the strong one in the family. Jeb and his father had come to rely on her, especially since their mother's death.

Jeb chanced opening his eyes and found himself in a darkened room. Sunlight peeked through the closed blinds in narrow slats. He noticed a powerful antiseptic smell, and when he moved his arm slightly, felt the tug of a line attached to his hand. An IV. He was obviously in the hospital, probably in Grand Forks.

Rolling his head to one side, he discovered Sarah sitting there, her face streaked with tears.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” she whispered when she saw that he was awake.

“I'm alive.” He had to hear himself say the words in order to know it was true.

“Son.”

His father stood on the other side of the bed. “We thought we'd lost you.” Joshua McKenna wasn't an emotional man, but his eyes revealed anguish. A heartbeat later, he broke eye contact.

Jeb frowned, not understanding. He'd lived, so the worst was over; this wasn't a time for tears or grief.

“What day is it?” Jeb asked, and the words scraped his dry throat. As if reading his thoughts, his sister offered him a sip of water, and he greedily took in the liquid until he'd had his fill.

His father looked at his watch. “Thursday afternoon. Four o'clock.”

Jeb had lost all perspective on time. The accident had happened earlier in the week. Must've been Monday, when Dennis was scheduled to deliver diesel for the farm equipment. Yes, because he remembered Dennis talking to him, helping him.

“You were unconscious for two days,” his sister explained.

“Two days,” he repeated. It didn't seem possible.

“You'd lost a lot of blood,” Joshua added, his voice trembling.

Jeb glanced at Sarah and then his father. Why were they so upset? He was alive and damn glad of it.

“Tell us what happened?” Sarah asked softly. She held his hand between her own.

“The tractor stalled and I…” He hesitated when an awkward lump blocked his throat.

“You climbed down to check the engine?”

Jeb nodded. “I'd just started to look when the tractor lurched forward.” He couldn't finish, couldn't make himself relive the nightmare—yet he knew he could never escape it.

Luckily his reflexes had been fast enough for him to avoid getting run over, but he hadn't been able to leap far enough to miss the sharp, churning blades of the field cultivator. They'd caught his leg, chewing away at flesh and sinew, grinding into bone. Then, without explanation, the tractor had stalled again, trapping his leg, holding him prisoner as he watched his blood fertilize the rich soil, darkening it to a deeper shade.

“Go on,” his father urged.

He tried, but no words came.

“No,” Sarah cried. “No more. It isn't important. Jeb's alive. That's all that matters.”

The door opened and Dennis Urlacher peered inside.

“He's awake,” Sarah announced, and Dennis walked slowly into the room.

He stood next to Sarah, his face tight with concern. “Good to have you back in the land of the living.”

Jeb swallowed hard, realizing that if Dennis hadn't arrived when he did, he'd never have survived. “I owe you my life.”

Dennis was uncomfortable with attention, and rather than comment, he simply nodded. “I'm sorry about—”

Jeb watched Sarah reach for Dennis's forearm and his friend stopped midsentence.

“He doesn't know,” his father said.

“Know what?” Jeb asked, frowning at those gathered by his bedside.

Then suddenly he did know, should have realized the moment he'd heard his sister's sobs and seen the agony in his father's eyes.

That was when he started to scream. The scream began in the pit of his stomach and worked its way through him until he sounded like a man possessed. He screamed until he had no oxygen left in his lungs, until his shoulders shook and his breath was shallow and panting.

He already knew what no one had the courage to tell him.

I
t was the screaming that woke him.

Jeb bolted upright in bed and forced himself to look around the darkened room, to recognize familiar details. Four years had passed since the accident. Four years in which his mind refused to release even one small detail of that fateful afternoon.

Leaning against his headboard, he dragged in deep gulps of air until the shaking subsided. Invariably with the dream came the pain, the pain in his leg. The remembered agony of that summer's day.

His mind refused to forget and so did his body. As he waited for his hammering pulse to return to normal, pain shot through his badly scarred thigh, cramping his calf muscle. Instinctively cringing, he stiffened until the discomfort passed.

Then he started to laugh. Sitting on the edge of his bed, Jeb reached for his prosthesis and strapped it onto the stump of his left leg. This was the joke: The pain Jeb experienced, the charley horse that knotted and twisted his muscles, was in a leg that had been amputated four years earlier.

He'd cheated death that day, but death had gained its own revenge. The doctors had a phrase for it. They called it phantom pain, and assured him that eventually it would pass. It was all part of his emotional adjustment to the loss of a limb. Or so they said, over and over, only Jeb had given up listening a long time ago.

After he'd dressed, he made his way into the kitchen, eager to get some caffeine into his system and dispel the lingering effects of the dream. Then he remembered he was out of coffee.

It didn't take a genius to realize that Sarah had purposely forgotten coffee when she'd delivered his supplies. This was his sister's less-than-subtle effort to make him go into town. It wouldn't work. He wasn't going to let her manipulate him—even if it meant roasting barley and brewing that.

Jeb slammed out the back door and headed for the barn, his limp more pronounced with his anger. His last trip into Buffalo Valley had been at Christmas, almost ten months earlier. Sarah knew how he felt about people staring at him, whispering behind his back as if he wasn't supposed to know what they were talking about. He'd lost his leg, not his hearing or his intelligence. Their pity was as unwelcome as their curiosity.

Jeb hadn't been particularly sociable before the accident and was less so now. Sarah knew that, too. She was also aware that his least favorite person in Buffalo Valley was Marta Hansen, the grocer's wife. The old biddy treated him like a charity case, a poor, pathetic cripple—as if it was her duty, now that his mother was gone, to smother him with sympathy. Her condescending manner offended him and hurt his already wounded pride.

Jeb knew he made people uncomfortable. His loss reminded other farmers of their own vulnerability. With few exceptions, namely Dennis, the men he'd once considered friends felt awkward and uneasy around him. Even more now that he'd given up farming and taken up raising bison. For the past three and a half years he'd maintained a herd of fifty breeding animals. He'd learned mostly by trial and error, but felt he'd made considerable progress.

Genesis, his gelding, walked to the corral fence and stretched his head over the rail to remind Jeb he hadn't been fed yet.

“I haven't had my coffee,” he told the quarter horse, as if the animal could commiserate with him. He hardly ever rode anymore, but kept the horse for company.

He fed the gelding, then returned to the kitchen.

Cursing his sister and her obstinate ways, he wrote a grocery list—if he was going into town he'd make it worth his while—and hurried toward his pickup. The October wind felt almost hot in his face. A few minutes later, he drove out of the yard, sparing a glance for the bison grazing stolidly on either side. He moved the herd on a pasture rotation system. Later in the day he'd separate the weanlings and feeders from the main herd.

Buffalo ranching. He'd made the right decision. They were hardy animals, requiring less care than cattle did. The demand for their meat was growing and often exceeded supply. Business was good. Currently his females were worth more as breeding stock than meat: just last week, Jeb had sold one of his cows for a healthy five thousand dollars.

To his surprise, he enjoyed the fifty-minute drive to Buffalo Valley, although he rarely ventured into town these days. Usually he preferred to drive with no real destination, enjoying the solitude and the changing seasons and the feel of the road.

When he pulled into town, he was immediately struck by the changes the past ten months had brought to Buffalo Valley. Knight's Pharmacy was and always had been the brightest spot on Main Street. Hassie Knight had been around as long as he could remember and served the world's best old-fashioned ice-cream sodas. He'd loved that place as a kid and had considered it a special treat when his mother took him there on Saturday afternoons.

Like Marta Hansen, Hassie Knight had been a friend of his mother's; she was also the one woman he knew, other than Sarah, who didn't make him feel like a cripple.

3 OF A KIND, the town's only hotel, bar and grill, was down the street from the pharmacy. Jeb had briefly met Buffalo Bob a couple of years earlier. He never did understand why a leather-clad, tattooed biker with a ponytail would settle in Buffalo Valley, but it wasn't up to him to question. Bob had lasted longer than Jeb had thought he would. People seemed to like him, or so Calla, Jeb's niece, had informed him.

The Pizza Parlor was new, but now that he thought about it, he remembered Sarah telling him Calla had started working there part-time. Good thing—the kid needed an outlet. She was fifteen and full of attitude. Jeb suspected that Dennis and his sister would have been married by now if it wasn't for Calla.

Sarah's quilting store came into view next and despite his irritation with her, he couldn't squelch his sense of pride. Her quilts were exquisite, crafted from muslin colored with various natural dyes that Sarah derived from plants, berries and lichen. She managed to make something complex and beautiful out of this hand-dyed muslin, combining traditional methods with her own designs. The store was a testament to her talent and skill. She took justifiable pride in her work, displaying quilts in the front window of what had once been a florist shop. The Spring Bouquet had been closed for at least fifteen years. Folks didn't buy a luxury like hothouse flowers when it was hard enough just getting food on the table. Nor had there been much to celebrate in Buffalo Valley for a long time.

Still, the town showed more life than it had in years. The old Buffalo Valley theater appeared to be in operation; he recalled his father saying something about a school play being held there last Christmas. He didn't realize the theater had reopened permanently, but he supposed it made sense, since the place had been completely refurbished.

The theater wasn't his only surprise. The outside of Hansen's Grocery had recently been painted, as well. God knew it could use a face-lift. The sign was down and propped against the building; it was probably worn out, like so much else in town.

Not delaying the unpleasant task any longer, Jeb parked and headed toward the grocery, determined to be as cold and aloof as possible until Marta Hansen got the message. If past experience was anything to go by, that could take a while.

“Hello.”

He wasn't two steps into the grocery when a friendly voice called out to greet him. His reply was more grunt than words. Without stopping, he reached for a cart and started down the first aisle.

“I don't believe we've met,” the woman said, following him.

Jeb turned. He didn't want to be rude, but he did want to get his point across.
Leave me alone.
He wasn't interested in exchanging gossip, didn't require assistance or company. He'd come for coffee and a few other groceries and that was it.

Confronting the woman with the friendly voice, Jeb got the shock of his life. She was young and blond and beautiful. Really beautiful. He couldn't begin to imagine what had brought a beauty like this to a town like Buffalo Valley. The next thing he noticed was how tall she was—just a couple of inches shorter than his own six feet. Her blue eyes held kindness and her smile was warm.

“I'm Maddy Washburn,” she said, holding out her hand.

Jeb stared at it a second before he extended his own. “Jeb McKenna,” he said gruffly, certain he was making an ass of himself by gawking at her. Hell, he couldn't seem to stop.

“So
you're
Jeb,” she returned, sounding genuinely pleased to make his acquaintance. “I wondered when I'd have a chance to meet you. Sarah and Calla talk about you all the time.”

He nodded and turned back to his cart. It was adding up now, why his sister had “forgotten” to include coffee in his monthly supplies.

“I own Hansen's Grocery,” she said.

“You do?” Afraid his staring was noticeable, he placed two large tins of ground coffee in his cart.

“What do you think of the new paint job?”

“Looks nice,” he said, and pointedly checked his list as he pushed his cart down the aisle. He added a ten-pound bag of sugar.

“I thought so, too.”

She was in front of him now, straightening rows of powdered creamer.

“Wait a minute. You bought the grocery?” The fact that she owned the store hadn't really hit him earlier. “Why?” It made no sense that someone with so much obvious potential and such a great body—call him sexist, but it wasn't like he could ignore the curves on this woman—would purchase a grocery in a back-country town on the Dakota plains.

She laughed. “Everyone asks me that.”

He'd bet they did.

“I flew out for Lindsay and Gage's wedding,” she explained.

“Lindsay? Lindsay Snyder?” Jeb asked aloud, trying to remember where he'd heard the name. It didn't take him long to make the connection. Lindsay was the schoolteacher Calla was so crazy about. The Southern gal who'd stepped in at the last moment a year earlier and saved the high school from being closed. He'd never met her, but she was all Calla had talked about for months. Apparently she was related to Anton and Gina Snyder, who were long-dead and buried, if memory served him right. Back in July, Lindsay had married Gage Sinclair, an area farmer and once a good friend. Needless to say, Jeb hadn't attended the wedding.

“Lindsay and I've been best friends our entire lives and…well, I was looking for a change…”

“You're from the South, too?”

Maddy nodded and laughed again. “Savannah, Georgia. Please don't feel obliged to warn me about the winters. Everyone takes delight in telling me how dreadful conditions can get here.”

The Southern beauty didn't have a clue, but she'd soon discover the truth of that on her own. Not being much of a talker, he wasn't sure what to say next, so he pushed his cart forward.

“I've changed things around quite a bit,” she said as she strolled down the aisle at his side. “If you'd like some help with your list—”

“I don't.” He knew he'd been curt, but that seemed the best way to say what needed to be said.

“Okay.” Apparently without taking offense, she left him, humming as she returned to the front of the store. She certainly appeared to be a good-natured sort of person. It made him wonder if she knew about his leg. The only telltale sign was his limp, which was more or less pronounced according to his mood. Some days it was hard to remember, and then on other days there was no forgetting. Days like this one, when he saw a woman as lovely as Maddy Washburn….

Once he'd collected everything he needed, Jeb pushed the cart to the check-out stand where Maddy stood, waiting for him. He set the groceries on the counter and she quickly rang them up. “I'm starting a delivery service,” she announced as she bagged his purchases, using several white plastic sacks. “Would you be interested in adding your name to the list? Of course, there'd be a small fee, but I'm sure many folks will find it cost-effective. I'd bill you once a month.”

He was interested. Having to rely on anyone, his sister included, was a thorn in his pride. However, he doubted Miss Scarlett O'Hara would be willing to drive that far out of town. “I live by Juniper Creek,” he told her.

“Is that close to the Clemens ranch?”

So she'd done her homework, after all. That impressed Jeb. “I'm not far from there.”

“Then I know where you are. You can either fax or e-mail your order. Or send it by post. As long as I have it by five on Wednesday for a Thursday-afternoon delivery.”

It sounded good, but Jeb still wasn't sure this would work. “I don't have to be at the house, do I?”

“Not at all,” she assured him. “If you're comfortable leaving your door unlocked, I can put the perishables in the refrigerator for you. It's all part of the service. Heavens, no, I wouldn't expect you to be there to meet me.”

His nod was abrupt. “All right. Sign me up.”

She handed him the form, which he folded and stuck inside his shirt pocket. Taking his bags, he started to leave.

“It was nice to meet you, Jeb.”

“You, too,” he replied brusquely and headed out the door.