Untamed (12 page)

Was she not capable of giving the kind of love she so desperately wanted? And did she have it in her to accept and appreciate it if offered or would she screw it up? Most important at the moment was why in the world was she sitting there wishing that Cam Marsh would be the man who made all that come true for her?

Chapter Four

Ellie walked outside onto the small patio with a steaming cup of coffee in hand. She didn’t have a lot of luxuries, but a good cup of coffee was a necessity. Now that she’d been to the store and purchased a decent coffee maker and bottled water, she could at least have a decent cup of coffee in the mornings. If she’d had to use the well water, she’d have given up coffee entirely.

Talk about a stink. The water from the well smelled so much of sulphur it was like bathing in
eau de
rotten eggs. Totally gross. She’d already started a list of “must haves” and a water conditioning system was at the top.

She took a sip and then lowered herself to the wobbly old wooden chair that sat at the equally rickety table. It was a beautiful morning. The air was cool, maybe in the mid-seventies, and there was a slight breeze. Sunlight slanted through the branches of the old gnarled oaks that dotted the lawn and rimmed the perimeter, dust motes dancing in the air and the sound of birds creating a melody that was both soothing and cheerful.

Were it not for the state of the house and yard and her lack of funds to make improvements this might not be a bad place. She mentally kicked herself at that lie. The place was a mess, and it would take more than she’d ever earn to make it nice. The only thing good about this place was the man who lived next door.

She knew it was foolish to wish that a love that had come to be when she was a child could transform into adult emotions. She and Cam had not known one another since they were children, and the love children shared was not something to base an adult relationship upon. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from wishing.

Ellie sat there until her cup was empty. She hated to go back inside but she still had a lot of work to do. She’d managed to separate the paintings by the dates they were painted but she hadn’t taken time to study them— and there was still an entire closet full of paintings in the spare bedroom to sort through.

She needed to go through those before the man from the art gallery in Orlando showed up. She’d done some research and discovered that her father had been rather well known and there were collectors eager to buy whatever she had.

That made it more of a mystery. If his work was so in demand, then why was so much of it left stacked in his house and why was his home so… meager? More important, why had he painted that damn white horse over and over?

“What’s the significance?”

Maybe there was something in the closets that would give her a clue. Resolved to keep searching for answers she headed inside.

* * * * *

Cam picked up the paper bag from the seat of the truck and climbed out. Ellie’s truck was parked in front of the house, signaling she was home. It had been a couple of days since the cookout at the ranch, he hadn’t had a chance to call or stop by, and he feared she might take that as him not being interested.

That definitely wasn’t the case. Sure, she was like a fish out of water out here in the country. She was scared of every damn thing that moved, but still there was something about her that got to him. Something besides his connection to her in the past and her looks.

He rapped on the front door and waited. Finally, the door opened.

“Cam!” Her face lit in a smile. “Hey, this is a nice surprise.”

“I come bearing goodies.”

“Goodies?” She stepped back for him to enter.

“Mrs. Myrtle— Mrs. Smithfield, dropped by some pound cakes at the ranch and I thought you might want one.”

“Homemade?”

“Yep.”

Ellie grinned. “I have coffee.”

“Lead the way.”

They went into the kitchen and Ellie poured two cups of coffee while Cam unwrapped the cake. “Cream and sugar?”

“Black is fine.”

“Great.” She set a cup in front of him and put hers on the table. “Oh that looks good.” Ellie fished a knife out of the drawer to hand to him. “You need a plate?”

“Nope.” Cam cut off a wedge and took a bite.

Ellie took the knife from where he’d left it stuck in the top of the cake and cut herself a piece. “Oh my god,” she mumbled after taking a bite. “This is really good. You wanna go out to the patio?”

“Sure.”

They went out and she gestured toward the chair. “Sit.”

“No, you.”

She shook her head and sank down on the concrete, her legs folded Indian fashion.

Cam took a seat in the lone chair and set his cup on the table. “So, you make any headway with your dad’s paintings?”

She nodded and swallowed before answering. “I just finished cleaning out the closet. More of the same. But I found one that had a tag from an art gallery in Orlando on the back so I called it and it turns out that he was pretty well known and there are quite a few collectors interested in his work.”

“No kidding?”

“I know. I was surprised, too. The guy— uh, John Bookman— he’s coming over today to take a look.”

“So you’re gonna sell the paintings?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve looked at all of them and they’re all beautiful but how many paintings can a person have of a white horse?”

“Funny how he always painted a white horse isn’t it?”

“Yes, to say the least.”

“No, I mean funny because of your name. Whitehorse.”

Ellie looked up in surprise. “I never even thought of that.”

“That reminds me— and tell me to mind my own business if you want, but you still go by Whitehorse?”

“Yeah.” She took another drink of her coffee. “I… okay, here’s the thing. Dan and I, we dated a couple of times. Nothing serious. But one night we were at a party and got really wasted and one thing led to another.

“As luck would have it I ended up pregnant. So, we got married. Then I miscarried and things kind of went south.”

“So when you got married you kept your maiden name.”

“Yep. Wasn’t keen on his name.”

“Which was?”

“Tiddy.”

Cam bit his lip to keep from laughing. “Tiddy?”

She nodded and all of a sudden burst out laughing and he laughed with her. “I know,” she said between laughter. “I just couldn’t do it.”

“Can’t really say I blame you.” Cam dusted the crumbs off his hands and took a drink of coffee. “But back to the paintings. Maybe they’d bring enough to let you fix up the place.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice? I’d love to be able to screen in the patio and paint the place. Maybe buy a couch. That old recliner needs to be tossed.”

“Well, you never know. When’s the guy supposed to be here?”

“In an hour or so. You not working today?”

“No, I pulled doubles the last two days so I got the day off.”

“So, you want to take a walk?”

Cam grinned. “You gonna protect me from the snakes?”

“Fat chance. But I’ve been venturing out beyond the yard and it’s really kind of pretty. Kind of like a park once you get beyond that big wall of those sharp sticky leaf fan things. I found a stream.”

“Well, let’s go take a look.”

“Cool!” Ellie jumped up and put her cup on the table.

Together they started across the yard. She was right − once clear of the yard the land looked like a park. The underbrush had been cleared away, leaving the old live oaks, small clumps of palmetto here and there and surprisingly, as they wandered deeper into the woods, a small grove of mimosa trees that grew alongside a steam.

“Look!” Ellie hurried to the bank of the stream. “Isn’t it pretty? I didn’t know Florida had a lot of rocks, especially quartz. I mean I haven’t seen any in the yard, but the stream is full of them— see how they poke up out of the bottom?”

Cam stopped and looked in amazement. Rocky streams were definitely not common to Florida. Limestone was the most prevalent mineral and this definitely wasn’t limestone. It was quartz.

“This is… impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because there isn’t quartz in Florida.”

Ellie looked at the stream, the clusters of quartz crystals spiking up from the surface of the clear water and the milky white of stones barely exposed by the sand along the stream’s bottom. It was beautiful. Magical in a way.

She walked to the edge of the stream and stooped down. She stuck her hand in the water and took hold of a small cluster that had three crystals affixed to a single base. She lifted it free and held it up. “But it’s here. Right here. And real. Here take it.”

Cam knelt down beside her and held out his hand. Ellie placed the crystal cluster on it. It was cool. Cam’s eyes widened. This time of year, the water in the rivers and streams should still be very warm. It was early October, but still too early in the year for the water to have significantly cooled.

He reached out and put his hand in the water. “This is strange.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the water shouldn’t be this cool.”

Ellie looked at him and then the stream. “Well… well, okay, so what would make the water cool, aside from the shade of the trees?”

Cam stood to face her. “I guess if it was spring fed.”

“Are there springs in Florida?”

“Yeah, but I’ve never heard of any around here.”

“But that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be one.”

“True.”

“So, let’s follow the stream and see if we can figure out where it comes from.”

Cam thought about it. “Okay, so we go that way.” He pointed to the left.

“Why that way?”

“Because the other way leads to our place and I know there are no springs there. In fact, this stream isn’t on our property.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I know every inch of the place and there’s no stream that crosses from here to our ranch.”

“Well, it has to go somewhere.”

“Yeah and it has to start somewhere so what do you want to find—the beginning or the end?”

“Beginning.”

“Then this way.”

Just then, Ellie’s phone rang. “Oh shoot it’s that art dealer,” she said as she looked at it. “Hello? Yes, yes. Give me…”

“Ten minutes.” Cam said quietly.

“Give me ten minutes. I’ll meet you at the house.”

“I’m sorry,” she said to Cam. “He’s early.”

“No problem. We can explore more after he leaves.”

“Really? Thanks.”

They returned to the house to find the man waiting in his car. Cam excused himself on the pretext of making a call and sat in his truck as Ellie took the man inside.

An hour later, they emerged from the house. Ellie shook the man’s hand and then he got in his car and left.

“So?” Cam asked when she walked over to his truck.

“He wanted the whole lot but…”

“You don’t want to sell them?”

“I don’t know. But there was just something about that guy. He seemed… smarmy.”

“Smarmy?”

“One of my grandmother’s words. We used it for people who seemed not quite genuine or dishonest. She always told me that if I got a vibe from someone that they weren’t to be trusted to go with my gut.”

“Vibe?”

Ellie chuckled. “Well, you know, Grannie was something of a hippie back in the day. She was all into new age, Wiccan and other stuff.”

“Wiccan? Witch?”

“Same but different. I’ll tell you all about it one day, but right now I want to go back to the stream.”

“Sure.” He started to climb out of the truck and his phone rang. “Sorry,” he said to her then answered. “Clint? Shit. Okay, on my way.”

“Fence down and cattle out in the marshy section. Need to go help round ‘em up and repair the fence.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks for exploring with me.”

“I could come back when I’m done and explore some more. If you want.”

“That would be great. Thank you.”

“Great. So, I’ll call before I head over.”

“Okay. Thanks Cam. Good luck with the… roundup?”

He chuckled. “See you later, Ellie.”

He waved as he drove off and saw her smile and wave in return. Cam found it odd how eager he was to get back to Ellie Whitehorse. What exactly was it about her that got to him so strong?

He figured that would become clear in time. Right now, he had cattle to round up. And later… well, later he’d see what happened.

Chapter Five

Ellie managed to clean out the closet in the largest of the spare bedrooms before taking a break. She washed her hands and put on a fresh pot of coffee. It occurred to her that she had not checked to see if there was mail in the box at the end of the driveway so she walked down to check it out.

The mailbox was crammed with circulars, a bank statement for her father, along with a letter from some conservancy group and a letter addressed to her from a law firm.

As she walked back to the house, she opened the letter addressed to her. Her eyes widened in surprise. Someone wanted to buy the property and was offering over three hundred thousand dollars.

Was that a good price? She didn’t have a clue, but she might know one way to find out. She’d call Lily Marsh.

The bank statement showed that her father’s bank accounts had been closed, which was no surprise since she’d filled out all of the paperwork to have that done.

When she got back inside, she dumped the junk into the trash and poured a cup of coffee. She sat down at the table and opened the letter from the Conservancy Group.

“What?”

The way the letter read made it seem that her father was a big benefactor. How could that be?

“More mysteries,” she grumbled as she got up and put the mail in the little stand on the kitchen counter.

She got her cell phone and placed a call to Lily’s cell.

“Hey, Lily. It’s Ellie. Sorry to bother you but do you have five minutes?”

“Sure Ellie, what’s up?”

“Well, I got a letter from a law firm.” She grabbed the envelope. “Johnston, Bremann, Miller, and Associates. In Orlando. They made an offer on behalf of a client on this property.”

“Seriously? That’s interesting. How much?”

“Three hundred and eighteen thousand.”

Lily laughed. “Toss that shit.”

“Really? It sounds like a lot to me.”

“For six hundred acres? Girl, if the land was only worth a thousand an acre you’d be looking at six hundred thousand and I know it’s worth that.”

“Oh! I had no idea. Okay, I guess I’ll just toss this then.”

“You making any progress over there? Need any help?”

“Right now I’m still going through things. I have one more closet to go through and then I start thinking about doing some painting and stuff like that.”

“Well, let me know if you need help, okay?”

“I will. Thanks Lily. And thanks for the advice.”

“Sure thing hon. And hey, if you decide you want to sell, do me a favor and talk to us first. We might be interested.”

“Okay, I definitely will. Thanks again, Lily. I’ll talk to you soon.”

Ellie ended the call and stood staring across the room for a few minutes. If Lily and her family were interested and the place was worth over half a million, maybe she should consider selling.

It wasn’t as if she was going to use the land for cattle or horses or anything like that. She knew nothing about that sort of thing. And with that much money, she could find a small place back in the Carolinas and have plenty left over to put in the bank. There sure wasn’t much here to call home.

It hit her like the proverbial truckload of bricks. She’d found nothing of a personal nature in this place aside from the paintings and carvings. There were no old bills, no letters, and no receipts. There were only a few articles of clothing, an old rusted disposable razor, a few plates, cups, old cookware and bare refrigerator and cabinets.

Maybe he hadn’t really lived there. But if he hadn’t lived here then where had he lived?

And what about the paintings?

The paintings. She kept coming back to the paintings. That was all that existed of the man who’d been her father. She went into the spare room where she’d organized all of the paintings by year and started with the earliest.

She needed a place to spread them out so she could study them but there wasn’t enough space on the floor. On a whim, she ran out to her pickup. There was a small toolbox behind the seat. She grabbed it and took it inside.

The old hammer that had been her grannie’s was inside the toolbox along with a small box of short nails. Armed with tools, she set about hanging the pictures on the bedroom wall, as close together as she could get them. It took a couple of hours and the walls were full before she ran out of paintings.

Ellie stepped back and started looking at the paintings, starting with the earliest she’d found. She became so engrossed that she completely lost track of time. It wasn’t until the light started to fade that she realized how much time had passed.

She went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The choices were slim. She really should go to the grocery store.

Ellie checked the time. There must have been more to do at the Marsh Ranch than Cam thought. She hadn’t heard from him yet. But maybe she didn’t have to wait for him to call.

On an impulse, she placed a call to him. He answered on the third ring.

“Ellie? Everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine. I just thought I’d see if you wanted to have dinner with me. I need to run to the store anyway, and it’d be nice to have some company.”

“Sure. I should be done here in a couple of hours.”

“That’s fine. Like I said, I need to run to the store anyway.”

“Great. I’ll call when I’m on my way.”

“Okay. Talk to you soon.”

She ended the call and started to stick the phone in her pocket but it rang. Thinking it might be Cam she answered without looking at the caller id. “Hey.”

“Ms. Whitehorse?”

“Yes.”

“Raymond Miller. Calling about the offer we made via mail on your property.”

“Oh. I’m not interested. Thanks.”

“I think it’d be in your best interest to reconsider.”

“I said no.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“Goodbye.”

Ellie ended the call and shook off the creepy feeling it gave her. She was probably imagining things. The man had not implied any threat. Telling herself she was just paranoid, she grabbed her purse and headed out of the house.

Even using the map feature on her phone she got turned around twice before she made it to the grocery store. Then once inside, rather than just picking up what she needed for the evening meal, she splurged and bought an entire week’s worth of groceries.

Ellie wheeled her cart out to her truck. “What the…?”

The driver’s side door of her truck looked like it had been kicked and the back tire was completely flat.

“Shit.” She stowed the grocery bags in the bed of the truck and dug out the jack. Her spare was not the best but it would get her home.

By the time she’d changed the tire and loaded the flat into the truck, she was hot, tired, and dirty. She climbed in and that’s when she saw the piece of paper wedged under her windshield wiper.

Ellie got out to retrieve the paper and unfolded it. “Sell the land or the next time it won’t be a tire that gets cut.”

Fear spike hot and hard inside her, making her break out into a sweat and nausea boil in her stomach. She jumped in the truck, locked the door, and tried to calm herself as she looked around the parking lot.

How had anyone known she would be there? She’d been followed. That made her even more afraid. Why would someone do that? Just because she said no to an offer on her land? People didn’t act like that in real life.

Ellie started the truck and backed out. She needed advice, and Cam was the one person she could trust. He worked for the sheriff’s department after all. He’d know what to do.

She’d been excited about seeing Cam, about fixing dinner and enjoying his company. Now all that had changed. Now she wanted him to protect her from the snakes. Again.