Dakota Born

  “The fence has been repaired, too,” Lindsay said in wonder. “And it’s painted and everything…”

  “We didn’t want your dogs to get lost,” Hassie said. “You can thank Gage Sinclair for that.”

  Gage was someone Lindsay hadn’t forgotten. They’d met during those few moments when he’d come into the pharmacy with his mother. Lindsay didn’t think she’d ever seen such depth and character in a man’s face. He was in his thirties, she’d guess, but the years couldn’t have been easy ones. The tracery of fine lines at the corners of his eyes told her that. His hair, a coffee-brown, had been in need of a cut. He was deeply tanned, but this wasn’t the kind of tan one got from sitting under a lamp. His tan had been baked on by long hours in the sun. It was his eyes, though, that had struck her most. They were the most incredible blue, verging on gray.

  Before they’d had a chance to exchange more than a word or two, he’d made his excuses and left. Later, Hassie had told her Gage had a younger brother who’d be attending the high school. In those few moments, Lindsay had keenly felt his appraisal, but whatever he thought he’d kept to himself.

  “If you like what we did to the outside, just wait till you see the interior.” Her face bright with joy, Hassie grabbed Lindsay’s hand and led her into the house.

  Inside, Lindsay paused. The place was virtually unrecognizable. The living room was a bright white and when she moved into the kitchen she found it to be a cheery shade of lemon-yellow. Her bathroom was a robin’s egg-blue, and her bedroom a pale lavender.

  What hadn’t been repainted had been scrubbed until it glistened. The floors shone with wax, and the entire place smelled fresh and clean.

  “I can’t believe anyone would do all this.” Lindsay had wondered how she was going to make the house liveable and still manage to get everything ready for the first day of school. She’d had no idea that the entire town of Buffalo Valley had foreseen her dilemma and taken action.

  With so many people helping, it didn’t take more than thirty minutes to completely unload the trailer and the truck. By the time Lindsay had finished thanking everyone, her mother was in the kitchen putting away pots and pans and filling up cupboards and drawers.

  Lindsay leaned against the doorway. “I’m exhausted.”

  Her mother laughed. “My goodness, Lindsay, you’re their hero.”

  “I wonder if they’ll feel the same way at the end of the school year?” her father teased, digging into the stacks of cardboard boxes for her CD player.

  Lindsay headed toward the largest bedroom, which faced the front of the house. Her bed had already been assembled, thanks to Dennis Urlacher and Joshua McKenna. She found the box that held the sheets and then, with her dogs patiently waiting, she made the bed. Mutt and Jeff immediately hopped up, making themselves comfortable. She’d barely been in town an hour and already her clothes were hung in the closet and her kitchen cupboards were stocked. This old house, which had felt so stark and empty only a few weeks earlier, had been scrubbed clean, repainted and repaired, until now it looked and felt like home.

  In two days, her parents would return to Savannah and Lindsay would be alone for the first time since her arrival. Her gaze fell on the fireplace and she recalled the memory of her grandmother and the moving brick.

  She would find that brick, she decided, and discover what her grandmother had slipped inside all those years ago.

  Five

  Minutes for the August 21st meeting of the

  Buffalo Valley Town Council

  As recorded by Hassie Knight, Secretary and Treasurer, duly elected.

  The meeting was opened by council president Joshua McKenna with the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. Council members attending: Joshua McKenna, Dennis Urlacher, Jacob Hansen, Hassie Knight, Heath Quantrill. Marta Hansen and Buffalo Bob Carr sat in as observers. Absent: Gage Sinclair.

  In regard to old business: Joshua McKenna commended everyone on the hard work and effort that went into cleaning up the school and yard. He also mentioned the work done to the old Snyder place to welcome the new schoolteacher. In refurbishing the house, the council spent two hundred dollars to supplement what wasn’t donated by the community businesses. Hassie Knight read a thank-you letter written to the town council by Lindsay Snyder.

  In the matter of new business: council president Joshua McKenna reminded the council of Lindsay Snyder’s request for guest speakers at the school on Friday afternoons. In an effort to set a good example, he volunteered to be the first speaker. Heath Quantrill offered to speak on banking practices and Hassie Knight promised a chemistry lesson. Dennis Urlacher declined to participate but volunteered Gage Sinclair, seeing that he was absent due to harvesting pressures.

  It was brought to the council’s attention by Marta Hansen (who is not an official member of the council) that because Miss Snyder is from the South and unaccustomed to the harsh North Dakota winters, the search for a permanent replacement for Eloise Patten should continue. The council is taking her suggestion under advisement. Hassie Knight recommended the town give Lindsay Snyder a chance to prove herself first.

  It was reported that Rachel Fischer is looking into opening a pizza parlor on weekends, using her parents’ restaurant, which has been closed for three years.

  The meeting was adjourned at precisely noon.

  Respectfully submitted,

  Hassie Knight

  Heath Quantrill had found the summons from his grandmother when he reached the Buffalo Valley bank bright and early Wednesday morning. The fact that she hadn’t phoned him at home told him she wanted to see him regarding a bank matter. He couldn’t even guess what he’d done to incur the old woman’s wrath this time.

  Sitting down at his desk, Heath looked over the application from Brandon Wyatt, a local farmer applying for a fifteen-hundred-dollar loan to buy a new washer and dryer. Brandon had been into the bank late last week for the application and returned it Tuesday afternoon by mail. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen Heath regarding a small loan. Brandon had one large outstanding debt—a loan on a combine, with a balance of over a hundred thousand dollars. He’d purchased it at a Fargo dealership, with financing arranged at a local bank by the dealership itself. Heath figured Brandon’s wife must really need this washer and dryer for the farmer to approach him before harvest time. Because he knew and trusted Wyatt, Heath approved the loan after giving it little more than a cursory read.

  Despite the fact that he’d lived with bankers his entire life, Heath was learning the banking business from the ground up, compliments of his cantankerous grandmother, Lily Quantrill. He’d known from childhood that one day he’d be an important part of the family business, but he hadn’t been in any hurry to assume that responsibility. Not when his big brother appeared to be the financial whiz kid.

  In college, Heath had taken all the right classes, graduated with an acceptable grade-point average and then left to spend the summer in Europe. Except that his summer had lasted eight years. He’d skied the Alps, climbed a few mountains, crossed the Sahara Desert on a camel and sailed the Mediterranean. He’d fallen in love with Greece and two or three women along the way. His sense of adventure knew no bounds.

  Without a thought, without considering the consequences, he’d blatantly risked his sorry neck in a series of insane quests. It never occurred to him that while he was involved in one extreme game after another, his brother Max would be killed in a freak highway accident.

  Heath had been called home for the funeral; his grandmother had tracked him down in Austria. He’d always loved the stubborn old woman, although unfortunately the two of them had never gotten along. Everyone else in the family had kowtowed to her for years. But not Heath. After his initial three months in Europe, she’d demanded he come home and accept his rightful place in the family business. He’d ignored her summons and managed quite nicely even after she’d cut off his healthy allowance.

  Max’s death had shaken him badly, even more than his own parents’ prem
ature deaths. It had also angered him. Had Max survived, Heath would have punched him out for risking his life. If he was seeking a dangerous thrill, there were far better ways than trying to avoid a deer in the middle of a snowstorm.

  His grandmother, however, had gotten her revenge. Upon Heath’s return to Grand Forks, she’d promptly sent him to the old bank in Buffalo Valley. She fully intended to shape him into a banking executive, no matter how unsuited she felt he was for the job. She’d started him at the bottom, working him at each position until he’d satisfactorily proven himself.

  The first time Heath saw Buffalo Valley, he’d thought it was a joke. Surely there’d been some mistake. The old woman couldn’t possibly expect him to commute three days a week to this godforsaken place! But that was exactly what she’d expected. For twelve months now, he’d been doing his penance.

  The town was in the last throes of death, a death that would have been inevitable if the Snyder woman hadn’t agreed to step in as teacher. When he’d heard the news, Heath hadn’t known whether to cheer or weep.

  The message from his grandmother weighed heavily on Heath’s mind as the day progressed. He found himself second-guessing the reason. He reviewed his files, wondering what he’d done now to displease her. He couldn’t come up with any questionable decisions he’d made, any meetings he’d forgotten or deadlines he’d missed. He might not want to be a banker, but he was perfectly adequate. His skills were instinctive, and he’d proven himself at every turn. Or so he thought.

  His grandparents had founded Buffalo County Bank, and his father had taken over the leadership, joining his grandmother after his grandfather’s death. Then, during Heath’s last year of college, his parents had died within six months of each other. His father had suffered a heart attack, and his mother, who’d battled cancer for years, succumbed to it a few months later. With the highway accident that had claimed Max, Heath and his grandmother were all that remained of the Quantrill family.

  Traffic inside the bank had been slow all day, but then it was most days. He called Brandon Wyatt to tell him he could stop in to sign the papers later that week. By four, he was on the road toward Grand Forks and the retirement center where his grandmother lived.

  “It’s about time you got here,” she muttered from her wheelchair the minute he walked into her suite.

  “I’m happy to see you, too, Grandma.” Grinning, he bent down to kiss her cheek. Lily was eighty-five, and Heath swore she’d outlive him.

  “Sit down,” she ordered.

  Another day he might have stood and enjoyed the breathtaking view of the Red River from her tenth-floor apartment, just to spite her. But he was curious about her mood and complied rather than press the issue. He trained his gaze on the water, mentally preparing himself for a tongue-lashing.

  “Do you remember Rachel Fischer?”

  Heath had to stop and think. The name was vaguely familiar.

  “She came into the bank for a loan recently,” his grandmother added.

  “Oh, yes.” Heath nodded. He did remember. “The widow. She wanted twenty-five hundred dollars for a pizza oven.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Her parents owned the old café.” As he recalled from the paperwork, the Morningside Café had been closed for three years. The place, now boarded up, was an eyesore on Main Street—one of many.

  “Do you happen to remember what Rachel intended to do with that pizza oven?”

  He raised an eyebrow at her question.

  “She told me she wanted to start a pizza restaurant that’d be open on weekends for pick-up and in-town delivery.” He recalled that, at the council meeting, Joshua had mentioned the possibility of Rachel’s new business. Naturally he couldn’t say anything about rejecting the loan.

  “A pizza restaurant,” Lily repeated.

  Heath studied his grandmother. Her voice was calm, as if she were laying a trap for him. But he knew he’d made the right decision in rejecting Rachel Fischer’s application. The woman, a widow with a ten-year-old son, had nothing in the way of collateral. Twenty-five hundred dollars might not sound like a lot of money, but to the people in Buffalo Valley it was a fortune.

  “You turned her down.”

  “I did.” He would again, too, without hesitation.

  His grandmother wheeled her chair closer to him. “Why?”

  He found it ludicrous that she’d even ask.

  “Because any new business in Buffalo Valley is doomed,” he finally answered.

  “Is that a fact?” The old woman’s face darkened. “My understanding is they found a teacher.”

  “Yes, but I still would’ve rejected the loan.”

  “Tell me your reasoning.” She folded her hands on her lap, patient as ever. Once again, Heath had the feeling she was lying in ambush.

  “First, she had no collateral—”

  “That’s not what I hear.”

  Heath frowned. Come to think of it, Rachel had offered to have him hold her wedding ring, but the plain gold band was worth a hundred dollars, if that.

  “A hundred-dollar ring?” He made it sound like a joke.

  “The wedding ring her dead husband gave her.” His grandmother’s gaze seared holes straight through him. “This man was her husband and the father of her child. Do you think she’d willingly surrender her wedding band and not walk over hot coals to get it back?”

  “I—”

  “She has a job, doesn’t she?”

  “For minimum wage. Driving the school bus.” Nine months of the year she was responsible for delivering Buffalo Valley’s grade-school age children to the Bellmont school thirty-five miles west of town.

  “You didn’t feel she could repay the loan with that?”

  “No.” How she managed to survive on these meager wages plus what she received from Social Security was beyond him. From the loan application he’d learned that there’d been very little insurance money after her husband’s death.

  His grandmother’s stare intensified, and she hit him with another sharp question. “Have you taken a look around Buffalo Valley recently?”

  Considering that he drove into town three days a week and was a member of the council, Heath presumed she already knew the answer.

  “Well?” she demanded in that deep voice of hers.

  “I’m aware of what’s happening in town, if that’s what you’re asking. Without a new teacher, it would have died in a year. With one, it’ll take two years, maybe three.” It wasn’t what his grandmother wanted to hear but it was the truth.

  “Dying, you say. That being the case, I’d say the town was badly in need of people willing to invest in the future.”

  “That’s true, but—”

  “Don’t but me,” his grandmother snapped.

  Heath flinched. He held his breath for a moment in an effort to keep from arguing with her. “Grandma, listen, I did everything by the book,” he began quietly.

  “Exactly.”

  He blinked in confusion. “Then what’s your point?”

  “My point, young man, is that you’ve failed both me and Buffalo Valley. I sent you to this branch not as punishment, which is what you seem to believe, but to provide you with a training ground for all future banking decisions.”

  Heath clenched his hands at his sides. He’d heard all this before and he didn’t buy it. It seemed to him that he could’ve learned everything he needed to know at the slick new bank in downtown Grand Forks.

  “Buffalo Valley holds a special place in my heart.” She relaxed and some of the anger left her eyes. “William chose Buffalo Valley for our first bank.”

  “I know.” All this was ancient history. As far as Heath could see, the only reason the bank remained open was Lily Quantrill’s nostalgia for her past. Even the most inexperienced accounting student could figure out that they’d been operating at a loss for several years. The minute his grandmother died, he intended on cutting his losses and moving out.

  “You aren’t telling me you w
ant to give her the loan, are you?” He’d do it if ordered, but Rachel Fischer wasn’t a better risk now than when she’d originally applied.

  His grandmother shook her head sadly.

  “You don’t want me to give her the loan?” There was no satisfying the old woman.

  Her eyes closed. “The woman offered you the most precious item she possesses. You couldn’t ask for better collateral. And she already has the building.”

  “She wants to run a pizza restaurant. Just how many pizzas do you seriously think she’s going to sell in a town the size of Buffalo Valley—especially in winter?”

  “She won’t have rent, won’t have high overhead, won’t have anything but her supplies and the loan on her pizza oven.”

  “Yes.” He’d already heard all that and still felt the widow was a poor risk.

  His grandmother shook her head again. “What I want to teach you is that looking at the bottom line can only tell you so much. A real banker makes decision with his head and his heart. You have an overabundance of one and are completely lacking in the other.”

  Heath looked away.

  “Give the widow her loan, Max.”

  He straightened. “I’m Heath, Grandma. Max is dead.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she grumbled. “Now go,” she said, gesturing with her hand. “Go before I say something I’ll regret.”

  Gage had been cutting wheat all morning under a darkening sky. Most of the six hundred acres planted were already harvested. With the threat of rain in the air and the wind picking up speed, he decided to get the combine out of the fields before it got stuck in the mud.

  He’d worked sixteen hours the day before and he’d been up before the sun that morning, hoping to beat the storm.

  Not until he pulled into the yard did he notice Lindsay’s car. He was instantly angry, but he understood his reaction. He didn’t want to see her, had taken pains to avoid contact with her. He wasn’t a man who ran away from many things, and he barely knew this woman, but she dominated his thoughts to an unprecedented—and disturbing—degree. He’d wondered what it would feel like to kiss her, to hold her, to have her as part of his life. At night when he stumbled into bed, exhausted, he couldn’t close his eyes without her image filling his mind. It made him damn mad because he knew he was setting himself up for trouble. Most everyone agreed she wouldn’t stay. Marta Hansen thought it prudent that they continue to search for a permanent replacement. Gage agreed. Lindsay had signed a one-year contract and in his opinion, it’d be a miracle if she lasted that long.