Redemption Bay (Haven Point Book 2) (Contemporary Romance) (3 page)

It was enough to make a woman want to tear her hair out—or want to curl up in her bed under the blankets and pretend she didn’t have a business
or
a town to run.

* * *

A
FTER
THEIR
NEIGHBORS
went inside their house, Ben led Hondo next door. The dog immediately found a stick under the big birch tree, carried it to the water’s edge, then flopped down on his belly and started to chew it.

Ben watched him for a moment, then took a few more steps to a double swing overlooking the water just a few yards from the dock.

It was beautiful here. Wispy clouds encircled the tops of the Redemption Mountains and the setting sun painted them pink and coral and lavender, a scene perfectly reflected in the clear waters of the lake.

Because of the way the shoreline curved, he could see the lights of downtown begin to twinkle in the twilight and with a piercing cry, a red-tailed hawk suddenly soared from one of the tall pines that grew in such abundance around the lake, lending their crisp, tart scent to the scene.

Haven Point was an idyllic spot, really. How had he forgotten that over the years? Somehow he must have let the darkness and despair of his home life swallow the memory.

Yes, it was pretty. That didn’t make him any happier at being forced to come back.

He could have said no.

He wasn’t exactly an indentured servant. When Aidan asked him to take on this assignment after Marsh’s sudden fatal heart attack, Ben could have told him to kiss off, to send someone else at Caine Tech.

Yes, they were facing a top-level decision but he could have picked two or three others on his team or Aidan’s, people he trusted, who were likely to be more objective about Haven Point than he was.

It would have been the logical move—and Ben was nothing if not logical.

So why hadn’t he? Why was he here on a beautiful late-June evening gazing out at a couple of colorful wood ducks swooping in to land on the water?

He didn’t have a clear answer to that, even inside his own head. Something was tugging him back here and had been for some time. Closure, maybe? Some sense of unfinished business? He had left town so abruptly, the afternoon of Lily’s funeral, and he hadn’t been back since.

Whatever the reason drawing him to Haven Point, he was here now. Aidan had wanted him to take over for Marshall Phillips on this fact-finding assignment and Ben had agreed.

“I think it will be good for you to go back,” Aidan said three days earlier when he came to Ben’s house personally to ask him to come. “Take it from a man who survived a brain tumor. At some point in your life, before it’s too late, you have to grab your ghosts by the throat and tell them to back the hell off. The only way to do that is to face them head-on.”

He hadn’t seen the point in arguing with Aidan that he didn’t have ghosts, unless he were counting the painful memories of the younger sister he adored.

He didn’t hate Haven Point. It was merely a small, beautifully situated town where he had once lived—one he had intended to spend the rest of his life without ever stepping foot in again.

“Besides,” Aidan had continued with that logic that was always so damn hard for Ben to refute. “You were just saying how that Killy you’ve been working to renovate for the last year is done and ready for her maiden voyage. It seems fitting that you put her in the water for the first time at Lake Haven, where she came from.”

Through the well-landscaped shrubs and trees, he caught sight of a figure moving past the window of the pretty little lake house next door.

He wasn’t sure he would be able to tolerate living next door to Haven Point’s vociferous mayor, even for a few days.

He remembered McKenzie. Those long-lashed dark eyes in her dusky skin, the inky hair, the dimples, which tended to flash equally, whether she was angry or happy.

How could he forget her, when she had been Lily’s dearest and most loyal friend? While his sister’s other friends seemed to have dropped off the edge of the earth after her condition deteriorated and she was forced to curtail most activity outside Snow Angel Cove, McKenzie had come faithfully at least two or three times a week, bringing homework and goodies and movies for the two of them to watch.

Yeah, he had been a self-absorbed, angry teenager, just trying to survive living in his father’s house until he could graduate from high school and get the hell out. But even
he
had been able to see that McKenzie had made Lily’s last year far more bearable—even
enjoyable
—than it would have been otherwise.

He would have liked to be able to thank her for that—but considering her animosity toward him, he wasn’t sure she wanted to hear anything he had to say.

He inhaled deeply then let out a sigh. What had he expected? He had burned every bridge he’d ever crossed here and had walked away without looking back.

Now here he was again, fully aware that his history here with the people of this town—the difficult heritage he didn’t like to remember—would make the job much harder than it would have been for Marshall.

CHAPTER THREE

A
FTER
A
RESTLESS
NIGHT
filled with very strange dreams involving a certain sexy billionaire, McKenzie rose before sunrise and headed outside, leaving a disgruntled Rika behind. She grabbed her kayak and paddle from the shed next to the lake then launched it from the dock.

The rim of the sun started to appear above the high peaks of the Redemptions as she paddled south along the shoreline through clear, quiet water.

Only a few hardy anglers shared the water with her but they were way out in the deep water of the middle, probably going after the huge lake trout that could be found there. She hardly noticed them as she stroked through tendrils of mist that curled off the water on these mountain mornings.

A few loons flapped their feathers and moved away from her as she paddled in their direction. To her left, a fish jumped, going after all the little morning bugs that skimmed across the surface, and in the pine trees offshore on the other side, she heard an owl hoot as he returned to bed after a night prowling the forests. Sometimes it seemed like a dream that she really had a life here—a good one, too, filled with good friends, responsibilities she did her best to tackle, a thriving business she loved.

Things could have turned out very differently for her, the child of an overworked single mother who struggled every day to care for both of them.

When she considered what could have happened to her if she had ended up in foster care in California after her mother died, she had to cringe.

Okay. Things here hadn’t exactly been perfect for her. She glanced at the shoreline, still in shadows as the sun continued its slow climb over the mountains. From here, she could see the house of her father and stepmother, where she had come to live when she was ten—a frightened, lost, grieving young girl.

Though nearly two decades had passed since the day Xochitl Vargas had arrived and been transformed slowly into McKenzie Shaw, she still felt the awkwardness of that first day when Richard had pulled into the driveway with her in the passenger seat of his BMW and her one suitcase of belongings in the trunk.

As uncomfortable as it had been for her, how much worse must it have been for her father, showing up in a small town like Haven Point with the half-Mexican love child he fathered with a paralegal during a business trip a decade earlier?

While it had taken her many years to come to this point, she had a more mature perspective now and could acknowledge the person who had been thrust in the
most
difficult situation—Adele, Devin’s mother and Richard’s wife.

She had opened her home and her family to the by-product of a brief affair her husband had during a difficult time in their marriage. Maybe she hadn’t been completely
enthusiastic
about the idea—or particularly warm and welcoming, for that matter, but she had done it.

McKenzie couldn’t really say she blamed her. What woman would have been thrilled at being forced to face the evidence of her husband’s infidelity every morning at the breakfast table?

Adele’s coolness had been more than offset by Devin and Richard. Devin had been thrilled to have a new sister—even one just two years her junior—and Richard had gone out of his way to make up for the ten years he had never known she existed.

She felt a pang at the thought of her father, gone three years now. She missed him so much sometimes and would have dearly loved to ask his advice a hundred times a day.

Some distance past her childhood home—where Devin lived alone now since her mother had moved away after Richard’s death—McKenzie pivoted the kayak around so she could paddle back home in time for work.

A few more boats had come out on the water by the time she made it back to Redemption Bay and reached the dock she shared temporarily with Ben. Even so, Lake Haven seemed quiet, serene.

Who could come here without feeling embraced by the beauty of the place?

Ben, probably. She frowned at the reminder as she hauled the kayak out of the water and carried it to the shed. He obviously hated it here—or why would he not have taken at least a passing interest in his holdings over the years?

As she headed out of the shed, she heard a low-throated bark and glanced over to the house next door just in time to see Ben and Hondo come out to the deck. The dog caught her attention first as he hurried down the deck steps to take care of what looked like urgent business. She smiled a little, then looked at Ben—and immediately wished she hadn’t.

He wore only jeans and his hair was damp, as if he had just stepped out of the shower. He held a mug of something steamy and as she watched, he took a sip, then lowered the mug and appeared to be enjoying the sunrise bursting over the mountains.

She stood gawking like an idiot, unable to look away. Her insides felt shaky and hot and she remembered suddenly some of those weird dreams she’d had about him, filled with heat and steam and hunger.

He must have sensed her presence—or, who knows, maybe she whimpered or something. To her great dismay, he glanced in her direction and after an extremely awkward moment that seemed to stretch and tug between them like the taffy Carmela Rocca sold in her store, he lifted a hand in greeting.

With sudden chagrin, she remembered she was wearing a skintight wetsuit—the only way she had found to truly enjoy chilly morning paddles around the lake—and that from his vantage point, he had an entirely unobstructed view of her too-generous curves.

It couldn’t be helped.

She nodded in response and then turned and walked with as much dignity as she could muster to her own house.

When she made it safely inside, she found Rika waiting by the door.

“Seriously?” she exclaimed to the dog. “You were out for fifteen minutes before I left. I can’t believe you need to go again.”

Her dog moved to the sunroom and whined, her attention solely focused on Ben’s German shepherd. Apparently Rika was smitten.

“I’ll let you out again in a minute—as soon as That Man lets his dog back in. You wouldn’t want to fraternize with the enemy, would you?”

Rika looked mournful, obviously disagreeing, but she gave a resigned sigh and plopped onto the rug.

As she expected, Rika hadn’t really needed to go out. When she saw the other dog was no longer in the yard, McKenzie opened the door but her dog only yawned and stretched out on the rug, just as if she hadn’t been sleeping for most of the past ten hours.

McKenzie showered and dressed, then grabbed Rika’s leash and the two of them took off into town.

By the time she reached downtown, she was brimming with energy from the walk and the early-morning paddle and hardly needed her usual coffee at Serrano’s but she and Rika stopped, anyway.

The small columned city hall on Lake Street might be the political apex of Haven Point, with the old city library next door serving as the literary hub, but Serrano’s, in its weathered redbrick building, was the social center of Haven Point.

The diner took up both stories of one of the downtown’s oldest buildings and was founded by the current owner’s great-grandparents, immigrants from Italy.

She tied Rika up in the small fenced grassy area Barbara Serrano and her husband had created just for visiting animals, then strolled through the glass door.

She loved walking inside the diner, that sense of slipping into an Old West time warp. From the mirrored wall behind the counter to the stamped-tin ceiling to the red leather chairs and old tables, Serrano’s likely wasn’t that different now than it had been a hundred years ago when it was founded. In the morning, the place smelled of pancakes, bacon and the best coffee in central Idaho.

Even more than the decor or the alluring scents, McKenzie loved the friendly welcome she always received when she walked inside.

A chorus of hellos rang out, almost as if people had spent hours practicing it together.

She waved to friends in general but made her way to the table of old-timers who had breakfast there each day, mostly to have somewhere to go and shoot the bull. She found them all completely adorable, BS and all, and always stopped to chat.

“Why, if it isn’t the prettiest mayor west of the Mississippi.”

“Morning, Ed.” She smiled at Edwin Bybee. He was just about the happiest guy in town, with a kind word to everyone. It was remarkable to her, especially considering he was fighting stage-four liver cancer.

“How are you this morning?” she asked after kissing him on his wrinkled cheek.

“Oh, I can’t complain. I’m still ticking, aren’t I?”

“Was that you out on the lake this morning?” his constant companion, Archie Peralta, asked her.

He used to be the manager of the grocery store but retired when she was still in high school. She had worked for him in her first job as a bagger and cart retriever and had a deep fondness for him.

“It was indeed.”

He gave a raspy laugh. “Thought so. That pink life jacket is a dead giveaway.”

She grinned. “I hope I didn’t scare the fish away.”

“The cutthroat biting this morning?” asked Paul Weaver, whose family had a small dairy farm on the outskirts of town.

“You’ll have to ask Archie here. He was the one with the line in the water that didn’t seem to be moving much. I was only kayaking.”

“Not this morning. They weren’t going after the bait,” Archie answered. “Don’t know why anybody would bother going out on the water without a fishing rod.”

“I’m only out there so I can watch you not catching anything,” she retorted, which made the whole table bust up.

She spent a few more minutes talking to the group and was about to go order her coffee and head to the store when Barbara Serrano headed over with a go-cup for her all ready.

No wonder she loved the woman.

“Is it true?” Barbara asked, holding the coffee just out of McKenzie’s reach as if they were playing a particularly cruel game of Monkey in the Middle.

“I don’t know. I hope not,” she answered automatically. “Is what true?”

“People have been talking all morning. Word is, Ben Kilpatrick is back in town.”

Instantly, the diner seemed to go deathly silent, as if somebody had flipped a switch. The comfortable buzz of conversation, the occasional laughter, even the clatter of silverware seemed to shut down as everybody in the vicinity stopped as if Barbara had just doused them all with McKenzie’s coffee.

“Kilpatrick. That son of a—” Ed bit off whatever harsh name he wanted to call Ben. His usually kindly, wrinkled face tightened into a scowl that shocked her, until she remembered that Ed as well as his only son had worked at the boatyard. After Kilpatrick’s closed its doors five years ago, Ed’s son and family had been forced to move away. She knew he lived in the Pacific Northwest along with Ed’s only grandchildren.

Folks here took the closing of the boatworks hard, especially those who had worked there and been displaced in a single afternoon after Joe Kilpatrick’s funeral.

“So is it true?” Barbara demanded. “Is he really back, after all this time?”

She sighed. “Yes. I can verify firsthand. Ben is in town. He showed up last night, renting Carole’s place next to mine.”

Conversation immediately started up again, animated and annoyed.

“Why is he back? What kind of trouble is he planning to stir up now?” Archie asked.

“How much more damage can he do?” Ed glared at McKenzie as if all this was
her
fault. That was the problem with being the mayor, she was finding. Everybody expected her to solve their problems, from a neighbor who watered his garden all night to a streetlight that had gone out.

“I don’t know why he’s here,” she confessed. “We only spoke for a moment last night. He did have an old Killy. Maybe he’s here in advance of the boat festival.”

It was a hollow explanation. She couldn’t see Ben hauling a boat from California to the hometown he hated just to show off what even
she
could tell had been a very fine watercraft.

“What model?” Ed asked. For the moment, he seemed to forget his animosity toward Ben. The people who had worked at the boatworks took great pride in their product—probably why Killy boats were still so sought-after these days.

“He mentioned it was a Delphine.”

“Oh, that is a fine boat,” Archie said, almost reverently.

“One of our best,” Ed agreed, in the same devout tones.

“I can’t see that the kind of boat the man owns matters a good gosh darn,” Barbara said. “I just want to know what he’s doing
here
with it.”

“I don’t know,” McKenzie admitted. “I can only promise you this. If he plans to cause more damage to this town than he already has, the jackass will have to get through me first.”

“Is that right?”

An instant too late, she realized all conversation in their vicinity had ground to a halt again. She turned at the familiar low drawl and of course, there he was standing just a few feet away. He looked gorgeous, wearing those jeans—buttoned up now—and a tailored polo shirt and fancy high-tech watch that could probably cover her entire mortgage.

The air inside the diner seemed to suddenly plummet thirty degrees, as if a January cold front had just blown across the lake.

No one seemed to know what to say—which she found as shocking as Ben’s presence here, since regulars usually had the opposite problem and never seemed to know when to shut up.

“Hello,” Ben said.

She cleared her throat, grateful the dusky skin she inherited from her mother didn’t show the heat she could feel soaking her cheeks. At least she hoped not.

“Um. Hi.” He knew she didn’t want him there, so she couldn’t see the point in showing outright hostility to the man. Okay, any more than she already had. “Everyone. You remember Ben Kilpatrick, I’m sure.”

Edwin opened his mouth to say something but Archie elbowed him in the ribs. While she would have liked to see them rip into Ben, this didn’t seem the time or the place—and she had a feeling that as resentful as everyone in town might be toward him for his negligence, most people were too well-mannered to throw it in his lap the first time they met.