Redemption Bay. RaeAnne Thayne
“I admire your confidence,” he murmured. He considered it completely misguided and without merit, but he appreciated her determination and her loyalty.
“You’ll see,” she repeated, then grabbed her go-cup off the table and turned around and headed for the door.
He hated to disappoint her but he truly felt as if Haven Point was the weakest of the contenders. He intended to make a decision based on logic and reason. He was doing his best to keep an open mind but it wasn’t easy.
He had offered up the town’s greatest shortcomings, from his perspective. What he hadn’t told her was that everywhere he looked in Haven Point, the past seemed to crowd him.
Being here again left him itchy, on edge. All the dark, ugly memories he thought he had firmly and succinctly dealt with long ago seemed to be creeping back to life, like skeletal, decomposing fingers suddenly poking over the side of an opened grave.
The waitress reached him finally. She poured coffee without asking and pulled out a notebook. “Have you decided yet?” she asked, her tone just shy of belligerent.
She looked familiar, a woman about his age and on the plump, comfortable side. Her name tag read Sharon and he suddenly placed her. Sharon Lowell. She had been in his grade and had dated one of his friends.
“Hi, Sharon. Good to see you again.”
“Likewise.” She offered a smile that didn’t look close to genuine. It took him a moment to remember her brother and father had both worked at the boatworks.
McKenzie Shaw wasn’t the only one in town who hated him. He wasn’t used to that but he supposed he couldn’t really blame them. Closing Kilpatrick Boatworks had been a necessary but difficult decision, when the business was steadily losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
“Have you had time to look at the menu or do you need a few more minutes?”
“I’m ready. I believe I’ll have a Greek omelet and a side of whole wheat toast.”
“Right. You want hash browns or anything?”
“No. Just the eggs and toast.”
“Got it.” She nodded and walked away without even bothering to make the customary server small talk.
As soon as she left, he once more became conscious of all the gazes aimed in his direction, some simply curious, others openly hostile.
It was awkward all the way around. He and Aidan both should have expected this. He was apparently the least popular person in Haven Point.
At least in one respect, he was carrying on his father’s legacy.
After looking out the window for a while at the desultory traffic passing by, he turned to the reliable diversion of his cell phone and started scrolling through and answering messages and emails.
After a few moments, a voice intruded into his digital distraction.
“Ben! I thought that was you.”
He looked up and knew the man instantly, though he hadn’t seen him in years. Probably not since Lily’s funeral, when he had left Haven Point.
Dr. Russell Warrick, their family’s longtime physician, was still handsome, though in his late fifties. He had brown hair threaded with gray, warm blue eyes and a trim, athletic build.
Lily had quite simply adored the man. As far as Ben’s younger sister had been concerned, Dr. Warrick could do no wrong.
He had always been so calm and patient with her, Ben remembered, even in those difficult last days of hospice.
He stood up and held out his hand. “Dr. Warrick. Hello.”
“Wow. It’s great to see you, son! It’s been far too long since you’ve been back this way.”
He couldn’t say he agreed but he smiled anyway, remembering a hundred different kindnesses over the years.
He gestured to the table across from him. “Join me, won’t you?”
“I just finished but I’ll sit for a moment to catch up. I’m due at the hospital for rounds but not for a while yet.”
“How are you?” Ben asked when the physician sat down. “How’s your family?”
Warrick had two sons, one a few years younger than Ben and another who had been around Lily and McKenzie’s age.
“The boys are good. They both live in Boise and between the two have given me three beautiful grandchildren.” He paused and sadness slanted across those blue eyes. “You may not have heard but I lost my wife a year ago.”
He remembered the other woman as kind and matronly. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“She was a good woman and I miss her every day, even a year later. I try to stay busy but, well, you know. I have cut back, though. I’ve taken on a go-getter young partner and she’s doing most of the work these days. You may remember her from school, though I think she was a bit younger than you. Devin Shaw.”
McKenzie’s half sister, he recalled. He had never known her well but he remembered her as being scary-smart.
“So how long are you back in town?” Warrick asked him.
“I’m not sure,” he hedged. “A week, maybe. Ten days.”
“You’re still working with Aidan at Caine Tech?”
“I am.”
“He’s a good man,” Warrick said with a smile.
Ben still found it odd that his best friend had a life here that he loved. It was more than a little surreal that the world where he had lived his first seventeen years had merged with the world he had created since leaving—and he still felt more than a little guilty about selling Aidan his holdings here.
If he’d had any idea Aidan had a brain tumor when the other man offered an exorbitant amount for Snow Angel Cove and his commercial holdings in Haven Point, Ben never would have agreed to the deal. The whole situation still left a bad taste in his mouth, even though he had sold the property for far less than market value.
In the end, Aidan had come out ahead—as he usually did—but Ben knew the other man never would have even made an offer for property in this obscure corner of Idaho if the tendrils of a benign tumor hadn’t been pressing on key decision-making areas of his brain at the time.
After Aidan’s diagnosis, Ben had tried to back out of the deal and invalidate the sale but Aidan refused to let him. For reasons Ben still didn’t understand, Aidan had fallen for this place and for Snow Angel Cove.
“You’ve done well for yourself with Caine, haven’t you?” Warrick said.
“He’s a good man,” he answered.
From their first encounter when Caine Tech was just a start-up like thousands of others in Silicon Valley, they had clicked. They made a damn good team. Aidan was inarguably the tech wizard behind the success of the company but Ben liked to think he was the business genius.
“I could always tell you had big things ahead of you,” Warrick said, with an odd note in his voice that almost sounded like pride.
Ben didn’t know quite how to answer that so he remained silent.
“Your mother must be thrilled to have you back in town, even if it’s only for a few weeks.”
The band of tension around his shoulders seemed to ratchet a notch tighter. “I haven’t had the chance to tell her,” he said curtly. “I don’t believe she’s around, anyway. Last I heard she was going to Tuscany.”
He should have called her, anyway. The moment he gave in and agreed to come to town on this assignment, he should have dropped her an email. Technically, Lydia lived in Shelter Springs—well, she had a condo there anyway, purchased