He also couldn’t deny she was beautiful, with slender features, striking green eyes, dark, glossy hair and a dusky skin tone that proclaimed her Italian heritage—as if her name didn’t do the trick first.
He actually liked the trace of New York accent that slipped into her speech at times. It fit her somehow, in a way he couldn’t explain. Despite that, he couldn’t deny that the few times he had interacted with more than a wave in passing, she was brusque, prickly and sometimes downright distant.
He had certainly had easier neighbors.
His father adored her and wouldn’t listen to a negative thing about her.
She hasn’t had an easy time of things but she’s a fighter. Hardworking and eager to learn, Frank had said the other night when Ruben asked how things were working out, now that Dani and her girls had been in town a few months. You just have to get to know her.
Frank apparently didn’t see how diligently Dani Capelli worked to keep anyone else from doing just that.
She wasn’t unfriendly, only distant. She kept herself to herself. It was a phrase his mother might use, though Myra Morales seemed instantly fond of Dani and her girls.
Did Dani have any idea how fascinated the people of Haven Point were with these new arrivals in their midst?
Or maybe that was just him.
As he followed her down the hall in her white lab coat, his dogs behaving themselves for once, Ruben told himself to forget about his stupid attraction to her.
Sure, he might be ready to settle down and would like to have someone in his life, but he wasn’t at all sure if he had the time or energy for that someone to be a woman with so many secrets in her eyes, one who seemed to face the world with her chin up and her fists out, ready to take on any threats.
When they walked into the clinic waiting room, they found her two girls there. The older one was texting on her phone while her sister did somersaults around the room.
Dani stopped in the doorway and seemed to swallow an exasperated sound. “Mia, honey, you’re going to have dog hair all over you.”
“I’m a snowball rolling down the hill,” the girl said. “Can’t you see me getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”
“You’re such a dorkupine,” her sister said, barely looking up from her phone.
“I’m a dorkupine snowball,” Mia retorted.
“You’re a snowball who is going to be covered in dog hair,” Dani said. “Come on, honey. Get up.”
He could tell the moment the little girl spotted him and his dogs coming into the area behind her mother. She went still and then slowly rose to her feet, features shifting from gleeful to nervous.
Why was she so afraid of him?
“You make a very good snowball,” he said, pitching his voice low and calm as his father had taught him to do with all skittish creatures. “I haven’t seen anybody somersault that well in a long time.”
She moved to her mother’s side and buried her face in Dani’s white coat—though he didn’t miss the way she reached down to pet Ollie on her way.
“Hey again, Silver.”
He knew the older girl from the middle school, where he served as the resource officer a few hours a week. He made it a point to learn all the students’ names and tried to talk to them individually when he had the chance, in hopes that if they had a problem at home or knew of something potentially troublesome for the school, they would feel comfortable coming to him.
He had the impression that Silver was like her mother in many ways. Reserved, wary, slow to trust. It made him wonder just who had hurt them.
“How are things?” he asked her now.
For just an instant, he thought he saw sadness flicker in her gaze before she turned back to her phone with a shrug. “Fine, I guess.”
“Are you guys ready for Christmas? It’s your first one here in Idaho. A little different from New York, isn’t it?”
“How should we know? We haven’t lived in the city for, like, four years.”
Dani sent her daughter a look at her tone, which seemed to border on disrespectful. “I’ve been in vet school in Boston the last four years,” she explained.
“Boston. Then you’re used to snow and cold. We’re known for our beautiful winters around here. The lake is simply stunning in wintertime.”
Mia tugged on her mother’s coat and when Dani bent down, she whispered something to her.
“You can ask him,” Dani said calmly, gesturing to Ruben.
Mia shook her head and buried her face again and after a moment, Dani sighed. “She wonders if it’s possible to ice-skate on Lake Haven. We watched the most recent Olympics and she became a little obsessed.”
“You could say that,” Silver said. “She skated around the house in her stocking feet all day long for weeks. A dorkupine on ice.”
“You can’t skate on the lake, I’m afraid,” Ruben answered. “Because of the underground hot springs that feed into it at various points, Lake Haven rarely freezes, except sometimes along the edges, when it’s really cold. It’s not really safe for ice skating. But the city creates a skating rink on the tennis courts at Lake View Park every year. The volunteer fire department sprays it down for a few weeks once temperatures get really cold. I saw them out there the other night so it shouldn’t be long before it’s open. Maybe a few more weeks.”
Mia seemed to lose a little of her shyness at that prospect. She gave him a sideways look from under her mother’s arm and aimed a fleeting smile full of such sweetness that he was instantly smitten.
“There’s also a great place for sledding up behind the high school. You can’t miss that, either. Oh, and in a few weeks we have the Lights on the Lake Festival. You’ve heard about that, right?”
They all gave him matching blank stares, making him wonder what was wrong with the Haven Point Helping Hands that they hadn’t immediately dragged Dani into their circle. He would have to talk to Andie Bailey or his sister Angela about it. They always seemed to know what was going on in town.
“I think some kids at school were talking about that at lunch the other day,” Silver said. “They were sitting at the next table so I didn’t hear the whole thing, though.”
“Haven Point hosts an annual celebration a week or so before Christmas where all the local boat owners deck out their watercraft from here to Shelter Springs to welcome in the holidays and float between the two towns. There’s music, food and crafts for sale. It’s kind of a big deal around here. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it.”
“I’m very busy, with the practice and the girls, Deputy Morales. I don’t have a lot of time for socializing.” Though Dani tried for a lofty look, he thought he caught a hint of vulnerability there.
She seemed...lonely. That didn’t make a lick of sense. The women in this town could be almost annoying in their efforts to include newcomers in community events. They didn’t give people much of an option, dragging them kicking and screaming into the social scene around town, like it or not.
“Well, now you know. You really can’t miss the festival. It’s great fun for the whole family.”
“Thank you for the information. It’s next week, you say?”
“That’s right. Not this weekend but the one after. The whole thing starts out with the boat parade on Saturday evening, around six.”
“We’ll put it on our social calendar.”
“What’s a social calendar?” Mia whispered to her sister, just loud enough for Ruben to hear.
“It’s a place where you keep track of all your invitations to parties and sleepovers and stuff.”
“Oh. Why do we need one of those?”
“Good question.”
Silver looked glum for just a moment but Dani hugged her, then faced Ruben with a polite, distant smile.
“Thank you for bringing in Ollie and Yukon. Have a good evening, Deputy Morales
.”
It was a clear dismissal, one he couldn’t ignore. Ruben gathered his dogs’ leashes and headed for the door. “Thank you. See you around. And by around, I mean next door. We kind of can’t miss each other.”
As he hoped, this made Mia smile a little. Even Silver’s dour expression eased into what almost looked like a smile.
As he loaded the dogs into the king cab of his pickup truck, Ruben could see Dani turning off lights and straightening up the clinic.
What was her story? Why had she chosen to come straight from vet school in Boston to set up shop all the way across the country in a small Idaho town?
He loved his hometown, sure, and fully acknowledged it was a beautiful place to live. It still seemed a jarring cultural and geographic shift from living back east to this little town where the biggest news of the month was a rather corny light parade that people froze their asses off to watch.
And why did he get the impression the family wasn’t socializing much? One of the reasons most people he knew moved to small towns was a yearning for the kind of connectedness and community a place like Haven Point had in spades. What was the point in moving to a small town if you were going to keep yourself separate from everybody?
He thought he had seen them at a few things when they first came to Haven Point but since then, Dani seemed to be keeping her little family mostly to themselves. That must be by choice. It was the only explanation that made sense. He couldn’t imagine McKenzie Kilpatrick or Andie Bailey or any of the other Helping Hands excluding her on purpose.
What was she so nervous about?
He added another facet to the enigma of his next-door neighbor. He had hoped that he might be able to get a better perspective of her by bringing the dogs in to her for their routine exams. While he had confirmed his father’s belief that she appeared to be an excellent veterinarian, he now had more questions about the woman and her daughters to add to his growing list.
Don’t miss Season of Wonder
by RaeAnne Thayne,
available October 2018
wherever HQN books and ebooks are sold!
Copyright © 2018 by RaeAnne Thayne
Keep reading for an excerpt from Second Chance in Stonecreek by Michelle Major.
Second Chance in Stonecreek
by Michelle Major
Chapter One
“It won’t do for people to see you staring off into space like you’re high on the wacky weed or something.”
Maggie Spencer blinked, then turned to her seventy-nine-year-old grandmother. “Grammy, did you just use the term ‘wacky weed’?”
“I’m not as behind the times as you seem to believe,” Vivian Spencer shot back, adjusting the collar of her Jackie O–inspired tweed coat. “I know what’s going on with teens today.”
“I’m twenty-seven,” Maggie pointed out. A gentle autumn breeze whistled across the town square in Stonecreek, Oregon, her beloved hometown. She pushed away a lock of hair that had blown into her face. “I don’t smoke pot or anything else. You know that.”
She waved to Rob Frisbie, who owned the local grocery store, walking past on his way to the beer booth. How Maggie would have liked to join him at the moment.
“You could eat it,” her grandmother suggested tartly. “That’s a thing, you know.”
“I know,” Maggie answered, struggling to keep her smile in place as she greeted a couple that approached her information booth, neither of whom she recognized. “Welcome to Fall Fest,” she said brightly. “Are you visiting for the afternoon?”
“We drove down from Portland,” the woman offered as both she and the man at her side nodded. “We’re doing a wine tasting at Harvest Vineyards later this afternoon.”
“We’re glad you stopped by the festival,” Maggie said. “I’m Maggie Spencer, Stonecreek’s mayor.” She picked up a tourism pamphlet and one of the flyers she’d printed for the annual festival. “Here’s some information on things to do around town and a list of the activities happening today. If you have five vendors stamp your flyer, bring it back, then you’ll be entered to win a weekend stay at our own local Miriam Inn.”
The woman smiled and took the papers as Grammy said, “I’m Vivian Spencer, Maggie’s grandmother and former mayor.” She leaned forward as if imparting a great secret. “She’s up for reelection next month. It’s a surprisingly tight race given that she inherited the position. I held it for almost a decade with barely any opposition.”
Heat rose to Maggie’s cheeks as the woman’s smile turned awkward. “Well, good luck, then,” she said and hurried away with her husband.
“I didn’t inherit the position,” Maggie said through clenched teeth. “I was elected and I’ve done well during my first term.”
“Don’t take that tone with me.” Vivian patted her silver hair, which was swept into a neat chignon on the back of her head. “Is it any wonder I question whether you’re on drugs with how you’ve been acting lately?”
“I’m not taking a tone,” Maggie said, making her voice gentle. “Or doing drugs. The campaign is going fine.”
“Fine isn’t enough to win the election.” Vivian reached out a crepey hand to squeeze Maggie’s arm. “I want this for you, Mary Margaret. It’s your destiny.”
Maggie sighed. Being the mayor of Stonecreek wasn’t exactly on par with a lightning bolt scar on her forehead, but she loved her town and her role as mayor. Her grandmother meant well. Grammy had stepped in to help raise Maggie and her siblings when their mother died almost twelve years ago. Maggie’s father, Jim, had struggled with being a single dad of three children. Grammy had been a constant source of love and support, and if she was a trifle overbearing and autocratic, Maggie could deal with it.
After all, she’d been content to let her grandmother steer the ship for years. It was only in the past few months that Maggie had finally wanted out from under Grammy’s manicured thumb.
“I want it, too,” Maggie said, wrapping an arm around Grammy’s shoulders. “Plans for the debate are going well. We have lots of volunteers on the campaign.”
“Debate.” Vivian sniffed. “I still cannot believe Jason Stone challenged to you to a public debate. It’s undignified.”
Maggie stifled a laugh. “It’s politics, Grammy.”
“Not in Stonecreek.” Her grandmother straightened the already neat stacks of pamphlets on the table in front of them. “Spencers have held the position of mayor for decades in this town. Your great-great-uncle and then your grandfather—rest his soul—and then me. For Jason to think he has a right to challenge you is preposterous.”
“Why do people say ‘rest his or her soul’ when talking about a dead person?” Maggie asked, grasping for any way to change the subject before her grandmother latched onto—
“I have no doubt that upstart will make an issue of your wedding, or lack thereof.” Grammy gave a quelling look, ignoring Maggie’s off-topic question. “You wouldn’t be in this predicament if you’d married Trevor Stone.”
“You’re right,” Maggie agreed, keeping her tone even. What her grandmother didn’t know was that she’d found Trevor cheating on her minutes before she was supposed to walk down the aisle. So there was a good chance she’d be in another predicament entirely. “I guess it was his loss.”
Grammy sniffed again. “Stupid boy.”
“He’s a grown man,” Maggie countered, “although I’m with you on the stupid part.”
“No better than he should be,” Vivian muttered.
“Another saying I don’t under—”
“Although still a better option than that brother of his.”
Maggie’s chest tightened at the mention of Griffin Stone. The prodigal son of the Stone family had returned to Stonecreek for the wedding and ended up rescuing Maggie when she’d fled the church after discovering her fiancé’s betrayal. They’d struck up an u
nlikely friendship and so much more from Maggie’s point of view. But her romance with Griffin had been short-lived.
He was still in town, once again rebuilding the tasting room at his family’s successful vineyard after fire had ravaged part of it for a second time in as many decades. Only, Maggie’s sixteen-year-old sister, Morgan, had caused the fire at the beginning of summer. The fallout of that tragic accident plus the tension that existed between the Stones and Spencers, fueled by a rivalry that dated back to the founding of the town, had driven a wedge between Griffin and Maggie that she had no idea how to combat.
And Griffin hadn’t even wanted to try. That was how little she’d meant to him.
Megan Roe, the town’s version of a girl Friday, approached the booth. “Hey, Maggie,” she called. “Hi, Mrs. Spencer. I’m here for my shift.”
Megan was in her early twenties and had grown up in Stonecreek, just like Maggie. In fact, she’d babysat the three Roe sisters through most of high school. As mayor, one of Maggie’s biggest concerns was attracting young people to the town. She wanted to keep things current and make sure there were good jobs to be found in Stonecreek so the town stayed relevant. Harvest Vineyards brought in tourists, but they also needed a strong foundation of other businesses to keep the local economy strong.
Grammy looked the young woman up and down. “Is that what you’re wearing to represent this town?” she asked, disapproval clear in her tone.
Luckily, Megan didn’t seem to notice. “Yeah.” She pulled at the hem of her minidress, which looked like an overlong flannel shirt with a red-and-black-checkered pattern. Her heavily highlighted hair was down around her shoulders and she wore black ankle boots with a chunky heel. “I got it last week when my sister and I went shopping in Portland. There are so many cool stores in the city. Around here, it’s online shopping or nothing.”
“Next time try nothi—”
“You look great,” Maggie interrupted her grandmother, gently pushing her from behind the booth. “Thanks for volunteering. We’ve had a steady stream of people stop by. Entries for the night on the town giveaway are starting to roll in. It should pick up before the band starts in an hour.”
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