The Cottages on Silver Beach

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Coach said you can play in two more weeks.”

  “By then, it will be too late. We’re losing every game and won’t have any chance of playing in the league championship.”

  “But if you let your arm finish healing all the way, the doctor said you won’t need surgery on it,” she reminded him.

  “I guess.”

  “Thanks for letting them hang out here this morning, especially on such short notice,” Luke said. “I know it’s Saturday and you have plenty of things to do for your photography exhibit.”

  He appeared distracted—nothing new for him—and still hadn’t yet noticed Elliot. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he didn’t even see the other man and simply climbed back into his pickup and drove away?

  “No problem. I’ll put them to work.” Through her nerves, she managed to muster an evil grin. “We’ve got weeds to pull.”

  “Sorry. I wish I could help,” her nephew said, putting on an apologetic expression that didn’t fool her for a minute. “If I can’t play baseball, I guess the doctor wouldn’t like me pulling weeds either.”

  “Does that mean I have to do all of it by myself?” Cassie’s eyes widened and her shoulders slumped dramatically.

  Megan patted her niece’s shoulder. “We’ll work together. Don’t worry.”

  “Guess I’d better get going. Those rooms won’t clean themselves,” Verla finally said. Luke glanced in her direction and she knew the moment he spotted Elliot. Shock flickered in his eyes, replaced by an angry hardness that he quickly concealed.

  “Elliot. I hadn’t heard you were in town.”

  “I only checked in last night.”

  There it was. Meg closed her eyes briefly then opened them to find her brother gazing between the two of them in shock.

  “You’re staying here? At the inn?”

  “Yes. In one of the cottages. Right next door to Megan, actually.”

  Luke’s expression darkened further and tension seemed to broil off the two men, thick and heavy like the August sky above the lake just before a thunderstorm.

  “Hi. I’m Cassie Hamilton and this is my brother, Bridger. I’m nine and he’s seven and a half. He always gets mad if I forget the half.”

  To her surprise, Elliot’s features softened a little as he looked at the girl. “Hi. I’m Elliot. And the half is very important.”

  “That’s what Bridger says. He says we’re only eighteen months apart, not two years, and I don’t have to be so bossy all the time.”

  “That’s probably true. But sometimes you have to take charge, when it’s the right thing to do.”

  “That’s what I always say. Like if he was just about to sit on a big spider, I would have to be bossy and tell him not to.”

  “Somebody has to make the hard decisions and say what needs to be said. But it doesn’t always make you the most popular person, I’m afraid,” Elliot said.

  “Hey, I hurt my arm, too. I was skiing and I fell. What did you do?” Bridger asked.

  Elliot glanced down at his sling as if he’d forgotten all about it. “Long story. It was a work thing. Nothing as fun as skiing. But it’s fine, really. Sorry about your baseball game. You’ll be playing again before you know it.”

  Bridger seemed to take comfort in that and Elliot gave a general wave to the group. “I should go. Bridger, Cassie, it was nice to meet you.”

  A moment later, he took off in the direction of Cedarwood Cottage, leaving a tense awkwardness behind him.

  The children didn’t seem to notice anything. “Can we go make waffles in the breakfast room before we start weeding?” Bridger asked his father.

  “If it’s okay with Megan.”

  “Please, Aunt Meg? Can we? We only had cereal at home,” the boy said, looking disgusted at the apparent dearth of culinary options available to him that morning.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “We’re only half-full, so there should be plenty of breakfast left.”

  “I’m heading that way,” Verla said. “Here. You can help me push the cart.”

  The kids jumped in willingly and headed for the door, chattering to the housekeeper about school getting out in only a few more weeks and what they planned to do with their summer vacation.

  The moment they were out of earshot, she braced herself as Luke turned on her, his features tight. “Elliot Bailey? Seriously, Meggie?”

  “What should I have done? He booked online before I knew what was happening. Even if I had known, I couldn’t legally refuse to rent to him simply because I don’t like the man.”

  “This isn’t about whether Elliot could win a popularity contest with the Haven Point Helping Hands.” Luke glowered and Megan could feel her tension level ratchet up. When he was angry, Luke looked entirely too much like their father. Which made her tend to slip back into old childhood patterns and fight the urge to run and hide from what used to be hard fists and cruel words.

  Luke wasn’t their father, she reminded herself. He might look like Paul Hamilton on the outside, but he was a very different man. No matter how angry he was, Luke never lost control of his emotions.

  “It’s done now and I can’t cancel his reservation without reason. It’s only a few weeks. I don’t see the harm in allowing him to rent the cottage for a few weeks.”

  “I can give you one really big one. The man would like to see me in prison...or worse.”

  Would this nightmare ever end for their family? She cursed her selfish sister-in-law, who had left behind so much devastation.

  “He’s here to see his family, I’m sure. Katrina’s reception is next week and that’s probably what brought him home. He’s not going to go digging up the past.”

  As far as she knew, anyway.

  “If he’s so keen on seeing his family, why isn’t he staying with one of them?”

  She would like to hear the answer to that herself. “I don’t know. You could ask him.”

  Luke made a face at that suggestion and she knew he wouldn’t do any such thing. He and Elliot hadn’t had a civil conversation in seven years.

  “It’s only a few weeks,” she said again. “He’ll be gone before we all know it and then life can get back to normal. You’ll see.”

  Luke didn’t look convinced and she couldn’t blame him. For her brother, life hadn’t been normal in seven years. He had lived under a dark cloud of suspicion and doubt.

  He looked through the gap in the trees, where the roof of Cedarwood Cottage was only just visible. “I don’t like him being here at all, Meg, and especially not next door to you. I don’t like it one bit. If he gives you any trouble, you let me know.”

  She forced a smile. What would Luke do? Take him on? If he thought she was in any sort of danger, he wouldn’t hesitate. But while that might make her brother feel better, he would end up in jail for assaulting an FBI agent.

  No, she would just have to make sure the two men didn’t come into contact much during Elliot’s stay at the inn. Considering that Luke was a silent partner at the inn—and hadn’t wanted even the 25 percent share her grandmother insisted on leaving her step-grandson—that shouldn’t be impossible. The only time he came around was to drop off the kids or do some handyman job for her.

  “He’s not going to give me any trouble. This is Elliot Bailey you’re talking about. What’s he going to do? Bore me to death reciting all the recent FBI policy directives?”

  Luke didn’t look convinced. He gazed over at the cottages again, shook his head as if to clear away a headache, then climbed into his pickup truck.

  “I should be done at the job site before lunchtime. I’ll get the kids then. Thanks again.”

  “You’re welcome,” Megan said.

  Luke looked like he wanted to say something else, but he finally waved, put the pickup in gear and drove away.

  She watched after him for a moment, unt
il his taillights turned onto the main road, trying to push away the sense of impending disaster.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “THAT’S IT, CASSIE. You’re doing great. Focus on your sweet spot.”

  Megan grinned through the chain-link fence at her niece on the pitcher’s mound, and Cassie shifted her steely-eyed attention from the pigtailed batter at the plate to send Megan a quick flash of smile. The slanted lavender light from the dying sun hit the girl perfectly, turning her face golden in the reflection. Almost without thinking, Megan lifted her camera between links of the fence, focused and clicked away.

  The evening somehow managed to improve on the perfection of the morning. The air was soft and warm and lovely with the scents of freshly cut grass, popcorn and cotton candy from the Lions’ Club booth a few hundred yards away.

  Behind Megan, families of the girls cheered them on with enthusiasm.

  She snapped several more of Cassie then turned her 70-200 zoom lens to the batter for the opposing team, Rosie Sparks, whose parents went to school with Megan. She was a power hitter—if such a thing could exist in a softball league of nine-and ten-year-old girls—and she stared down Cassie, her face screwed up with concentration as the count rose to two strikes and one ball.

  “One more, baby,” Luke called from the bleachers. “You got this. Just bring it home now.”

  Megan shifted her lens to her brother, unable to resist. His features were intense and focused, without the shadows that usually haunted him, and she snapped away to capture Luke in a rare, unguarded moment.

  Her brother rarely showed emotion. Some of that control had been ingrained in them from childhood but much came out of the past difficult seven years.

  She photographed him for a few more moments, then amused herself by taking candids of some of the others in the stand, though she purposely avoided capturing the image of at least one person in the crowd—the man sitting on the top row of the bleachers, wearing a white dress shirt and jeans so precisely creased they might as well have been ironed.

  Trust Elliot Bailey to harsh the mellow of a beautiful spring evening.

  She knew why he was here. His brother’s stepdaughter was on Cassie’s team and all the Baileys were there in force. Charlene and Mike sat just below him, along with the rest of the Bailey clan.

  It warmed her, the way they stepped up to support each other. There wasn’t a softball game, dance recital, soccer match or spelling bee the family would consider missing.

  She wouldn’t have expected Elliot to join them all, but here he sat, part of his family, yet somehow always remote in his own way.

  She shifted back to the action in time to see Cassie deliver a perfect pitch, right in the strike zone. Behind the plate, the ump thumbed over his shoulder to indicate Rosie was out, and the crowd erupted in cheers.

  The Baileys and the rest of the crowd leaped to their feet, cheering wildly—okay, maybe a little more enthusiastically than a softball game between preteen girls really warranted, but Megan wasn’t about to argue.

  “Good game,” Luke called to Cassie. “Way to go, Pitch.”

  “Yay Cass!” Bridger called out, and his sister turned to both of them and beamed.

  “Hamilton has a good arm, and she’s fast.”

  Behind her, Bobby Sparks spoke loud enough to be heard by many of the people in the stands. It was his daughter Rosie who had just struck out. “She must get that from her dad. He was always fast. Look at how he’s been running from a murder charge for all these years—and getting away with it, too.”

  The reference quieted the crowd around them with an almost collective hush and she caught several furtive looks at Luke, whose features looked etched in granite. She gave a hurried glance toward Bridger and saw with relief he wasn’t paying any attention to the adult conversation but was busy chattering with Elliot’s nephew by marriage, Marshall’s stepson Will.

  “Cut it out, Bobby.” Wyn Emmett glared at the man, who flushed.

  This was the sort of thing her brother lived with all the time, finding himself the center of whispers and veiled—and not-so-veiled—accusations. It broke her heart every single time. Since the day Elizabeth disappeared seven years ago, Luke had faced this. Despite the fact that no charges had ever been filed against him, Luke had been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion.

  Not everyone in Haven Point felt that way. Many, like Wyn, had been supportive. But enough small-minded people remained in the area, especially in the other towns that surrounded Lake Haven, to make things harder than they had to be for Luke and the children.

  Paul Hamilton cast a long shadow on this community. Sometimes she didn’t know if Luke was being punished for his own perceived sins or because he looked like their bully of a father.

  Megan couldn’t understand why her brother didn’t simply pick up and move away from the rumors and innuendo. His life would be so much easier. His construction business had struggled the last few years. Funny, but people could be a bit wary about employing a suspected murderer to build their homes.

  Every time she asked him why he stayed, Luke only said this was his home and his children’s home and he wouldn’t let small-minded people push him out of it.

  Because he stayed, she stayed. As simple as that. He needed her help with Cassie and Bridger and she didn’t know how she could walk away either.

  “You’re coming to help us with the project tomorrow, aren’t you?” Katrina Callahan asked as everyone began gathering up their belongings and started clearing out the bleachers to make room for the next game. Kat held hands with a little girl who had the distinctive features of someone with Down syndrome—her daughter, Gabriella, who grinned at Megan.

  “Oh, I forgot about the project,” she exclaimed. “What time?”

  “We’re hoping to finish scraping the paint in the morning so we can start priming the place in the afternoon.”

  Since the previous Christmas, the service organization they both belonged to had taken on the cause of an older woman in the nearby town of Shelter Springs, helping spruce up her house and yard. Before Christmas, Janet Wells had taken custody of her three grandchildren after their mother had been arrested on drug-related charges. The cobbled-together family was struggling with even the most basic care.

  Megan had helped do a few other things at the house and greatly respected the woman for what she was doing. It was, unfortunately, a too-common situation, grandparents raising grandchildren.

  Or in her own case, aunts helping to raise nieces and nephews.

  “I would love to help but I’ll have to see how the day goes,” she said to Kat.

  “I hope you can make it.”

  “I can’t make any promises. I’ve got a million things to do tomorrow, between the inn and the art exhibit in a few weeks.”

  Wynona Emmett, wife of the Haven Point police chief, joined them in time to hear that. “I can’t believe your gallery exhibit is all the way in Colorado! We have galleries here. Why couldn’t you have it somewhere closer to home?”

  Maybe because nobody here had invited her to do a showing.

  “It’s crazy that you have to leave the state entirely to exhibit a photography collection that focuses on Haven Point,” Katrina added.

  “I guess it doesn’t really matter where it is,” Wyn went on. “I’m just so excited someone besides us is finally recognizing how amazing you are.”

  “Thank you,” Megan said, warmth seeping through her at her friends’ confidence, which she was far from sharing.

  What would she do without the Haven Point Helping Hands? They had carried her through some dark and difficult times.

  “Don’t worry about tomorrow at Janet’s place,” Wyn insisted. “We should have plenty of volunteers. You should focus on the preparation you need to do for your gallery showing, doing whatever it takes to knock their socks off.”

&
nbsp; “I’ll see how things go. I might be able to make it over in the afternoon to work on the painting,” she said, just as the girls finished giving their cheer and headed out into the bleachers to greet their families.

  Cassie came straight toward her, beaming a thousand-watt smile. “Did you see me, Auntie Meg?”

  “I watched the whole thing. Great game, kiddo.”

  “Coach said I can pitch again next week.”

  She set her camera aside to hug her. “Perfect! I can’t wait.”

  “Did you get any pictures of me?”

  “You know it, honey. We can look through them later while we’re having pizza.”

  “Yay! Pizza!” Bridger exclaimed as he and Luke walked down the steps of the bleachers toward them.

  “Are you sure you have time?” her brother asked. “I heard you tell Wyn and Kat how busy you are.”

  “Don’t worry. I always have time for pizza.”

  “We’ll meet you at Serranos, then. I’m not crazy about the crowd here.” Luke didn’t look in the direction of Elliot but she knew exactly what he meant.

  The two men once had been close friends, but all that changed after Elizabeth vanished, when Elliot came down firmly on the side of those who thought Luke had been involved.

  Elliot wasn’t the only friend Luke had lost following his wife’s disappearance, but it was probably the relationship he missed most. Not that her brother would talk about things like relationships or hurt feelings, but she could tell.

  Having Elliot here had to be painful for Luke. Oh, she wished the man had never come home.

  * * *

  “GREAT TO HAVE you join us for dinner, though I’m a little surprised.”

  At his brother’s words, Elliot raised an eyebrow. “What’s so surprising about gathering with my family to celebrate a mighty victory?”

  Chloe, seated across the long expanse of table from him, preened at his words, and he gave her a little smile. She was a cute kid, he had to admit. So was her brother Will. The two of them had enriched all their lives.