No way could her sister guess that McKenzie had just spent several long, life-altering moments kissing Ben outside Sam’s mother’s awful boutique. Right?
To her great relief, the fireworks started before her sister could start any interrogation.
“Ooh. Here they go,” Sam exclaimed. Had McKenzie sounded that young when she was twenty-one? It seemed another lifetime.
Devin patted the empty spot on the blanket next to her and McKenzie settled down, lying back so she could watch the show overhead.
While colors began to light up the sky, she couldn’t help rehashing that kiss.
It hardly seemed fair to women in general that the man had everything—money, gorgeous looks, a really great dog—and he could also kiss as if his life depended on it.
She licked her lips, still tasting him there. He had been right, lame or not. The fireworks bursting across the sky were nothing compared to what the two of them had generated in those few amazing moments.
McKenzie sighed. She would have to do something about this ridiculous crush that had suddenly reawakened inside her. If she wasn’t careful, he would walk away when his time here was over and leave her heartbroken.
A week ago, she had loathed the very mention of the man’s name. Now, after the time she had spent with him since he came back to Haven Point, she was discovering the truth wasn’t always as black-and-white as she might like to believe. He had certainly made mistakes, trusting the wrong people, and demonstrating an obvious lack of interest in his holdings here.
She could even understand it a little. If his childhood had been as unhappy as she was beginning to increasingly suspect it had, given the tension between him and his mother, he would naturally want to distance himself from his hometown.
These past few days had shown her that perhaps her perspective about him wasn’t completely accurate. She still wished he hadn’t closed the boatworks, especially now that Kilpatrick boats were reemerging in popularity. But she was beginning to see that perhaps the decision hadn’t been as spontaneous or vindictive as she’d always thought.
She let out a soft breath. What did it matter? Even if he wasn’t necessarily the villain she had always painted him, he wasn’t the kind of man she needed. She wanted someone who loved Haven Point as much as she did, who could find peace in small moments like this, being surrounded by friends in this beautiful spot on a perfect July night.
Maybe she was finding a little too much peace. After a few more moments, the colors of the fireworks seemed to stir and blend together like paint on a palette and her body seemed to sink a little more deeply into the blanket on the soft grass.
This was the first time she had stopped moving since well before sunrise. She hadn’t realized how very exhausted she was by the events of the day.
Something about the cessation of sound snapped her out of the Zen-like state she had slipped into. She had completely missed the entire grand finale and realized people were getting up, gathering their blankets and chairs and beginning to stream out of the park.
Devin glanced over. “Were you asleep?”
“Not quite,” she said. “Close, though. It’s been a long day.”
“A few of us are heading over to the Mad Dog for the Lake Haven Monster Ball,” Megan Hamilton said. “Want to come?”
On the last night of Lake Haven Days, the local watering hole threw a wild party to celebrate the mythological Lake Haven Monster—which, as far as anyone could tell, no one had actually seen except a few drunk fishermen and boys trying to scare their little sisters. It sounded like fun, hanging out with her sister and girlfriends, drinking a little too much, maybe flirting with a couple of the cute guys from out of town who showed up for the marathon or the baseball tournament.
Sometimes having grown-up obligations really sucked.
“I’d better not,” she said, with real regret. “I’m opening the store in the morning and then Lindy-Grace’s boys are coming to stay overnight.”
“Oh, man,” Megan commiserated. “You definitely need to save your strength, then.”
Lindy’s boys were a handful but she loved having them over. “You girls have a good time. Dance with a hot tourist for me.”
“We’ll do that. If you change your mind, you know where to find us.”
“Got it.”
She wouldn’t join them, McKenzie thought as she gathered up her own belongings. She wanted to be home with Rika, safe in her comfortable bed and away from the temptation of the gorgeous man living next door, who was far more appealing than any cute tourist.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THOUGH HER CAR was parked behind city hall in the special spot reserved for the town’s mayor, she decided it would be easier to just walk home and get her car in the morning so she could avoid all the traffic driving slowly through town after the fireworks show.
She opted to walk along the lake trail, using the flashlight on her cell phone to light the way so she didn’t stumble over any unforeseen obstacles like rocks or tree roots. The night was beautiful, cool and sweet with summer. She tugged her pashmina around her shoulders, grateful she’d had the foresight to grab it out of her car earlier. Even in summer, the temperature of these high mountain nights could drop dramatically.
The pines whispered with the breeze and out on the water, a few people were launching their own fireworks shows off their boats. The celebration would be going on long into the night.
She was enjoying the moonlit night so much, she was almost sorry when she reached her house, even as she felt the familiar sense of contentment and homecoming beckon her.
When she reached her property, a couple of creatures bounded toward her through the night. She gave an involuntary shriek until she realized it was two dogs, a regal German shepherd and a beautiful cinnamon standard poodle.
“Hello, you two. Paprika, you rascal. What are you doing out here?”
“My fault.” A shadow separated itself from the darkness of the dock, stepping into a patch of moonlight.
Her heart accelerated and she suddenly couldn’t think about anything but that wild kiss.
“I thought I’d better let her out again after I came back from town,” Ben said. “The fireworks were just starting as I let her out. Since she didn’t mind them—and since Hondo seemed to find a little more courage with her around—I let the two of them sit out here on the dock to watch with me. I wasn’t sure when you’d be back and I was just about to let her inside. Here’s your key from the red flowerpot.”
He pulled it out of the pocket of his jeans and handed it over, still warm from the heat of his body.
She felt it press into the skin of her hand, concentrating on the hard metal shape of it. “Thanks for watching her.”
“It was my pleasure, believe me. She’s a great dog. How did everything go at the park? The fireworks looked nice from here.”
“Good, I guess. We didn’t have any major crisis this year—unlike a few years ago, when one of the volunteer firefighters accidentally let off the whole shebang at once and the show was over in about thirty seconds.”
He laughed, a soft sound that rippled through the night. She could swear she felt it in the very tips of her toes.
Out on the water, somebody set off a particularly impressive display of pyrotechnics that arced across the sky before exploding in a shower of color.
“Apparently the show isn’t quite over.”
“Private aerials are technically illegal, especially so close to US Forest Service land, but everybody does them, anyway. People seem to think it’s fine to set them off across the lake since they can’t catch anything on fire. They buy them on one of the reservations or down in Wyoming and haul them in. I swear, there are some people in town who spend more for their private fireworks show than the city does for the official display.”
“Looks like we’ve got front-row seats. We’d better take advantage while we can. It’s only one night a year, right? Are you tired of fireworks yet?”
“I never get tired of them,” she told him. By tacit agreement, they headed back to the dock, to the porch swing under the open wooden pergola that straddled her property and the vacation rental next door.
The breeze off the water was cool and she was grateful for her pashmina. She pulled it more tightly around her and settled into the swing. The chains rattled a little as Ben sat beside her.
Hondo came to stand in front of her, obviously still a little on edge because of the fireworks. She scratched between his ears. “There’s a good, brave boy. They won’t hurt you.”
Rika made a sound that drew Hondo’s attention and the dog padded over to her, and the two of them settled down on the dock, perfect companions.
“How’s the head?” Ben asked.
“Fine. Still a little achy but I’m good.”
“You must be exhausted after the long day.”
Her answering shrug brushed against his shoulder. Sensations flooded through her but she did her best to ignore her reaction. A snide little warning voice suggested—just a thought—that this might not be the smartest idea, sharing a swing on a sweetly perfect summer night when she had just resolved to keep some safe distance from the man. She decided to ignore it.
“I fell asleep a little during the fireworks earlier,” she admitted, “but caught my second wind during the invigorating walk home.”
She paused, aware of every inch of him beside her on the swing, the heat and strength of him. In an effort to fight the attraction she knew couldn’t go anywhere, she introduced the one topic she was certain would distract both of them.
“So. Here we are. Just the two of us. The perfect chance for you to tell me about your strained relationship with Lydia. You promised.”
He groaned. “That again? Why ruin a perfectly lovely evening? Let’s talk about something easier, like politics or religion or the China trade deficit.”
“Ha. I knew you’d try to weasel out. And after I told you about coming here to live with my dad, too. Weaselly McWeaselson.”
He gave a rusty laugh. “Anybody ever tell you you’re relentless, Mayor Shaw?”
“All the time. Just ask anybody on the city council or the city public works director. I’m not his favorite person, always after him to fix this roadway or that water line.”
He was silent for a long while as the waves lapped softly against the dock and fireworks burst from a wooden sailboat to the north of them. Perhaps he wasn’t going to tell her. It was really none of her business and very presumptuous of her to hound him to talk about things he didn’t want to discuss.
“Sorry,” she relented. “I’m just teasing you. You don’t have to tell me anything. I’m being nosy and rude and I’ll shut up now.”
“We didn’t have a very happy home,” he said in response. “I guess you probably knew that, from the times when you would visit Snow Angel Cove to see Lily.”
The household had always seemed on edge. She remembered that now. At the time, she assumed it was because of Lily’s worsening condition and the grim inevitability the family had to live with each day.
Lydia had always been very kind to her daughter’s friend, but McKenzie now recalled the lines of strain on her features, the sadness in her eyes. As for Ben, he had been a distant, rather angry figure. She rarely saw Joe, since he spent most of his time at the boatworks—or the Mad Dog, if rumors could be believed.
Only Lily had seemed oblivious to the emotional tumult in their home.
“I did pick up that things were...strained, but I didn’t think twice about it,” she admitted. “Every family has issues. I told you all about my own messy home life. But I wasn’t dealing with a terminally ill sister, either.”
Except those horrible months when Devin had first been diagnosed, she remembered, when the entire world had seemed to condense only to that.
“Lily’s cystic fibrosis was tough to deal with, yes, but that wasn’t the core issue.” His fingers drummed out a rhythm on the armrest of the bench, his posture tight.
“My father was a son of a bitch. Everyone in town knew that. He was a bully at the boatworks, he pushed his weight around with the other merchants in town and he came home and tried to dominate his family completely. When I say family, I mean my mother and me. He was never physically abusive but he knew just how to strike out at a person’s most vulnerable spot, with lethal precision.”
She heard the tension in his voice and regretted ever bringing this up. She had to get over thinking she could solve everyone’s problems. Some situations couldn’t be solved. They just had to be endured.
“I worked hard in school and earned good grades but Joe was always telling me how stupid I was, how lazy, how I would never amount to anything. He was cold and cruel. With my mom, it was worse. So much worse.”
Her chest ached at the echo of old pain in his voice. Despite the advice she had given herself earlier, about trying to keep a safe distance between them, she couldn’t ignore that pain. She reached a hand over to where his fist was clenched on his thigh and folded her fingers over his. He looked startled at the contact and then she felt a little of the tension seep away.
“She wouldn’t let me protect her. That was the toughest thing for me to deal with. Joe slept around with anything that moved in town and delighted in flaunting that to her. He told her she was an ugly cow and called her the most horrible names you can imagine. He controlled all the finances and withheld any spending money from her. I can remember her having to borrow cash from the housekeeper so she could buy feminine hygiene products. It was truly horrible, the way he beat her down without once using his fists.”
He glanced down and seemed a little startled to find her there. “I’ve never told anybody else in the world that. See what happens when you’re obstinate? You find out more than you probably wanted to know.”
She was touched beyond words that he would confide his deepest pain in her. The subtle connection between them seemed to tighten a little more.
“May I ask the obvious?”
“What’s that?”
“Why are you taking out your anger at Big Joe’s cruelty on your mother, when it sounds as if she was just as much a victim as you were?”
“Intellectually, I know that. She was a victim. But from my perspective, she wasn’t a helpless one. She chose him. She married him. She had two children with him. I just can’t get past the fact that she stayed as long as she did, knowing what he was like. Lydia is a smart woman. She had to know where she could find help out there. Why didn’t she leave him earlier, at the first sign of abuse?”
“Sometimes there are complicating factors, Ben. You can’t know what was in her head.”
“I’m sure my mom had reasons for staying. Lily was probably the biggest. For all his faults, my dad was surprisingly good with Lily. She was so frail and so needy and she simply adored him. I get that, but it doesn’t make it any easier.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You know, he could walk out of her room after reading to her for an hour and then come to my room and rail at me for an hour about how stupid and worthless I was because I got an A-minus on my advanced calculus test.”
She didn’t know what to say. Compassion twisted inside her and she wished she could take away the pain of his memories. “That must have been very hard for you,” she murmured.
“I suppose in some ways I’m grateful now. He pushed me to try harder and be better. I hated the bastard by the time I left that house but I wasn’t about to let him be right about me. I refused to become what he said I was, so I worked my ass off to get into Cal Poly and haven’t stopped since.”
“So now when you’re with your mother, you remember being back at S
now Angel Cove and all the pain and disappointment that she didn’t do more to protect you,” she guessed.
He seemed struck by her words. “That’s about the size of it, yeah. Pretty pathetic, isn’t it?”
She squeezed his fingers. “No. Not pathetic at all. Completely understandable. Mothers are supposed to protect their kids above all else. You felt betrayed and abandoned and that’s a tough thing for a person to move past. I get it.”
She paused as the party in the sailboat sent off their grand finale, a huge, exploding burst of color and light that clearly illuminated the Redemptions across the bay.
“Don’t you think it’s possible to find some sort of peace with your mother?” she asked quietly, when the last spark had drifted into the water. “To let go of the past and move on, somehow, so the two of you could build a better relationship now? It’s obvious, even to me, that she wants that very much.”
“I don’t know,” he said frankly.
“I would give anything to still have my mom or my dad right now. The saddest thing in the world to me is unnecessary regret. Take the chance now, while you still can.”
He was silent, gazing out at the now-quiet lake. The Independence Day revelers had all started making their way back to the marina or to other private docks along the lake. Without the pyrotechnics to distract the eye, McKenzie could now see a wide spangle of stars above the lake and a half-moon rising above the highest peak.
Ben made the swing move with his longer legs and she was content to sit beside him, wondering what he was thinking about, feeling the heat of him, listening to the quiet night sounds around them—the dogs snuffling together, a splash here or there, where a fish jumped up after some unsuspecting insect, her friendly neighborhood owl in the pine tree.
Finally, his fingers tightened on hers. “Do you feel the need to solve everyone’s problems, or just mine?”
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