Sweet Haven

by Shirlee McCoy

  A pretty little place to be buried.

  Yeah. It was, but she didn’t think her father had planned to be interred there quite so soon.

  She settled onto the bench, the coolness of the stone seeping through her jeans, the soft branches of the willow brushing her shoulders and arms. The silence was even nicer than she’d remembered, the crisp edge of fall chilling the breeze that ruffled her hair.

  Hair she’d chopped off three months ago.

  Janelle would have a cow.

  Brenna loved her mother, but the woman put way too much value on hair and nails and fancy cars. Brenna had always had simpler tastes and a more practical outlook, and that had been a bone of contention between them.

  Until Dan.

  Dan—everything Janelle had ever wanted in a son-in-law. A successful surgeon. Charming. Hardworking. Kind. He’d settle Janelle’s rebel-child down.

  Brenna snorted.

  He’d also cheat on her and steal her blind, but Janelle wasn’t going to hear a word about that. Not from Brenna. A little break from each other is how she’d described the situation. When Janelle asked why two people who were so perfect for each other needed a break, Brenna had told her that they both had busy careers and needed time to get their priorities straight. Janelle hadn’t bought the excuse.

  Thank God for Adeline’s pregnancy.

  The distraction had come at the perfect time. Everyone focused on Adeline and the new little life she was percolating. No one focused on Brenna and the knee-deep pile of crap she’d found herself in.

  A win-win situation.

  Except that Brenna didn’t feel like a winner.

  She felt like she’d come full circle and was starting right back where she’d left off when she was seventeen and certain she could make her own happily-ever-after. If someone had asked her then what her life would be like in ten years, she’d have said she’d be married, have a couple of kids, own that nice little cottage that she’d always dreamed about. Modeling had been a means to an end. Traveling the world was supposed to bring her to a place where she could finally belong.

  All it had brought her was right back where she had never wanted to be.

  “Life doesn’t always work out the way we want. Right?” she said to the angel statue.

  “It sure doesn’t,” someone responded, the masculine voice so surprising, she nearly tumbled sideways off the bench.

  Leaves crackled, a twig snapped, and a dark shadow appeared in front of her. Tall. Broad shouldered. A man, moonlight gleaming in his dark hair.

  She screamed so loudly she almost expected the angel to take flight.

  It didn’t, but she sure did, her head slamming into willow branches, leaves falling all around her as she darted behind the tree and raced back through the cemetery.

  She was pretty damn certain her feet never touched the ground.

  * * *

  Scaring the hell out of a woman wasn’t cool. Chasing her through a cemetery to apologize? Even worse.

  Both beat getting tossed in jail.

  Which could happen if River Maynard didn’t convince the lady he’d scared that he was harmless. Tough to do when he was wandering around a cemetery in the middle of the night. Tougher to do with his history.

  The fact was, people in Benevolence didn’t trust him. River couldn’t blame them for that. During his teenage years, he’d given them plenty to be distrustful about. Breaking and entering. Petty theft. Arson. He’d even taken the radio from a police car that had been left unlocked in the church parking lot. He’d been fifteen at the time. Just young enough that the sheriff had taken pity on him. Otherwise, he’d have been tossed right back into the juvenile detention center that his foster parents had pulled him out of.

  Dillard and Belinda Keech.

  If there were saints on earth, he’d say the two were that.

  The Keeches had heard about River from a friend of a friend. They’d traveled from Benevolence to Seattle, visited him in the detention center he’d been confined to, and decided then and there to bring him to Freedom Ranch.

  A place for troubled kids. That’s what River’s caseworker had said.

  It had turned out to be a hell of a lot more than that. It had been a place to grow up a little, a place to learn what it meant to work hard. A place where doing the right thing was rewarded and doing the wrong thing ended in a lecture, a few extra chores, and disappointing the only two people who’d ever actually believed in him.

  He owed the Keeches everything.

  It was too late to repay Dillard, but as long as Belinda was around, River would keep trying to repay her.

  That would be difficult to do from a jail cell.

  “Hold up!” he called as the woman reached the cemetery gate and sprinted through it. She moved fast, long legs eating up the ground, arms pumping like she’d spent the past few years training to run the hundred-meter dash.

  “Ma’am?” He tried again, because if Belinda got wind of the fact that he’d scared the crap out of some woman in the cemetery, she’d be stressed, and the last thing she needed was more of that.

  “I’m calling the police!” the woman yelled back.

  The police? That was just what he didn’t need.

  “No need for that. I just wanted to apologize for scaring you.”

  “You didn’t scare me.” She panted, yanking open the door of an ancient Cadillac Seville and hopping in. “You terrified me.”

  She slammed the door, and he thought she’d speed off to wherever she’d come from and tell whoever she lived with all about the guy who’d chased her through the cemetery. If she did, he’d be screwed. Benevolence was typical small-town, with a typical small-town gossip network. If she told anyone, the entire town would know about it before dawn. No way did River want Belinda to deal with that. She was only three weeks out from a stroke that could have killed her, and she needed peace, quiet, and rest.

  Not an easy thing to get at Freedom Ranch.

  Not right now, anyway.

  River had come back to Benevolence to take care of all that. He just hadn’t realized how much it would entail. The month he’d planned was going to be closer to two. Maybe more, if he couldn’t convince Belinda to close the ranch and sell it.

  He neared the Seville, its glossy paint glimmering in the moonlight. The woman hadn’t started the engine. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t locked the door either.

  Instead, she sat in the driver’s seat, her face pale in the darkness.

  He knocked on the window. “You okay?”

  “I’ve been better,” he thought she said, but the window was closed, her voice muffled.

  “I can give you a ride home, if you’re not up to driving,” he offered. They’d have to walk to his truck, though. He’d left it parked on Main Street right in front of the chocolate shop. The place had been closed when he’d arrived. Of course. Because that’s the way River’s whole damn day had gone. One mini-crisis after another, all of them culminating in Belinda discovering that someone had eaten the last piece of Lamont fudge.

  Huckleberry was the culprit.

  River knew it, but he hadn’t had time to track down the eighteen-year-old and read him the riot act. He’d needed to get the fudge.

  Only he hadn’t been able to accomplish that, either.

  “I’m fine,” the woman said, unrolling the window and eyeing him through the opening.

  “You sure? It’s no trouble to give you a lift.”

  “I’m sure,” she responded, brushing thick bangs from her forehead.

  She looked . . . familiar. Something about her face—the angle of the jaw, the shape of the nose. He couldn’t quite place it, but he was certain they’d met before.

  “Do you live around here?” he asked, and she frowned.

  “Do you always wander around cemeteries in the middle of the night asking women questions about where they live?”

  He laughed. “Touché. It’s an unusual night. For both of us, I’d say.”

&nb
sp; “You’re right about that.” She shoved the keys in the ignition and the dashboard light went on, illuminating freckled skin and short red hair that stuck out in about a dozen different directions.

  He had a flash of a memory: a young girl with long red hair and big blue eyes, trudging down the road, a red wagon filled with books rattling along behind her. One of the Lamont girls. That’s what Belinda had told him.

  “You’re a Lamont,” he said, and she met his eyes.

  “Brenna.” She held out a hand. “What gave it away? The hair?”

  “You used to walk down Main Street with a wagon-load of books. Hard to forget something like that.”

  “I’d like to say I remember you,” she responded, cocking her head to the side and studying him carefully, “but I’m drawing a blank.”

  “River Maynard.” He didn’t add anything else. He knew he didn’t need to. She might not remember his face, but she’d remember the name.

  It took a few seconds, and then her eyes widened. “Holy sh—Crap! You’re the kid who sheared all of Old Man Morris’s sheep.”

  “And his dogs,” he added.

  She grinned. “That’s right. Three Old English sheepdogs, shaved down to their skin.”

  “It was summer. They were hot.” And he’d been young and stupid and itching for a fight.

  “Is that why you let Henderson Baily’s bull out of the pasture?”

  “I did that because Henderson was an asshole.”

  She laughed, a light easy sound that rang through the quiet parking lot. “Your honesty is refreshing. Good luck with it in this town.”

  “You don’t think Benevolence appreciates honesty?”

  She reached into her glove compartment, pulled out a stick of gum, and shoved it into her mouth. “Who knows? It’s been years since I’ve called this place home.”

  “You planning on calling it home again?” He was just curious enough to ask.

  “No. I’m just back to help in Chocolate Haven for a few weeks.”

  Chocolate Haven.

  The one place that could give him what he’d promised Belinda he’d bring.

  “I guess that means you have a key to the store?”

  She stiffened. “That’s an odd question to ask.”

  “Not if you’re a guy who came to town for fudge and realized the only store that sold it was closed.”

  “Chocolate Haven is open every day except Sunday. Nine to six. Show up first thing in the morning, and you might be able to get a deal on day-old fudge.”

  “Tomorrow morning isn’t soon enough. I promised I’d bring it home tonight.”

  “Sorry. Your girlfriend will have to wait.” She started the engine and looked like she was about to roll up the window.

  But River hadn’t gotten to where he was in life by turning over and playing dead every time someone told him no.

  He leaned down so that they were face-to-face, and found himself staring into wide, almond-shaped eyes. “If the fudge was for my girlfriend or wife or buddy, I’d agree. But this is for Belinda. You remember her, right?”

  “She was a long-term sub in my fifth grade class when Mrs. Pruett was out on maternity leave,” Brenna muttered, and he knew he had her.

  No one could resist Belinda.

  “Did you know she had a stroke?”

  “My sister mentioned that she was in the hospital. I thought she’d recovered.”

  “Recovery is a long way away. She lost the use of her right arm and leg. It’s hard. She spends hours in therapy. When she gets home, the one thing she looks forward to is—”

  “Let me guess,” she said with a sigh. “Lamont fudge.”

  “Right.”

  “Look, River, I’m really sorry to hear about Belinda, but—”

  “It’s a piece of fudge. I’ll pay for ten pounds, and we’ll call it good.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “She cried, Brenna.” He cut her off. No way in hell was he letting her go without giving this a fighting chance. He’d promised Belinda—promised—that he’d come back with a piece of that fudge.

  “Fudge is really nothing to cry about. Maybe she needs counseling or—”

  “Maybe she needs just one thing to go right. Maybe she needs to come home from a long day of therapy, and she needs to sit in her recliner and watch her favorite game show and just eat one damn piece of fudge,” he said quietly as he backed out of the window.

  He couldn’t keep the woman there and he couldn’t force her to sell him a piece of fudge. But, God! He wanted to.

  Never promise something you can’t give, son. You do, and you just might find that you disappoint yourself more than you disappoint anyone else.

  How many times had Dillard said that? How many times had River rolled his eyes?

  All that eye-rolling was coming back to bite him in the butt. If Dillard’s spirit happened to be hanging around nearby, the old guy was probably nodding his head and smirking that smirk he’d always worn when something that he’d warned would happen, did.

  “Look,” Brenna said, and he was sure it was over. She was going to drive off to Chocolate Haven and leave him standing in the parking lot with his spoken and broken promise. “I know how it feels to want to have just one little thing go right. You want some fudge, come to the shop and I’ll see if we have any. I can’t promise anything, though.”

  She rolled up the window and sped out of the parking lot.

  Smart lady, not making a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep.

  He’d be smart to do the same.

  Next time.

  This time, he was going to take her up on her offer and head over to Chocolate Haven. Maybe he wouldn’t have to go back to the ranch empty-handed, and maybe he wouldn’t end the night more disappointed than Belinda would be.

  She was the closest thing he’d ever had to a mother. Or at least the closest thing he’d ever had to a mother who cared.

  He’d do anything for her.

  Even convince one of the Lamonts to sell him fudge in the middle of the night.

  Town royalty.

  That’s what the family was, but River had never cared about social status. He’d never cared about looking good in other people’s eyes. All he’d cared about was getting out of the crap-hole he’d been born into and taking care of the two people who’d helped him do that.

  He jogged across the parking lot, sprinted down the street that led into town. He should have just let Brenna go back to whatever she’d been doing when he’d heard her walking through the cemetery, but the thought of returning to Freedom Ranch empty-handed appealed to him about as much as the thought of facing the mismatched group of people he’d found when he’d arrived there three weeks ago.

  No more foster kids.

  That’s what Belinda had said after Dillard’s funeral.

  River had had no reason to doubt her words, and he’d been too caught up in building his newest Portland restaurant to make sure she was following through on her promise to take it easy.

  Easy?

  Instead of kids, she’d taken in a bunch of misfit adults who had nowhere else to go. As far as River was concerned, three weeks with some of the craziest bunch of humans he’d ever encountered was about two weeks too long. He wanted them out. All of them. But Belinda had insisted that he let every damn one of them stay.

  Even Huckleberry.

  The kid who’d eaten the last piece of fudge.

  Good thing he hadn’t been around when Belinda started crying. River would have been tempted to ring the kid’s scrawny neck.

  Extend some grace, River.

  He could almost hear Belinda chiding him.

  She had more patience than anyone River had ever met.

  She’d needed it to finish raising him.

  Probably he should keep that in mind when he was dealing with her “guests.”

  Extend some grace . . .

  Yeah. He’d extend it.

  Unless that little pip-squeak Huckleberry made B
elinda cry again. Then grace would be out the window, and Huckleberry would be out on his scrawny behind.

  ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2016 by Shirlee McCoy

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4201-3927-3

  ISBN-10: 1-4201-3927-4

  ISBN: 978-1-4201-3927-3