Redemption Bay (Haven Point Book 2) (Contemporary Romance) (8 page)

While Ben usually prided himself on his logic and common sense when it came to women—and everything else—he was halfway across the lawn without even thinking about the wisdom of spending more time with her. He couldn’t seem to help himself.

“Evening.”

She glanced up and he saw surprise and disquiet in her expression before she nodded politely.

“Hi.”

“Need a hand?”

Her eyes seemed to sparkle in the fading rays of the sun as she looked first at him, then down at the kayak. “This thing weighs all of thirty pounds. I think I can handle it.”

“So can I. You stow it in the shed, right?”

Without waiting for an answer, he picked it up and carried it toward the small red structure. He didn’t miss the little frustrated huff she gave at his high-handedness but she didn’t argue, only picked up the double-bladed paddle and followed him, shrugging out of her life jacket on the way.

“Just there is fine, next to the lawn mower. Right. That works.”

He set it down and she hung the life jacket and paddle next to the door.

“Thanks for your help,” she said as she led the way back out of the small structure.

“You’re welcome.” It was a little hard to reconcile this fresh-faced, vibrant woman with the flyaway braid and the bright eyes to the buttoned-down, self-contained mayor who had hosted breakfast that morning in a tailored skirt and high heels.

He wasn’t sure which one attracted him more.

“Lovely evening, isn’t it?” he said, to distract himself from the sudden impulse to reach forward and push a stray tendril of hair behind her ear.

“The best.” She smiled. “July is one of my favorite months on Lake Haven. At least in the top twelve.”

He smiled and suddenly realized that was one of the things he found most attractive about McKenzie. He smiled more often around her than he remembered doing in a long time.

He had spent far too much time being serious since he had left Haven Point. First, he had thrown himself into his studies and after meeting Aidan and teaming up with him to build Caine Tech into the powerhouse it was today, he had dedicated every spare moment to the company.

His social life usually consisted of entertaining vendors and clients, traveling to trade shows, attending charity benefits.

For so long, he had been fiercely driven to push out the harsh voice in his head telling him he was lazy and stupid and worthless.

At some point along his journey—perhaps after his father died—that voice had stopped mattering to him, but those workaholic habits still consumed him.

Watching the changes that had come over Aidan these past few months since he and Eliza connected had been both illuminating and disconcerting. Aidan had learned to relax, to slow down a little and savor the life he was building with Eliza and Maddie.

Ben knew that was one of the reasons his friend had encouraged him to take this assignment to spend a few quiet weeks in Haven Point after Marsh Phillips’s unexpected death.

It was working, at least when it came to McKenzie. Right now, he wasn’t thinking about Caine Tech. Instead, he had a sudden fierce urge to be out on the water with her, kayaking through golden-hued ripples and sending those Canada geese into flight.

“Have you had dinner?” he asked on impulse. “I was about to throw a steak on the grill. It would be no trouble to toss on another one.”

She blinked at him in the fading sun, obviously caught off guard by the invitation.

Another thing he enjoyed about McKenzie—she wasn’t very good at shielding her emotions. In her eyes, he saw surprise and confusion and, if he wasn’t mistaken, an unwilling but unmistakable attraction.

So she felt this little sizzle between them, too. The realization heightened his own awareness of her.

“I haven’t had dinner,” she admitted. “A steak sounds delicious. Maybe I can whip up a salad and cut up some vegetables.”

Just as she finished the sentence, Hondo suddenly gave his deep-throated stranger-danger bark and planted his paws in a protective stance in front of both of them.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” a familiar woman’s voice called.

Tension suddenly gripped his shoulders, strengthened a moment later when his mother walked around the side of the house.

She looked lovely and feminine, as always, well-dressed in a sundress and scarf with strappy sandals and big Jackie O sunglasses. She always looked to him at least a decade younger than her true age, with only a few laugh lines at the corners of the blue eyes he had inherited.

She must have gained those after she divorced his father and walked away, because he didn’t remember her laughing much during his childhood.

As always when faced with his mother, he was filled with that conflicting jumble of emotions—resentment and love and frustration, all wrapped into one big, delightful ball of angst he hated.

Lydia’s face brightened when she spotted him standing with McKenzie. “Here you are. I rang the doorbell but you didn’t answer. I thought you weren’t here, even though that must be your vehicle in the driveway, and then I thought I heard voices back here and a dog. I’m so glad I caught you.”

Lydia approached them, smiling brightly. He tried to hide his discomfort as he dutifully kissed her cheek.

“Mom. Hi.”

“Hello, my dear. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to town? Imagine my surprise when Russ called me a few days ago and told me he bumped into you at Serrano’s. I waited for you to call. When you didn’t, I decided to take matters into my own hands, since I’m meeting someone in town for dinner.”

He had no reason to feel guilty. He had seen his mother just a few months earlier when he flew down to San Diego for her birthday. “I wasn’t sure you would be here,” he answered. “Didn’t you tell me you were heading to Tuscany over the summer? Some kind of extended art history class, wasn’t it?”

She made a face. “It sounded like fun but it didn’t quite happen the way I planned. My friend Cynthia backed out at the last minute after she was lucky enough to be blessed with new twin granddaughters. They’re absolutely darling, by the way. Not that I’m hinting or anything.”

Right. She had hinted plenty that she thought it was past time he started looking for something a little more stable than his steady string of short-lived relationships.

“Anyway, I didn’t want to go to Italy by myself—what’s the fun in that?—so I decided to spend July here at the condo, where I could see my sisters.”

He did not understand at all how his mother could feel such a connection to this place. Yes, she had grown up in Haven Point and several of her multitude of siblings had chosen to settle in the area. Maybe that connection to her younger life compensated somehow for the memories she must have of her unhappy marriage.

“I stopped by yesterday but you weren’t here. We must have missed each other.”

Yet another layer of tension and guilt knotted the muscles in his shoulders. He loved his mother and would love the kind of relationship Aidan Caine had with his father, Dermot, but every time he was with her, he couldn’t seem to shake all those difficult memories of the times she stood by and didn’t protect him.

He suddenly remembered his manners. “Mom, you remember McKenzie Shaw, I’m sure. She used to come around the house sometimes to hang out with Lily.”

His sister’s name seemed to shiver between the three of them, as heavy and dangerous as a claymore. McKenzie drew in a quick breath and Lydia’s mouth tightened for a moment before she straightened it out into a warm smile she aimed in McKenzie’s direction.

“Of course!” she exclaimed. “I should have recognized you instantly. It’s been years, but I still remember those beautiful dark eyes and long eyelashes of yours. You were such a good friend to Lily.”

McKenzie smiled, though it looked a little sad around the edges.

“Lovely to see you again, Mrs. Kilpatrick. I would hug you but I just came off the kayak and I’m drenched.”

“Please. Call me Lydia. And I certainly don’t care about a little damp.”

Before McKenzie could back away, his mother stepped forward and embraced her. McKenzie looked startled at first and then touched as she hugged Lydia back.

His mother often had that effect on people. Most saw her as a calm, lovely person who drew people to her.

He did his best to see her through that prism but it was sometimes difficult when the view was obstructed by murky pain and disappointment.

“How are you?” Lydia asked, folding her fingers around McKenzie’s. “I understand you’re the one who bought that charming floral and gift shop in town. My sister Janet was telling me the other day she can’t walk out without spending a fortune.”

“Just what I like to hear. You’ll have to stop in while you’re in the area.”

“I’ll definitely do that. Is this handsome fellow yours?” She scratched Hondo’s chin and the dog immediately became enamored of her, too.

McKenzie shook her head, looking a little surprised. “Actually, he’s your son’s.”

His mother’s jaw dropped and she stared at him in disbelief. “You got a dog, after all these years? This is huge! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He’s not mine,” Ben said stiffly. “A friend passed away a few weeks ago and I temporarily ended up with Hondo. I’m looking for a good home for him before I head back to California. You’re not looking for a German shepherd, are you?”

“No, though I would love a handsome boy like this. Yes, I would. I would. I’ll ask around.”

“Thanks,” he answered stiffly.

Most of the time, Ben felt as if he handled his life pretty well, other than the tendency to work too much. He had friends, a good life in California, an amazingly successful career.

So why did he have so much trouble forging a healthy adult relationship with his mother? He always felt suffocated by her expectations and choked by her disappointment when he was unable to meet them.

Sometimes he worried that something fundamental had been crushed out of him after his father stopped loving him, as if some healthy emotional development had been stunted along the way.

“Was there some reason you stopped by?” he asked.

Only when McKenzie frowned at him did he realize how cold, almost hostile, his words and tone sounded. For an instant, he felt uncomfortably like his father, wielding words like a samurai sword to jab and wound, always aiming for the weakest spot.

Lydia only smiled, though some of the delight in her eyes seemed to have seeped away. “When my only son shows up in the same zip code, of course I’m going to stop by to say hello. Your aunt Janet and I were hoping you could come for dinner with us while you’re here.”

He didn’t answer for a moment—too
long
a moment. The hesitation was obvious to all three of them.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I’m here on business and my schedule is quite packed while I’m here. Mayor Shaw and I were just working out the details of all my obligations. I don’t know when I’ll have a moment to spare. I’m going to have to check my calendar but I’ll see what I can do.”

“I see. Of course. I know you’re a busy man.” She wore that same calm smile he hated, the one that reminded him painfully of the polite facade she used to exhibit to the world during his childhood, even during the worst times with Lily. That smile was carefully crafted to give no evidence that behind it their life was quietly falling apart.

“Do let me know. Your aunt would love to see you while you’re here.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Good. I’ll be in touch, then. I should run. I have a...date, if you can believe that.”

He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to that.

“Not a date, I suppose. Just an outing with an old friend. Russell Warrick. We’re meeting for dinner.”

“Have fun, then.”

She gave a short laugh. “I’ll try.”

After an awkward moment, she reached out and hugged him and he was instantly awash in her familiar apple-scented shampoo and the perfume she still used, after all these years.

“Goodbye, son,” she murmured “It really is wonderful to see you. Please call.”

“I’ll walk you to your car.”

“No need. I can find my way. I’ll call you.”

She hurried away as if she were escaping rising floodwaters, leaving behind a thick silence.

“You lied to your mother,” McKenzie finally said.

He made a face, though he felt ridiculously guilty about it. “I’ve heard people do, on occasion.”

“You didn’t have to drag me into it. I only asked you to attend the Lake Haven Days celebrations on Saturday. You could have spent any one of the other evenings you’re in town having dinner with your mother and aunt Janet.”

“And I probably will.”

He would call her in the morning and set up something else, he told himself. Even if it was an evening filled with awkwardness and the resurrection of memories he preferred to stuff down most of the time.

“Are we still on to grill tonight?” he said, trying to change the subject. “I’m starving.”

She looked as if she wanted to say more about his mother, but to his relief, she only smiled. “Sure. Let me go change into dry clothes.”

“Great. I’ll grab the steaks and meet you here in a few moments,” he said, grateful he had acted on the impulse and asked her to share a meal with him.

An evening with McKenzie Shaw was guaranteed to keep him from thinking about his mother and the ball of emotion that wouldn’t stay submerged, no matter how hard he tried.

CHAPTER SEVEN

S
HE
COULD
HANDLE
THIS
.

She was a strong, competent, professional woman, chief executive for a town of four thousand people and owner of her own successful business.

A simple meal on a lovely summer evening posed no challenge, as long as she focused on her goal—to convince Ben Kilpatrick he was completely wrong about Haven Point, that the aging infrastructure could be quickly and easily updated and that this would be the absolutely perfect location for Caine Tech’s new facility.

All while ignoring the unwanted attraction that simmered just under her skin and made stringing two thoughts together at a time a daunting endeavor.

What did a woman wear when she was taking on an impossible task?

McKenzie sighed as she slipped out of her board shorts and her swimming suit. Board shorts. Good grief. And not even cute ones. These were a raggedy pair she had bought off the closeout rack of a big-box store in Boise last fall. The evening had seemed too warm for the wetsuit and this had been the next best thing—but had she really just talked to the elegantly put-together Lydia Kilpatrick dressed like a surfer chick?

She fought down embarrassment as she jumped in the shower fast and hurriedly changed, opting for a favorite pair of capris and a red cotton knit shirt, simple but flattering. As she dressed, her mind continued to stray toward Ben and his mother.

What was the reason for the tension percolating between them? It had been impossible to miss, from the sudden tightness in Ben’s posture to that yearning she had glimpsed in his mother’s eyes when she looked at her son.

Add in the fact that he hadn’t bothered to let his mother know he was in town and it was obvious the two of them had issues. Did the chasm have anything to do with the divorce of Lydia and Big Joe? Or maybe it was related to the reasons Ben clearly didn’t like Haven Point and hadn’t been back since Lily’s funeral.

Not that it was any of her business, McKenzie reminded herself as she yanked a brush through her hair and quickly twisted it into a casual updo.

She had a tendency to try to repair other people’s relationships. Some people played tennis or liked to knit. She liked to fix people and mend fences.

All her girlfriends came to her for relationship advice—and she had been the one to suggest to Lindy-Grace that a night away might be the ticket to reigniting the spark she and Mac seemed to have extinguished along the way.

She didn’t have to dig very deeply to understand why she liked to fix things. She had grown up in such chaos, first with a struggling single mother, then being thrust into the life of a father who hadn’t known she existed for the first decade of her life.

Standing by so helplessly and watching her mother slip away, day by day, and then moving here with the Shaws and struggling to find acceptance in their home had created a deep urge in her to help people heal their relationships while they could.

Ben didn’t need or want her interference, she reminded herself as she carefully touched up her makeup. She heard a sound and looked down to find Rika in the hallway outside the bathroom, gazing through the doorway at her with a quizzical sort of look.

“What? You’ve never seen me put on mascara before?”

Her poodle seemed to shrug, settling down on her front paws to watch the interesting proceedings.

Okay, maybe it had been a while since she took such care with her appearance. In her position as mayor, she actually tried to go easy on the girlie stuff. It was hard enough as a reasonably attractive young woman—emphasis on young—to prove her competency when it came to city business.

She generally went out of her way to look professional, not soft and pretty.

She gazed at her reflection in the mirror, tempted for a moment to break out the eye makeup remover, scrub her face clean for the night and forget the whole thing.

This wasn’t a date and she needed to remember that.

Of course, it had been so long since she’d been on an actual date, no wonder Rika looked confused.

One of the downsides of living in a small town—the dating pool of available men was a little on the shallow side. The pool of
attractive
available men in the area was more like a puddle.

It was a little depressing to realize her last serious relationship had ended three years earlier, when she left Chicago to come home and they had both decided they didn’t care enough to cope with the headaches of a long-distance thing.

These days, most of her interactions with members of the opposite sex involved taking complaints from citizens like Darwin Twitchell, arm-wrestling the four Good Old Boys on the city council—the GOBs, as she thought of them in her head—or consulting with the fire and police chiefs.

While both men definitely had a yum factor, the fire chief happened to be married to one of her close friends and she had dated the police chief in high school, before they both decided they made better friends than anything else.

She could handle a simple dinner with Ben Kilpatrick. She might be attracted to the man on a purely physical level but she still hadn’t forgiven him for all those years when he had neglected her town.

She could still be polite, she told herself as she quickly threw together a salad, then let Rika out the back door and followed her.

The evening air was sweet and lovely. She heard the soft slap of waves against the dock and the peeps and coos of night creatures on the lake.

He had switched on all the exterior lights to his house against the gathering darkness and also had turned on the gas fire pit on the patio. It sent flickering light and shadows across the trees and bushes around the yard.

Ben stood at the gas grill, illuminated clearly by one of the lights on the house. He looked dark and gorgeous. When he caught sight of her, he smiled and a host of butterflies suddenly started flapping wildly inside her.

Okay, this was ridiculous. She could be professional, mayoral, polite. She had left her giddy teenage years behind her a long time ago.

Rika bounded ahead of her to brush noses with Hondo—the little traitor. The two of them romped and danced around as if they hadn’t seen each other in weeks. It would have been adorable if she wasn’t suddenly nervous.

Get a grip. It’s only dinner.
McKenzie drew in a calming breath and walked the rest of the way across the lawn, wielding the salad bowl and the other small bag she carried like a shield.

She told herself she was completely misreading the flash of appreciation in his eyes. It was a trick of the low light conditions. Even if it was truly there and not just a figment of her overactive imagination, she couldn’t afford to pay attention to it.

“I was afraid you might have changed your mind and decided you weren’t in the mood for steak.”

She
should
have changed her mind. It would have been the wiser choice, to make some excuse and heat up a frozen dinner, her usual culinary option.

Try as she might, she had a feeling she was going to have a very tough time remaining professional around him.

“It just took me a minute to throw together a salad,” she answered, deciding not to mention the lipstick and the extra layer of mascara, for obvious reasons.

“Looks great.”

He was talking about the salad. That’s all.

She held up the small bag. “When I came home from work, I picked some early green beans from the garden. You can sauté them on the grill or I can borrow your stove and cook them inside.”

He smiled. “Yum. Haricot verts.”

“Right. Well, here in Idaho we call them plain old green beans, not some fancy French term.”

“I had some delicious plain old green beans in Paris last month when I was there visiting the Caine Tech office in Europe but I’m sure they still won’t compare to fresh-picked from a high mountain garden.”

He lived a fast-paced life she couldn’t even imagine. “When you were a kid living here on the lake, did you ever guess that one day you would be traveling the world, moving and shaking for Caine Tech?”

“Not for an instant. Of course, when I lived here, Caine Tech didn’t exist—except in Aidan’s imagination, maybe.”

“You know what I mean. Some people have their lives planned out, minute by minute. I just wondered if this was your master plan from the beginning, to end up where you are now.”

“I didn’t have a master plan. I just wanted to get through high school so I could get out of that house and this town.”

The bitterness in his voice took her by surprise—both that he felt so strongly about leaving Haven Point and that he would confide in her about it.

It made her wonder all over again about his childhood. She had always sensed the house wasn’t a joyful place. Sadness seemed to seep through the chinking between the log walls. She had always assumed it was because Lily’s terminal cystic fibrosis and her valiant efforts to stay alive had become the focus of the family. Now she wondered if the reason was something deeper, something that had to do with the coolness between Ben and his mother.

She sensed somehow that Joe Kilpatrick was the key to all of it.

Few people in town had liked Joe. He had been a difficult man, a bully and a petty tyrant who demanded special treatment from everyone because Kilpatrick Boatworks was the largest employer in town.

McKenzie’s interactions with him had been minimal, just a few encounters when he had come into Lily’s room to check on her, but he had always seemed solicitous.

She had seen him yell at Ben once, she suddenly remembered. She had been helping Lily with her schoolwork one evening and had gone downstairs to find a glass of water for her. Ben had been sitting at the kitchen table, white-faced, while Joe called him some particularly nasty names. She didn’t remember details, only how embarrassed she had been and how she had crept back to Lily’s room without the glass of water.

“Was it so very terrible, growing up at Snow Angel Cove?” she asked quietly.

He gazed at her for a long moment, a muscle flexing in his jaw. Finally, he shrugged. “Who doesn’t come from a little dysfunction?”

She certainly could agree with that, especially given her own situation.

“These steaks are almost done,” he said, giving her the distinct impression he was trying to avoid the topic. “I think we can sauté your beans out here on the side burner of the grill. I just need to grab a pan.”

He headed into the house and she took a seat at the cast-iron table on the patio, watching the last rays of the sun gleaming on the water.

Hondo and Rika sprawled out side by side on the flagstone terrace, the best of friends despite their short acquaintance.

She envied dogs for that. They didn’t need to know someone’s life history or probe into all their dark corners. They gave their affection with uncomplicated abandon.

He returned a moment later with an olive-oil spritzer and a frying pan, along with a couple of plates.

She was suddenly struck by the surreal moment. Ben Kilpatrick—tech billionaire, hometown boy, the man whose name she had cursed for years—was fixing her dinner. It didn’t seem quite real that she was here with him. They had even shared a bit of civil conversation while the night settled in around them and their dogs dozed together.

“If you’d like, I can take care of the haricot verts,” she said, with the clear accent she had attained in three years of high school French.

“Great, since I have no idea what I’m doing with anything but steak.” That devastating smile flashed and her resident butterflies responded accordingly.

She ignored them and headed for the grill. From the larger bag of beans, she pulled the small zipper bag containing the unsalted butter, minced garlic and shallots she used in her recipe. A few moments, a shake of the pan, and she was basically done.

He plated the steaks and handed them to her to add the beans, then Ben carried them to the table, where he had already set out a couple of glasses and a bottle of wine.

“This all looks perfect. When I offered to grill a steak for you, I had no idea I was setting myself up for a gourmet meal.”

“Hardly that. I am competent in the kitchen but that’s as far as it goes.”

For all her nerves, it turned into one of the most lovely meals she had enjoyed in a long time. Once she convinced herself to call a truce for the evening, she discovered Ben was filled with wry observations and wide-ranging interests that made for fascinating conversation.

He told her more about his recent visit to Paris and the unforgettable trip he took down the Amazon River on a fishing boat the previous summer. She found herself fascinated by his travels, and by the man himself.

“So what about you?” he asked, when the conversation dragged a little. “I think I’ve talked about myself more tonight than I have in longer than I can remember. You told me you became mayor by default. What about the rest of it? Your business. This house. Why stay in Haven Point? Didn’t you ever want to see what might be out there in the big, wide world?”

She sipped at her wine. “I’ve seen the big, wide world and I like my small one much better, thanks very much.”

“Have you?”

“For your information, Mr. Skeptic, I have an MBA from Northwestern and after graduation, I worked for two years in middle management of a major bank in Chicago.”

“Really?”

She had shocked him. He gaped at her as if she had suddenly jumped up and started badonka donking on the table.

“I know this will come as a surprise to you, but I’m not a complete hayseed.”

“I never said you were any sort of hayseed,” he protested.

“Admit it. You were thinking it.”

“Not a hayseed. I would never go that far. Okay, maybe I thought your focus was a little...narrow.”

“My focus is just right. I’ve lived in a big city, with all the excitement and restaurants and nightlife. I loved it while I was there but only after I came home to Haven Point did I realize I was always playing a role there. It wasn’t me.”

“Why did you come back?”

She played with the stem of her wineglass. “My father had a massive heart attack three years ago. From his hospital bed, he begged me to come back and run his business holdings here. He was an attorney but he had also branched off in later years and had taken on various business endeavors over the years—a couple of condo developments in Shelter Springs, a sporting goods store in town, a few fast-food outlets. He was doing too much, which probably contributed to his heart attack.”