Книга - Riverbend Road

Riverbend Road
RaeAnne Thayne


‘A rising star in the romance world. Her books are wonderfully romantic, feel-good reads that end with me sighing over the last pages.’ Debbie Macomber, bestselling author of Any Dream Will DoReturn to Haven Point, there’s no sweeter place to fall in love…Protecting the streets of Haven Point isn’t just a job for police officer Wyn Bailey, it’s a family tradition.But lately she’s found herself wanting more, especially from her boss—and overprotective brother’s best friend—sexy chief of police, Cade Emmett. The only problem is getting Cade to view her as more than just a little sister.Cade’s hands-off approach with Wyn isn’t from lack of attraction. But his complicated past has forced him to conceal his desire. When Wyn is harmed in the line of duty, Cade realizes the depth of his feelings, but can he let his guard down long enough to embrace the love he secretly craves?







Return to Haven Point, where New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne proves there’s no sweeter place to fall in love...

Protecting the streets of Haven Point isn’t just a job for police officer Wyn Bailey, it’s a family tradition. But lately she’s found herself wanting more, especially from her boss—and overprotective brother’s best friend—sexy chief of police, Cade Emmett. The only problem is getting Cade to view her as more than just a little sister.

Cade’s hands-off approach with Wyn isn’t from lack of attraction. But his complicated past has forced him to conceal his desire. When Wyn is harmed in the line of duty, Cade realizes the depth of his feelings, but can he let his guard down long enough to embrace the love he secretly craves?


Praise for New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne (#ulink_47358a1c-f5f0-50e1-b6e5-e985ea9cffa2)

“Romance, vivid characters and a wonderful story; really who could ask for more?”

—Debbie Macomber, #1 New York Times bestselling author, on Blackberry Summer

“This quirky, funny, warmhearted romance will draw readers in and keep them enthralled to the last romantic page.”

—Library Journal on Christmas in Snowflake Canyon

“A sometimes heartbreaking tale of love and relationships in a small Colorado town... . Poignant and sweet, this tale of second chances will appeal to fans of military-flavored sweet romance.”

—Publishers Weekly on Christmas in Snowflake Canyon

“Plenty of tenderness and Colorado sunshine flavor this pleasant escape.”

—Publishers Weekly on Woodrose Mountain

“Thayne, once again, delivers a heartfelt story of a caring community and a caring romance between adults who have triumphed over tragedies.”

—Booklist on Woodrose Mountain

“Thayne pens another winner by combining her huge, boisterous cast of familiar, lovable characters with a beautiful setting and a wonderful story. Her main characters are strong and three-dimensional, with enough heat between them to burn the pages.”

—RT Book Reviews on Currant Creek Valley

“RaeAnne has a knack for capturing those emotions that come from the heart.”

—RT Book Reviews




Riverbend Road

RaeAnne Thayne







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


Many people play a vital role in bringing a book to life, from the first tiny seeds of an idea germinating in my imagination to the final creation. I am deeply grateful to every single person at Harlequin—from the art department for their stunning cover designs to the tireless marketing team to the fabulous HQN editors (especially the incomparable Gail Chasan, who has been with me through more than fifty books now!). Thank you to Sarah Burningham and Katie Olsen of Little Bird Publicity, my agent Karen Solem, my assistant Judie Bouldry, my review crew, and all the bloggers and booksellers who work so hard to help my books reach my wonderful readers.

For Riverbend Road in particular, I must thank Michael Lynch for the invaluable research help. The former small-town police chief and big-city homicide detective is a quiet everyday hero who has lived a far more fascinating life than any fictional character I could write! Also, I am indebted to my friend Jill Shalvis, for helping me through some sticky plot points and for always having my back.

Finally, I must thank my husband and three children. You fill my life with joy.


Contents

COVER (#u1e216a3e-66a4-5fa5-a54e-fde22a53c5f2)

BACK COVER TEXT (#uc7d56885-24bc-569f-841f-97ef81c39f51)

Praise (#ulink_5b86a5fc-16cd-54f0-a764-4cfe39baa3ef)

TITLE PAGE (#uf74c9761-a89e-561c-9803-0eed1695bc97)

DEDICATION (#u9b9e4daa-f35d-56b0-a9a7-36a60cd145e3)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_065481e0-b199-574a-b9b0-6ee1622d2d44)

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_c3f12f93-a1bb-55fe-9373-47996424d816)

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_ff08720d-4f12-5fb1-8ce5-f70166c16507)

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_7b124f28-5257-53a0-8e56-0b63e26beeab)

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_7fe6e431-7b38-578e-8a28-64735353e010)

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_6ffc5a39-aff2-5df2-b241-3f7f97b315d0)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)

EXTRACT (#litres_trial_promo)

COPYRIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)


CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_6052b3c6-2f0e-5854-8810-b772fd6a405c)

“THIS WAS YOUR dire emergency? Seriously?”

Officer Wynona Bailey leaned against her Haven Point Police Department squad car, not sure whether to laugh or pull out her hair. “That frantic phone call made it sound like you were at death’s door!” she exclaimed to her great-aunt Jenny. “You mean to tell me I drove here with full lights and sirens, afraid I would stumble over you bleeding on the ground, only to find you in a standoff with a baby moose?”

The gangly-looking creature had planted himself in the middle of the driveway while he browsed from the shrubbery that bordered it. He paused in his chewing to watch the two of them out of long-lashed dark eyes.

He was actually really cute, with big ears and a curious face. She thought about pulling out her phone to take a picture that her sister could hang on the local wildlife bulletin board in her classroom but decided Jenny probably wouldn’t appreciate it.

“It’s not the calf I’m worried about,” her great-aunt said. “It’s his mama over there.”

She followed her aunt’s gaze and saw a female moose on the other side of the willow shrubs, watching them with much more caution than her baby was showing.

While the creature might look docile on the outside, Wyn knew from experience a thousand-pound cow could move at thirty-five miles an hour and wouldn’t hesitate to take on anything she perceived as a threat to her offspring.

“I need to get into my garage, that’s all,” Jenny practically wailed. “If Baby Bullwinkle there would just move two feet onto the lawn, I could squeeze around him, but he won’t budge for anything.”

She had to ask the logical question. “Did you try honking your horn?”

Aunt Jenny glared at her, looking as fierce and stern as she used to when Wynona was late turning in an assignment in her aunt’s high school history class.

“Of course I tried honking my horn! And hollering at the stupid thing and even driving right up to him, as close as I could get, which only made the mama come over to investigate. I had to back up again.”

Wyn’s blood ran cold, imagining the scene. That big cow could easily charge the sporty little convertible her diminutive great-aunt had bought herself on her seventy-fifth birthday.

What would make them move along? Wynona sighed, not quite sure what trick might disperse a couple of stubborn moose. Sure, she was trained in Krav Maga martial arts, but somehow none of those lessons seemed to apply in this situation.

The pair hadn’t budged when she pulled up with her lights and sirens blaring in answer to her aunt’s desperate phone call. Even if she could get them to move, scaring them out of Aunt Jenny’s driveway would probably only migrate the problem to the neighbor’s yard.

She was going to have to call in backup from the state wildlife division.

“Oh no!” her aunt suddenly wailed. “He’s starting on the honeysuckle! He’s going to ruin it. Stop! Move it. Go on, now.” Jenny started to climb out of her car again, raising and lowering her arms like a football referee calling a touchdown.

“Aunt Jenny, get back inside your vehicle!” Wyn exclaimed.

“But the honeysuckle! Your dad planted that for me the summer before he... Well, you know.”

Wyn’s heart gave a sharp little spasm. Yes. She did know. She pictured the sturdy, robust man who had once watched over his aunt, along with everybody else in town. He wouldn’t have hesitated for a second here, would have known exactly how to handle the situation.

Wynnie, anytime you’re up against something bigger than you, just stare ’em down. More often than not, that will do the trick.

Some days, she almost felt like he was riding shotgun next to her.

“Stay in your car, Jenny,” she said again. “Just wait there while I call Idaho Fish and Game to handle things. They probably need to move them to higher ground.”

“I don’t have time to wait for some yahoo to load up his tranq gun and hitch up his horse trailer then drive over from Shelter Springs! Besides that honeysuckle, which is priceless to me, I have seventy-eight dollars’ worth of groceries in the trunk of my car that will be ruined if I can’t get into the house. That includes four pints of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia that’s going to be melted red goo if I don’t get it in the freezer fast—and that stuff is not exactly cheap, you know.”

Her great-aunt looked at her with every expectation that she would fix the problem and Wyn sighed again. Small-town police work was mostly about problem-solving—and when she happened to have been born and raised in that small town, too many people treated her like their own private security force.

“I get it. But I’m calling Fish and Game.”

“You’ve got a piece. Can’t you just fire it into the air or something?”

Yeah, unfortunately, her great-aunt—like everybody else in town—watched far too many cop dramas on TV and thought that was how things were done.

“Give me two minutes to call Fish and Game, then I’ll see if I can get him to move aside enough that you can pull into your driveway. Wait in your car,” she ordered for the fourth time as she kept an eye on Mama Moose. “Do not, I repeat, do not get out again. Promise?”

Aunt Jenny slumped back into her seat, clearly disappointed that she wasn’t going to have front-row seats to some kind of moose-cop shoot-out. “I suppose.”

To Wyn’s relief, the local game warden Moose Porter—who, as far as she knew, was no relation to the current troublemakers—picked up on the first ring. She explained the situation to him and gave him the address.

“You’re in luck. We just got back from relocating a female brown bear and her cub away from that campground on Dry Creek Road. I’ve still got the trailer hitched up.”

“Thanks. I owe you.”

“How about that dinner we’ve been talking about?” he asked.

She had not been talking about dinner. Moose had been pretty relentless in asking her out for months and she always managed to deflect. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the guy. He was nice and funny and good-looking in a burly, outdoorsy, flannel-shirt-and-gun-rack sort of way, but she didn’t feel so much as an ember around him. Not like, well, someone else she preferred not to think about.

Maybe she would stop thinking about that someone else if she ever bothered to go on a date. “Sure,” she said on impulse. “I’m pretty busy until after Lake Haven Days but let’s plan something in a couple of weeks. Meantime, how soon can you be here?”

“Great! I’ll definitely call you. And I’ve got an ETA of about seven minutes now.”

The obvious delight left her squirming and wishing she had deflected his invitation again.

Fish or cut line, her father would have said.

“Make it five, if you can. My great-aunt’s favorite honeysuckle bush is in peril here.”

“On it.”

She ended the phone call just as Jenny groaned. “Oh. Not the butterfly bush too! Shoo. Go on, move!”

While she was on the phone, the cow had moved around the shrubs nearer her calf and was nibbling on the large showy blossoms on the other side of the driveway.

Wyn thought about waiting for the game warden to handle the situation but Jenny was counting on her. She couldn’t let a couple of moose get the better of her. Wondering idly if a Kevlar vest would protect her in the event she was charged, she climbed out of her patrol vehicle and edged around to the front bumper. “Come on. Move along. That’s it.”

She opted to move toward the calf, figuring the cow would follow her baby. Mindful to keep the vehicle between her and the bigger animal, she waved her arms like she was directing traffic in a big-city intersection. “Go. Get out of here.”

Something in her firm tone or maybe her rapid-fire movements finally must have convinced the calf she wasn’t messing around this time. He paused for just a second then lurched through a break in the shrubs to the other side, leaving just enough room for Great-Aunt Jenny to squeeze past and head for her garage to unload her groceries.

“Thank you, Wynnie. You’re the best,” her aunt called. “Come by one of these Sundays for dinner. I’ll make my fried chicken and biscuits and my Better-Than-Sex cake.”

Her mouth watered and her stomach rumbled, reminding her quite forcefully that she hadn’t eaten anything since her shift started that morning.

Her great-aunt’s Sunday dinners were pure decadence. Wyn could almost feel her arteries clog in anticipation.

“I’ll check my schedule.”

“Thanks again.”

Jenny drove her flashy little convertible into the garage and quickly closed the door behind her.

Of all things, the sudden action of the door seemed to startle the big cow moose where all other efforts—including a honking horn and Wyn’s yelling and arm-peddling—had failed. The moose shied away from the activity, heading in Wyn’s direction.

Crap.

Heart pounding, she managed to jump into her vehicle and yank the door closed behind her seconds before the moose charged past her toward the calf.

The two big animals picked their way across the lawn and settled in to nibble Jenny’s pretty red-twig dogwoods.

Crisis managed—or at least her part in it—she turned around and drove back to the street just as a pickup pulling a trailer with the Idaho Fish and Game logo came into view over the hill.

She pushed the button to roll down her window and Moose did the same. Beside him sat a game warden she didn’t know. Moose beamed at her and she squirmed, wishing she had shut him down again instead of giving him unrealistic expectations.

“It’s a cow and her calf,” she said, forcing her tone into a brisk, businesslike one and addressing both men in the vehicle. “They’re now on the south side of the house.”

“Thanks for running recon for us,” Moose said.

“Yeah. Pretty sure we managed to save the Ben & Jerry’s, so I guess my work here is done.”

The warden grinned at her and she waved and pulled onto the road, leaving her window down for the sweet-smelling June breezes to float in.

She couldn’t really blame a couple of moose for wandering into town for a bit of lunch. This was a beautiful time around Lake Haven, when the wildflowers were starting to bloom and the grasses were long and lush.

She loved Haven Point with all her heart but she found it pretty sad that the near-moose encounter was the most exciting thing that had happened to her on the job in days.

Her cell phone rang just as she turned from Clover Hill Road to Lakeside Drive. She knew by the ringtone just who was on the other end and her breathing hitched a little, like always. Those stone-cold embers she had been wondering about when it came to Moose Porter suddenly flared to thick, crackling life.

Yeah. She knew at least one reason why she didn’t go out much.

She pushed the phone button on her vehicle’s hands-free unit. “Hey, Chief.”

“Hear you had a little excitement this afternoon and almost tangled with a couple of moose.”

She heard the amusement in the voice of her boss—and friend—and tried not to picture Cade Emmett stretched out behind his desk, big and rangy and gorgeous, with that surprisingly sweet smile that broke hearts all over Lake Haven County.

“News travels.”

“Your great-aunt Jenny just called to inform me you risked your life to save her Cherry Garcia and to tell me all about how you deserve a special commendation.”

“If she really thought that, why didn’t she at least give me a pint for my trouble?” she grumbled.

The police chief laughed, that rich, full laugh that made her fingers and toes tingle like she’d just run full tilt down Clover Hill Road with her arms outspread.

Curse the man.

“You’ll have to take that up with her next time you see her. Meantime, we just got a call about possible trespassers at that old wreck of a barn on Darwin Twitchell’s horse property on Conifer Drive, just before the turnoff for Riverbend. Would you mind checking it out before you head back for the shift change?”

“Who called it in?”

“Darwin. Apparently somebody tripped an alarm he set up after he got hit by our friendly local graffiti artist a few weeks back.”

Leave it to the ornery old buzzard to set a trap for unsuspecting trespassers. Knowing Darwin and his contrariness, he probably installed infrared sweepers and body heat sensors, even though the ramshackle barn held absolutely nothing of value.

“The way my luck is going today, it’s probably a relative to the two moose I just made friends with.”

“It could be a skunk, for all I know. But Darwin made me swear I’d send an officer to check it out. Since the graffiti case is yours, I figured you’d want first dibs, just in case you have the chance to catch them red-handed. Literally.”

“Gosh, thanks.”

He chuckled again and the warmth of it seemed to ease through the car even through the hollow, tinny Bluetooth speakers.

“Keep me posted.”

“Ten-four.”

She turned her vehicle around and headed in the general direction of her own little stone house on Riverbend Road that used to belong to her grandparents.

The Redemption mountain range towered across the lake, huge and imposing. The snow that would linger in the moraines and ridges above the timberline for at least another month gleamed in the afternoon sunlight and the lake was that pure, vivid turquoise usually seen only in shallow Caribbean waters.

Her job as one of six full-time officers in the Haven Point Police Department might not always be overflowing with excitement, but she couldn’t deny that her workplace surroundings were pretty gorgeous.

She spotted the first tendrils of black smoke above the treetops as she turned onto the rutted lane that wound its way through pale aspen trunks and thick pines and spruce.

Probably just a nearby farmer burning some weeds along a ditch line, she told herself, or trying to get rid of the bushy-topped invasive phragmites reeds that could encroach into any marshy areas and choke out all the native species. But something about the black curl of smoke hinted at a situation beyond a controlled burn.

Her stomach fluttered with nerves. She hated fire calls even more than the dreaded DD—domestic disturbance. At least in a domestic situation, there was some chance she could defuse the conflict. Fire was avaricious and relentless, smoke and flame and terror. She had learned that lesson on one of her first calls as a green-as-grass rookie police officer in Boise, when she was the first one on scene to a deadly house fire on a cold January morning that had killed three children in their sleep.

Wyn rounded the last bend in the road and saw, just as feared, the smoke wasn’t coming from a ditch line or a controlled burn of a patch of invading plants. Instead, it twisted sinuously into the sky from the ramshackle barn on Darwin Twitchell’s property.

She scanned the area for kids and couldn’t see any. What she did see made her blood run cold—two small boys’ bikes resting on their sides outside the barn.

Where there were bikes, there were usually boys to ride them.

She parked her vehicle and shoved open her door. “Hello? Anybody here?” she called.

She strained her ears but could hear nothing above the crackle of flames. Heat and flames poured off the building.

She pressed the button on the radio at her shoulder to call dispatch. “I’ve got a structure fire, an old barn on Darwin Twitchell’s property on Conifer Drive, just before Riverbend Road. The upper part seems to be fully engulfed and there’s a possibility of civilians inside, juveniles. I’ve got bikes here but no kids in sight. I’m still looking.”

While she raced around the building, she heard the call go out to the volunteer fire department and Chief Gallegos respond that his crews were six minutes out.

“Anybody here?” she called again.

Just faintly, she thought she heard a high cry in response but her radio crackled with static at that instant and she couldn’t be sure. A second later, she heard Cade’s voice.

“Bailey, this is Chief Emmett. What’s the status of the kids? Over.”

She hurried back to her vehicle and popped the trunk. “I can’t see them,” she answered tersely, digging for a couple of water bottles and an extra T-shirt she kept back there. “I’m going in.”

“Negative!” Cade’s urgency fairly crackled through the radio. “The first fire crew’s ETA is now four minutes. Stand down.”

She turned back to the fire and was almost positive the flames seemed to be crackling louder, the smoke billowing higher into the sky. She couldn’t stand the thought of children being caught inside that hellish scene. She couldn’t. She pushed away the memory of those tiny charred bodies.

Maybe whoever had tripped Darwin’s alarms—maybe the same kids who likely set the fire—had run off into the surrounding trees. She hoped so, she really did, but her gut told her otherwise.

In four minutes, they could be burned to a crisp, just like those sweet little kids in Boise. She had to take a look.

It’s what her father would have done.

You know what John Wayne would say, John Bailey’s voice seemed to echo in her head. Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.

Yeah, Dad. I know.

Her hands were sweaty with fear but she pushed past it and focused on the situation at hand. “I’m going in,” she repeated.

“Stand down, Officer Bailey. That is a direct order.”

Cade ran a fairly casual—though efficient—police department and rarely pushed rank but right now he sounded hard, dangerous.

She paused for only a second, her attention caught by sunlight glinting off one of the bikes.

“Wynona, do you copy?” Cade demanded.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stand out here and wait for the fire department. Time was of the essence, she knew it in her bones. After nearly five years as a police officer, she had learned to rely on her instincts and she couldn’t ignore them now.

She was just going to have to disregard his order and deal with his fury later.

“I can’t hear you,” she lied. “Sorry. You’re crackling out.”

She squelched her radio to keep him out of her ears, ripped the T-shirt and doused it with her water bottle, then held it to her mouth and pushed inside.

The shift from sunlight to smoke and darkness inside the barn was disorienting. As she had seen from outside, the flames seemed to be limited for now to the upper hayloft of the barn but the air was thick and acrid.

“Hello?” she called out. “Anybody here?”

“Yes! Help!”

“Please help!”

Two distinct, high, terrified voices came from the far end of the barn.

“Okay. Okay,” she called back, her heart pounding fiercely. “Keep talking so I can follow your voice.”

There was a momentary pause. “What should we say?”

“Sing a song. How about ‘Jingle Bells’? Here. I’ll start.”

She started the words off and then stopped when she heard two young voices singing the words between sobs. She whispered a quick prayer for help and courage then rapidly picked her way over rubble and debris as she followed the song to its source, which turned out to be two white-faced, terrified boys she knew.

Caleb and Lucas Keegan were crouched together just below a ladder up to the loft, where the flames sizzled and popped overhead.

Caleb, the older of the two, was stretched out on the ground, his leg bent at an unnatural angle.

“Hey, Caleb. Hey, Luke.”

They both sobbed when they spotted her. “Officer Bailey. We didn’t mean to start the fire! We didn’t mean to!” Luke, the younger one, was close to hysteria but she didn’t have time to calm him.

“We can worry about that later. Right now, we need to get out of here.”

“We tried, but Caleb broked his leg! He fell and he can’t walk. I was trying to pull him out but I’m not strong enough.”

“I told him to go without me,” the older boy, no more than ten, said through tears. “I screamed and screamed at him but he wouldn’t go.”

“We’re all getting out of here.” She ripped the wet cloth in half and handed a section to each boy.

Yeah, she knew the whole adage—taught by the airline industry, anyway—about taking care of yourself before turning your attention to helping others but this case was worth an exception.

“Caleb, I’m going to pick you up. It’s going to hurt, especially if I bump that broken leg of yours, but I don’t have time to give you first aid.”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. Do what you have to do. We have to get Luke out of here!”

Her eyes burned from the smoke and her throat felt tight and achy. If she had time to spare, she would have wept at the boy’s quiet courage. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She scooped him up into a fireman’s carry, finally appreciating the efficiency of the hold. He probably weighed close to eighty pounds but adrenaline gave her strength.

Over the crackles and crashes overhead, she heard him swallow a scream as his ankle bumped against her.

“Luke, grab hold of my belt buckle, right there in the back. That’s it. Do not let go, no matter what. You hear me?”

“Yes,” the boy whispered.

“I can’t carry you both. I wish I could. You ready?”

“I’m scared,” Luke whimpered through the wet T-shirt wrapped around his mouth.

So am I, kiddo. She forced a confident smile she was far from feeling. “Stay close to me. We’re tough. We can do this.”

The pep talk was meant for herself, more than the boys. Flames had finally begun crawling down the side of the barn and it didn’t take long for the fire to slither its way through the old hay and debris scattered through the place.

She did not want to run through those flames but her dad’s voice seemed to ring again in her ears.

You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you’ve got.

Okay, okay. She got it, already.

She ran toward the door, keeping Caleb on her shoulder with one hand while she wrapped her other around Luke’s neck.

They were just feet from the door when the younger boy stumbled and went down. She could hear the flames growling louder and knew the dry, rotten barn wood was going to combust any second.

With no time to spare, she half lifted him with her other arm and dragged them all through the door and into the sunshine while the fire licked and growled at their heels.


CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_ff2d0c2e-08be-52e6-9657-5f29d8ae78f7)

SHE MADE IT only a few steps out of the burning structure into the blessedly sweet air and blinding sunlight before strong hands reached to take both boys.

“Careful of Caleb’s leg. I think it’s broken,” she mumbled, not even sure who was helping her and very much afraid she was going to be sick now from a combination of the smoke choking her lungs, the exertion and delayed reaction.

“We’ve got to move, before the whole thing tumbles down around us.” As her vision adjusted to the shift in light, she saw Cade, his face set and hard, carrying both boys as if they weighed no more than a couple bags of sugar.

“You coming?” he growled.

“Right behind you, Chief,” she mumbled, then called on the last of her strength to follow Cade as he rushed away from the structure toward a cluster of emergency vehicles just arriving on scene.

He headed straight for the ambulance pulling in just behind the first water truck. Before they reached it, a couple of paramedics jumped out and grabbed a gurney out of the back. They were two of the best in the volunteer department, she saw with relief. In seconds, Ed Cutler had Caleb on the stretcher.

“I didn’t have much time to assess the situation but it looked like he broke his ankle. He jumped out of the hayloft once the fire started,” Wyn explained, keeping a careful eye on Ed’s partner Terri Michaels as she hooked Luke up with an oxygen mask.

“Thanks. Sit down before you fall over,” the bald EMT ordered her. “Terri, get a mask on Wyn here too.”

“I’m okay,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. You’ve got enough on your hands with the boys. They come first.”

“You’re going to let them treat you,” Cade growled. “And then you’re going to explain to me why the hell you thought you could defy a direct order.”

The paramedics exchanged glances and then pointedly busied themselves with Lucas and Caleb.

“I had no choice. You can see how quickly that thing flared out of control. When I rolled up, only the loft was engulfed but I knew it was only a matter of time. If I hadn’t gone in, Chief Gallegos would be sending his guys in for body retrieval and we both know it!”

“Another ten seconds and they would have been looking for three bodies!”

Though the June afternoon sunshine was warm and the fire put out plenty of heat, Wyn shivered. As her adrenaline spike ebbed, the reality of the situation began to soak in like that water spraying out of the firefighters’ hose.

In nearly five years of law enforcement, she’d never had such a close call. She and the boys all could have died inside that fiery barn. If she had been thirty seconds later...if she hadn’t been able to move as quickly...if one of those blazing timbers had crashed to the ground.

No question about it, they had been lucky.

She swallowed, suddenly light-headed. She didn’t realize she swayed until Cade grabbed her.

“Sit down,” he ordered harshly, though his hands were gentle as he helped her to the ground. Terri came over with an oxygen mask and a water bottle.

“Did you call another ambulance for her yet?” Cade asked.

Terri looked wary at his clipped tone. “No. We’ll check her blood gases first. Could be, we can treat and release at the scene with a few more puffs of oxygen.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Wyn answered through the mask, then spoiled the words with a paroxysm of coughing.

When Wyn finished, Cade’s silver-blue eyes looked as fierce and hard as the Redemption Mountains.

“If the paramedics don’t ship you to the hospital, take your vehicle and clear out. You’re officially suspended without pay for the next seven days.”

For a moment, she thought the fire had messed with her hearing. “What? I just saved two lives!”

“And almost lost your own in the process.”

She glared at him. “You can’t suspend me! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“You disobeyed a direct order and your actions could have endangered others.”

“How?” she demanded.

“You turned off your radio, didn’t you? You had no idea what the status of the other responding personnel might have been. Nor did we have anybody on scene to provide status reports on the fire until the first engine rolled up.”

She had no answer to that, especially not when he reached down and unclipped her radio from her shoulder. When he turned the dial up the air was immediately filled with voices and static as Chief Gallegos and his team communicated through the airwaves with dispatch about their needs.

“I made a judgment call,” she said. It sounded weak, even to her. Okay, maybe she had ignored department policy, but those two boys chattering to the EMTs were proof that her judgment call had paid off.

“The wrong one. I’ll see you in seven days,” he answered tersely, then turned and stalked over to the fire command center.

* * *

CADE HAD NEVER been more angry.

The fury prowled through him, harsh and wild like the fire burning through Darwin Twitchell’s dilapidated barn.

He had to be able to trust her to do exactly what he asked. Out of all six officers in this small ragtag Haven Point police department, he trusted Wynona most. She was smart, hardworking, compassionate and insightful.

She had natural instincts and seemed to always find the perfect way to allay any tense situation, from drunk altercations down at the Mad Dog tavern to hot tempers between neighbors.

He figured she came by those instincts naturally, since she was fourth-generation law enforcement in these parts.

He didn’t want to suspend her, especially not when they were in the middle of their busiest time of the year with the summer tourist season heading into full swing. But what alternative did he have? This wasn’t the first time she had ignored his orders but he vowed it would be the last. He wasn’t a control freak but he had to know that his officers would follow the chain of command.

He glanced back at the ambulance. She looked so fragile and vulnerable sitting there in the grass, her cheek sooty and strands of wheat-colored hair slipping free of the thick braid she always wore on duty.

Beneath his anger lurked something else, something he didn’t want to look at too closely. He only knew that he couldn’t remember ever feeling that bone-deep fear that had sent him racing out of the station to his vehicle and then bulleting through town to the fire scene.

She was a police officer. One of his police officers. He would have worried about any of his guys who stopped responding while out on a call.

He put it away when he saw Erik Gallegos heading in his direction.

“What’s the status?” he asked the fire chief.

“Barn looks like it’s going to be a total loss,” Erik answered. “Old thing was about to fall over anyway, next time a stiff wind blew off the lake. At this point, my crew is just trying to put out the flames and make sure it doesn’t spread to the undergrowth.”

“That a concern?”

Erik shrugged. “Not really. All the rain we’ve had the last few weeks has reduced the threat level for now, but you never know.”

Cade hoped they had another six or seven weeks before fire season hit, especially since some places in the higher elevations were still covered in snow.

The chief jerked his head toward his EMTs. “Wynona okay?”

He followed the other man’s gaze, where Wynona was smiling and saying something to the younger of the Keegan boys. “Seems to be.”

He thought about leaving the situation there but figured word would spread soon anyway and he might as well get out in front of it.

“I gave her a week’s suspension for disobeying a direct order and for turning off her comm.”

Erik snorted. “Seriously? Harsh. You know you would have done the exact same thing.”

That was different, though Cade couldn’t quite pin a finger on why. “Your guys were four minutes behind her. She should have waited for somebody who could search the premises wearing proper gear.”

“Four minutes is a long time for two scared little boys,” the fire chief said.

Cade still knew he had made the right call. That had been four minutes of hell he never wanted to live through again, trying to raise her on the radio, then rolling up to the scene a half minute before the fire crews to find the place engulfed and no sign of her.

When she had burst out of that door seconds later like she was some kind of freaking avenging angel, carrying two kids with smoke and flames pouring out behind her, his blood had turned as cold as a jump into Lake Haven in January.

His stomach still felt hollow and shaky.

“It could have been a hell of a lot worse, if not for Wyn. I’ll take a little mild smoke inhalation and a broken ankle over the alternative.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Lindy-Grace and Ron are both on their way. I asked Ed and Terri to wait a minute longer for the boys’ parents to make it here before they roll out to Lake Haven hospital.”

Erik gave him a careful look. “You going to refer the boys to juvie court for trespassing and vandalism?”

“We can cross that bridge eventually.”

He should probably have a word with the boys before they left the scene. He could always catch them at the hospital or after they were discharged, but in his experience, time sometimes had a way of distorting the truth.

He should have remembered his duty, first and foremost. Yet another reason to be pissed at Wynona.

He headed back toward the ambulance. She had risen from the grass and now leaned into the rear of the ambulance trading jokes with the boys, who still looked small and frightened.

He had gone to school with their mom, Lindy-Grace, and considered her a friend. She was a sweetheart who threw the best barbecues in town and often dropped off baked goods at the police station.

He had heard rumors that LG and Ron were going through a trial separation. That must be tough on the boys. He didn’t want to pile it on when they were already scared and one was injured, but he really did have a job to do, trying to find out what happened.

When he neared the ambulance, Wyn gave him a wary look and stepped aside, as if afraid he was going to yell at her again. He ignored her and stuck his head into the ambulance.

“Hey, boys. How we doing in here?”

The older one—Caleb—paled another shade when he spotted him. The EMTs must have given him something for the pain of his ankle, which was encased in an inflatable splint. “Are you gonna take us to jail because we started the fire, Chief Emmett?” he asked.

“We didn’t mean to do it,” the younger boy whimpered before Cade could answer. “It was just a junky old barn. Nobody used it for nothing. That’s what our dad said. So we decided to make it our clubhouse and we were gonna roast hot dogs for lunch. We were supposed to go on a campout with our dad tonight but then he said he had to work so we couldn’t go.”

“Since we already had the hot dogs and stuff, we decided to have our own campfire,” Caleb said.

As much as he liked Lindy-Grace Keegan, he had never much liked her husband, Ron. The guy had always struck him as a self-absorbed workaholic who didn’t know a good thing when it lived in his house. The story just confirmed it.

“If you have to arrest somebody, arrest me.” The older boy held out his wrists as if he expected Cade to slap cuffs on them right there. “It was my fault. All of it. I tried to start the fire and I guess I used too much kindling.”

“No, I didn’t make the ring good enough,” his brother protested. “You should arrest me.”

“But if I hadn’t fallen when we jumped down from the loft, we could have run out and called for help. I’m the one responsible. Arrest me.”

Wyn made a soft sound and he risked a glance down. Her eyes were suspiciously moist and he felt an answering tug of emotion. It would take a harder man than he was not to be touched at this evidence of brotherly love, each trying to shoulder the blame for the other.

Would any of his brothers step up to do the same for him? He wanted to think so but he wasn’t sure. Hell, his own father would have shoved every single one of his boys in front of a firing squad if it meant he could save his own skin.

“I’m not going to arrest anybody—” he started to say, but didn’t finish the sentence before a distraught female voice cried out.

“My babies! Where are they? My babies!”

“Mama,” Lucas cried out and Lindy-Grace lifted her head at the sound like a bird dog on a pheasant.

An instant later, she and Ron were both there. Lindy-Grace shoved him aside to jump into the ambulance so she could hug and kiss each boy, babbling about how much she loved them. Ron, ashen-faced, stayed next to Cade.

When she finished hugging them, she frowned ferociously at both of them. “You are in such big trouble!”

At her words, both boys burst into tears.

“We’re sorry,” the younger one wailed. “We’re so sorry, Mama.”

“We didn’t mean to,” Caleb blubbered. “It was an accident. We had a fire ring and everything but then the fire jumped out onto some hay and we couldn’t put it out. I knew we had to get out so we jumped down, only I fell hard and hurt my ankle and couldn’t get up and Luke wouldn’t go without me, even though I told him and told him to go.”

“We were so scared,” his brother interjected. “We couldn’t get out and we were crying and praying and then she came in and helped us.”

They pointed to Wynona, who smiled and waved weakly.

“Wynona Jane Bailey,” Lindy-Grace exclaimed. “You saved my boys.”

She jumped back down from the ambulance and wrapped Wynona in a tight embrace that couldn’t have felt the greatest on his officer’s smoke-seared lungs.

“If I live to be a hundred and three like my great-grandmother LuLu, I will never forget what you’ve done here today,” LG said through her tears.

He knew just what Wyn was thinking when she arched an eyebrow at him. See? Not everybody thinks I screwed up.

She hugged Lindy-Grace for a moment before deftly extricating herself. “It wasn’t a big deal. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Any other officer on the Haven Point Police Department would have done exactly the same thing. Isn’t that right, Chief Emmett?”

He was spared from having to answer that by Lindy-Grace’s effusive gratitude.

“I don’t care. They weren’t there. You were. Cade, I sure hope you’re going to give Wynnie a medal!”

His jaw clenched and he opened his mouth to answer but one of the EMTs spoke up before he could get the words out.

“Actually, he suspended her for a week without pay,” Terri Michaels offered, with a dark look in his direction.

The women in Haven Point apparently stuck together.

“What?” Lindy-Grace exclaimed. “Suspended her! Are you kidding?”

Cade ground his back teeth. How was he supposed to defend his position to the mother of the two boys Wynona had risked her life to rescue? Yes, he was glad everything had turned out relatively okay except for Caleb’s broken ankle. But procedures were in place for a reason.

“It’s an internal police matter,” he finally said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to the scene. Boys, we’re not done talking about this. But now that your mom and dad have had a chance to make sure you’re okay, you need to be checked out at the hospital. I’ll come by later to ask you a few more questions about what happened here and I’m sure Chief Gallegos will have a word or two for you as well.”

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison, looking chastened at his stern tone.

He walked away without risking another look at Wynona, wondering how he seemed to have lost control of the entire situation.


CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_c25301f1-1908-545a-b219-23167727d70c)

WYN WATCHED CADE walk away, tension radiating from him with every step.

She had worked with him for nearly three years but had never seen him like this. Usually he was calm, coolheaded, no matter the crisis. He was acting very unlike himself—being abrupt to two scared little boys, suspending her for actions he certainly would have taken himself in the same situation.

It left her feeling off balance, as if she were trying to hike up to the top of Mount Solace wearing high heels.

“Seriously, Wyn. How can we ever thank you?”

She shifted back to Lindy-Grace and Ron. She had a sudden feeling this was going to get old really quickly.

Her father had been the hero around town and people revered him accordingly. Twenty-five years as the police chief of Haven Point had earned him a reputation as a decent, caring man who would do anything for the people he served. The last difficult two years of his life had only solidified that love and respect. His funeral five months earlier had to be moved to the gymnasium at Haven Point High School to hold the crowds of people who wanted to come pay their respects.

She was no hero, just a police officer doing her job.

Her mother was going to freak. It was a wonder Charlene hadn’t hitched a ride to the fire with Lindy-Grace to make sure her oldest daughter was okay.

“I’m just happy everything worked out,” she said now to her friend.

“But a week’s suspension! You saved two lives. You shouldn’t be punished for that! What is wrong with that man?”

She couldn’t begin to guess—nor did she want to discuss it with Lindy-Grace.

“It doesn’t matter.” She forced a smile. “The boys are safe and that’s the important thing. And they’re not going to go around starting any more fires to roast hot dogs without a grown-up present, right?”

Both boys shook their heads vigorously.

“We really need to go now,” Ed said. “The docs at the emergency department have called three times trying to find out what the heck is taking so long. LG, you can ride along if you want. Ron, just follow behind at a safe speed and meet us at the hospital.”

“Right.”

“So I’m good here?” Wyn pressed.

Ed nodded as he took the oxygen mask from her. “Yeah. Your levels are great and I think Chief Gallegos would be fine with me releasing you. Just promise you’ll go straight to the hospital if you notice any shortness of breath or feel light-headed.”

“You got it.”

She signed the paperwork releasing her from their care, then waved off the ambulance as it backed away through the fire crew.

By the looks of it, the entire Haven Point volunteer fire department had turned out for the excitement, though it looked like the barn was going to be a total loss. At this point, they seemed to be trying to contain the fire to only the barn and make sure it didn’t spread to the surrounding vegetation.

She spotted Cade helping uncoil hose from one of the water trucks. No, it wasn’t his job, but that never stopped him before. He always jumped in to do whatever necessary.

With a sigh, she headed for her patrol car. When she started the engine, he looked over. He wore sunglasses that concealed his expression but she had a feeling he was still glowering at her as she drove away.

She had left her phone inside the vehicle when she responded to the fire, what felt like another lifetime ago. It rang before she even made her way past the last fire truck and when she glanced at the screen, she saw she had missed six calls—all from her mother. She had to talk to Charlene eventually but she wasn’t quite ready for that.

Just as she turned onto Riverbend Road, it rang again. This time the caller ID had her reaching to answer.

“Hey, Kat,” she said as she pulled over to the shoulder of the road, grimly aware she was too shaky to talk on the phone and drive safely at the same time.

She was greeted by an excited shriek that nearly pierced her eardrums.

“Is it true?” her sister, Katrina, demanded.

As usual, her sister’s bubbly energy made her feel about a hundred years older, though less than five years separated them.

“I’m going to say yes, though I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Sam just texted me that Michelle Hunter came into the store and said she heard from her mom who heard on the police scanner that you ran into a burning building and saved about twelve people.”

Oh, the fun rumor mill in Haven Point. You had to love it.

“Don’t forget all the babies and kittens. There had to be at least a hundred of them.”

“Seriously?”

For about half a second, Katrina actually bought it. Wyn swallowed a laugh. She adored her sister, she really did, but sometimes Kat was a little too gullible—not a good trait in a second-grade teacher.

“No,” she finally admitted. “No babies or kittens. Or puppies, for that matter. I didn’t rescue a dozen people either. As usual, the facts tend to get a little distorted once the rumors start flying.”

“Why bother with facts when they only get in the way of a good story?”

It was another of their dad’s little sayings and she had to smile. Both she and her sister seemed to be quoting John Bailey more often now that he was gone. Maybe they were finally able to remember him as he once was instead of the distorted version they had lived with for the last two years of his life.

“It was only two little boys,” she answered. “Lindy-Grace Keegan’s pair. And I was only a few minutes ahead of the fire crew.”

“My sister, the hero! That’s amazing. I’m so proud of you. Dad would have been too.”

“Thanks,” she answered, a little catch in her throat at the words.

“I mean it. Wait until Marsh hears.”

Their oldest brother, Marshall, was the sheriff of Lake Haven County. What would he think about her suspension? He would probably support it wholeheartedly, especially since Cade was his best friend.

“Can I bring you dinner tonight?” Kat asked. “I was thinking about trying out a new recipe for chicken divan.”

Her stomach gave a long, greasy roll at the offer. Kat was a fantastic, dedicated teacher, a good friend and a sweet, kindhearted person. She was also a terrible cook.

“I think I’m good. Thanks, though. I just need a little downtime, you know?”

“Are you sure? I’d love to bring you something. What about dessert? I’ve got more fresh rhubarb out back and was thinking about rhubarb-cherry tarts.”

Her mouth puckered. Kat was on a no-sugar kick these days and Wyn could only imagine rhubarb-cherry tarts without it. No thanks. She had an emergency Snickers bar hidden away inside her house that was calling her name right now.

“You’re so sweet, but really. It’s been a crazy day and I need to chill.”

It felt like another lifetime ago that she had been rescuing Aunt Jenny from the cow moose and her baby camping out in her driveway.

“I totally get that. After teaching twenty-five seven-year-olds all day, sometimes when I get home from school I just want to sink into a chair and not move until the next morning. I don’t know how I would survive without summers. Fine. But can we grab lunch or something this week? Don’t tell me you’re working double shifts! I won’t hear any excuses.”

“Okay. I won’t tell you that.” She didn’t add that she wasn’t working any shifts for several days. Kat would have no problem marching right down to the fire scene and giving Cade a piece of her mind. Her sister tended to lump Cade into the same category as Marshall and Elliot, just one more troublesome older brother.

She had never looked at him that way, but her sister did.

With the experience of long practice, she shied away from considering exactly how she looked at Cade.

“I could do lunch,” she said instead. “Let’s plan on it tomorrow.”

“Perfect. Oh, and you’re going to have to talk to Mom. She’s already called me three times, trying to see if I know anything about what happened to you.”

“Do I have to teach you again how to hit Ignore on your phone?”

“I wouldn’t have to hit Ignore, if you would just man up and talk to her,” Kat retorted.

“Yeah, yeah,” she answered.

She and her sister exchanged love yous and ended the call.

She did love Kat. They had always been close, the only two girls in a family of rambunctious, wild boys—just not quite as close as Wyn had been to her twin brother.

Her heart twisted with the familiar sharp ache she always felt when she thought of Wyatt, gone five years now.

He would have run into that burning barn too. She knew it in her bones. He wouldn’t have hesitated for a second and would have told his boss to screw off if the word suspension was even mentioned.

She would never be Wyatt—funny, brave, compassionate. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t fill her twin’s shoes.

Yeah, Charlene was going to be freaking out.

She would call her mother the moment she was home, she told herself.

She turned the patrol car onto Riverbend Road, the long, winding road that ran parallel to the Hell’s Fury before it dead-ended.

As she neared her house, she spotted an unfamiliar minivan with Oregon plates parked in the driveway of a nearby house.

Oh, it would be lovely if someone moved in. The house had been cold and empty for too long, since before the river flooded the previous summer. She had always loved the little tan Craftsman house with the wide front porch and the cheery red shutters.

Moving to this area of town had been largely an accident. She had intended to rent something on the lake, similar to the house where she had grown up, but around the time she came back to help after her dad was injured and to take a job at the Haven Point PD, the renters who had been living in her grandmother’s house moved out. Her mother suggested she move in as a stopgap until she could find something else she liked, and Wyn had fallen in love with the whimsical charm of the stone cottage and this eclectic neighborhood along the river.

She loved that none of the houses were the same. Her house, constructed a century earlier of stucco and stones pulled from the river, seemed very different from the Craftsman just down the street, which in turn was nothing like Cade’s log house just across the road.

Somehow they all seemed to work together.

She spied a bike and a tricycle propped against the side of the Craftsman and a soccer ball resting in the grass. Despite the toys in the yard, the curtains were tightly drawn at the house and she couldn’t see any sign of activity, which she found a little weird.

The curtains at her own front window were wide-open, though, and a familiar face peered out, as if he had been perched exactly there in the deep window seat, waiting all day for her return—which was very likely.

When she turned into the driveway, that face—and the furry body it was attached to in the form of her yellow Labrador retriever—lit up with excitement.

When she unlocked the door, Young Pete waited for her just inside, his tail wagging with eagerness. “Hold,” she told him, then took two minutes to unhook her service revolver and her badge and lock them in the fingerprint safe in the hall closet before she rewarded Pete’s patience with a hug.

“There’s my favorite guy,” she said. “How was your day?”

Her dog nudged his head against hers and the quiet, steady affection made her throat burn even as she felt some of the stress of the day seep away.

What would have happened to Pete if she hadn’t made it out of that barn in time? She had to think Marshall or Katrina would have taken him in. He’d been their dad’s dog, after all, a link to the man John had been before his traumatic brain injury two years before he died.

“Need to go out? Do you?”

The dog gave one quick bark and she opened the back door for him and walked out onto the stone patio overlooking the river.

She needed to change out of her smoky uniform and shower but right now she wasn’t sure she could move from this spot.

After a moment, Young Pete finished his business then came back to sit beside her. The dog was ten years old and not young anymore but she still stuck the modifier on his name. Her dad had always called him that, in contrast to Old Pete, John’s previous dog.

Birds flitted through the branches of one of the big elms in her backyard, their song mingling with the breeze rustling the leaves and the river’s endless, soothing song.

She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the late afternoon sun.

She could have died today.

She wanted to think she’d had the situation fully in hand but Cade had it right. She had been foolish and arrogant to think she could take on that fire and win, especially without following protocol and keeping her radio on. It had been sheer dumb luck that she was here enjoying the beauty of a June afternoon.

The realization was sobering yet oddly invigorating, as if the heat and smoke had burned away something hard and confining.

She felt as if she had been encased in ice since her father’s death in January. Longer, really. Maybe some part of her had been suspended, frozen since the terrible succession of events five years ago that culminated in Wyatt’s death, when she had made the decision to go to the academy in his stead.

Each of her brothers loved law enforcement, just as their father and grandfather and great-grandfather before them. A Bailey had been keeping the peace here since the first settlers moved into the area the Native Americans considered a place of mystical strength and healing.

Her father and Wyatt had given their lives for the job. If she loved it as they had, she might have been willing to die in the line of duty. She didn’t. She never had.

Her pocket jangled suddenly and she knew by the ringtone it was her mother. Shoot. She’d meant to call Charlene the moment she got home. As the widow of a fallen police officer and the bereaved mother of another, her mother had every right to her worry and Wyn felt bad for adding to it.

“Mom. Hi. I’m sorry I missed your call. It’s been a...crazy afternoon.”

“Oh honey. I’ve been frantic! I called the ER, I called the station, I called your house. Finally I called Cade and he told me what happened and assured me you were all right.”

“I am. A little smoke inhalation but I was treated and released at the scene.”

“So it’s true. You really ran into a burning building to save a couple of juvenile delinquents.”

She thought of those poor, scared little boys, each trying to shoulder the blame for the accident in order to take the burden from the other.

“Something like that.”

“Oh honey.”

She heard a sniffle and could guess her mother was trying to hold back the tears she had probably been crying all afternoon. Charlene had lots of practice sitting at home and worrying. Guilt pinched at her again. She should have called the moment the EMTs took away the oxygen mask.

“I’m coming over to make sure you’re okay,” her mother insisted.

“It’s not necessary, really. I’m fine.”

“You say that, but I don’t believe you for a minute. I can hear it in your voice. Mother’s intuition is never wrong, honey. You’re upset and you need me there.”

She closed her eyes, loath to hurt her mother’s feelings by telling her the reality was exactly the opposite.

She loved her mother, she did. Charlene was sweet and earnest and she loved nothing more than to fuss over her family. Wynona mostly found it exhausting.

For two years, her mother had turned those energies to caring for her husband after his brain injury. Charlene visited him daily in the nursing home and had been a dedicated and selfless caregiver. Wyn admired her greatly for it. Since John’s death, though, her mother had tried to shift all those caregiving energies to her children—whether they needed it or not.

She couldn’t deal with Charlene today. She couldn’t.

“I’m actually on my way out,” she lied.

Charlene paused. When her mother spoke again, Wyn couldn’t miss the eagerness in her voice. “A date?”

Gah. She suspected her mother thought that the very day she would turn thirty—in four months, one week and two days—she would become a dried-up old maid.

“Afraid not. I’ve, um, got some things to do for McKenzie’s wedding,” she improvised quickly. “A bridesmaid thing.”

Yes. That’s right. She was nearly thirty years old and still lied to her mother.

“What time will you be home? I’ll bring dinner. I’m making lasagna.”

She did love her mother’s lasagna, flavored with fresh herbs and home-canned tomatoes and deliciousness. It was fantastic—but not quite worth everything that would come along with it.

“Thanks a million, Mom. That’s really sweet of you, but I’ll probably just grab something while I’m out.”

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

Wyn could clearly hear her mother’s wounded feelings in the words and she swallowed a heavy sigh.

“Aunt Jenny wants to have us all over for dinner,” she offered as a salve. “I’ll try to coordinate with Marsh and Kat and see when the whole gang can make it. How would that work?”

“Oh, that would be lovely. We live so close together, it’s a shame we can’t find more time for family dinners. Though, of course, it won’t feel the same without Elliot. Don’t forget Marshall’s birthday next Sunday.”

“Maybe Jenny can join us for that.”

“I already asked her. She’ll be there.”

“Great. I can’t wait. I’ve got to go, Mom. I need to jump in the shower and wash some of this smoke out. Love you.”

She hung up before her mother could press her. After a quick shower and shampoo, she felt a million times better. She was throwing on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt when her phone rang again. To her relief, it wasn’t her mother’s customized ringtone but the one for her friend McKenzie.

“Hey, Kenz.”

“Wynona Jane Bailey!” McKenzie Shaw exclaimed. “If you didn’t want to be a bridesmaid for me, you could have just told me! You didn’t have to risk your life and nearly die to get out of it, a month before the wedding!”

She made a face as she combed through her hair. “I didn’t risk anything. Good grief. Does everyone in town know?”

“LG called me five minutes before Cade did.”

Lindy-Grace worked for McKenzie at her gift shop and they were good friends, so it only made sense she would let her know what happened.

“You will be at the top of Lindy-Grace’s Christmas list for the rest of your life,” McKenzie went on. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Lucky me. She gives the best presents.”

“And the top of ours as well. Ben and I have a very soft spot in our hearts for those boys. We would have been devastated if anything had happened to them. The whole town would have been devastated.”

“Everything ended well and now we can all move on.”

She was already tired of all the hullabaloo, especially for a decision that she was beginning to accept might not have been the smartest one she’d ever made.

“Not everything. I understand Chief Emmett suspended you from the department for a week without pay.”

Ugh. Small towns! A dog couldn’t pass gas without people talking about it.

“Does everybody know that too?”

“Cade called to tell me personally before the rumors started flying.”

Of course. McKenzie was the mayor of Haven Point and Cade technically reported to her. Apparently he had been very busy on the phone all afternoon, between her mother and her dear friend.

“I told him that didn’t sound like a good idea to me,” McKenzie said. “I can word my opposition more strongly, if you want.”

“Heavens no! I don’t need my friends fighting my battle for me.”

“Your friend happens to be his boss, in a roundabout way.”

“All the more reason to keep your mouth shut. Please, Kenz.”

“It doesn’t seem right to me. You saved the lives of two boys and shouldn’t be punished for that.”

“I’m looking at it as a nice vacation,” she lied. “I’ll finally have the chance to catch up with things around here. Plus, it will give me more time to help Devin with the final plans for your bridal shower.”

“You two are taking this bridal shower way too seriously. It’s beginning to scare me.”

“Don’t worry. This is just practice. You and I can do the same for Dev and her sexy rancher when they tie the knot.”

“Good point,” McKenzie said and Wynona could hear the smile in her voice. In the background she heard someone else talking to her friend and a moment later, McKenzie came back on the line. “I’ve got to go. Somebody is here to make a special floral order.”

“No problem. I have to go too. Young Pete needs to go out again.”

“I’m just going to say this again. It’s time you dropped the descriptor. Young Pete has prostate issues, like other dudes of a certain age,” McKenzie muttered.

She smiled and hung up after exchanging goodbyes, deeply grateful for her friends. Yes, she had been a bridesmaid five times in the last two years—it would be six after Devin’s wedding in a few more months. She was getting a little tired of it, but she would be lost without her friends, who had lifted her through more than they even knew.

“You might not be young anymore,” she told Pete, “but you’re still worth a dozen puppies.”

He wagged his tail, still standing by the door, patiently waiting for her to open it.

“You know what we both need?” she decided on impulse. “A little walk to clear our heads. Somewhere out of cell range, preferably.”

Pete seemed to be in full agreement, especially when she slipped on her walking shoes and grabbed the little pack she always kept stocked with a flashlight, water bottle and granola bar.

She decided to head for their favorite walk, along the Mount Solace trail that would take them across the Hell’s Fury River and up into the mountains above town. The bridge that led to the trailhead was just on the other side of Cade’s house so she didn’t bother with Pete’s leash, though she brought it along and stuffed it in the pack.

The dog stayed by her side as they walked down the street with the sound of the river accompanying them. When they reached the little Craftsman, she saw a slight woman with auburn hair unpacking groceries from the minivan, aided by a little boy of about four and a girl a few years older.

Pete, ever friendly, wandered over to say hello with his tail wagging a hundred beats a minute. The boy let out a shriek and hid between his mother and the minivan.

Shoot. She should have used the leash. She forgot there were new people in the neighborhood who didn’t adore him yet like everybody else did.

“Pete, get back here,” she called. After a reluctant moment, the dog wandered back to meet her as she approached the little family and she gripped his collar tightly.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “He loves to meet new people and can be a little too friendly sometimes. Hi. I’m Wynona Bailey. I live just down the street in the stone house with the green shutters. Welcome to Haven Point.”

The woman didn’t answer her smile. Her features were closed, unapproachable, her green eyes arctic.

“Isn’t there some sort of leash law in Haven Point?” she asked in a stiff voice.

So. Not the friendliest of new neighbors. Too bad. The kids were adorable, with auburn hair like their mother’s. The boy’s was curly and the girl wore hers in two long, thick braids.

“Technically, yes,” she answered. “I’ve got a leash here. But since we were just walking from our house to the trailhead just up ahead, I decided not to use it.”

“My son is afraid of dogs. Especially big, ill-behaved, dangerous dogs.”

She had to blink at that. No one in his right mind could possibly call a big, furry sweet-tempered guy like Young Pete dangerous or ill-behaved. He only wanted to say hello, for heaven’s sake.

“Sorry again. I’ll try to keep him out of your way. Come on, Petey.” She grabbed the leash out of the pocket of the backpack and clipped it on him. The little boy had emerged from behind his mother and gave her a tentative smile and she couldn’t help smiling back.

“It was great to meet you all,” she said, even though she hadn’t really met them. Meeting someone implied an exchange of names, which the woman had quite pointedly not shared.

She waved at the children. The boy waved back and it looked like his sister wanted to, but at the last minute she stuck her hand in her pocket. Their mother had turned away to unpack groceries.

Wyn gave a mental shrug and headed past Cade’s log home to the beginning of the trailhead up into the mountains. As soon as she and Pete crossed the bridge, she unclipped his leash with a defiant look back at the family, but they had disappeared into the house.


CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_d4a5a27a-29c2-52b5-9345-6cc767e166b9)

IT DIDN’T TAKE long for the sheer beauty of her surroundings to siphon away the unpleasantness of the encounter with her new neighbors.

She had grown up hiking the foothills all around Haven Point but this was indisputably her favorite walk. The trail to Mount Solace was an easy but steady climb through stands of fragrant pines and firs and a thick forest of aspens with leaves that fluttered and danced on the slightest breeze. Amid the trees were several wide meadows bursting with wildflowers this time of year—columbine and kittentails, Indian paintbrush and delicate Queen Anne’s lace.

She loved the solitude and the serenity she always found in the mountains and as she walked, she felt the tension in her shoulders begin to ease. Pete enjoyed it, too, sniffing from tree trunk to flower patch to granite boulder.

An hour later, she felt much more centered and calm. Yes, she had a close call today. Yes, it probably had been a mistake to run into that barn and especially to turn off her comm while she did it, but she would never regret rescuing Lucas and Caleb, no matter what Cade said.

The sun was beginning to slide behind the mountains and her stomach reminded her she still needed to think about dinner.

“What do you think? Should we go home, Petey?”

The dog’s ears perked up and he inclined his head down the trail, just in case she had forgotten the way back.

She had to smile. “Thanks. Lead on.”

The dog obediently took point and they made their way back down. She loved the uphill trail for the burn it gave her quads and thighs and the sense of accomplishment, but the real reward came from the walk back down, when she caught occasional glimpses through the trees of the lake and the silvery twist of river and the town she had sworn to serve and protect.

She had hiked higher than she intended, she realized, as the shadows lengthened and the temperatures began to drop. She picked up her pace. Just before she hit the relatively flat part of the trail that paralleled the river, she heard voices ahead of her—unhappy voices, by the sound of it. A couple of upset children.

Remembering her new neighbors, she called Pete over to her and clipped his leash onto his collar.

“Sorry, dude. Better safe than sorry, right?”

Pete huffed out a breath but he was so easygoing that he never minded the leash much. They continued walking along the trail that curved with the river, following those voices.

Finally, they rounded a bend where she discovered the new occupant of the cute Craftsman sitting on the trail with her right leg stretched out in front of her and her children hovering close.

Wyn did a quick situation assessment and saw the woman’s ankle was swollen and beginning to bruise. She had a vague sense of déjà vu. Apparently this was her designated day to deal with injured limbs.

Her children knelt beside her in the dirt. The little boy’s face was streaked with tears and the girl was holding her mother’s hand, though she also looked pale and frightened.

The woman caught sight of Wyn and her distressed features closed up.

“Oh. It’s you.”

The woman tried to struggle to her feet as if she didn’t want to be caught in any kind of vulnerability and Wynona hurried forward.

“Please, don’t get up. That looks nasty!” Grateful for the impulse she’d had to put on Pete’s leash, she moved closer so she could have a better look at the injury. “I’m guessing the rock over there was the culprit. I stumbled over the same one on my way up.”

She pointed to one of those basketball-sized rocks that sometimes seemed to spring out of the ground overnight along these mountain trails, like mushrooms after a rain.

“We were watching a pretty bluebird on the trail and my mama didn’t see the rock. She says she sprained her ankle,” the girl offered.

“That was probably a mountain bluebird. They’re my very favorite bird.”

“I liked it too,” the girl said. “It sounded nice. I like your dog. She’s pretty.”

“She’s a he, actually. This is Young Pete and I’m Wynona Bailey. Wyn.”

“I remember. You said so before. My name is Chloe Montgomery. This is my brother, Will, and my mom, Andrea. I’m six years old and Will is four. My mom is thirty.”

Ah. Andrea Montgomery. That was the name of the woman who was now frowning at her daughter like she had just revealed state secrets.

Or maybe Wyn was being too suspicious. Maybe the woman was merely grimacing in pain.

“Do you mind if I take a look?” she asked Andrea Montgomery. “I’m a police officer here in Haven Point, trained as an EMT too.”

This was the second time that day she had been grateful that Cade insisted everyone in the department go through the necessary basic training in first aid. Haven Point was a small town, he had always explained, and sometimes his officers were on an accident scene alone for several minutes before the volunteer fire department could mobilize. A little knowledge might even mean the difference between life and death.

If she hoped the other woman would be relieved to find out she had basic medic experience, Wyn would have been sadly disappointed. If anything, the woman’s features tightened even further and she avoided Wyn’s gaze.

“That’s not necessary, Officer Bailey. It’s not broken. I only twisted it a little. I was catching my breath a moment before we head back home. I’ll put some ice on it when we get home.”

“I’m not an expert but that looks like a sprain to me. Even if it’s only twisted, you might have some tendon and ligament damage. You could make it worse, if you’re not very careful.”

“I’m fine, really. Sorry we’re in your way. You can just go around me.”

As if Wyn could ever leave a neighbor—even a prickly one—sprawled out in the dirt. The woman obviously didn’t want her help but beneath the coldness, she sensed something else, a hint of another emotion that smelled to her cop’s nose suspiciously like fear.

She couldn’t begin to guess why her neighbor might be afraid of her but it made her intensely curious.

“You’ve got at least a quarter-mile walk back to your place. Even if the ankle is only twisted a little, that’s going to be a long, hard slog with two kids by yourself. You won’t make it before dark. Do you have a flashlight?”

The woman still continued to avoid her gaze but shook her head, just as Wyn would have guessed.

“Look, at least let me try to find a walking stick you can use for support.”

After a pause, Andrea Montgomery relented slightly. “That might be helpful.”

“Great. Kids, can you help me? I’m looking for a walking stick that’s about this tall and this big.” She held her hand at shoulder height and made a wide circle with her thumb and forefinger.

The boy—Will, his sister had said—found one first and produced it triumphantly.

“That looks great,” Wyn exclaimed.

“Thanks, honey,” Andrea said with a soft smile for her son that contrasted starkly with her attitude toward Wynona. “Let’s see if it works.”

She gripped the walking stick and used it to pull herself to her feet. “Look at that. Perfect.”

Her son preened as if he had just single-handedly shot down the Death Star and Wyn had to smile. Yeah, Andrea might be a cool customer to her but the woman seemed like a loving mother.

“Thank you,” the woman said. “I think we’ll probably be fine now. You don’t have to wait for us. I’m sure you have somewhere to go.”

“Not at all,” she answered, which was the unvarnished truth, though it was a little depressing.

She had no one to blame but herself for that state of affairs, really. Kat had offered to bring dinner and so had Charlene. McKenzie likely would have been more than thrilled to come over. Given half a chance, Lindy-Grace probably would have thrown a parade down Lakeside Drive.

She had shut everybody down, so it was her own fault she had no dinner plans.

“Young Pete and I aren’t in a hurry,” she assured her new neighbor. “We were taking our time ambling home with no particular schedule and a few moments more won’t matter to us. I don’t feel good about leaving you here when you’re injured. If you don’t mind, I’ll just stick with you so I can be sure you make it home.”

The woman looked as if she minded very much but she must have realized Wyn wouldn’t back down. She finally gave a shrug and started making her painstaking way down the trail.

It was clear after just a few steps that Andrea Montgomery was in considerable pain but she stubbornly continued on.

They walked slowly back with Andrea leading the way and Chloe behind her, holding her brother’s hand. The boy seemed to be warming up a little to Pete and no longer looked completely panic-stricken, though he continued to keep a safe distance between them. Wynona, in the rear, kept up a running commentary with the children, identifying some of the birds that flitted through the trees and different varieties of wildflowers they passed.

They still had several hundred yards to walk before they reached the bridge when Andrea stumbled again and let out a gasp of pain.

Wyn decided it was time for a little more firm intervention.

“Chloe, I know your brother isn’t very crazy about dogs,” she said. “What about you?”

“Oh, I love them,” she declared. “We used to have a big dog named Magnus but my dad found him a new home without kids after he bit Will when he was little.”

This earned the girl a swift look from her mother, whose features were white with pain. Was it because the girl mentioned her dad? Where was the man? And was he the reason Andrea Montgomery seemed determined to keep her distance?

“That’s good to know. Do you think you could hold on to Pete here while I help your mom?”

“Oh yes!” Chloe exclaimed. “May I?”

“I don’t need help,” Andrea said stiffly.

Wynona ignored her and handed Pete’s leash to the eager girl, then stepped forward to the woman’s side.

“Don’t be a hero. Trust me, that gets old after a while. Just lean on me. I’ll help you back to your house. I know you don’t know me, but, I promise, I’m harmless. I’m only trying to help. I don’t want you falling again and making things worse for yourself.”

The woman’s mouth tightened, whether from irritation or pain, Wyn couldn’t tell. She had a feeling she was better off not knowing. They made their way to the bridge and over it, then only had the short distance to the family’s new house. By now, the children were in front of them and both of them were giggling at Pete. Will seemed to have completely warmed up to the dog—Pete’s sweet nature had a way of winning over even the wariest of hearts.

“Your children are adorable,” Wyn said after a moment.

Andrea’s features softened. “Thanks. I’m pretty crazy about them.”

It was another point in her favor, along with her strength and stubbornness, which seemed more than a little familiar to Wynona.

If Andrea hadn’t made it so clear that she didn’t want to have anything to do with her, Wyn might have thought they had a good chance of becoming friends.

“I’m sorry your introduction to the Haven Point backcountry didn’t end well. When your ankle feels better, you’ll have to try the trail again. It’s a little bit of a climb but Mount Solace is stunning this time of year. If you keep going up this trail, you’ll eventually come to a beautiful waterfall. It’s not huge but it’s definitely worth the effort.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she answered.

“Another good trail is Crimson Ridge,” she went on, mostly to distract the woman from the pain of hobbling along on her sprained ankle. “The trailhead for that one is just past Redemption Bay. It’s one of my favorites, especially in late summer when it’s wild-blackberry season. In the fall, the sugar maples up there turn amazing colors, which is where the trail gets its name.”

“Are you...from here?” Andrea Montgomery asked. Though pale, she didn’t falter once. Another point in her favor.

“Yep. Born and raised. It’s a really nice community, full of good people.”

“If everyone here is good, why do they need a police department?”

She laughed. “Okay, most of the people are good. We’ve got a few bad eggs but they’re the minority.”

Andrea’s new house was in sight now, which seemed to give the woman a little extra strength.

“You picked a great time to move here,” Wynona continued. “In a couple of weeks, we’ll have our annual Lake Haven Days and wooden-boat show. Your kids will love it, trust me. There’s a pancake breakfast, a big parade, a craft fair and all kinds of activities for children. They can even make their own wooden boats and have races in the marina.”

“Sounds...nice.”

“Oh, it is. And at Christmastime, you can’t miss the Lights on the Lake Festival. People come from miles around to see local boat owners decorate their watercraft and parade from here to Shelter Springs and back. It’s quite a spectacle.”

“We’ll plan on it.”

“So where are you from and what brings you and your family to Haven Point?”

She meant the question to be casual and conversational, a subtle little probe, but Andrea Montgomery instantly tensed.

“The Pacific Northwest,” she said, the words as sharp as pine needles.

That was certainly deliberately nonspecific. The polite thing would be to let the subject rest but that wasn’t in her nature, police officer or not.

“What part?” she asked.

For a long moment, the other woman didn’t answer. She glanced at the children then back down in front of her.

“Near Portland,” she finally said.

“Oh, that’s a beautiful area,” Wyn said, hoping to put her at ease again. “I drove through there when I was in college on the way to the coast with friends. I loved it. I especially remember how green it was and all the beautiful gardens. I was struck by the gorgeous masses of flowers in baskets hanging from the streetlamps.”

As she hoped, Andrea seemed to relax. “It’s an easy place to grow flowers, as long as they like a lot of moisture. I love the wildflowers here.”

They talked about flowers and gardening a little—not Wyn’s area of expertise, as evidenced by the scraggly flower gardens outside her house. She waited until they reached the driveway of the Craftsman before she slid the next question into the conversation.

“And what brings you to our beautiful neck of the woods? Do you have family close by?”

The woman gripped the walking stick with white knuckles—from pain or tension, Wyn couldn’t tell. “We needed a change,” she said tersely.

She obviously wasn’t going to add anything more and Wyn knew she had pushed her hard enough.

“Haven Point is a nice place for a new start,” she said, offering up a calm smile, “especially with the new Caine Tech facility opening up. We’ve had many new people move in already and expect even more. We’re happy to have you all.”

“Thanks,” Andrea said as they walked up the driveway. Wyn helped her struggle up the few steps. “And thank you...for your help.”

“You’re very welcome. That’s what neighbors do. Are you sure you’re okay from here?”

“Yes. Fine.”

Wynona gestured to the other woman’s swollen ankle. “You probably know this already but you should elevate that and ice it. RICE, right? Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation.”

“Got it.”

“And if it’s still swollen and giving you trouble in the morning, you may want to see a doc. My friend Devin Shaw is an excellent family doctor and is wonderful with children and grown-ups alike. Hold on, and I can write down her name and number for you.”

She reached into the front pocket of her backpack for the little notebook and pen she always kept there, just in case. Her best moments of inspiration for solving cases often came while she was hiking and she hated to lose her train of thought. She jotted down a few things then ripped out the paper and handed it to Andrea.

“Here you go,” she said. “That’s the number and address for Devin’s clinic. I also put down my cell number. If you need someone to drive you to the doctor or the grocery store while you’re laid up, I’m more than happy to help.”

The other woman looked both shocked and wary at the offer. “Thank you.”

“You’re more than welcome. The third number is the other essential thing you need to know—the secret delivery number for Serrano’s. That’s the best restaurant in town and they have pizza, sandwiches, whatever kind of comfort food you need and if you tell them I referred you, they’ll deliver it right to your door. They don’t do that for everyone but will help out in an emergency.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

Andrea looked overwhelmed but grateful too.

“Seriously, I’m just up the street if you need anything.” She grabbed Pete’s leash from Will, who apparently was now completely over his fear of big dogs—at least her particular big dog. “I’ll see you guys later. Take care of your mom, okay?”

“’Bye, Officer Bailey,” Chloe said.

“’Bye,” Will said with an adorably enthusiastic wave that would have scared away any mosquito within a square mile. “’Bye, Pete.”

Wyn walked back down the driveway then waited until the woman and her children were safely inside the house. The blinds moved as if someone had made sure they were closed tightly.

Something wasn’t right with this family. The impression settled on her shoulders and refused to lift. The woman wasn’t simply unfriendly. She was a bundle of nerves and had the hollow-eyed, furtive look of someone with something to hide.

What? Was she afraid, guilty or both?

A dozen possibilities flitted through her mind, none of them good. Wyn turned, barely registering the lovely lavender dusk that smelled of cut grass and someone working the charcoal grill.

It wasn’t any of her business, she told herself. Didn’t she have enough to worry about without taking on someone else’s problems?

Her gaze landed on Cade’s SUV with the HPPD logo on the side, parked in the driveway of his log home across the street. Like him, she was a police officer. Taking on other people’s problems was sort of in her job description.

She really should mention her concerns about the new neighbor and ask him to keep an eye on things here, just in case trouble showed up in the middle of the night.

As a side benefit, perhaps she could persuade him to reduce her suspension by a few days. It was worth a try, anyway.


CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_c4a9c881-cdd4-541d-8965-c24ab01d05bb)

THIS WAS THE craziest damn day he’d had in a long time and right now all he wanted was a steak, a cold Sam Adams and a nice, relaxing baseball game on the big screen to help him unwind.

Though he had a perfectly serviceable gas grill and it was fine in a pinch, he preferred the rich flavor from the traditional method so Cade spent a moment lighting the charcoal on his old-fashioned Weber. Yeah, he was a two-grill guy. Sue him.

Once the coals were smoldering, he headed inside to turn on the game and pulled the two rib eyes marinating in the refrigerator. Since it was as easy to grill two as it was one, he always cooked an extra and used the leftovers for fajitas or a steak omelet.

He had a very limited skill set in the kitchen, he would freely admit. Most of it involved flames and protein of some sort, though he tried to add fruit and veggies where he could.

He set the steaks on the counter and reached back into the refrigerator for a beer. He was just grabbing the bottle opener when his cell phone rang.

Sometimes he wanted to grab the thing and toss it into the middle of the Hell’s Fury.

As much as he would have liked to ignore the blasted ringing, he knew he couldn’t. It might be an emergency. He was the chief of police and had a responsibility to the people of Haven Point, like it or not.

A quick check of the caller ID showed it wasn’t a problem in his community but still something he couldn’t ignore. His sister-in-law wasn’t in the habit of calling him for no reason.

“Hey, Christy,” he greeted her. “What’s going on?”

She uttered a particularly succinct epithet that basically summed up Cade’s own prior delightful twenty-four hours. “Guess who just called me from jail again? That’s right, you guessed it. Your idiot asshole of a brother!”

And this day just kept getting better and better.

He closed his eyes and pressed the cold bottle to the tension headache brewing at his temple. A familiar sense of helplessness settled in his gut, the same feeling he always had when dealing with certain members of his troubled family.

“I’ve had it. Do you hear me? I told him the next time would be the last time. I told him if he can’t keep his sorry ass off a bar stool, there’s no freaking way I was going to bail it out of jail again.”

“DUI?” he guessed, though it didn’t take any particular detective skills.

“What else? Third one in four months.” She swore again. “It’s like he’s been on one long bender since he lost his job.”

Marcus was the brother just younger than he was, with barely two years between them. He was also the Emmett brother who seemed determined to follow in their father’s wobbly, drunk-off-his-ass footsteps.

Until a few months earlier, things had been going well for Marcus. Though his brother had only graduated high school by the skin of his teeth, he immediately moved to Boise and went to work in construction and eventually made a good living driving a cement truck.

He and Christy had a rocky start, marrying young after she got pregnant, but seemed to be making things work and had even added a few more kids to the mix.

Earlier in the year, Marcus’s company had run into financial trouble and he was laid off and everything seemed to implode.

“I can’t do this anymore, Cade. I just can’t,” Christy said. Her voice wavered and he could hear the tears just below the surface. “When he’s here, he just mopes around doing nothing but snapping at me and the kids.”

“Being unemployed is tough on a guy like Marc, who’s used to taking care of his family.”

“I get that. Believe me, I get it. But instead of going out to find another job, he goes out and buys more booze. What is wrong with him?”

Cade didn’t know how to answer. Christy wanted him to fix his brother. He felt as if he’d spent his entire life trying to duct-tape together the jagged pieces of his broken family in one way or another. Hell of a lot of good that had done over the years. He hadn’t been able to prevent his mom from getting sick when he was eleven and he couldn’t keep anybody else out of the hot mess of trouble they always seemed to land in.

“What do you need from me?” he asked.

“How about a phone number for a good divorce attorney?” she countered.

That would be a disaster for their three kids, who adored their father. On the other hand, living with an unreliable, unstable, angry drunk wasn’t a great alternative.

“I can’t help you there, Christy. He might be an ass but he’s still my brother. He would be devastated to lose his family. You know he loves you.”

“Does he? Really? He’s losing his family right now. He’s just too plastered to notice!”

Was she only calling to complain or did she really think he had some power to change his brother’s behavior? He couldn’t decades ago when they were kids. He certainly couldn’t now.

“I’m not bailing him out this time,” Christy went on. “I’m dead serious. I’m working my fingers to the bone, trying to keep food in my kids’ mouths and shoes on their feet. I’m not going to use my hard-earned money to bail him out of jail one more time. As far as I’m concerned, he can rot in there.”

Maybe that would be the wake-up call his brother needed, the stimulus to get off his butt and make a change. Or maybe Marcus would perceive Christy’s inaction as proof she didn’t love him, which might send him slipping further into the depression that seemed to have caught hold.

“I understand where you’re coming from.”

“Do you?”

Yes. Hell, yes. After his mother died, Cade had tried his best to help his father but had finally had to accept his father loved Johnnie Walker far more than he could ever love his sons.

Marcus wasn’t Walter. He was a good man going through a rough stretch.

“I can try to talk to him, see if I can convince him to go into rehab.”

Christy paused and he heard more sniffling on the line. “Don’t you think I’ve tried that? Only about a thousand times. He won’t listen.”

“It’s worth a shot.”

“Maybe you’ll have better luck. He respects you more than any other man he knows.”

“I can’t make any promises,” he warned. “Any change has to come from him.”

“I appreciate the effort anyway. You’ve been a good brother to him.”

He would beg to disagree. A good brother would have been better at keeping his siblings out of trouble.

“It might be a few days before I can get over there. I’ve got to work double shifts for a while since I’m short an officer this week.” He grimaced at the reminder of Wynona Bailey and her foolhardy stubbornness.

“That’s fine with me. Let him stay in there and stew about the mess he’s created.”

“I should be able to squeeze out a few hours toward the middle of the week to drive to Boise.”

“I hope you can talk sense into his hard head.”

“So do I.”

She was silent for a moment and he heard more sniffling on the line and a muffled sob. “Why does he have to make it so hard to love him?” she finally burst out.

If his brother had been there, Cade would have had no problem pounding him, badge or no badge. Idiot. He had a good thing going. A wife who loved him, kids who needed him. Why would he throw all that away?

Cade’s own beer—the bottle from the single six-pack he allowed himself per week—suddenly tasted flat and bitter.

None of them had been given much of a chance, with an abusive drunk for a father and a weak mother who didn’t take care of herself and ended up with liver disease because of it.

With such a screwed-up childhood, it was a wonder Marcus had been able to maintain a good relationship with Christy all these years.

“You take good care of yourself and those kids.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do. But you know Marcus won’t see it that way.”

He feared she was right. “Do you need help with bills?” he finally asked quietly.

Christy was silent for a long, awkward moment. “You’ve done more than enough, Cade.”

He didn’t mention to her that Marcus had come to him asking for help paying the mortgage the last few months. He had a feeling she knew and was too proud and stubborn to ask for more.

He would send a check anyway and hope she accepted it, for the kids’ sake. Losing their home wouldn’t help the situation right now.

“I’ll talk to you later in the week to see how things are going,” he said.

“Thanks, Cade. I didn’t know what else to do but to call you. I needed to vent to someone else who loves that idiot as much as I do.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he promised.

After they said goodbye, he leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, exhausted suddenly from the crazy day. Marcus and his latest DUI seemed like just one more thing he couldn’t fix.

The world was filled with problems he couldn’t solve, which sometimes seriously sucked.

The doorbell rang while he was still trying to figure out how he could slip Christy the extra money for her mortgage—which happened to be the one problem he could remedy.

He might get to that steak at some point that evening, but he was beginning to wonder.

“Coming,” he called out.

He headed to the front door and pulled it open. All thoughts of Marcus and Christy, DUIs and mortgages, flew completely out of his head.

Wynona Bailey stood on his doorstep with her wheat-colored hair pulled back into a thick braid and tan shorts revealing a surprisingly long stretch of tawny legs.

Yeah. The world was really good at throwing unsolvable problems at him.

His mind snapped back to that nightmarish moment when he had pulled up to the fire at Darwin Twitchell’s barn and found her patrol vehicle empty and no sign of Wyn, and then an instant later she burst through the doors of the barn with a kid in each arm and flames exploding behind them.

He had run through that moment in his head dozens of times in the last few hours and still couldn’t figure out the emotion he’d experienced, when he knew she was safe and unharmed.

Something had changed. That’s all he knew. Or maybe it had been there forever but was only now growling to life.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, then realized how rude the words sounded when her hesitant smile slid away.

But what was he supposed to say? Though she lived at the other end of the street, they didn’t socialize at each other’s homes outside of work. He could count on one hand the times he’d been to her place, usually to drop off paperwork. She stopped here just as seldom.

Why was that?

He didn’t know the answer and it seemed odd now. They were friends and had been for years, even before she came to work for him after her father’s injury. Her brother was his best friend.

He had been to all his other officers’ homes several times. Barbecues. Birthday parties. It had never been a big deal to socialize outside of work, especially in a small police department like Haven Point. But something about Wyn Bailey was...different.

Maybe he could blame the same something that had sent him rushing to the scene of a fire after she stopped responding to the radio, with his heart hammering and his foot pushing hard on the gas pedal.

“I’ll tell you why I’m here but I’d rather not do it standing on the porch,” she said. “May I come in?”

He had no choice but to step back and open the door wider for her.

A familiar canine followed her in and he couldn’t help a smile, despite the tension that popped and sparked between them like a bad wire.

“Hey there, Young Pete.”

The dog’s ears perked up at his name and he sat at Cade’s feet with his tail brushing the wood plank floor of his entryway. Cade reached down and scratched Pete in the spot he remembered the dog liked, just under its left ear.

“How are you, buddy?”

He and Young Pete went way back, to the days when the dog used to be John Bailey’s constant companion. The former chief had adored the puppy, the latest in a string of dogs he always named Pete.

He wasn’t a puppy anymore. Gray peppered his muzzle and he walked with the same ginger care of an old man on the cusp of needing artificial knees.

“How are the lungs?” he finally asked when Wyn showed no inclination to let him know what she was doing at his house.

At her blank look he arched an eyebrow. “Smoke inhalation, remember? A few hours ago you were being examined by two of Haven Point’s finest EMTs. Ring a bell?”

“Oh. Right. The lungs.” She shrugged. “If I breathe too deeply, they ache a little but nothing I didn’t expect.”

The reality of her close call seemed to reach out and grab him by the throat all over again. He couldn’t even contemplate what might have happened to her.

Yeah, he knew the risks of the job. Every day when he sent his officers out, he knew they were risking injury and even death. People thought Haven Point was a nice, quiet town where nothing much happened but those in his department knew better. The town had its share of drug abuse, domestic disturbances, assaults.

He had been standing just a few feet away when her father took a bullet to the head that should have killed him—and in a roundabout way, eventually did just that two years later.

If Wynona had joined the ranks of the fallen that included her father and her twin brother, Cade wouldn’t have been able to live with himself.

Her mom was probably out of her head with worry.

“That was a really stupid thing you did,” he said sternly.

“Yes, I believe you mentioned that when you were yelling at me in front of the entire fire department.”

For a guy with a reputation for a cool head under pressure, he had done a miserable job of handling the whole situation. He could admit that now, after the fact. He should have taken her aside and reprimanded her in private. The whole public-safety community didn’t need to watch him lose his temper.

Too late now. It was done and he wouldn’t back down or change his mind.

“Did you come here thinking you could talk me out of the suspension? If you did, don’t bother.”

“You are ridiculously stubborn, Cade Emmett. Did anybody ever tell you that?”

“You. About a thousand and sixteen times.”

Of all his officers, he trusted her judgment most. She wasn’t afraid to call him out when he became dogmatic or unreasonable, whether during an investigation or in personnel issues. He wasn’t afraid to admit when he was wrong but he knew he wasn’t on this one.

“Would you at least consider reducing the number of days I’m suspended?”

“No.”

She narrowed her gaze at him. “This is the worst time of year for the department to be shorthanded, with all the tourists starting to trickle in before Lake Haven Days in a few weeks.”

“I know that.”

She sighed. “You’re hanging me out to dry as an example to the rest of the guys, aren’t you?”

Yeah, that was partly true. When it counted, he needed his officers to follow the chain of command. If he ordered an officer to stand down, he needed to know the order would be heeded.

“It’s not easy having to be the one who makes the tough calls.”

Sometimes he was really tired of being the responsible one. Between the phone call from Christy about his brother and Wynona calling him out because of her suspension, the burden had never felt so heavy.

“I get it. You did what you had to do. A week just seems excessive to me.”

“A week. No more, no less. You scared the hell out of me, Wyn.”

He shouldn’t have said that last part, especially not in that rough, intense tone. She gazed at him, her eyes wide and he thought he saw something there, a little flicker of awareness, before she shifted her gaze down to her dog, who was now stretching out on the floor at his feet.

“Fine. Your decision. I guess we’ll all have to live with it. That wasn’t really why I stopped anyway,” she went on. “You have new neighbors across the street.”

“Yeah, I saw a vehicle in the driveway this morning and a moving van unloading things when I came home around lunchtime.”

“Do you know anything about them?”

He shook his head. “Not a thing, except what I saw earlier. They must have kids because I saw a couple of bikes out on the lawn when I came home—a boy and a girl, judging by the stereotypical bike colors. The pink bike was bigger. They drive a minivan with Oregon plates and listen to NPR, according to a bumper sticker.”

She laughed. “For not knowing anything about them, you seemed to have picked up quite a bit.”

It would probably sound too much like bragging to recite the license plate he’d memorized or the county in Oregon where the vehicle was registered last. “It’s my job to notice what’s going on in front of me.”

She made a funny little sound in her throat that morphed into a cough. “Of course it is.”

Did her dry tone imply there was something significant he hadn’t noticed?

He frowned. “Why are you so interested in our new neighbors?”

“It’s also my job to notice what’s going on around me and something there is off. I don’t know what it is but it’s got my nose itching.”

Her instincts were usually right on the money.

Once she called him in for backup on a routine traffic stop of a gray-haired couple driving a sedan with Ohio plates. None of his other officers would have found anything unusual about them but Wyn had caught a subtle vibe about the pair and ended up asking their permission to search the vehicle. When the couple refused, he brought in Rusty, the drug-sniffing dog from the Lake Haven Sheriff’s Department, who found a quarter million dollars’ worth of heroin sewn into the hollowed-out seats.

He would have said she had her father’s cop instincts—except for the last few weeks he had served under her father.

“Have you met them already?”

“Yes. Well, the mom and the kids. Andrea Montgomery and two kids, Chloe and Will. I don’t know if there’s a dad in the picture. I didn’t see any evidence of one but that doesn’t mean anything. I said hello to them on my way to the trailhead. When I was coming down, I found her sprawled out on the trail with a sprained ankle. I helped her back to her house.”

“You’re on a roll. How many more people will you rescue today?”

She made a face. “I couldn’t just leave her there.”

No, she wouldn’t. Wynona was like her father in many ways, full of compassion and concern.

“What makes you think something’s off?”

“She doesn’t seem very crazy about police officers. When I told her I worked for the local police department, you would have thought I told her I drowned kittens for a living.”

“Plenty of people don’t like the police. That doesn’t make them criminals.”

“I know that. This was something beyond dislike. More like...fear.”

Perhaps she was exaggerating or had misunderstood the woman’s reactions but, again, he trusted her gut. He had guys in the department who could shoot the hell out of a bull’s-eye at the shooting range and one who could bench-press three-hundred-fifty pounds. None of them had Wynona’s instincts with people.

“You think she’s on the run?”

“Maybe. Maybe she’s got an abusive ex in the background. Or maybe it’s a custody case. Who knows?”

“Maybe she’s witness protection.” He couldn’t resist teasing her a little. “Maybe she testified in a mob hit back in Oregon and now she’s got a new identity here in Haven Point. Or maybe she’s a superhero and her secret identity is a suburban mom.”

She smacked his arm. “You can mock me all you want but something was up. My spidey sense is tingling about this one.”

Cade dropped the teasing tone. “Want me to run the plates and see if anything pops?” he asked.

“That might be overkill at this point. She hasn’t done anything wrong, as far as I can tell. I only wanted to give you a heads-up so you can keep an eye on things, especially since you’re just across the street.”

“I’ll do that.”

His phone timer went off and she raised an inquisitive brow.

“Just telling me the coals are ready for my dinner.”

She looked shocked. “You’re cooking? Really?”

“I guess you can call it cooking. Grilling, anyway. I’m throwing on a couple of steaks.”

“Ah.” Her stomach chose that moment to rumble with enthusiasm, so loudly that Pete looked up and cocked his head to the side. Wyn—the steadiest, most unflappable person he knew—looked flustered. Her cheeks turned pink and she gave an embarrassed-sounding laugh.

“That wasn’t a hint, I swear. I’ve got leftover Chinese at home.”

“I’ve got an extra steak, if you want it.”

He wasn’t sure which of them was more shocked by the invitation. She stared at him, eyes wide.

What was the big deal? They were friends. They had been for years, long before she ever came back to work for the Haven Point Police Department after her father’s shooting and Cade became chief.

He had known her since she wore her hair in braids on either side and those light freckles had been much more pronounced. Back in the day, he used to spend every spare moment he could at the Baileys’ house with his best bud, her brother Marshall. The warmth and peace there had been a foreign concept to him at first compared to the fighting and yelling at his own house but had quickly become addictive.

“Somebody ought to give you dinner,” he said gruffly when she continued to look at him out of wide blue eyes. “It’s not every day one of my officers runs into a burning building to save a couple of kids.”

“Thank heavens for that.” A dimple flashed beside the mouth he had never noticed was so lush and soft. “You don’t have that many officers and you certainly can’t suspend us all.”

“True enough.”

She appeared to consider the offer and he couldn’t begin to guess what was going through her head. He seriously doubted she was entertaining the same thought that seemed to ricochet through his brain—that something had changed between them the moment he saw her come bursting through the doors of that burning barn.

“I would actually really enjoy a steak,” she finally said. “I’m all dusty from the hike, though. Give me fifteen minutes to run home and change and toss a salad.”

“You don’t have to do that. The salad, I mean. I’ve got a head of lettuce in the refrigerator and can throw something together.”

“I’ll bring something. Just give me a few.”

He was inordinately happy that she had agreed. Probably just lingering relief that the situation today had turned out so well, except for poor Caleb Keegan’s broken ankle.

“They shouldn’t take much time to cook. I’ll wait until you’re back to throw them on. The coals can heat a little longer.”

“Sounds good.”

She headed for the door, whistling for Pete.

“You can leave him if you want. He can keep me company out on the deck.”

Again, she looked a little surprised. “Okay. He could probably use some water. Young Pete, behave yourself. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She headed out into the soft dusk, leaving him with her dog, a couple of steaks and the uncomfortable feeling that he had just made a grave mistake.


CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_4a27106e-e07b-55e7-b578-6c16316c82b9)

DINNER. WITH CADE EMMETT.

What was wrong with her?

This had been a day for weird things. The whole moose debacle that she had nearly forgotten about, the fire, her suspension, their new neighbor and finally this.

She had tried so diligently to keep things casual and friendly between them. Since coming to work at the Haven Point PD, she felt as if she were walking on a knife’s edge, afraid she might reveal her growing feelings for him.

Working side by side in a small, intimate department was awkward enough. She was the only female in the department and had to constantly pretend she was just one of the guys. With the rest of the officers, it wasn’t an issue. She could laugh and joke, pull pranks and buy a round of beers at the Mad Dog on their downtime.

The problem was, deep in her heart lived the knowledge that she didn’t want to be one of the guys to Cade.

She knew there was no other option. He was her boss. While she worked at the Haven Point Police Department, that was the only thing that mattered.

The day had already been surreal and she feared she was too tired to keep up the pretense all evening. What if she did or said something that revealed the feelings that seemed to have always been a part of her but that had deepened and changed over the years?

This was going to be a nightmare.

A wiser woman would have simply thanked him for his kind invitation but declined. She was tired, it had been a long day, she should rest her lungs. She had a million ready excuses. What was she thinking, agreeing to spend more time with him, when it was taking everything she had to maintain this casual, businesslike relationship between them?

She could still back out. If she called him and told him she wasn’t up for it tonight, he would probably even walk Young Pete back for her.

Or she could simply look at the evening as a simple meal shared by friends who shared a history going back to the days he used to come to the house to hang out with her brothers.

That was the safest route, she decided. She’d had plenty of practice keeping things casual between them. No reason a dinner between them wouldn’t be the same.

She changed quickly out of her hiking shorts and dusty T-shirt into her favorite cropped jeans and a loose blouse then put on a little foundation and mascara and pulled her hair into her favorite messy bun, a much softer style than she would ever allow herself while she was on duty.

Here was that knife’s edge again, the line she walked between looking presentable and not giving him the idea that she wanted to impress him.

Throwing the salad together took considerably less time than figuring out what to wear. She opted for a Mediterranean salad using feta cheese and Greek olives with the lettuce. Just before she headed out the door, she remembered she had several pieces of Aunt Jenny’s fabulously creamy cheesecake in her freezer from the last time they had a family party. She took the cheesecake out and transferred a few pieces to a smaller container, then on a whim she cut up some strawberries she had on hand.

With a minute or two to spare out of the fifteen minutes she’d told him, she walked back to Cade’s house on a cool, lovely night scented with climbing roses and honeysuckle from Herm and Louise Jacobs’s place next door to her.

Cade had only been in his house a few years, had moved in some time after she moved back to Haven Point, but he had done a great deal in his off-hours to spruce it up.

Before he moved in, the logs had been faded and weather-beaten, the gardens overgrown. He had planted low-maintenance perennial gardens and spent a memorable week the previous summer sealing and re-chinking the logs—memorable to her, anyway, because he tended to work with his shirt off. Kat and Samantha had spent most of that week camped out at Wyn’s place so they could watch him through the front window.

Her sister and Samantha Fremont were always trying to set up Wynona on dates with tourists they met in town or guys from Shelter Springs. She had gone with them a few times but the experiences were usually awkward affairs. Either the guys were intimidated because she was a police officer and hardly said a word all night like they were afraid she would arrest them if they spoke out of turn or they were titillated by the idea and wanted to know weird details like how she managed to frisk a guy without touching his junk.

She found both kinds equally abhorrent. She didn’t even want to think about how long it had been since she had a serious relationship.

Okay, she knew. Five years. She had broken up with her last steady boyfriend the day before the fateful New Year’s Eve party that had changed everything.

She pushed the memory away as she reached Cade’s house.

In the moonlight now, his place looked tidy and comfortable, with that big Adirondack chair on the porch and the lavender blooming in the curving garden along the sidewalk.

It looked very different from the ramshackle shack where he had grown up. He had remade his environment just as he had remade himself.

As she approached the house, she saw lights glimmering in the back. She took a chance and decided he was probably on his deck overlooking the river.

She heard him before she saw him. At first she thought he might have a visitor or be talking on the phone. When she rounded the corner, she saw he was alone, with no phone in sight. Indeed, he was sitting on another Adirondack chair with his feet up on a matching footrest while he chatted companionably with her dog.

By the sound of it, they were discussing baseball. She had to smile, charmed by the scene. He had created a comfortable oasis here beside the river, with big globe lights strung overhead, comfortable outdoor furniture and even a few big planters that overflowed with what looked like more perennials. She tried to picture Cade at the garden center outside Shelter Springs and couldn’t quite manage it.

Young Pete sensed her first. He lifted his head and stretched his mouth in that expression that looked uncannily like a smile. A few seconds later, Cade turned, his gaze searching the darkness where she stood.

He was so blasted gorgeous, with that dark hair, the silver-blue eyes, the delicious hint of afternoon shadow covering his jaw and chin. If she didn’t have her hands full of salad and cheesecake, she would have pressed a hand to her stomach and the sudden nerves jumping there.

Settle down. This was Cade. Her boss. Her brother’s best friend. Her father’s trainee. Yes, he had half the women in town head over heels for him. Yes, when he smiled that rare, bright smile, she forgot her own name. So what? She could come up with a million and one reasons she couldn’t let any of that matter.

She stepped into the light and walked up the steps of the deck. For just an instant, she thought she saw something in his gaze, something hot and hungry. She felt an answering tug in her stomach but told herself she was only hungry—and completely imagining things.

“I figured you were back here.”

“Where else would we be on a beautiful summer night in Haven Point?”

“Excellent point.” She smiled and set down the containers of food on the patio table. “I brought salad and a couple pieces of my aunt Jenny’s cheesecake I had in the freezer. It should be thawed by the time we’re ready for dessert.”

“Yum.” He rose, all lanky, masculine grace, and headed for the grill. “I was hungry so I put the steaks on about ten minutes ago.”

“Great. I’m starving.”

“It won’t be long now. Have a seat. I’m afraid I don’t have much to drink in the house but beer.”

“Ice water is great for me.” Her throat had been scratchy since the fire, but she decided not to mention that for obvious reasons.

While he went inside the kitchen, she sank into the empty chair next to the one where Cade had been sitting. She reached down and petted her dog, who yawned and settled into a more comfortable position.

The night seemed soft and lovely, the kind of evening made for relaxing out under the stars.

The pine and spruce around his property lent an appealing citrusy tang to the air. She inhaled it, struck again by how very close she had come that afternoon to never seeing another glorious Haven Point sunset.

No doubt it was a reaction to the events of the day but the world seemed vibrant and new, overflowing with possibilities.

She hadn’t taken nearly enough time to just sit and be lately. When she wasn’t working, she was either helping out at her mother’s or spending time with friends. That was one more thing she intended to change, she resolved.

“It’s so peaceful back here,” she said when Cade brought her a glass with water with a slice of lemon in it. “I could sit here all evening, just listening to the water and the birds and the wind in the trees. If this were my back deck, I would never want to leave.”

He laughed as he headed back to the grill. “Your house is two hundred yards away with the exact same view.”

“Not the same at all, because of the way the river curves. You have a much better view of the mountains.”

“That’s only because I lost three trees in the flood.”

He gestured to the river’s edge, where she saw a trio of small saplings interspersed among the larger trees lining the bank.

The previous summer, the Hell’s Fury rose to dangerous levels because of a dam break upstream. Everyone in Haven Point mobilized to fill sandbags and help people who lived along the river move their valuables to higher ground.

Because of the efforts of so many, local damage had been minimal, but a few properties still had been affected. She knew others whose basements had been flooded, their landscaping completely washed away.

“I’d forgotten you lost trees. They’re pretty close too. You were lucky they didn’t fall on the house.”

“It was a near miss, actually. The branches at the crown of the biggest one brushed the house.”

“Scary!”

He shrugged. “The trees were old and not healthy anymore and probably should have been taken out years ago. They obviously had weak root systems or they wouldn’t have been impacted by the flood.”

“It could have been much worse, for all of us. And now you have a beautiful view because of it.”

“I guess that’s the thing about floods and fires and other natural disasters,” he said. “The damage from them can be devastating, but they can also be catalysts for change, offering entirely new perspectives.”

It was an interesting way to look at things. “That’s true. When I was little, we went to Yellowstone seven or eight years after the huge fires that burned more than a third of the park. I remember being so sad about all the snags of burned trees you could still see but my dad explained that the fires were necessary.”

“Right. Lodgepole pinecones can’t open and begin to reseed without being exposed to high heat.”

“It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Certain plants and animals started to thrive only because of the fire and entirely new areas of the park were open to view for the first time in recent history.”

Maybe the fire in Darwin Twitchell’s barn had been her catalyst for change.





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