Return of the Wild Son. Cynthia Thomason

night class. Tomorrow was Friday, her day off from the bakery. She’d have to implement plan B.

      

      “W HAT ARE YOU DOING here?” Shirley asked when Jenna came into the bakery the next morning at eight o’clock.

      “I just need to pick something up,” she said, smiling at the dozen customers having coffee at the counter as she passed into the kitchen. After surprising her mother with a kiss on the cheek, she helped herself to fresh-from-the-oven raspberry pastries.

      “Where are you going with those?” Marion asked.

      “Isn’t it obvious, Mom? Who, recently returned to this town, likes raspberry Danish?”

      Marion watched as she dropped the goodies into a bag. “You’re taking those to Nate?”

      Jenna smiled. “Absolutely. I can be nice.”

      Marion pulled a loaf of bread from the oven and poked it, testing its doneness. “I think he’ll be as hard to influence as Bill Hastings.”

      Jenna folded the top of the bag. “Yeah, I remember how well that worked.” She headed for the exit. “Wish me luck.”

      Marion didn’t glance up from her baking. “Somehow I think I should be wishing Nate luck. Don’t be too hard on him.”

      Jenna left the bakery and headed two blocks down Main Street before turning onto Sparrow Court. Word had traveled quickly around town that Nate Shelton was back and had taken up temporary residence at Cove Country House, owned by long-time residents Jubal and Bonnie Payne.

      Jenna walked three blocks under budding maple and oak trees to the charming three-story home. Like most of the houses on the narrow lanes off Main, it had been built in the early 1900s, at the height of Finnegan Cove’s lumber boom. Jenna was thankful she’d been able to buy a carriage house next to one of the Victorians two blocks over on Hummingbird Street.

      She opened the gate in the picket fence and proceeded up the brick walkway to the blue-and-white gingerbread house. Jubal greeted her from a rocker on the porch, where he was having coffee and reading the Sutter’s Point newspaper. “’Morning, Jenna. Did you come to see Bonnie?” He retreated behind his newspaper. “If you came to see me, I don’t know anything about the lighthouse.”