“The hardest thing for me is eating alone. Would you...go to dinner with me sometime?”
Silence met his question and his palms seemed suddenly sweaty. Lord. Why was this so much harder at fifty-seven than it had been at seventeen?
“Yes,” she finally said. “Yes, I think I would like that very much.”
The sun suddenly seemed blinding off the water. “Great. Perfect. What about Sunday? There’s a concert at the park afterward, if you’d like to go. Bluegrass, apparently.” He wouldn’t have known that except he was staring right at the poster on the wall outside the diner.
“Why don’t we start with dinner, then we can go from there.” She sounded overwhelmed suddenly, as if she regretted agreeing to go. He wondered if this was as awkward for her as for him.
“Dinner is a good start. A very good start. I’ll see you then.”
And with luck, he would find a way to see Ben before then, too, one more time—and maybe finally, after all these years, together they could pull back the lid containing all the secrets between them.
MCKENZIE GAZED AROUND her workroom at the women gathered there.
Her troops.
Her sister, Devin, sat next to Megan Hamilton, who owned the inn that had burned down last year, and across from Lindy-Grace Keegan, McKenzie’s right hand at the store. All around the battered table in the workroom of Point Made Flowers and Gifts sat her dearest friends, the other members of the Haven Point Helping Hands.
Her heart swelled as she gazed at their beautiful faces. One urgent phone call, that’s all it had taken, and she had fifteen women willing to drop everything on a busy Saturday morning to see what they could do to help.
Hazel Selby Brewer and her sister Eppie had obviously been playing tennis, at least judging by their matching white skirts and short-sleeved sweaters that showed off their knobby knees, varicose veins and age spots. Though a year apart—Irish twins, they always informed people proudly—they dressed almost identically. The two were inseparable and had even married twin brothers—though since Hazel’s husband, Donald, died two years earlier, Eppie’s husband, Ronald, had taken over escorting both women around town.
Hazel and Eppie wore their wrinkles well. They were the oldest of the Helping Hands at eighty-three and eighty-two. The youngest, Samantha Fremont and her best friend, Katrina Bailey, were in their early twenties. They dressed in short shorts and tight T-shirts and both looked a bit hungover, as if they’d partied a little too late on Friday night at the Mad Dog, which had featured a live band the night before.
In between the two ends of the spectrum were housewives, a real estate agent, a couple of teachers. They weren’t particular about who could come to the Helping Hands meetings.
She loved every single one of them.
McKenzie drew in a deep breath that smelled of flowers and raffia and sage. “Thank you all for coming to meet with us. I know everybody is crazy busy right now, especially on a summer Saturday with Lake Haven Days in less than a week. I hardly have time to take a shower most days, and I imagine it’s the same for all of you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate each one of you for dropping everything and coming for this impromptu meeting.”
“What’s going on?” Linda Fremont demanded. “Marie wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“Because I don’t know anything,” Marie Caldwell said in a testy tone. “All I heard from Hazel was that Kenzie had called an emergency meeting and it was all hands on deck. That’s the message I got and the message I passed along.”
“It had better be important,” Linda Fremont said, her features as sour as ever. “I need to be at the store. This is one of our busiest days of the summer.”
McKenzie gave a patient smile. Linda didn’t need to be there, since her daughter Samantha had come as well and could have passed along any message—but then Linda would have had to miss something, which she would have found intolerable.
“This won’t take long, I promise.” She tried her best to be sweet to Linda, even when the woman was at her most annoying. Which was quite often, unfortunately.
“I think I can guess what this is about,” Barbara Serrano said. “Does it have anything to do with our unexpected visitor and your companion at the diner this morning?”
Only a few people looked confused—but that was still a few more than McKenzie had expected. She had anticipated the news of Ben’s return would have already spread through Haven Point like a late-October frost, touching everything in its path.
“Who was it?” Sam Fremont asked, blue eyes widening with interest. “Are you dating somebody, Kenz?”
“No! Absolutely not! Anyway, why would I call an emergency meeting to tell you all about my date?”
“Breaking news?” Devin asked.
She glared at her sister. “It wasn’t a date. I can’t believe you all haven’t heard this already, but, okay. Here it is. Ben Kilpatrick is back in town.”
This caused a minor stir. Sam and Kat gaped at each other, probably trying to figure out how they had missed the news that a gorgeous billionaire bachelor was suddenly in their humble midst. Hazel and Eppie also looked shocked. Other than that, most of the women wore expressions ranging from curiosity to disgruntlement to outright anger.
“Betty Orton came into the store this morning and told me but I didn’t believe it.”
“Why didn’t you say anything, Mom?” Sam demanded.
“I just said, I didn’t believe it. What’s the point of passing along gossip without a shred of proof?” she said. McKenzie almost rolled her eyes. Linda delighted in sharing any tidbit she heard and rarely bothered to authenticate any of it.
“It seemed impossible to me and that’s what I told Betty. How can he dare show his face here after what he’s done to this town?” Linda glowered.
“I’ll admit I was pretty surprised, too, when he sauntered into the diner this morning like the cock of the walk.”
“Oh, he was always such a polite boy,” Hazel exclaimed. “And so handsome. Remember how handsome he was, Eppie?”
Eppie beamed. “Oh, yes. I remember, with those brooding blue eyes. Like a young Paul Newman in From the Terrace.”
“Oooh, I loved that movie,” her sister exclaimed.
“Is he still as handsome, Mayor?” Eppie asked.
“Well, yes, Eppie dear. But that’s not the point.”
“What does he want?” Linda Fremont demanded. “Let me guess. He and Aidan are going to raze the whole downtown and build a golf course.”
“What?” Hazel exclaimed. “That’s not right! We don’t need a golf course! Shelter Springs already has one. That would be just plain crazy!”
“We could take up golf next, Hazel,” Eppie protested. “I think it would be fun.”
Okay, she dearly loved all these women and they had been amazingly sweet to her over the years but sometimes during these meetings, McKenzie felt as if she was trying to grab hold of a whole herd of greased piglets.
Did piglets run in herds?
She pushed away the stupid random thought. “Nobody is building a golf course, I promise. Look, our time is limited here. Lindy-Grace and I have a busy Saturday ahead of us and I know the rest of you do, too. Let’s try to stay focused so we can all get back to it. The truth