Though nearly two decades had passed since the day Xochitl Vargas had arrived and been transformed slowly into McKenzie Shaw, she still felt the awkwardness of that first day when Richard had pulled into the driveway with her in the passenger seat of his BMW and her one suitcase of belongings in the trunk.
As uncomfortable as it had been for her, how much worse must it have been for her father, showing up in a small town like Haven Point with the half-Mexican love child he fathered with a paralegal during a business trip a decade earlier?
While it had taken her many years to come to this point, she had a more mature perspective now and could acknowledge the person who had been thrust in the most difficult situation—Adele, Devin’s mother and Richard’s wife.
She had opened her home and her family to the by-product of a brief affair her husband had during a difficult time in their marriage. Maybe she hadn’t been completely enthusiastic about the idea—or particularly warm and welcoming, for that matter, but she had done it.
McKenzie couldn’t really say she blamed her. What woman would have been thrilled at being forced to face the evidence of her husband’s infidelity every morning at the breakfast table?
Adele’s coolness had been more than offset by Devin and Richard. Devin had been thrilled to have a new sister—even one just two years her junior—and Richard had gone out of his way to make up for the ten years he had never known she existed.
She felt a pang at the thought of her father, gone three years now. She missed him so much sometimes and would have dearly loved to ask his advice a hundred times a day.
Some distance past her childhood home—where Devin lived alone now since her mother had moved away after Richard’s death—McKenzie pivoted the kayak around so she could paddle back home in time for work.
A few more boats had come out on the water by the time she made it back to Redemption Bay and reached the dock she shared temporarily with Ben. Even so, Lake Haven seemed quiet, serene.
Who could come here without feeling embraced by the beauty of the place?
Ben, probably. She frowned at the reminder as she hauled the kayak out of the water and carried it to the shed. He obviously hated it here—or why would he not have taken at least a passing interest in his holdings over the years?
As she headed out of the shed, she heard a low-throated bark and glanced over to the house next door just in time to see Ben and Hondo come out to the deck. The dog caught her attention first as he hurried down the deck steps to take care of what looked like urgent business. She smiled a little, then looked at Ben—and immediately wished she hadn’t.
He wore only jeans and his hair was damp, as if he had just stepped out of the shower. He held a mug of something steamy and as she watched, he took a sip, then lowered the mug and appeared to be enjoying the sunrise bursting over the mountains.
She stood gawking like an idiot, unable to look away. Her insides felt shaky and hot and she remembered suddenly some of those weird dreams she’d had about him, filled with heat and steam and hunger.
He must have sensed her presence—or, who knows, maybe she whimpered or something. To her great dismay, he glanced in her direction and after an extremely awkward moment that seemed to stretch and tug between them like the taffy Carmela Rocca sold in her store, he lifted a hand in greeting.
With sudden chagrin, she remembered she was wearing a skintight wetsuit—the only way she had found to truly enjoy chilly morning paddles around the lake—and that from his vantage point, he had an entirely unobstructed view of her too-generous curves.
It couldn’t be helped.
She nodded in response and then turned and walked with as much dignity as she could muster to her own house.
When she made it safely inside, she found Rika waiting by the door.
“Seriously?” she exclaimed to the dog. “You were out for fifteen minutes before I left. I can’t believe you need to go again.”
Her dog moved to the sunroom and whined, her attention solely focused on Ben’s German shepherd. Apparently Rika was smitten.
“I’ll let you out again in a minute—as soon as That Man lets his dog back in. You wouldn’t want to fraternize with the enemy, would you?”
Rika looked mournful, obviously disagreeing, but she gave a resigned sigh and plopped onto the rug.
As she expected, Rika hadn’t really needed to go out. When she saw the other dog was no longer in the yard, McKenzie opened the door but her dog only yawned and stretched out on the rug, just as if she hadn’t been sleeping for most of the past ten hours.
McKenzie showered and dressed, then grabbed Rika’s leash and the two of them took off into town.
By the time she reached downtown, she was brimming with energy from the walk and the early-morning paddle and hardly needed her usual coffee at Serrano’s but she and Rika stopped, anyway.
The small columned city hall on Lake Street might be the political apex of Haven Point, with the old city library next door serving as the literary hub, but Serrano’s, in its weathered redbrick building, was the social center of Haven Point.
The diner took up both stories of one of the downtown’s oldest buildings and was founded by the current owner’s great-grandparents, immigrants from Italy.
She tied Rika up in the small fenced grassy area Barbara Serrano and her husband had created just for visiting animals, then strolled through the glass door.
She loved walking inside the diner, that sense of slipping into an Old West time warp. From the mirrored wall behind the counter to the stamped-tin ceiling to the red leather chairs and old tables, Serrano’s likely wasn’t that different now than it had been a hundred years ago when it was founded. In the morning, the place smelled of pancakes, bacon and the best coffee in central Idaho.
Even more than the decor or the alluring scents, McKenzie loved the friendly welcome she always received when she walked inside.
A chorus of hellos rang out, almost as if people had spent hours practicing it together.
She waved to friends in general but made her way to the table of old-timers who had breakfast there each day, mostly to have somewhere to go and shoot the bull. She found them all completely adorable, BS and all, and always stopped to chat.
“Why, if it isn’t the prettiest mayor west of the Mississippi.”
“Morning, Ed.” She smiled at Edwin Bybee. He was just about the happiest guy in town, with a kind word to everyone. It was remarkable to her, especially considering he was fighting stage-four liver cancer.
“How are you this morning?” she asked after kissing him on his wrinkled cheek.
“Oh, I can’t complain. I’m still ticking, aren’t I?”
“Was that you out on the lake this morning?” his constant companion, Archie Peralta, asked her.
He used to be the manager of the grocery store but retired when she was still in high school. She had worked for him in her first job as a bagger and cart retriever and had a deep fondness for him.
“It was indeed.”
He gave a raspy laugh. “Thought so. That pink life jacket is a dead giveaway.”
She grinned. “I hope I didn’t scare the fish away.”
“The cutthroat biting this morning?” asked Paul Weaver, whose family had a small dairy farm on the outskirts of town.
“You’ll have to ask Archie here. He was the one with the line in the water that didn’t seem to be moving much. I was only kayaking.”
“Not this morning. They weren’t going after the bait,” Archie answered. “Don’t know why anybody would bother going out on the water