He gave her an almost-smile, though she didn’t miss the rather bleak look in his blue eyes that made her suspect the rumor mill had something else right—Ben Kilpatrick wasn’t any happier to find himself back in Haven Point than she was.

Even with the dark shadows in his gaze, he was far more gorgeous than he’d been when she was a girl. That chiseled jaw was more, well, chisel-y, his eyes seemed more intense, his features masculine and strong.

The last time she had seen Ben in person had been at Lily’s funeral. The sudden realization sent a wave of remembered grief washing over her for her friend and his sister, one of the most courageous people she had ever met. Lily had lost her battle against cystic fibrosis the year they both turned thirteen.

She pushed away the echoing sadness. Lily had been gone a long time. As much as she might despise Ben, McKenzie could never fault him for his care of his sister. In all the years she had been friends with Lily, she had never seen Ben be anything but loving and kind with her, patient under very difficult circumstances.

She had a long list of other sins she could lay at his feet, however, starting with the abrupt way he had left town right after the funeral and taken her idealism and trust with him.

“I’d like to say I’m happy to see you, but I’ve never been a very good liar.”

“Oh, ouch.”

His mouth quirked up in a smile and he appeared more amused than offended.

She had a hundred accusations she wanted to hurl at him, years of helpless frustration as she watched her town die inch by inch.

Instead, she focused on what was really the least important of them all.

“Is this your dog?” she demanded.

“No. Okay. Yes. Sort of. This is Hondo.”

The dog’s tongue lolled out and he appeared to beam broadly at his name.

“Like the John Wayne movie?”

“I suppose. I didn’t name him.”

The dog nosed her hand in a friendly way but McKenzie only frowned, refusing to be charmed by anything associated with Ben. Unlike Rika, she had a few standards. “Is he your dog or isn’t he?”

“Technically, he’s mine, I guess. Until a few weeks ago, he belonged to a good friend. He died unexpectedly but stipulated in his will that I take him. I’m not sure why. It’s a temporary situation. Until I can find him a good home, I guess we’re stuck with each other.”

Naturally, he wouldn’t want to take any unexpected responsibility that had been thrust on him. Why ruin a perfect track record? It was a wonder he bothered to feed and water the dog, if his treatment of the property he inherited in Haven Point was any indication.

“He’s a beautiful dog. Unfortunately, the owner doesn’t allow pets at the vacation rental. I’m sure the property management company informed you of that fact. As usual, you probably think the rules don’t apply to you, right?”

His eyes widened a little at the direct frontal attack. Okay, she hadn’t meant to add that last bit. She probably should have tried for politeness first but the hostility had sort of slipped out.

“Actually,” he answered, a little stiffly, “when I was looking for a place to stay with Hondo while I’m in town, Carole was kind enough to make an exception to the no-pets rule.”

McKenzie could just bet Carole would make an exception. She had always liked the other woman and considered them good friends for the short time Carole had been her next-door neighbor before the divorce, but she knew Carole was eager to add another husband to her collection—even one several years younger than she. A man with an amazingly attractive portfolio would only sweeten the deal.

Not to mention that sinful mouth and eyes the same deep blue as Lake Haven on a calm August morning.

She frowned. She didn’t care about his sinful mouth, for heaven’s sake.

“I’ve discovered in the few weeks since Hondo here came to live with me that he isn’t crazy about hotels—and, quite frankly, vice versa. Since I’m not sure how long I’ll be in town, a vacation rental seemed the most logical option. The dock was definitely a bonus.”

“I saw the boat out front when I came home. It’s a Killy, isn’t it?”

His family’s boatworks had been famous across the world for making beautiful wooden boats. Many older models were considered classics and were highly sought by collectors for their tight construction and classic lines. In only a few days, Haven Point would be hosting its annual wooden boat festival as part of Lake Haven Days, when collectors came from all over to share their love for the elegantly crafted boats.

“Yes. The Delphine, named for my grandmother.”

The Delphine was one of the most expensive and hard-to-find of the older Killy models, she knew. While McKenzie wasn’t exactly an expert on the boatworks and its history or products, she had chaired the Lake Haven Days committee three years in a row at the request of the previous city administration and had come to know more than she ever expected about wooden boats and the passionate fans who adored them.

She never would have expected Ben to be the sentimental type, especially considering he was the one who made sure Kilpatrick Boatworks would never manufacture another Killy.

In one single afternoon five years earlier, he dealt a crippling blow to the town and his family’s legacy when he closed the factory and put two hundred people out of work.

She curled her fingers into fists at the reminder. How dare he show up in the town he had irreparably damaged, towing behind him bold and painful evidence of all he had taken away? Was he trying to rub everybody’s faces in it?

Grrr.

The words he had spoken suddenly penetrated the fog of anger around her.

I’m not sure how long I’ll be in town.

Was he talking days, weeks, months? All of it spent next door to her?

How would she endure it, when some heretofore unknown violent part of her wished she could drag him behind his family’s beautiful boat for two or three hours?

Having him next door was going to be torture. Her comfortable little house on the lake was her sanctuary. She desperately needed the calm oasis she found here on Redemption Bay, overlooking the raw, craggy mountains reflected in the vivid blue waters of the lake.

With him staying next door, she wouldn’t be able to relax for an instant. She would always be aware he was there, just a few shrubs away.

She couldn’t bear it.

Okay. Gloves officially coming off now. The idea that he had brought one of his family’s boats back to town to float in Lake Haven in front of everyone like some kind of taunt was the last straw. Why bother being polite?

“I’ll admit, I’m surprised to see you here. Last I heard, you despised Haven Point and never wanted to see the place again. You’ve certainly done your best to see us obliterated off the map.”

He frowned. “I never despised Haven Point. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, wouldn’t you say?”

“What else would you call it? You deliberately let the downtown fall into ruins.”

“I did?”

The jerk actually had the nerve to look surprised at the accusation.

“You must have driven through town on your way here. You had to have seen all the boarded-up buildings and vacant properties in your buildings.”

“Not mine now,” he pointed out. “Aidan Caine owns them.”

“For five years they were yours!” she exclaimed. “And for five years you did absolutely nothing to take care of them except hire a completely incompetent property manager, who robbed you blind along with the tenants of your buildings.”

He glowered at her, looking suddenly as dark and forbidding as thunderstorms over the Redemptions.

Rika whined a little and suddenly planted her haunches at McKenzie’s feet. McKenzie highly doubted Ben would pose any sort of threat to her but she appreciated the moral support, anyway.

“I might have been less...attentive than I should have been,” he said stiffly. “I’ve been a little busy the last few years. And, again, I haven’t owned the property since I sold everything to Aidan.”

“Regardless, the problem was created by you. Haven Point is practically a ghost town, with almost half of the businesses closing or relocating outside the city limits to Shelter Springs since Joe died. I’m the mayor of Haven Point. Did you know that?”

“I did not. Congratulations?”

“Condolences are more in order, thanks to you. It’s a rough job, especially with our constantly plummeting tax revenue. It kills me to know we could have a thriving, active downtown filled with shops, restaurants, hotels, entertainment—if the man who owned most of the real estate in this town hadn’t completely ignored his responsibilities for the last five years.”

His jaw clenched for only a moment before his features smoothed out. “Wow. This is an interesting way to welcome someone to your town. Go directly on the attack.”

She refused to feel guilty. He deserved every ounce of her hostility and more. “I’m very welcoming to newcomers, in general.”

“Just not to me.”

Could he honestly blame her? He had created a huge mess and even with Aidan’s cooperation now, she didn’t know how to help her town find its way out.

“Let’s be honest. You’re not my favorite person right now.”

“Message received, loud and clear, Mayor. I’ll try to stay out of your way while I’m here. That might be a touch difficult, considering we’re next-door neighbors and share a boat dock, but I’ll do my best.”

If it hadn’t been such a long day—and if she weren’t so darn angry at the man—she might have been able to muster a facsimile of politeness, but right now it didn’t seem worth the effort. “How long are you staying?”

“I’m not sure,” he hedged. “A week. Maybe two. Depends.”

On what? His mood? The moon cycle? The futures market?

Why was he here?

He didn’t seem inclined to be forthcoming about that particular question on his own and she couldn’t figure out a way to ask, especially considering she had just unloaded years of frustration on him.

His reasons for being here were none of her business, really. He could travel anywhere he wanted. She was the mayor, not some petty megalomaniac who could demand to see his papers once he crossed over her town boundary.

McKenzie fought the urge to press a hand to her suddenly shaky insides. She had never been very good at confrontations and now that the heat of this one with Ben had passed, she felt a little quivery and unsettled. At the moment, she only wanted to go home, lock the door, run a hot bath and try to pretend the past fifteen minutes never happened.

She certainly wasn’t going to bring her chicken breast out to the terrace to grill now. She would just have to sauté it or something, which wasn’t nearly as good.

Darn the man for ruining what had promised to be such a beautiful evening.

“Good night, then. I’ll do my best to keep Rika on my property.”

“I don’t mind her. I get the feeling the boundary between the houses has been fairly fluid. I see no reason to change that. She’s welcome over there.”

She nodded, but gripped her dog’s collar tightly so her poodle wouldn’t be tempted to go sniffing after Hondo again.

Cheap tart. Okay, so he was big and beautiful, with all those muscles. That didn’t make him good for her.

The dogs, of course. She was talking about the dogs.

“Come, Rika.”

After considerable effort, she managed to convince her dog to leave her new BFF and return to the house. The dog immediately plopped down onto her favorite spot on the rug in the sunroom.

Usually the room was McKenzie’s favorite of the house, too—but with those glass windows, she was entirely too aware of her new neighbor’s presence next door. She closed all the blinds before she turned around and marched into the kitchen.

Her hands were shaking and her knees felt as weak as the first time she had gone backcountry skiing with her friend Paulo and they had nearly been caught in an avalanche when a cornice above them had broken free.

They had managed to ski out of the path just in time. Right now, she didn’t feel as lucky as that day. She felt as if thousands of tons of snow and ice and rock had just tumbled over her head.

Ben Kilpatrick. Here, in Haven Point, after all these years, and tougher, harder, more sexy than ever.

Oh, she used to have such a crush on the man. It was humiliating, really, when she remembered how she had pined for him. He barely knew she was alive but she had watched him with almost stalker-like intensity. When she would visit Lily at Snow Angel Cove to bring her homework or hang out and talk about boys, McKenzie used to pray he would be there. She hoped every time that he would come into Lily’s room—which had become basically a hospital room in later months as her condition regressed—to check on her at some point during the visit.

When he did stop by, he barely noticed McKenzie. She knew that. He plainly adored his ill younger sister and probably didn’t know McKenzie existed.

He had been brooding and angry back then. Though she had never been quite sure why, she sensed the atmosphere at Snow Angel Cove hadn’t been exactly nurturing and warm. She had always liked his mother, Lydia, but Joe was a serious A-hole most of the time, cold and cruel, especially to Ben.

Why was he here? And why now? It was the worst possible timing. She was heading into her busiest few weeks of the year. Lake Haven Days, the boat show, the Fourth of July town celebrations. She didn’t expect to have five minutes to even breathe in the next week to ten days and now she had to worry about Ben Kilpatrick living next door.

It was enough to make a woman want to tear her hair out—or want to curl up in her bed under the blankets and pretend she didn’t have a business or a town to run.

* * *

AFTER THEIR NEIGHBORS went inside their house, Ben led Hondo next door. The dog immediately found a stick under the big birch tree, carried it to the water’s edge, then flopped down on his belly and started to chew it.

Ben watched him for a moment, then took a few more steps to a double swing overlooking the water just a few yards from the dock.

It was beautiful here. Wispy clouds encircled the tops of the Redemption Mountains and the setting sun painted them pink and coral and lavender, a scene perfectly reflected in the clear waters of the lake.

Because of the way the shoreline curved, he could see the lights of downtown begin to twinkle in the twilight and with a piercing cry, a red-tailed hawk suddenly soared from one of the tall pines that grew in such abundance around the lake, lending their crisp, tart scent to the scene.

Haven Point was an idyllic spot, really. How had he forgotten that over the years? Somehow he must have let the darkness and despair of his home life swallow the memory.

Yes, it was pretty. That didn’t make him any happier at being forced to come back.

He could have said no.

He wasn’t exactly an indentured servant. When Aidan asked him to take on this assignment after Marsh’s sudden fatal heart attack, Ben could have told him to kiss off, to send someone else at Caine Tech.

Yes, they were facing a top-level decision but he could have picked two or three others on his team or Aidan’s, people he trusted, who were likely to be more objective about Haven Point than he was.

It would have been the logical move—and Ben was nothing if not logical.

So why hadn’t he? Why was he here on a beautiful late-June evening gazing out at a couple of colorful wood ducks swooping in to land on the water?

He didn’t have a clear answer to that, even inside his own head. Something was tugging him back here and had been for some time. Closure, maybe? Some sense of unfinished business? He had left town so abruptly, the afternoon of Lily’s funeral, and he hadn’t been back since.

Whatever the reason drawing him to Haven Point, he was here now. Aidan had wanted him to take over for Marshall Phillips on this fact-finding assignment and Ben had agreed.

“I think it will be good for you to go back,” Aidan said three days earlier when he came to Ben’s house personally to ask him to come. “Take it from a man who survived a brain tumor. At some point in your life, before it’s too late, you have to grab your ghosts by the throat and tell them to back the hell off. The only way to do that is to face them head-on.”

He hadn’t seen the point in arguing with Aidan that he didn’t have ghosts, unless he were counting the painful memories of the younger sister he adored.

He didn’t hate Haven Point. It was merely a small, beautifully situated town where he had once lived—one he had intended to spend the rest of his life without ever stepping foot in again.

“Besides,” Aidan had continued with that logic that was always so damn hard for Ben to refute. “You were just saying how that Killy you’ve been working to renovate for the last year is done and ready for her maiden voyage. It seems fitting that you put her in the water for the first time at Lake Haven, where she came from.”

Through the well-landscaped shrubs and trees, he caught sight of a figure moving past the window of the pretty little lake house next door.

He wasn’t sure he would be able to tolerate living next door to Haven Point’s vociferous mayor, even for a few days.

He remembered McKenzie. Those long-lashed dark eyes in her dusky skin, the inky hair, the dimples, which tended to flash equally, whether she was angry or happy.

How could he forget her, when she had been Lily’s dearest and most loyal friend? While his sister’s other friends seemed to have dropped off the edge of the earth after her condition deteriorated and she was forced to curtail most activity outside Snow Angel Cove, McKenzie had come faithfully at least two or three times a week, bringing homework and goodies and movies for the two of them to watch.

Yeah, he had been a self-absorbed, angry teenager, just trying to survive living in his father’s house until he could graduate from high school and get the hell out. But even he had been able to see that McKenzie had made Lily’s last year far more bearable—even enjoyable—than it would have been otherwise.

He would have liked to be able to thank her for that—but considering her animosity toward him, he wasn’t sure she wanted to hear anything he had to say.

He inhaled deeply then let out a sigh. What had he expected? He had burned every bridge he’d ever crossed here and had walked away without looking back.

Now here he was again, fully aware that his history here with the people of this town—the difficult heritage he didn’t like to remember—would make the job much harder than it would have been for Marshall.

CHAPTER THREE

AFTER A RESTLESS NIGHT filled with very strange dreams involving a certain sexy billionaire, McKenzie rose before sunrise and headed outside, leaving a disgruntled Rika behind. She grabbed her kayak and paddle from the shed next to the lake then launched it from the dock.

The rim of the sun started to appear above the high peaks of the Redemptions as she paddled south along the shoreline through clear, quiet water.

Only a few hardy anglers shared the water with her but they were way out in the deep water of the middle, probably going after the huge lake trout that could be found there. She hardly noticed them as she stroked through tendrils of mist that curled off the water on these mountain mornings.

A few loons flapped their feathers and moved away from her as she paddled in their direction. To her left, a fish jumped, going after all the little morning bugs that skimmed across the surface, and in the pine trees offshore on the other side, she heard an owl hoot as he returned to bed after a night prowling the forests. Sometimes it seemed like a dream that she really had a life here—a good one, too, filled with good friends, responsibilities she did her best to tackle, a thriving business she loved.

Things could have turned out very differently for her, the child of an overworked single mother who struggled every day to care for both of them.

When she considered what could have happened to her if she had ended up in foster care in California after her mother died, she had to cringe.

Okay. Things here hadn’t exactly been perfect for her. She glanced at the shoreline, still in shadows as the sun continued its slow climb over the mountains. From here, she could see the house of her father and stepmother, where she had come to live when she was ten—a frightened, lost, grieving young girl.

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 without a fishing rod.”

“I’m only out there so I can watch you not catching anything,” she retorted, which made the whole table bust up.

She spent a few more minutes talking to the group and was about to go order her coffee and head to the store when Barbara Serrano headed over with a go-cup for her all ready.

No wonder she loved the woman.

“Is it true?” Barbara asked, holding the coffee just out of McKenzie’s reach as if they were playing a particularly cruel game of Monkey in the Middle.

“I don’t know. I hope not,” she answered automatically. “Is what true?”

“People have been talking all morning. Word is, Ben Kilpatrick is back in town.”

Instantly, the diner seemed to go deathly silent, as if somebody had flipped a switch. The comfortable buzz of conversation, the occasional laughter, even the clatter of silverware seemed to shut down as everybody in the vicinity stopped as if Barbara had just doused them all with McKenzie’s coffee.

“Kilpatrick. That son of a—” Ed bit off whatever harsh name he wanted to call Ben. His usually kindly, wrinkled face tightened into a scowl that shocked her, until she remembered that Ed as well as his only son had worked at the boatyard. After Kilpatrick’s closed its doors five years ago, Ed’s son and family had been forced to move away. She knew he lived in the Pacific Northwest along with Ed’s only grandchildren.

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