by Rebecca Ryan
Love Bound
An Echo Bay Inn Romance
by
Rebecca Ryan
Copyright @ 2020 Rebecca A. Moreán
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact at www.rebeccaryanbooks.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Design by Steamy Designs
First Printing by RAM5 Press
Other books by Rebecca Ryan
Seeing Just You (stand alone)
Waiting Just for You (stand alone)
Just for You (Duet)
For anyone who has ever waited for love,
and trusted they would find it.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
COMING NEXT. . .
THANK YOU!
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Claire
I sit in the stiff sea grass on a giant slab of granite. A thick vein of rose quartz runs through the center of it and my knees are to my chest, my stomach in knots as I stare at the horse in the paddock. His head hangs low as if he’s trying to retch, belly extended, legs splayed out as he paces. All signs of colic, but it's not.
He was rescued from a burning barn. The owner—a skinny little man who reeked of cheap whiskey and his own shit—had doused the north perimeter with gasoline before he tossed the match. He made certain the animals he didn’t want to care for anymore were locked inside. Over a dozen scrawny laying hens, two cats, one parasite-infested pig, and two healthy lambs perished. The large, chocolate gelding screamed as flames raged. He bit through his tether and tore at the south-facing door with his hooves and teeth.
I'd had my morning swim already in the choppy capped bay, then picked up the call from George Johnson, Geo,—my sort-of adopted father—while peeling out of my wetsuit. Officially, he serves as our guardian, but I feel like his daughter. The fire chief’s son had the gelding trailered, and it was all he could do to not beat the crap out of skinny, wretched, Ernie Tolbert.
Would I take the horse?
Of course.
Would I take pictures and examine the charred remains of the other animals for the prosecution?
Of course.
In shock, exhausted, his right rump scorched with a six-inch ragged burn, the gelding walked slowly from trailer to paddock. Now, he refuses to eat or drink and slowly pads the perimeter in a circle—a sign of mental duress. And he needs to eat. His ribs spread painfully under his dull, brittle hair and the hollows above his eyes are sunken, darker even than his sooty coat.
My gaze shifts to the sea. It's a cold, gray, late afternoon in mid-September. On the coast of Maine, that means forty-degree nights and maybe sixty-degree days if we get lucky. I love the water. When little kids ask me what my favorite color is—and it's always little kids with sick dogs or kitties, bunny rabbits, or hamsters—I always smile and say, "Whatever color the sea is today."
There's a shout to my right, but the horse doesn’t flinch. Lobstermen are coming in with their catches, banding the lobsters their stern men missed. Echo Bay smells different in the early evenings after a good catch. Yes, saltwater and fog. Yes, pine and granite. But notes of boat petrol and the greeny brine of lobster also wafts. Now they're calling to one another, checking in—part of the late afternoon ritual.
Brighty, who should be retired, raises a hand in greeting.
I wave back.
He used to bounce me on his knee.
Now he walks along the little dirt trail in front of The Inn and passes it to get from the docks to where I sit.
The gelding blows hard and nickers as Brighty huffs up the hill. In this part of Maine, the roiling coastline is as irregular vertically as it is horizontally. Hills and cliffs buck up in one direction and jagged rocks jut into the sea in the other. The horse nickers again, but not to welcome this stranger to my rocky perch. The gelding's lungs are singed, and he tries to bring up phlegm. Pneumonia could be next.
Would I take him?
Of course.
"Hey, Docky," calls Brighty, a little out of breath, but loving his own name for me—a combination of ‘doc’ and ‘the docks.’ He fancies himself a punster. "Got yourself a new patient?"
I stand, the late afternoon sun's heat trapped under my windbreaker. "He's from Waldoboro. Did you hear about that barn burning? The one that was set?"
His face darkens. "What people do," he says, shoving his hands into his pockets.
"He's the only one who made it out." I shade my eyes against the afternoon sun.
"George bring him?"
"George and David."
"Sorry I missed 'em."
I know he means Geo, who lives in Portland now. He sees David, the fire chief's son, all the time at The Pines—the ill-aptly named diner perched on the town's bald, rocky cliff with no pines, maples, or birches in a three-hundred-yard radius. There are just sloppy wild roses growing along a sagging split rail fence.
Brighty's stern man yells something to him and Brighty waves him off. "He gonna make it?" he asks, looking at the horse.
"Don’t know," I say. "I can’t see into his lungs."
"You need that ultrasound gizmo thing, ay? Why do you take these cases?"
"Somebody has to," I say.
"Somebody has to," was my mother's mantra and she repeated it my entire life. All twenty-eight years. Even now, after she's gone, I still hear her voice in my ear.
"You're going to have your hands full enough with your new neighbor," he says with a side nod to The Inn.
This is a sore point. He can tell from my face I'm not ready to discuss it.
"George did the best he could," Brighty starts.
"I know. I know. It had to be sold."
"He did good by you kids."
I stuff my hands in my back pockets. "It just makes me sad."
The Inn at Echo Bay used to be majestic. At least I thought so when I was growing up. There were five of us: Chloe, me, Devon, Laurel, and Travis. When we were really little, Mom and Chloe ran The Inn, and I helped Dad with the animals at the practice. When Devon and Laurel were old enough, Devon helped out with housekeeping and maintenance. And little Laurel learned to make all kinds of scones by the time she was six. She was the only kid I knew with sand on her feet and flour up to her elbows. Then Travis came to us. He immediately turned his attention to animals. By the time I left for college, he was ready to help Dad out with the practice and take my place. It felt—I felt—like everyt
hing was set.
I was wrong.
We had to let The Inn go, and it's been wasting away for the last decade. And though the office and corral aren't attached, they're part of the same parcel, so whoever bought the place last week is going to be a very close neighbor. It makes me sick to my stomach. The thought of someone else in there. Someone else's family living in our home.
This is why Brighty could read my face.
The stern man shouts again and Brighty sighs before offering a quick hug. Then, I watch him walk back to the docks where the Little Lightning II rocks in her moors. It's the dinghy they use to bring in their catch. Little Lightning III rocks daintily, moored in Echo Bay. Brighty lost the original Little Lightning—and almost his life—when I was a teenager. Moving quickly, he steps into the dinghy and starts lifting crates of lobster.
Even after growing up here, I never did get my sea-legs. Brighty could probably balance a Champagne flute on his head during his haul and not spill a drop. I still have to take Dramamine for longer trips out to islands like Mohegan, Matinicus, or Metinic. Then there's Cat Ledge.
My stomach churns again.
I need to stop thinking about family and boats.
Ducking inside the small stable with three stalls, I start making mental notes of what I need to get at the feed store. Grain, a good curry comb, salt lick. I need new hoof trimmers anyway. I glance at the horse's feet. His hooves curve like evil, elven shoes. After rubbing some crap out of one of the stainless-steel watering dishes at the end of the stall, it's clear I'll have to flush the water pipes and get the automatic waterers back in working condition. Large animals hardly ever spend more than a night and I just haul water from the kitchen with a hose. But this horse will be with me for months. This guy—this rawboned, hacking, mustang mix with blistered lips and bowed tendons—will be here awhile. If he makes it.
I can't predict which charges will stick. It'll probably end up being insurance fraud and Ernie Tolbert will get some fine he can't pay. If found guilty on charges of animal abuse, he'll get fined five hundred bucks and have to do sixty hours of community service. I'll have to face him in court with the photos.
Some people deserve to be shot.
Not killed. Just shot through the knee or something. And I'm a pacifist.
Asshole.
He should get five to ten and have to work at a farm or ranch and deal with animals every single day.
The chocolate gelding comes up behind me and I turn around—too fast. He startles, which is actually a good sign, I remind myself and sidestep to the other end the corral.
He needs a name. But I don’t have it in me to give him one. Not yet. Not until I'm certain he's going to make it. I can’t take a risk on a name that might disappear. I've had way too much of that.
A truck pulls up in the front of The Inn. I can't see the entrance from the back of the property, but then it pulls around between the two buildings. By the time the door slams, whoever was driving is inside.
It’s a big, weather-beaten, hollow tin can of a truck. An old, gold, Ford half-ton pickup. There are rust patches and part of the front fender is twisted off. Probably some local guy from Belfast or Thomason. Maybe Cushing, here to get the inside cleaned up for the new buyer. But then I see Massachusetts plates—and I know.
This is the new buyer.
Doesn’t look like the kind of truck somebody who buys property with cash would drive. I expected a Lexus or BMW or a Mercedes. But there are tools in the back. So not the owner, the contractor. But if he knows the owner, maybe I could leverage something.
"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," my mother always said. She learned this from living in a small town.
I grit my teeth.
I better go make some welcome muffins.
From inside, through the kitchen window, I can see the gelding. The muffins are baking, and the mixing bowl is clean and rinsed and back on its shelf. Evening is beginning to fall, but the rusted-out truck still sits between the buildings.
Wandering out, I shush the gelding into a stall, being careful to stay away from his teeth and hooves. Now that he's settling in, shock may wear off and his personality may not be so reticent. I open the clinic's back window, drag a metal milking crate to stand on, attach a hose to the spigot above the clinic sink, and flood a rubber tub with thirty gallons of water.
The sun is just setting behind Camden hills, the rolling shoulders of the mountains backlit with crimson running behind them. A breeze kicks up and as I stand there, hose in hand, the gelding watches me with wide, frightened eyes.
A light flicks on in the second story floor of The Inn in a room facing the road.
Not the sea.
It's hard to find a room without a view.
The families who would stay in that room stayed for cheap and were always really nice. Most people who came and stayed were nice. The Inn was built to house quarrymen at the turn of the century and was remodeled in the nineteen-sixties as an inn. It went from twenty-one rooms to fourteen, with walls torn down and rooms enlarged. Our parents bought it with a business loan leveraged off the death of a grandmother in Oregon and then my dad turned the servants' house into the clinic—Russo Veterinary Clinic. The offices are downstairs, living quarters up. The sign still hangs at the end of the gravel road.
Three stories high with a walkup attic, The Inn is huge, needs scraping, and a new coat or two of white paint. Twenty pairs of dark green shutters would definitely complicate that chore. My favorites, though, are the old twelve-over-twelve windows that face the ocean and Rock Island and stretch the length of the dining area. Growing up, my one chore was to clean those little squares of glass, so old they warped the view of the sea, land, and trees, reflecting the twelve-foot tides and the occasional clam digger.
Stepping up, I turn the water off. The wind flips a strand of hair in both eyes and they sting and tear while I closed the stall door. The horse has plenty of room to turn around and make eye contact, but he won't. Head down, he stands in a corner and shakes himself. Soot flies. I hope he has enough trust to lie down in the fresh straw.
A movement makes me glance up. All I can see is the construction guy from the waist up. And it is a guy.
My eye still tears and I wipe it quickly, trying not to stare. I can't see the man’s face which makes this all the more voyeuristic, but I don’t care.
His body is hard. Hard. Everything about him is sinew and flesh, ripped, but lean. His stomach is flat and despite the old gauzy curtains blowing in the breeze, I can see the deadly, serrated pattern of a six-pack. The hose starts slipping to the ground then he turns around, steps into full view. No curtains separate my view of him and I take a step back as if to hide.
His chest is ripped, his pecs rising into perfect swaths of muscle with just enough hair to tease, to feel good, skin against skin. A faint tickle. A shiver in expectation and after.
He leans down for a moment to close the window and I hold my breath, afraid of being seen. Though he's not looking at me or even out the window. But it won't slide, and he wrestles with a wooden window prop—probably one my dad made. His arms in the fading pink light are muscular, strong; the arc of his lats moves as he struggles to wrest the prop from the sill. Shadows define the rest of him, cast where muscle tucks neatly to bone and suddenly the window slams shut. He never looked down. I never saw his face.
The curtains stop blowing. The construction guy disappears.
I start breathing again.
This is going to be my neighbor for God knows how long.
Really?
But he's in a financial bed with the enemy. So I definitely can't crawl into bed with him. With a body that hot he probably has a third eye or a hunchback. I never did see his back.
Besides. I don’t sleep around. I don’t even date.
Not anymore.
Unscrewing the hose from the sink spigot and coiling it over a post on the corral, I stomp my rubber work boots and slide them off before going in the si
de door. Just as the door closes, the timer dings.
Muffins are done.
This is my life. My sisters—Devon and Laurel—still make fun of me and how orchestrated my day-to-day existence is. But it has to be. It's the only way I could get through the day, the week, the month, the year, vet school, run a practice, and take care of all of them. Travis—our baby brother—is the only one who gets it, the only one who really sees how much work it is for me to keep it all together, all the time.
Setting the little metal pan on the cooling rack, I glance at the window across the driveway still lit with yellow light. Now that I’m upstairs, my kitchen window is directly across from where that man is sleeping tonight.
I'd better keep it together.
Two days ago, I received a certified letter from a Willis Bertrand, an "attorney at law" in Massachusetts. The letter was four pages long with a ten-page addendum and a survey of the entire property. My hand shook holding the papers and I had to set them down on the kitchen table. I spread them out, tried to read them, but the words were all caps and screamed at me. I ended up calling our family attorney, Aiden McCardell.
Aiden had also received a copy of the letter. It wasn't good news. The new owner—Finn Colton—wanted to break the land trust my parents set up when we were little. And, if he couldn't break it, then he'd petition to have himself named landlord over the clinic and give me three months' notice. I hung up the phone, and sat down hard, refusing to panic. But it was hard not to.
I'm still trying to tamp the terror down. I don’t have money for a court battle. I don’t have endless resources and it sounds like this guy might have a case. All I know about this Finn Colton is from George, who said Finn was a businessman who paid or The Inn with cash. Some rich guy who could just start throwing money around to get his way.
It’s hard to live an orchestrated life. It takes a lot of work to keep all those balls in the air, all at once, and not have them all go flying.