Serenity Harbor

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Because she missed so much school, she had been behind everyone else—and the medication she took in an attempt to control the seizures left her fuzzy-headed and sleepy, with a hard time focusing on schoolwork.

  StupidKat. TwitchyKat.

  She had hated both nicknames. Kids had said them to her out loud on the playground, but she had also felt the implication from their parents, with their whispers and their pitying looks.

  Her seizures made her different—and when you’re a kid and you’re different from everyone else, you can’t help but feel it.

  Like a miracle, the best possible answer to all her prayers, the seizures started to taper off as she grew older and then stopped completely around the time she hit puberty. Her doctors said that wasn’t uncommon, for kids to grow out of seizures.

  As the months went on without seizure activity, she had begun to feel unrestrained by her physical condition for the first time in her life. Charlene, of course, had still been inclined to hover over her and keep her wrapped tightly in her warm arms at home, but her dad had finally put his foot down, one of the rare times she had seen her parents argue.

  Around the same time the stranglehold eased a little at home, Katrina had started to develop curves and grew into her features. Some of the tourist boys coming to the lake for the summer started to notice her, which made the local boys suddenly wake up and really see her for the first time.

  Heady stuff for a girl who had always felt wrong somehow.

  She wasn’t that girl anymore, she reminded herself now. She was a grown woman with a college degree, a career, and hopes and dreams that didn’t leave time for her to heedlessly throw her heart at the next gorgeous guy who smiled at her.

  While she lived in Bowie’s house, she simply had to keep her attention focused on those dreams. To remind herself of them now, she pulled out her tablet and clicked to the images of Gabi.

  This little girl loved her and was counting on her to provide a better life for her, and she couldn’t afford to let anything distract her from that.

  Not even a man who smelled like sin and kissed like salvation.

  * * *

  “YOU’RE MOVING IN with the man? Seriously?”

  Katrina had to hold the phone away from her ear a moment at Samantha’s shriek.

  “It’s not like that,” Katrina answered, though she had a feeling Sam didn’t hear her. Her friend’s words confirmed the suspicion.

  “How do you do it?” Sam asked, clear admiration in her voice, though Kat thought she detected something else there, too.

  “Do what?”

  “You’ve been in town less than a week, yet you’ve managed to get closer to Bowie than any of the rest of us could even dream.”

  Katrina closed her eyes, wincing. Crap. She had totally forgotten that Sam had a bit of a crush on the town’s newcomer. That first day in the supermarket, she had all but put a “hands off” on him.

  The memory of her mistake of a kiss suddenly flashed through her mind, surrounded by big flashing uh-oh lights. She could never tell Sam about that. Her friend would definitely see it as a betrayal. Yes, it was junior high of them, but they had an unspoken pact that anytime one of them showed interest in a guy, the other one would back down. No exceptions.

  Maybe she shouldn’t move in. Maybe she ought to call Bowie right this moment and tell him she had changed her mind. All night long, she had gone back and forth, wondering the right thing to do.

  Double what was already an exorbitant salary, though. How could she in good conscience say no to that?

  “I barely know him, Sam. I’m helping him with Milo. That’s it.”

  “What does your mom think?”

  She didn’t want to think about her mother’s reaction. As she had predicted to Bowie, Charlene had been over the moon. Oh, she had made a big show of saying she would miss having Katrina in the house to talk to and how she hoped she knew what she was doing, but Kat hadn’t missed the anticipatory gleam in her eyes.

  “She’s fine with it, especially after I promised her that Milo and I will still be around during the day all week leading up to the wedding to help her out with whatever she needs.”

  As she hoped, Samantha allowed herself to be distracted from talking about Bowie. “I can’t believe it’s almost here. That’s why I called, actually. My mom wants to know if you can come in today for your last fitting. She’s all stressed that we’re down to the wire on your particular dress. It’s been a little tough to get this one fitted, with you being out of the country for the last year.”

  While Linda’s taste in clothing was about twenty years out of date, she was an excellent seamstress who had made all of Kat’s and Sam’s dresses for school dances.

  “Yes. I can come in anytime, as long as you don’t mind me bringing Milo.”

  “I don’t mind at all, but I can’t promise the same about my mom. You know how she can be.”

  “It shouldn’t take long, though, right? I’ll bring a DVD for him to watch or something.”

  “Sounds good.” When Samantha spoke again, her voice had a wistful tone that worried Katrina. “When are you moving in with Bowie?”

  “Today. Right now. I’m zipping up my suitcase as we speak.”

  “I can’t believe you,” Sam said again. “At least I’ll have a good excuse now to drop by, right?”

  “Sure,” she said. “But he works a lot. That’s the whole reason he hired me to live in, because of his long hours. It’s not like we’re going to be hanging out together in the hot tub all day.”

  It was the wrong thing to say, on several levels—mostly because Katrina suddenly had an entirely too vivid image of that particular picture in her head, of hard muscles and sun-bronzed skin and Bowie with that sleepy, sexy look in his eyes again.

  “Oh man,” Sam said, sounding breathless.

  “What time works best for the fitting?” she asked, hoping to distract both of them.

  “How about eleven? Then maybe we can grab lunch after—if you’re not too busy hanging out in the hot tub, anyway.”

  “Sounds good.”

  She ended the call shortly after, unsettled by the worry that her friendship with Sam might grow even more strained than it had become after Katrina took off with Carter.

  Her worry didn’t solve anything, she told herself, especially when she should be focusing on the job and on helping Milo.

  She picked up her laptop bag and her battered suitcase with the broken zipper and headed for the stairs.

  When she walked into the kitchen, she found her mother and Mike wrapped together in an embrace that raised the temperature in the room about thirty degrees.

  Yeah, she wasn’t too broken up about moving out.

  She cleared her throat and set the suitcase down with a bang. “Don’t mind me. I’m just going to grab some coffee.”

  Charlene jerked away, hot color flooding her plump, still-pretty features. “Oh. We didn’t hear you come down.”

  Maybe because Mike’s tongue was in your ear? she thought, then wanted to cringe at her bitchy thoughts.

  She was thrilled for both of them, honestly. Mike, her late father’s younger brother, had been divorced and had lived alone for years. He and his wife had never had kids, so after she moved out, Mike had spent holidays and many Sunday dinners with his brother’s family.

  He had been a quiet, steady force in their lives forever, and she had always adored him.

  Charlene, on the other hand, had been a devoted wife, even after John Bailey’s severe head injury from a police shooting that left him unable to walk, talk or feed himself. For years she drove to the care center in Shelter Springs every single day to sit beside him even though he hadn’t known her name or why she showed up in his room every day.

  Yes, Charlene could be frustrating at
times, but Katrina loved her and wanted nothing more than for her to be happy.

  She didn’t necessarily want to have that happiness shoved in her face, though—especially when she still missed her beloved father with a fierce ache.

  “It’s fine,” she assured them. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I was just heading out and wanted to say goodbye.”

  “I’ll make you some toast,” Charlene said instantly. “Do you want scrambled eggs to go with it? You need some protein, honey.”

  “No. I’m fine. Just toast and coffee.”

  Wishing she had just skipped breakfast altogether, she poured a cup, stuck a couple slices of bread in the toaster and then sat at the table, since she didn’t know what else to do.

  After a moment, Uncle Mike joined her, his features troubled.

  “Are you sure about this Callahan guy?” Uncle Mike asked, his eyes dark with concern and his mouth set in a frown. Somehow she had the feeling he had been gearing up for exactly this conversation.

  “What do we know about him, really?” he went on. “I’m not sure I’m completely comfortable with you moving into his house after only knowing him for a few days. I was watching a show about human trafficking the other day. It was very upsetting and a good reminder that you can’t be too careful.”

  Katrina smiled a little, touched at his concern. She found it very sweet that Mike was trying to stand in and be a protective father figure. Good thing he hadn’t seen the neighborhood where she lived in Colombia and the buses she rode through even scarier parts of town.

  If she were ever in danger of human trafficking, being snatched off a dodgy bus in South America would be a much more likely scenario than encountering a trafficker at the luxurious home of a computer company executive in a small town in Idaho.

  But then, one never knew.

  “Bowie is a very nice man, Uncle Mike. You don’t need to worry. I’ll be fine.”

  “I hope so.” He didn’t look convinced, and she couldn’t resist touching his arm.

  “I can take care of myself, you know. And I promise, if anything feels weird, I’ll call you. Who would dare to mess with me, when I have one brother who’s an FBI agent and another who’s the county sheriff?”

  He smiled back at her. “Not to mention a sister who’s tougher than either of them.”

  Katrina would forever regret not inheriting the badass gene in her family. Of her four siblings—including Wyatt, Wyn’s twin, who had died several years earlier—Kat was the only one who hadn’t gone into law enforcement. Wynona had left the Haven Point Police Department the previous summer to pursue her master’s degree in social work, but she still taught self-defense classes at the community center.

  “Exactly. He’d have to be stupid to mess with the Bailey clan. I promise, Bowie Callahan is far from stupid.”

  “She’ll be fine. You watch too many of those crime documentaries,” Charlene said with an exasperated look at him as she pulled Katrina’s toast out of the toaster and started buttering it for her before Kat had the chance. “He is a nice man. I knew it the first time we met him. Handsome, well-mannered, personable. And he’s loaded. You could do much worse.”

  She sighed. So much for all her good intentions about not being frustrated with her mother.

  “That is all true,” she said. “But I’m not interested in Bowie. I don’t know how many times I need to tell you that.”

  Perhaps the one she really needed to be telling was herself. She thought of those moments the night before in his arms and the heat and magic that swirled around them and did her best to fight back a shiver.

  “Just keep an open mind. That’s all I’m saying. When you do that, you never know what might happen. Why, if I hadn’t been willing to keep an open mind, I never would’ve given Mike a chance. I never would have seen him as anything other than my former brother-in-law.”

  Mike sipped at his coffee, color crawling up his cheeks above his beard.

  “And look at you now,” Katrina said.

  “Exactly! Both of us would have been alone and miserable. Instead, here we are looking at the rest of our lives together, and we couldn’t be happier.”

  “Not everybody is as lucky as you two,” she murmured. Especially not when they waste time on guys like Carter Ross when they know from the beginning they’re completely wrong for them.

  “Look at your sister and Cade,” Charlene protested. “And Marshall and Andie. It’s your turn, wouldn’t you say?”

  Katrina had a daughter to worry about now, but she knew Charlene wouldn’t want to hear that. She probably wouldn’t listen to anything Kat had to say, anyway. Her mother’s mind had been made up before Katrina even came back to town.

  Frustrated and a little sad, she took a bite of the toast, then dumped the rest of her coffee in the sink. “Thanks for the toast. I’ll eat it on the way.”

  “You can’t take five minutes?” Her mother looked disappointed, though Katrina had a feeling that was only because Charlene was gearing up to offer more advice.

  “I need to hurry or I’ll be late. I’ll see you guys later.”

  “Just be careful,” Mike said.

  “And don’t forget to smile,” Charlene added. “You have such a pretty smile.”

  She pasted on a fake smile, picked up her laptop bag and suitcase, and headed for the door.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BOWIE HAD NEVER been so close to pulling out his hair—and that even counted the time he spent thirty-six hours straight, back-to-back with Aidan on their respective computers, trying to fix a critical software glitch in one of the early Caine Tech apps.

  He sucked in a breath and tried not to let the frustration trickle into his voice. “You made the mess, you’re going to clean it up,” he said calmly, doing his best not to step into the ever-widening puddle of milk and Cheerios beside the kitchen table.

  In answer, Milo crossed his arms defiantly over his chest, chin screwed up and eyes narrowed to slits.

  Bowie tried to count backward from ten. He made it to three before the tenuous hold on his temper started to fray. The entire past two hours had been a series of confrontations—made even more frustrating because Milo did all his arguing without words.

  “You wouldn’t tell me what kind of cereal you wanted, remember? I asked you four times, and you were too busy playing with your toys to answer me. New rule. When you refuse to tell me what you want, you aren’t allowed to complain at what you get—and you’re absolutely not allowed to throw your bowl of cereal on the floor because you’re mad about what I gave you. Got it?”

  He couldn’t tell whether Milo was listening or not. His brother continued giving him that same snake-eyed stare. What was spinning around inside the boy’s mind? Bowie would give anything to know.

  “Come on. Help me clean it up or you won’t see your purple car for the rest of the day.” Autism or not, Milo needed to learn his actions had consequences.

  They continued their silent battle of wills for a full ninety seconds. He was asking himself how the hell he was going to follow through on his threat and wrestle a beloved toy away from a six-year-old with autism when, without warning, Milo dropped to the ground and started wiping at the spill with the paper towels Bowie had pulled from the roll.

  Bowie sat back on his heels, watching his brother. This little interaction was even more proof that Milo understood far more than he could communicate back. Not that he needed more evidence. From the beginning, he could tell Milo’s delays probably had as much to do with neglect than from severe cognitive deficits.

  Guilt, his constant companion, churned through him. His brother’s rough start in life wasn’t his fault. He knew it. He couldn’t change the past. All he could focus on now was providing his brother the best possible future, one where Milo could have friends and a purpose, where he could commun
icate what he wanted.

  “You’re doing a great job so far,” he said after a moment, when Milo tried to hand him the soggy paper towel. “Looks like there’s a little more cereal under the table. Would you like me to help you reach it?”

  Milo nodded and the two of them worked together, with Milo cleaning up the milk and cereal and Bowie going along behind him with a wet cloth so Mrs. Nielson didn’t get too mad at them for leaving another mess for her to mop. They were nearly finished with the job when he heard someone punching in the code for the door, and a moment later Katrina walked in looking fresh and sweet and lovely in a peach flowered skirt, white T-shirt and strappy sandals.

  He was both astonished and dismayed at the way his heart seemed to kick in his chest like a rabbit in a cage.

  He had dreamed of her all night, a tangle of skin and heat and madness, and had awakened hard and aching. He hadn’t been able to shake the memories of their kiss—the taste of her, the sexy little breath she sighed against his mouth, the softness of her curves pressed to his chest.

  His body stirred to life again, making him glad his position on the floor helped him conceal that fact.

  She took in the scene at a glance and came to the correct conclusion.

  “Apparently Cheerios wasn’t the preferred menu choice today.”

  “Who knew?” he drawled. “Certainly not me.”

  Her smile was not without sympathy. “This week it’s been Cinnamon Toast Crunch and scrambled eggs every morning. Nothing else will do.”

  How had she figured Milo out so well after less than a week, when he had spent three times that with his brother and still considered him an unfathomable mystery?

  Again, he couldn’t help wondering if he had been wrong to categorically dismiss the various professionals who had suggested a school that specialized in helping autistic children might be the best placement for Milo.

  His brother had spent his first six years in chaos. Bowie couldn’t bring himself to go that route, though he hadn’t completely ruled out the possibility.