Serenity Harbor

by RaeAnne Thayne

  The sense of his own inadequacy sharpened his tone more than he intended.

  “It might help if you bothered to share that particular info with me. Milo’s being his usual loquacious self.”

  “I’ll write a sticky about the day’s menu preferences and put it on the refrigerator for you,” she answered in a cool voice that made him feel like a jerk.

  “Sorry. It’s already been a long morning. He’s been up since five.”

  “Ouch. I’m the one who should apologize for being late. I can finish up here, if you need to head into Caine Tech.”

  He glanced at the clock and saw she was only a few minutes late. “We’re almost finished. I told him he’ll lose his purple car if he doesn’t help me clean up the mess he made. So far he’s doing a great job. That’s it, Milo. Almost there. I only see one more little puddle of cereal.”

  Milo didn’t acknowledge him or meet his gaze, but he moved the towel to the spot Bowie indicated and wiped until it was gone.

  “That should do it.” He wiped the wet cloth across the floor one more time behind him, then rose. “You brought a suitcase. Do I dare hope this means you haven’t changed your mind about staying here while you’re in town?”

  A host of emotions chased themselves across her expressive features before she sighed. “I’ve changed it a hundred times since last night.”

  “Still, here you are, suitcase in hand.”

  Only now did he fully understand how apprehensive he had been since that ill-considered kiss—worried that she would not only refuse to stay in his house but would stop helping him with Milo altogether.

  He didn’t want to think about how depressing that would have been—especially when he would have had no one else to blame but himself.

  “You’re a tough man to say no to,” she murmured.

  Not true. She certainly had found a way to do it the night before.

  Eventually.

  Against his will, his stomach muscles clenched with the echo of desire as he tried not to remember the sweetness of her mouth, the soft curves pressed against him, the hunger that had swirled around them.

  “In that case,” he said, yanking his mind away, “let me introduce you to my brother, Milo Callahan. He can teach you all you ever imagined about that particular topic. Saying no to me, I mean.”

  Her laughter rippled through the kitchen, and even Milo seemed affected by it. He looked up, and Bowie could swear his brother almost smiled.

  The day that had started out rough suddenly took a brighter turn. The sunlight streaming in through the windows seemed more intense, and the world seemed beautiful and rich and full of promise.

  He needed to get out of there. Quick.

  “So,” she said after a moment, “where do you want me?”

  She did not want to hear the answer to that. He gazed blankly at her for about two seconds before he realized she was gesturing to the suitcase at her feet.

  “Oh. Right. In between nannies, I’ve been sleeping in the room next to his down here so I can hear him if he wakes up and starts wandering in the night. With you here, I’ll move back upstairs to the master bedroom.”

  “I don’t want to kick you out of your bed,” she protested.

  What about yours?

  Yeah. He needed to get out of here before he said or did something stupid that he couldn’t take back. “The master bedroom upstairs is bigger, with a nice balcony overlooking the lake. It’s the room I prefer, actually.”

  “There are plenty of bedrooms up there. Why didn’t you move him up near you instead of vice versa?”

  “The first week or so, I was worried enough about him slipping out without me knowing and didn’t want to have to worry he might fall out of a second-story window, too.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “I changed the sheets for you and cleared out the few belongings I’ve been keeping in there.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Milo,” he called to get his brother’s attention, “let’s help Katrina with her bags.”

  His brother didn’t hesitate. He shoved his toy into his pocket and picked up her laptop bag. Bowie picked up the suitcase, and all three of them made their way to the hallway on this level that contained two bedrooms and his home office.

  He opened the door and carried her suitcase inside. “Will this work? Sorry it’s not very big.”

  She looked around at the bedroom that did have a lovely view out over the patio to the lake’s edge. “Trust me, it’s just fine. Great, actually. I’ve got a bed with an actual mattress and an en suite bathroom. Compared to some of the places where I’ve slept the last year, this is like a five-star hotel.”

  He could only imagine. Given that he once spent six months when he was thirteen sleeping in the back seat of an Oldsmobile, it wasn’t that tough to picture.

  He didn’t like thinking of her in primitive, dangerous conditions. “What did your family think about your taking off to a bunch of Third World countries?”

  Her features grew pensive. “About what you might expect. My mother wasn’t thrilled. She thought I was going to be kidnapped and held for ransom. She had Marsh, my brother who’s the sheriff, recount all the bad things that might happen to me and she made Elliot, my brother the FBI agent, send me a list of every government travel warning in the region. Wynona didn’t understand why I couldn’t just take a sabbatical and hike across the country or something.”

  “Despite their objections, you did it anyway. Were you at all anxious about traveling alone?”

  “I wasn’t alone,” she said after an awkward moment. “Not at first, anyway. I went with...a friend.”

  “A friend.”

  More than that, he suspected, judging by the color soaking her cheeks. “Carter was a climber trying to summit the highest points in every country in South America. I was part of his support crew.”

  “Wow. I thought you said you’d been teaching English in Colombia.”

  “I have been, for most of the time I’ve been gone. The climber thing didn’t work out and we...parted ways.”

  She said nothing more and he didn’t press, sensing she didn’t want to talk about it. He couldn’t help wondering, though. What kind of idiot would drag her to South America and then walk away from her? Or had she been the one doing the walking?

  “Why didn’t you come back after things ended?” he couldn’t resist asking.

  “You sound like my mom. Because I met Gabi. I already loved her and knew I couldn’t simply leave her there. Could you have left Milo in another country and gone on to merrily live your life without him?”

  “Not a chance,” he answered without hesitation. The moment he found out about his little brother, Bowie knew his life was about to change. He owed Milo the sort of childhood Bowie had always wanted, no matter how difficult it might prove to deliver.

  At his answer, her expression softened. “I know it’s not the same. Gabi isn’t my blood, but I loved her from the beginning. Even if I hadn’t met Gabi, though, I wouldn’t have come home right away.”

  “Why not?”

  “And prove everybody right? Not a chance.”

  That he could understand completely. He had spent his whole life feeling like he needed to prove something, the brainiac runt in the secondhand clothes and the shaggy hair he had to cut himself, when he bothered.

  In each new school, he had to prove he could handle the work—a challenge magnified a thousand times after he conned his way into MIT.

  About a month after he started school, he had almost been thrown out after the burden of his guilt had become too great and he confessed the truth to the department head of the computer program. He might have been ousted, if the dean of the department had been a stuffy ass.

  Instead, Monte Lewis had been flabbergasted to learn
Bowie had been able to pull off a monumental hack that could fool the entire admissions department. He had insisted on a demonstration—yet another time when Bowie had to prove himself.

  When Bowie confessed the reason for the deception, that he had earned his GED a few months before because he moved around with his mother too much to attend high school, Dean Lewis had taken him under his considerable wing and cleared his way to stay in college.

  He had met Ben and Aidan there. While Aidan’s ideas had started Caine Tech, Bowie had been there from the beginning. He hadn’t even been old enough to vote when he helped Aidan perfect the software that had been the cornerstone of the business.

  How successful did a guy have to be before he lost the feeling that he had to face the world with his chin out and his fists raised?

  “This room should work fine,” Katrina said, distracting him from the rhetorical question.

  “Good,” he said. “I need to take off. Milo, I’ll see you later, okay?”

  His brother ignored him, apparently still holding a grudge over the cereal thing.

  Bowie swallowed his sigh. “Thank you. If you have any questions or problems, you know where to find me.”

  “We’re going to have a great day. Don’t spare us a thought.”

  Given that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since the night before—even in his dreams—he didn’t hold out much hope for that.

  * * *

  “YOU WANT ME to read to you from the book about the true story of the Big Bad Wolf, is that right?”

  Milo nodded vigorously, holding up the funny book that made him smile no matter how many times she read it to him.

  She wanted nothing more than to curl up beside him on the bed and read the story, since it was one of her own favorites, but she wasn’t a second-grade teacher for nothing. When necessary, she had become pretty good at channeling her inner hard-ass.

  “I would be happy to read. You know I love that story, too. But I need you to do something for me first.”

  The noise he made sounded remarkably like a wordless question, complete with the raised inflection at the end.

  “We need to practice what the speech therapist told us today. I need you to practice the B sound. B for book. Can you do it?”

  He shook his head vigorously, and she sighed. She had been trying all afternoon since their appointment, with various other incentives but roughly the same result. “Well,” she said, her voice shaded with regret, “I guess you can look at the pictures by yourself. Maybe you can find the letter B I showed you. Big and bad both start with the letter B.”

  He thrust the book at her stubbornly, and just as stubbornly, she shook her head. “Sorry, kiddo. I’ll read to you when you practice what you learned today from the speech therapist. Book. B. Buh. Remember that boat ride we were talking about? Boat also starts with B.”

  Milo’s eyebrows lowered with his frustration, but he must have sensed she was serious. He looked at the book, then back at her, and finally repeated the sound. “Buh. Buh. Ba-oo.”

  She figured it was as close as he could come, since the K sound at the end of the word was tough.

  Delighted, she couldn’t resist pulling him into a hug that she knew he merely tolerated. “Milo, that’s fantastic! I’m so proud of you. You said book! Great job! Wait until Bowie hears you. That’s another B word. Brother. Bowie. Bo.”

  “Bu-o.”

  Oh, she hoped he would be able to replicate the sound the next morning when he saw Bowie again at breakfast. Milo could learn to use words to communicate. She knew it. Yes, he was six years old and had a long way to go, but she wanted to believe the boy was on the verge of a big speech breakthrough.

  “You earned the story for sure. Maybe I’ll even read it twice!”

  He offered the small half smile that indicated he was pleased and then settled into his bed, pulling the blankets up to his chin. She sat beside him and started to read. By the time she finished the last page, his eyelids drooped and he struggled to keep them open.

  “There you go. Sleep well, little bug. That’s another B word. Buh-ug.”

  He didn’t try to tackle that one, because he was already mostly asleep.

  She tucked him in, setting the purple car in his hand on the bedside table, where he would be sure to see it first thing, then smoothed a hand over his hair, aware of a soft tenderness settling around her heart.

  Oh, this was exactly what she had been afraid would happen. Despite her best efforts to steel her emotions, she deeply cared for this cute little boy.

  Leaving him would gouge away a little corner of her heart.

  It wasn’t like she would never see him again. If all went well with the adoption, she would be back in Haven Point by Christmas. Still, she knew it wouldn’t be the same. She wouldn’t be a regular part of his life, only someone he might remember and wave to when she saw him at school or if they bumped into each other in a store.

  At least she would have the chance to watch him soar from afar. That would have to be enough.

  She arched her neck from side to side, aware of the ache in tendons and muscles that spread from her neck to her shoulders.

  Milo might be cute, but he was also a handful. Teaching twenty-four six-and seven-year-olds in her classroom had kept her on her toes every day, constantly alert to head off trouble. One would think being responsible for only one child would be easier. Not when that child was Milo Callahan. Spending hours at a time alone with him was the very definition of exhausting.

  Through the open window, a soft breeze whispered through the curtains, tantalizing, beckoning, scented with pine and the lake.

  She and Milo had spent a good portion of the evening outside when they ate dinner out on the patio, then took a walk over to the Lawsons’ house to play with Jerry Lewis, but she still wanted to be out there. She couldn’t seem to get enough of the long, balmy Haven Point evenings, where the sun didn’t completely sink behind the Redemptions until nine thirty, still an hour or so away.

  Unable to resist the temptation, she grabbed the video monitor into Milo’s room off the table and walked outside.

  This was her favorite part of the day, when the shadows were long and the air was starting to hum and peep with night creatures. The lake still buzzed with activity as people enjoyed the glorious summer evening by whatever means they could—kayaks, stand-up paddleboards, inflatable rafts.

  When a power fishing boat trawled past, close to the shore, she recognized her friend Lindy Grace and her husband, Ron, and two young sons.

  The boys spotted her first and waved with an enthusiasm that drew their mother’s attention. Lindy Grace waved and mouthed something Katrina couldn’t understand. Probably, What are you doing at Bowie Callahan’s house so late? Or maybe not. The way word spread in Haven Point, everybody in the Helping Hands probably already knew she had moved into Bowie’s house.

  Certain tongues were probably already wagging.

  She couldn’t let it bother her. She was making a difference to Milo, and that was the important thing.

  She remembered his painstaking effort that evening to squeeze out the word book. His brother would be thrilled at his progress. Before they knew it, Milo would be chattering Bowie’s ears off.

  Thoroughly enjoying the mental picture, she settled into one of the loungers overlooking the lake and propped the video monitor on the table next to her, where she would hear the slightest peep out of Milo.

  She tilted her face to the dying sun, enjoying the warmth on her skin and listening to the buzz of activity out on the lake and the soft wind murmuring in the treetops.

  Not a bad way to spend a summer evening. Not bad at all.

  It was her last conscious thought for some time.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHE AWOKE TO the vague, unsettling sens
ation of being watched.

  For an instant, she was disoriented, caught up in the dregs of a nightmare where someone who looked like Angel Herrera was dressed in a suit that appeared to have been fashioned out of filled-out adoption forms. The man held Gabi in his arms and walked briskly away from Katrina. No matter how quickly she ran to catch up, he and the precious cargo in his arms stayed several paces ahead of her, just out of reach.

  She understood the dream perfectly. She was deeply afraid something would go wrong with the adoption and she and Gabi would be forever separated.

  Milo. An instant later, she remembered her charge, and her gaze shifted instinctively to the monitor, where she saw the boy sleeping peacefully.

  With that worry gone, she could focus on her surroundings and the unsettling feeling of being watched. The sun had set, and though it wasn’t fully dark yet, everything seemed in shadows. She could just make out a shape about six feet away, big and somehow menacing.

  As her sleepiness receded, panic washed in to take its place, acrid and hot. She instinctively reached for the pepper spray she always carried in her pocket while traveling by herself, but her hand came up empty.

  Haven Point was a safe town, for the most part. But not always. She wasn’t the daughter of a police chief for nothing. She knew the lake attracted boaters and tourists—and alcohol. The sleepy calm of the community could quickly become an illusion.

  “You’re awake.”

  At the voice she sagged back against the lounger. Bowie. Of course. At least he wasn’t some crazed, drunken boater out to cause trouble, yet somehow knowing the identity of that dark shape did nothing to ease her jumpiness.

  “I’m awake now!” she finally said. “You scared the wits out of me.”

  “Sorry about that. You were sleeping so peacefully, I didn’t want to wake you, but I was afraid if I didn’t, the mosquitoes would probably carry you away.”

  She was mortified suddenly. How long had he been standing there? Had she been snoring? Or, worse, drooling? She wiped at her mouth and was relieved when it was dry. Whether she was snoring or not would probably have to remain a mystery, unless she worked up the nerve to ask him.