He was the problem—and he couldn’t escape the mess he had created, no matter how far away from Denver he drove.
He struggled to unzip the duffel one-handed, then finally gave up and stuck his right arm out of the sling to help. His shoulder ached even more in response, not happy with being subjected to eight hours of driving only days post-surgery.
How was he going to explain the shoulder injury to his mother? He couldn’t tell her he was recovering from a gunshot wound, not given his family’s history.
Charlene had lost a son and husband in the line of duty and had seen both a daughter and her other son injured on the job.
Nor could he tell his brother Marshall or his brother-in-law Cade about all the trouble he found himself in. He was the model FBI agent, with the unblemished record.
Until now.
Moving into the cottage was an easy job that took him all of five minutes, transferring the packing cubes from his duffel into drawers, setting his toiletries in the bathroom, hanging the few dress shirts he had brought along. When he was done, he wandered back into the combined living room/kitchen.
The front wall was made almost entirely of windows, perfect for looking out and enjoying the spectacular view of Lake Haven during one of its most beautiful seasons, late spring, before the tourist horde descended.
On impulse, Elliot opened the door and walked out onto the wide front porch. The night was chilly but the mingled scents of pine and cedar and lake intoxicated him. He drew fresh mountain air deep into his lungs.
This.
If he needed to look for a reason why he had been compelled to come home during his suspension and the investigation into his actions, he only had to think about what this view would look like in the morning, with the sun creeping over the mountains.
Lake Haven called to him like nowhere else on earth—not only the stunning blue waters or the mountains that jutted out of them in jagged peaks, but the calm, rhythmic lapping of the water against the shore, the ever-changing sky, the cry of wood ducks pedaling in for a landing.
He had spent his entire professional life digging into the worst aspects of the human condition, investigating cruelty and injustice and people with no moral conscience whatsoever. No matter what sort of muck he waded through, he had figured out early in his career at the FBI that he could keep that ugliness from touching the core of him with thoughts of Haven Point and the people he loved who called this place home.
He didn’t visit as often as he would like. Between his job at the Denver field office and the six true-crime books he had written, he didn’t have much free time.
That all might be about to change. He might have more free time than he knew what to do with.
His shoulder throbbed again and he adjusted the sling, gazing out at the stars that had begun to sparkle above the lake.
After hitting rock bottom professionally, with his entire future at the FBI in doubt, where else would he come but home?
He sighed and turned to go back inside. As he did, he spotted the lights still gleaming at the cottage next door, with its blue trim and the porch swing facing the water.
The swing was empty now. She wasn’t there.
Megan Hamilton. Auburn hair, green eyes, a smile that always seemed soft and genuine to everyone else but him.
He drew in a breath, aware of a sharp little twinge of hunger deep in his gut.
When he booked the cottage, he hadn’t really thought things through. He should have remembered that Megan and the Inn at Haven Point were a package deal. She owned the inn along with these picturesque little guest cottages on Silver Beach.
In his defense, he had no idea she actually lived in one herself, though. If he had ever heard that little fact, he had forgotten it. Should he have remembered, he would have looked a little harder for a short-term rental property, rather than picking the most convenient lakeshore unit he had found in his web search.
Usually, Elliot did his best to avoid her. Megan always left him...unsettled. It had been that way for ages, since long before he learned she and his younger brother had started dating.
He could still remember his shock when he came home for some event or other and saw her and Wyatt together. As in, together, together. Holding hands, sneaking the occasional kiss, giving each other secret smiles. Elliot had felt as if Wyatt had peppered him with buckshot.
He had tried to be happy for his younger brother, one of the most generous, helpful, loving people he’d ever known. Wyatt had been a genuinely good person and deserved to be happy with someone special.
Elliot had felt small and selfish for wishing that someone hadn’t been Megan Hamilton.
Watching their glowing happiness together had been tough. He mostly had managed to stay away for the four or five months they had been dating, though he tried to convince himself it hadn’t been on purpose. Work had been demanding and he had been busy carving out his place in the Bureau. He had also started the research that would become his first book, looking into a long-forgotten Montana case from a century earlier where a man had wooed, then married, then killed three spinster schoolteachers from New England for their life insurance money before finally being apprehended by a savvy local sheriff and the sister of one of the dead women.
The few times Elliot returned home during the time Megan had been dating his brother, he had been forced to endure family gatherings knowing she would be there, upsetting his equilibrium and stealing any peace he usually found here.
He couldn’t let her do it to him this time.
Her porch light switched off a moment later and Elliot finally breathed a sigh of relief.
He would only be here three weeks. Twenty-one days. Despite the proximity of his cabin to hers, he likely wouldn’t even see her much, other than at Katrina’s reception.
She would be busy with the inn, with her photography, with her wide circle of friends, while he should be focused on finishing his manuscript and allowing his shoulder to heal—not to mention figuring out whether he would still have a career at the end of that time.
Don’t miss THE COTTAGES ON SILVER BEACH
by RaeAnne Thayne,
available July 2018
wherever HQN books and ebooks are sold!
Copyright © 2018 by RaeAnne Thayne
Detective Barelli’s Legendary Triplets
by Melissa Senate
Chapter One
The first thing Norah Ingalls noticed when she woke up Sunday morning was the gold wedding band on her left hand.
Norah was not married. Had never been married. She was as single as single got. With seven-month-old triplets.
The second thing was the foggy headache pressing at her temples.
The third thing was the very good-looking stranger lying next to her.
A memory poked at her before panic could even bother setting in. Norah lay very still, her heart just beginning to pound, and looked over at him. He had short, thick, dark hair and a hint of five-o’clock shadow along his jawline. A scar above his left eyebrow. He was on his back, her blue-and-white quilt half covering him down by his belly button. An innie. He had an impressive six-pack. Very little chest hair. His biceps and triceps were something to behold. The man clearly worked out. Or was a rancher.
Norah bolted upright. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. He wasn’t a rancher. He was a secret service agent! She remembered now. Yes. They’d met at the Wedlock Creek Founder’s Day carnival last night and—
And had said no real names, no real stories, no real anything. A fantasy for the night. That had been her idea. She’d insisted, actually.
The man in her bed was not a secret service agent. She had no idea who or what he was.
She swallowed against the lump in her parched throat.
She squeezed her eyes shut. What happened? Think, Norah!
There’d been lots of orange punch. And giggling, when Norah was not a giggler. The man had said something about how the punch must be spiked.
Norah bit her lower lip h
ard and looked for the man’s left hand. It was under the quilt. Her grandmother’s hand-me-down quilt.
She sucked in a breath and peeled back the quilt enough to reveal his hand. The same gold band glinted on his ring finger.
As flashes of memories from the night before started shoving into her aching head, Norah eased back down, lay very still and hoped the man wouldn’t wake before she remembered how she’d ended up married to a total stranger. The fireworks display had started behind the Wedlock Creek chapel and everything between her and the man had exploded, too. Norah closed her eyes and let it all come flooding back.
* * *
A silent tester burst of the fireworks display, red and white just visible through the treetops, started when she and Fabio were on their tenth cup of punch at the carnival. The big silver punch bowl had been on an unmanned table near the food booths. Next to the stack of plastic cups was a lockbox with a slot and a sign atop it: Two Dollars A Cup/Honor System. Fabio had put a hundred-dollar bill in the box and taken the bowl and their cups under a maple tree, where they’d been sitting for the past half hour, enjoying their punch and talking utter nonsense.
Not an hour earlier Norah’s mother and aunt Cheyenne had insisted she go enjoy the carnival and that they’d babysit the triplets. She’d had a corn dog, won a little stuffed dolphin in a balloon-dart game, which she’d promptly lost somewhere, and then had met the very handsome newcomer to town at the punch table.
“Punch?” he’d said, handing her a cup and putting a five-dollar bill in the box. He’d then ladled himself a cup.
She drank it down. Delicious. She put five dollars in herself and ladled them both two more cups.
“Never seen you before,” she said, daring a glance up and down his six-foot-plus frame. Muscular and lanky at the same time. Navy Henley and worn jeans and cowboy boots. Silky, dark hair and dark eyes. She could look, but she’d never touch. No sirree.
He extended his hand. “I’m—”
She held up her own, palm facing him. “Nope. No real names. No real stories.” She was on her own tonight, rarely had a moment to herself, and if she was going to talk to a man, a handsome, sexy, no-ring-on-his-finger man—something she’d avoided since becoming a mother—a little fantasy was in order. Norah didn’t date and had zero interest in romance. Her mother, aunt and sister always shook their heads at that and tried to remind her that her faith in love, and maybe herself, had been shaken, that was all, and she’d come around. That was all? Ha. She was done with men with a capital D.
He smiled, his dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners. Early thirties, she thought. And handsome as sin. “In that case, I’m...Fabio. A...secret service agent. That’s right. Fabio the secret service agent. Protecting the fresh air here in Wedlock Creek.”
She giggled for way too long at that one. Jeez, was there something in the punch? Had to be. When was the last time she’d giggled? “Kind of casually dressed for a Fed,” she pointed out, admiring his scuffed brown boots.
“Gotta blend,” he said, waving his arm at the throngs of people out enjoying the carnival.
“Ah, that makes sense. Well, I’m Angelina, international flight attendant.” Where had that come from? Angelina had a sexy ring to it, she thought. She picked up a limp fry from the plate he’d gotten from the burger booth across the field. She dabbed it in the ketchup on the side and dangled it in her mouth.
“You manage to make that sexy,” he said with a grin.
Norah Ingalls, single mother of drooling, teething triplets, sexy? LOL. Ha. That was a scream. She giggled again and he tipped up her face and looked into her eyes.
Kiss me, you fool, she thought. You Fabio. You secret service agent. But his gaze was soft on her, not full of lascivious intent. Darn.
That was when he suggested they sit, gestured at the maple tree, then put the hundred in the lockbox and took the bowl over to their spot. She carried their cups.
“Have more punch,” she said, ladling him a cup. And another. And another. He told her stories from his childhood, mostly about an old falling-down ranch on a hundred acres, but she wasn’t sure what was true and what wasn’t. She told him about her dad, who’d been her biggest champion. She told him the secret recipe for her mother’s chicken pot pie, which was so renowned in Wedlock Creek and surrounding towns that the Gazette had done an article on her family’s pie diner. She told him everything but the most vital truth about herself.
Tonight, Norah was a woman out having fun at the annual carnival, allowing herself for just pumpkin-hours to bask in the attention of a good-looking, sexy man who was sweet and smart and funny as hell. At midnight—well, 11:00 p.m. when the carnival closed—she’d turn back into herself. A woman who didn’t talk to hot, single men.
“What do you think the punch is spiked with?” she asked as he fed her a cold french fry and poured her another cup.
He ran two fingers gently down the side of her cheek. “I don’t know, but it sure is nice to forget myself, just for a night when I’m not on duty.”
Duty? Oh, right, she thought. He was a secret service agent. She giggled, then sobered for a second, a poke of real life jabbing at her from somewhere.
Now the first booms of the fireworks were coming fast and there were cheers and claps in the distance, but they couldn’t see the show from their spot.
“Let’s go see!” she said, taking his hand to pull him up.
But Fabio’s expression had changed. He seemed lost in thought, far away.
“Fabio?” she asked, trying to think through the haze. “You okay?”
He downed another cup of punch. “Those were fireworks,” he said, color coming back into his face. “Not gunfire.”
She laughed. “Gunfire? In Wedlock Creek? There’s no hunting within town limits because of the tourism and there hasn’t been a murder in over seventy years. Plus, if you crane your neck, you can see a bit of the fireworks past the trees.”
He craned that beautiful neck, his shoulder leaning against hers. “Okay. Let’s go see.”
They walked hand in hand to the chapel, but by the time they got there—a few missed turns on the path due to their tipsiness—the fireworks display was over. The small group setting them off had already left the dock, folks clearing away back to the festival.
The Wedlock Creek chapel was all lit up, the river behind it illuminated by the glow of the almost full moon.
“I always dreamed of getting married here,” she said, gazing up at the beautiful white-clapboard building, which looked a bit like a wedding cake. It had a vintage Victorian look with scallops on the upper tiers and a bell at the top that almost looked like a heart. According to town legend, those who married here would—whether through marriage, adoption, luck, science or happenstance—be blessed with multiples: twins or triplets or even quadruplets. So far, no quintuplets. The town and county was packed with multiples of those who’d gotten married at the chapel, proof the legend was true.
For some people, like Norah, you could have triplets and not have stepped foot in the chapel. Back when she’d first found out she was pregnant, before she’d told the baby’s father, she’d fantasized about getting married at the chapel, that maybe they’d get lucky and have multiples even if it was “after the fact.” One baby would be blessing enough. Two, three, even four—Norah loved babies and had always wanted a houseful. But the guy who’d gotten her pregnant, in town on the rodeo circuit, had said, “Sorry, I didn’t sign up for that,” and left town before his next event. She’d never seen him again.
She stared at the chapel, so pretty in the moonlight, real life jabbing her in the heart again. Where is that punch bowl? she wondered.
“You always wanted to marry here? Then let’s get married,” Fabio said, scooping her up and carrying her into the chapel.
Her laughter floated on the summer evening breeze. “But we’re three sheets to the wind, as my daddy used to say.”
“That’s the only way I’d get hitched,” he said, slurring t
he words.
“Lead the way, cowboy.” She let her head drop back.
Annie Potterowski, the elderly chapel caretaker, local lore lecturer and wedding officiant, poked her head out of the back room. She stared at Norah for a moment, then her gaze moved up to Fabio’s handsome face. “Ah, Detective Barelli! Nice to see you again.”
“You know Fabio?” Norah asked, confused. Or was his first name really Detective?
“I ran into the chief when he was showing Detective Barelli around town,” Annie said. “The chief’s my second cousin on my mother’s side.”
Say that five times fast, Norah thought, her head beginning to spin.
And Annie knew her fantasy man. Her fantasy groom! Isn’t that something, Norah thought, her mind going in ten directions. Suddenly the faces of her triplets pushed into the forefront of her brain and she frowned. Her babies! She should be getting home. Except she felt so good in his arms, being carried like she was someone’s love, someone’s bride-to-be.
Annie’s husband, Abe, came out, his blue bow tie a bit crooked. He straightened it. “We’ve married sixteen couples tonight. One pair came as far as Texas to get hitched here.”
“We’re here to be the seventeenth,” Fabio said, his arm heavy around Norah’s.
“Aren’t you a saint!” Annie said, beaming at him. “Oh, Norah, I’m so happy for you.”
Saint Fabio, Norah thought and burst into laughter. “Want to know a secret?” Norah whispered into her impending husband’s ear as he set her on the red velvet carpet that created an aisle to the altar.
“Yes,” he said.
“My name isn’t really Angelina. It’s Norah. With an h.”
He smiled. “Mine’s not Fabio. It’s Reed. Two e’s.” He staggered a bit.
The man was as tipsy as she was.
“I never thought I’d marry a secret service agent,” she said as they headed down the aisle to the “Wedding March.”
“And we could use all your frequent flyer miles for our honeymoon,” Reed added, and they burst into laughter.
“Sign here, folks,” Annie said as they stood at the altar. The woman pointed to the marriage license. Norah signed, then Reed, and Annie folded it up and put it in an addressed, stamped envelope.
A Maverick to [Re]Marry Page 19