The Lawman Lassoes A Family (Conard County: The Next Generation Book 24) (Contemporary Romance)

by Rachel Lee

  “Well,” said Vicki, “she picked you.” And then she added something that seemed as important to her as all the mountains and valleys she had traveled since moving here. “And I guess I picked you, too.”

  He smiled, adjusting Krys on his lap so he could draw Vicki up against him and hug her. “I am one hell of a lucky guy.”

  Vicki smiled, truly happy, content and at peace for the first time in forever. The shadows would return sometimes, and storms might come, but she no longer feared them. They would weather them as they’d weathered everything else, but this time they’d get through them together.

  A bright new future had begun.

  Epilogue

  They were married just before Christmas in Good Shepherd Church. Krystal got to be a flower girl, and at her insistence, so did Peggy. The little girls scattered bright red petals down the aisle ahead of Vicki, who walked on the arm of her late husband’s best friend, Bill Hanton. Her attention was fixed on Dan, resplendent in a blue suit. She herself wore blue velvet, rather than the traditional white. Dan loved her in blue.

  The pews were filled with her new friends, a lot of deputies and their families, some teachers, Lena’s friends. Many of Hal’s old friends from Austin had made the trip, too, resplendent in their dress uniforms, prepared to provide an honor guard a little later. This time Vicki was happy to see the blue wall gathered around her, and they looked as thrilled for her as she was.

  Inside her, still a secret from everyone but Dan, a new child was growing. Ahead of her lay her new life, and she was being ushered there by Hal’s closest friend. Joy filled her heart to overflowing.

  When Bill placed her hand in Dan’s, she felt almost as if it was a changing of the guard. Dan broke tradition a bit, drawing Krys to stand between him and Vicki.

  Lena, grinning from ear to ear, stood as maid of honor for her, and gave her a little nudge as if to say “You go, girl.”

  Krys had gone to therapy, but hadn’t needed much of it. Not for months now had she expressed any anxiety over anyone leaving. Vicki felt she had overcome the worst of her own fears, and faced the future with excitement and pleasure.

  “I love you,” Dan whispered to her, just before the minister began the ceremony.

  “I love you, too.”

  Smiling, they faced the pastor, ready to embark on a new journey.

  *

  Don’t miss Rachel Lee’s next romance, PLAYING WITH FIRE, coming soon from Harlequin Romantic Suspense!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from REDEMPTION BAY by RaeAnne Thayne.

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  SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM

  McKenzie Shaw works harder than anyone as the

  mayor of her hometown, Haven Point. But all of her hard work might be for nothing when her long-ago crush, Ben Kilpatrick, shows up again, about to wreak havoc in Haven Point—and on McKenzie’s heart.

  Read on for a sneak preview of

  REDEMPTION BAY,

  the latest book in New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne’s heartwarming series,

  HAVEN POINT.

  On sale now!

  Redemption Bay

  by RaeAnne Thayne

  CHAPTER ONE

  THIS WAS HER favorite kind of Haven Point evening. Mckenzie Shaw locked the front door of her shop, Point Made Flowers and Gifts. The day had been long and hectic, filled with customers and orders, which was wonderful, but also plenty of unavoidable mayoral business.

  She was tired and wanted to stretch out on the terrace or her beloved swing, with her feet up and something cool at her elbow. The image beckoned but the sweetness of the view in front of her made her pause.

  “Hold on,” she said to Paprika, her cinnamon standard poodle. The dog gave her a long-suffering look but settled next to the bench in front of the store.

  McKenzie sat and reached a hand down to pet Rika’s curly hair. A few sailboats cut through the stunning blue waters of Lake Haven, silvery and bright in the fading light, with the rugged, snowcapped mountains as a backdrop.

  She didn’t stop nearly often enough to soak in the beautiful view or enjoy the June evening air, tart and clean from the mighty fir and pines growing in abundance around the lake.

  A tourist couple walked past holding hands and eating gelato cones from Carmela’s, their hair backlit into golden halos by the setting sun. From a short distance away, she could hear children laughing and shrieking as they played on the beach at the city park, and the alluring scent of grilling steak somewhere close by made her stomach grumble.

  She loved every season here on the lake but the magnificent Haven Point summers were her favorite—especially lazy summer evenings filled with long shadows and spectacular sunsets.

  Kayaking on the lake, watching children swim out to the floating docks, seeing old-timers in ancient boats casting gossamer lines out across the water. It was all part of the magic of Haven Point’s short summer season.

  The town heavily depended on the influx of tourists during the summer, though it didn’t come close to the crowds enjoyed by their larger city to the north, Shelter Springs—especially since the Haven Point Inn burned down just before Christmas and had yet to be rebuilt.

  Shelter Springs had more available lodging, more restaurants, more shopping—as well as more problems with parking, traffic congestion and crime, she reminded herself.

  “Evening, Mayor,” Mike Bailey called, waving as he rumbled past the store in the gorgeous old blue ’57 Chevy pickup he’d restored.

  She waved back, then nodded to Luis Ayala, locking up his insurance agency across the street.

  A soft, warm feeling of contentment seeped through her. This was her town, these were her people. She was part of it, just like the Redemption Mountains across the lake. She had fought to earn that sense of belonging since the day she showed up, a lost, grieving, bewildered girl.

  She had worked hard to earn the respect of her friends and neighbors. The chance to serve as the mayor had never been something she sought but she had accepted the challenge willingly. It wasn’t about power or influence—not that one could find much of either in a small town like Haven Point. She simply wanted to do anything she could to make a difference in her community. She wanted to think she was serving with honor and dignity, but she was fully aware there were plenty in town who might disagree.

  Her stomach growled, louder this time. That steak smelled as if it was charred to perfection. Too bad she didn’t know who was grilling it or she might just stop by to say hello. McKenzie was briefly tempted to stop in at Serrano’s or even grab a gelato of her own at Carmela’s—stracciatella, her particular favorite—but she decided she would be better off taking Rika home.

  “Come on, girl. Let’s go.”

  The dog jumped to her feet, all eager, lanky grace, and McKenzie gripped the leash and headed off.

  She lived not quite a mile from her shop downtown and she and Rika both looked forward all day to this evening walk along the trail that circled the lake.

  As she walked, she waved at peo
ple walking, biking, driving, even boating past when the shoreline came into view. It was quite a workout for her arm but she didn’t mind. Each wave was another reminder that this was her town and she loved it.

  “Let’s grill some chicken when we get home,” she said aloud to Rika, whose tongue lolled out with appropriate enthusiasm.

  Talking to her dog again. Not a good sign but she decided it was too beautiful an evening to worry about her decided lack of any social life to speak of. Town council meetings absolutely didn’t count.

  *

  WHEN SHE REACHED her lakeside house, however, she discovered a luxury SUV with California plates in the driveway of the house next to hers, with boat trailer and gleaming wooden boat attached.

  Great.

  Apparently someone had rented the Sloane house.

  Normally she would be excited about new neighbors but in this case, she knew the tenants would only be temporary. Since moving to Shelter Springs, Carole Sloane-Hall had been renting out the house she’d received as a settlement in her divorce for a furnished vacation rental. Sometimes people stayed for a week or two, sometimes only a few days.

  It was a lovely home, probably one of the most luxurious lakefront rentals within the city limits. Though not large, it had huge windows overlooking the lake, a wide flagstone terrace and a semiprivate boat dock—which, unfortunately, was shared between McKenzie’s own property and Carole’s rental house.

  She wouldn’t let it spoil her evening, she told herself. Usually the renters were very nice people, quiet and polite. She generally tried to act as friendly and welcoming as possible.

  It wouldn’t bother her at all except the two properties had virtually an open backyard because both needed access to the shared dock, with only some landscaping between the houses that ended several yards from the high watermark. Sometimes she found the lack of privacy a little disconcerting, with strangers temporarily living next door, but Carole assured her she planned to put the house on the market at the end of the summer. With everything else McKenzie had to worry about, she had relegated the vacation rental situation next door to a distant corner of her brain.

  New neighbors or not, though, she still adored her own house. She had purchased it two years earlier and still felt a little rush of excitement when she unlocked the front door and walked over the threshold.

  Over those two years, she had worked hard to make it her own, sprucing it up with new paint, taking down a few walls and adding one in a better spot. The biggest expense had been for the renovated master bath, which now contained a huge claw-foot tub, and the new kitchen with warm travertine countertops and the intricately tiled backsplash she had done herself.

  This was hers and she loved every inch of it, almost more than she loved her little store downtown.

  She walked through to the back door and let Rika off her leash. Though the yard was only fenced on one side, just as the Sloane house was fenced on the corresponding outer property edge, Rika was well trained and never left the yard.

  Her cell phone rang as she was throwing together a quick lemon-tarragon marinade for the chicken.

  Some days, she wanted to grab her kayak, paddle out to the middle of Lake Haven—where it was rumored to be so deep, the bottom had never been truly charted—and toss the stupid thing overboard.

  This time when she saw the caller ID, she smiled, wiped her hands on a dish towel and quickly answered. “Hey, Devin.”

  “Hey, sis. I can’t believe you’re holding out on me! Come on. Doesn’t your favorite sister get to be among the first to hear?”

  She tucked the phone in her shoulder and returned to cutting the lemon for the marinade as she mentally reviewed her day for anything spill-worthy to her sister.

  The store had been busy enough. She had busted the doddering and not-quite-right Mrs. Anglesey for trying to walk out of the store without paying for the pretty hand-beaded bracelet she tried on when she came into the store with her daughter.

  But that sort of thing was a fairly regular occurrence whenever Beth and her mother came into the store and was handled easily enough, with flustered apologies from Beth and that baffled “what did I do wrong?” look from poor Mrs. Anglesey.

  She didn’t think Devin would be particularly interested in that or the great commission she’d earned by selling one of the beautiful carved horses an artist friend made in the woodshop behind his house to a tourist from Maine.

  And then there was the pleasant encounter with Mr. Twitchell, but she doubted that was what her sister meant.

  “Sorry. You lost me somewhere. I can’t think of any news I have worth sharing.”

  “Seriously? You didn’t think I would want to know that Ben Kilpatrick is back in town?”

  The knife slipped from her hands and she narrowly avoided chopping the tip of her finger off. A greasy, angry ball formed in her stomach.

  Ben Kilpatrick. The only person on earth she could honestly say she despised. She picked up the knife and stabbed it through the lemon, wishing it was his cold, black heart.

  “You’re joking,” she said, though she couldn’t imagine what her sister would find remotely funny about making up something so outlandish and horrible.

  “True story,” Devin assured her. “I heard it from Betty Orton while I was getting gas. Apparently he strolled into the grocery store a few hours ago, casual as a Sunday morning, and bought what looked to be at least a week’s worth of groceries. She said he didn’t look very happy to be back. He just frowned when she welcomed him back.”

  “It’s a mistake. That’s all. She mistook him for someone else.”

  “That’s what I said, but Betty assured me she’s known him all his life and taught him in Sunday school three years in a row and she’s not likely to mistake him for someone else.”

  “I won’t believe it until I see him,” she said. “He hates Haven Point. That’s fairly obvious, since he’s done his best to drive our town into the ground.”

  “Not actively,” Devin, who tended to see the good in just about everyone, was quick to point out.

  “What’s the difference? By completely ignoring the property he inherited after his father died, he accomplished the same thing as if he’d walked up and down Lake Street, setting a torch to the whole downtown.”

  She picked up the knife and started chopping the fresh tarragon with quick, angry movements. “You know how hard it’s been the last five years since he inherited to keep tenants in the downtown businesses. Haven Point is dying because of one person. Ben Kilpatrick.”

  If she had only one goal for her next four years as mayor, she dreamed of revitalizing a town whose lifeblood was seeping away, business by business.

  When she was a girl, downtown Haven Point had been bustling with activity, a magnet for everyone in town, with several gift and clothing boutiques for both men and women, restaurants and cafés, even a downtown movie theater.

  She still ached when she thought of it, when she looked around at all the empty storefronts and the ramshackle buildings with peeling paint and broken shutters.

  “It’s his fault we’ve lost so many businesses and nothing has moved in to replace them. I mean, why go to all the trouble to open a business,” she demanded, “if the landlord is going to be completely unresponsive and won’t fix even the most basic problems?”

  “You don’t have to sell it to me, Kenz. I know. I went to your campaign rallies, remember?”

  “Right. Sorry.” It was definitely one of her hot buttons. She loved Haven Point and hated seeing its decline—much like old Mrs. Anglesey, who had once been an elegant, respected, cont
ributing member of the community and now could barely get around even with her daughter’s help and didn’t remember whether she had paid for items in the store.

  “It wasn’t really his fault, anyway. He hired an incompetent crook of a property manager who was supposed to be taking care of things. It wasn’t Ben’s fault the man embezzled from him and didn’t do the necessary upkeep to maintain the buildings.”

  “Oh, come on. Ben Kilpatrick is the chief operating officer for one of the most successful, fastest-growing companies in the world. You think he didn’t know what was going on? If he had bothered to care, he would have paid more attention.”

  This was an argument she and Devin had had before. “At some point, you’re going to have to let go,” her sister said calmly. “Ben doesn’t own any part of Haven Point now. He sold everything to Aidan Caine last year—which makes his presence in town even more puzzling. Why would he come back now, after all these years? It would seem to me, he has even less reason to show his face in town now.”

  McKenzie still wasn’t buying the rumor that Ben had actually returned. He had been gone since he was seventeen years old. He didn’t even come back for Joe Kilpatrick’s funeral five years earlier—though she, for one, wasn’t super surprised about that since Joe had been a bastard to everyone in town and especially to his only surviving child.

  “It doesn’t make any sense. What possible reason would he have to come back now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s here to make amends. Did you ever think of that?”

  How could he ever make amends for what he had done to Haven Point—not to mention shattering all her girlish illusions?

  Of course, she didn’t mention that to Devin as she tossed the tarragon into the lemon juice while her sister continued speculating about Ben’s motives for coming back to town.