Kathleen Creighton: One Summer’s Knight

“I’ll be happy to-” her voice was ragged, torn between laughter and tears of exasperation “-if you’ll just please stop calling me Mrs. Robey.”

“I will-I promise.” Then he cleared his throat and continued in an endearingly stiff and formal tone, “I would much prefer, as soon as it can be arranged, to call you Mrs. Grogan.”

There was a bemused pause; then in a voice soft with dawning wonder, Summer said, “All right.”

“David-wake up, wake up,” Helen whispered. “Hurry-you’re gonna miss it! Mommy’s kissin’ Mr. Riley!”

Jake Redfield stood in the early morning fog and watched the uniformed sheriff’s deputy stride toward him. Behind him on the banks of the river, other men, some wearing diving gear, were gathered around the shrouded body of a man.

“Fingerprints will have to confirm it,” the deputy said as he drew near. “But it’s Robey, all right. Everything matches.”

“He have anything on him?” Redfield asked. Like a computer disk, maybe?

The deputy shook his head. “Wallet, several different I.D.s, a little cash, not much. Sorry…”

Redfield turned without a word and walked back to his car.

has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old-timers’ tales and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today, she says she is interested in everything-art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history, but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing, and now combines her two loves in romance novels.