Lisa Carter - The Bachelor's Unexpected Family

She’d buried her chance for love when they lowered Pax’s coffin into the earth at Arlington National Cemetery.

Weston propped his elbows on the window. “Thanks for taking Caroline into Kiptohanock. The completion of the marine animal rescue center is at a critical juncture, and with her car on the fritz...”

“No problem. Opening day still set for May?”

He grinned. “If my beloved aquatic veterinarian wife has anything to say about it, then yes.”

Redheaded Izzie launched herself at the open window. “Hey, Aunt Kristina.”

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite niece.” Kristina winked. “Hey, yourself.”

Izzie giggled. “I’m your only niece, Aunt Kristina.”

Auburn-haired Caroline nudged aside her husband with her hip. “I hate to further impose, but could we drop off Izz at my sister Amelia’s house? With today being a teacher workday...”

Weston made a face. “And I’m on deadline with an engineering project for a Baltimore client.”

Kristina held up her hand. “Say no more. Gray’s moping at my house, too.”

Of course, he hadn’t moped until she grounded him for sneaking over to the airfield.

“You need me to bring them home, Wes?”

Weston rapped a beat with his palms on the car door. “I’ll finish in time to bring my girls home.”

His girls. Kristina bit back a sigh. She’d been loved like that once.

Izzie hugged her dad goodbye. “Maybe Gray could come play with Max and me.”

Max—Caroline’s nephew and all-around Kiptohanock mischief maker. Gray would consider being left with a bunch of ten-year-olds nothing short of babysitting.

Caroline smoothed a strand of Izzie’s hair. “I’m sure Gray has high school stuff to do, ladybug.”

The little girl chattered nonstop until they dropped her off at the Dutch-roof farmhouse Max’s dad, Braeden Scott—commander of the Kiptohanock Coast Guard station—had recently purchased for his growing family.

Kristina’s hands tightened on the wheel. With Gray usually at school, time moved in slow motion for her. Too often leaving her feeling without purpose and alone.

She cleared her throat. “You’ve made my brother and Izzie so happy, Caroline. Thank you.”

“My pleasure entirely.” A sweet smile curved Caroline’s lips. “They’ve made me so happy.”

Happiness seemed forever out of reach for Kristina.

“There’ve been adjustments.” Caroline stashed her purse on the floorboard beside her foot. “A good marriage requires work.” She raised her gaze to meet Kristina’s. “You know how it is. Letting go of the past with its fears and building something new together. Hard, but good work.”

Letting go of the fear... Kristina’s problem in a clamshell.

She slowed the car as they approached the town limits of oceanside Kiptohanock. “Including throwing my lovable but high-energy niece into the equation, too.”

Caroline smiled. “Life is never dull with Izzie. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Nothing worth keeping is ever easy. But in the long run, a risk so worth taking.”

Relationships. Risk. Was that arrogant crop duster—aerial application specialist—correct? Was Kristina risking her relationship with her son because of fear?

She steered the vehicle toward the waterfront. The town librarian passed the gazebo on the village green. Caroline threw out her hand in greeting.

“Evy Pruitt,” Caroline added by way of explanation. “Newly married to Deputy Sheriff Charlie Pruitt.”

After years of moving from one base to the next, Kristina loved the small-town friendliness. “Evy’s also Sawyer Kole’s sister, right? And therefore your other sister Honey’s sister-in-law. Got it.”

Which in the hospitable South made the young librarian not only kin by marriage to Caroline, but in a weirdly, endearing kind of way kin to Kristina, too.

Bypassing the Sandpiper Café and the Coast Guard station, Kristina nosed the car into a parking space along the seawall outside the former seafood-processing building. Power tools buzzed as the renovations on the aquatic center neared completion.

Caroline opened the door. “Thanks, Kristina.”

“Before you go...”

Caroline paused, one foot on the ground.

Kristina took a breath. “I wondered if you might have heard anything about the crop—” She moistened her lips. “I mean, the aerial application specialist out my way. Canyon Collier.”

Caroline’s brown eyes narrowed. “What has he done? Is he bothering you? If so, Weston will—”

“It’s not that. Collier offered Gray a part-time job at the airfield, and I wanted to find out more before I agreed.”

“He and his brother were ahead of me by a few grades in high school.” Caroline’s eyes dropped to her shoes. “And we didn’t run in the same circles.”

Kristina’s lips tightened. “By your tone, I’m sensing their circles ran toward trouble.”

Caroline let out a breath. “I’m the last person in the world to cast stones, but one of the Colliers got into big trouble back then. I don’t remember which brother.”

Kristina’s heart thumped. “You mean trouble with the law?”

“Like I said, I don’t remember which brother. They left the Shore soon after. By force or choice, I don’t know. One went into the Coast Guard, though.”

Kristina assumed that would be Canyon Collier. Maybe where he acquired his aviation skills.

“I don’t know much about the one who returned.” Caroline cocked her head. “Given my own history of being a black sheep prodigal, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“Whether he deserves it or not?”

Caroline nodded. “Whether he deserves it or not. But by all accounts, this Collier has built a solid agribusiness with the local farmers. A good pilot, I’ve heard. A trustworthy businessman.”

“But what about Gray working there?” Kristina bit her lip. “This job and this guy have become important to Gray.”

Uncomfortably important to her son. But if she were honest, she was equally disturbed by the fluttery feeling the man had evoked in her as well.

Caroline turned toward the whine of a drill inside the building. “You should talk to Evy’s brother, Sawyer. He’s the general contractor on the renovation. I’ve seen him and Collier hanging out at the Sandpiper over Long John doughnuts.”

Or maybe it would also be wise to talk to Evy Pruitt’s deputy sheriff husband.

Caroline unfolded from the car. “And of course, you must pray about what to do.”

Kristina’s gaze skittered to the white clapboard church whose steeple brushed the sky above the harbor. How could she tell her sister-in-law that since Pax died, her prayers felt as if they bounced off a Teflon ceiling?

Where was God when Pax was killed? Had God been off duty when she was widowed? What kind of Father would leave Gray without a father?

But she couldn’t say those things to Caroline, whose own rediscovered faith had been wrested from a dark abyss of despair. Kristina fidgeted in her seat at her blasphemous thoughts. She’d been raised to put her trust and hope in God.

Which was exactly the problem. Her trust had been shattered and her hope as lost as Pax’s plane. Even worse, she didn’t know how to get them back. And she wasn’t unaware that her faith had ebbed at the same rate the fear had taken hold.

Caroline closed the car door with a soft click. “Everyone deserves a second chance, Kristina. I’m so thankful God gave me a do-over, despite the bad choices I made in the past.”

Everyone deserved a second chance. Until they didn’t. Kristina backed out of the parking space. Did that include her, too?

* * *

Canyon wrapped his hands around the steering wheel of the Jeep Cherokee. The tension was palpable enough to cut with a propeller. He shot a furtive look at the sixteen-year-old girl beside him.