RaeAnne Thayne - Redemption Bay

“Will you still be in town for the service auction?” Doc Warrick asked him after McKenzie ended her welcoming speech and sat down.

“I don’t know yet, to tell you the truth. I haven’t figured out how long I’m staying.”

“It’s only another week and some change. If you are still here, the service auction is an event you should not miss. If you want to know this town’s heart, you should see us in action.”

He wasn’t really interested in seeing the town’s heart. He had seen enough when he lived here, watching them all kiss up to Joe, even though his father had been an ass and a bully.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said with a polite smile.

Yeah, he was going to wring McKenzie’s lovely little neck. She should have told him what he was getting into when she invited him here to meet her.

Breakfast was served buffet style. While everyone left their chairs to queue up at the platters filled with pastries, fruit and bagels, Ben opted to remain in his seat to enjoy a surprisingly good coffee.

A moment later, he was joined by a vaguely familiar older man with a shock of white hair and sun-wrinkled features.

He set his plate down and eased into the chair with stiff, jerky movements. “Young Kilpatrick, isn’t it? Ben.”

He nodded.

“Thought so. You’ve changed a bit from the days when you were a punk driving too fast up and down the street but I could recognize your mother’s eyes. Lovely woman, your mother. How is she these days?”

“Good. Thank you.” He assumed as much, anyway. With a niggle of guilt, he remembered Doc Warrick’s conviction that he should tell his mother he was back. He hadn’t called Lydia yet. Maybe after breakfast.

“Do you remember me? Mick Sargent.”

Right. He had worked at the boatworks as long as Ben could remember. The man had always been kind to him.

“Was that you I saw the other day out on the water in an original Delphine?”

“Yes.”

“Named for your grandmother,” Mick said with a solemn nod. “From where I sat on shore, she looked sleek and feisty—much like the original Delphine, as I recall.”

He smiled at this, wishing he remembered the woman. Those who had known her, universally spoke of her with admiration and respect.

“Did you restore her yourself?”

He shook his head. “When I found her, she was in terrible shape, rotting out. I sent her to someone I know in the Bay Area and he managed to find mostly original parts to bring her back to her glory.”

“She is looking fine, at least the quick glimpse I got on the water. It’s only right you should bring her back here. Good decision, son.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ve got a Verlaine myself. She’s not quite as smooth as the Delphine but she’s solid and dependable.”

“Good.”

“I don’t think I’m alone in hoping the reason you’re back in town might have something to do with new plans to open the boatworks again. Fine-crafted wooden boats have made a big comeback in recent years. Look at you, pouring all kinds of money and time into restoring a Delphine. You’re not the only one who sees the beauty there.”

He hoped he wasn’t going to have to defend his decision to close the factory all morning long. “I’m not in the boat-building business anymore,” he said quietly, hoping this would be the end of it. “My job at Caine Tech takes all my time and energy.”

“That’s fine for you,” Mick said in a low, even tone that matched his own. “What about for the people of this town? You’ve got obligations here, like it or not.”

He wasn’t responsible for these people. He barely knew them! Simply because his father had once owned the company that had once been the town’s largest employer did not make Ben some sort of feudal lord, for heaven’s sake.

He was saved from having to answer when another guy of about the same age as Mick sat down on his other side and asked Sargent a question about irrigation water shares.

Ben used their conversation as an excuse to get up. He started to head for the exit, hoping McKenzie wouldn’t notice. Unfortunately, at the same moment she began to walk toward him. She wore a tailored white shirt and a chunky blue-and-green necklace that reminded him of sunlight shifting across the lake. All that lovely dark hair was tangled up in some kind of a twist behind her head. She probably thought it made her look crisp and businesslike but he only wanted to pull a few pins out and trail his fingers through the soft strands.

The impulse came out of the blue, shocking him to the core, and he curled his fingers into his palm to keep from acting on it.

“Hi, Ben. I hope you’re enjoying breakfast. I wasn’t sure you would come.”

“I get the impression people don’t say no very often to the Haven Point mayor.”

Her mouth twisted into a wry expression. “You’d be surprised. Most people have absolutely no problem saying no to me.”

“That’s fairly shocking. I can’t believe I’m the only one in town who considers you a force of nature.”

She laughed a little but it still relaxed the tension in her features. “Not a force of nature. Mostly a pain in the butt. I have a...bad habit of putting high expectations on people. Some have even called them unrealistic.”

Who? Her family? He had been a teenager when McKenzie came to town and could clearly remember hearing gossip around town about the big-eyed, exotic-looking daughter who had suddenly shown up and moved in with the local attorney and his family.

It had set tongues wagging all around town. McKenzie had obviously been the product of an affair, as she was a few years younger than the Shaws’ only other living child, Devin.

What had life been like for her in that household? Adele Shaw had always struck him as a nice woman but she wasn’t a saint, by any stretch of the imagination. It couldn’t have been easy for her to have her husband’s love child suddenly thrust upon her.

He didn’t have the local monopoly on shitty childhoods, he suddenly realized.

“When you have unrealistic expectations of people, you’re setting yourself up for a firestorm of disappointment,” he said. “That’s a tough way to go through life.”

She shrugged. “I may be naive, but I like to put my faith in people, even if it’s overly optimistic. In my experience, if you demand much of people, they usually want to rise to meet those expectations.”

Or they fight back and do their damnedest to shatter them, he thought, but didn’t say.

“I overheard you talking boats with Mick Sargent.”

“ He was talking about boats. I was mostly listening.”

Her smile was like the sun sliding over the peaks of the Redemptions after a miserable night. “That’s usually all you can do once Mick settles in for a chat. He’s a character. Eighty-three years old and still going strong.”

“He seemed old when I was a kid. I remember seeing him work a sander and wondering if he was going to keel over any minute.”

“Isn’t perspective a funny thing? When I was a girl, thirty seemed absolutely ancient. Now that I’m staring it right in the face, I feel like I’m still a baby.”

“You are still a baby. You’re probably the youngest mayor in the history of Haven Point, aren’t you? Though apparently not by choice.”

“Not really. I never sought this position and didn’t want it.”

“Why did you accept the nomination? Nobody can force you to run for office in this country, unless there’s some bizarre Haven Point compulsory service bylaw I don’t know about.”

She sighed. “You’re absolutely right. I could have said no.”

“But you didn’t.”

She gave a shrug that seemed both eloquent and simple. “This is my town and I love it here. People here embraced me when I was a strange kid who showed up out of nowhere. They have supported my business and opened their hearts to me in friendship. Haven Point isn’t perfect. We have our problems, like any other town—the economy being at the top of the list—but in general, this is a warm, caring place.”