RaeAnne Thayne - The Cottages On Silver Beach

“Guess I’d better get going. Those rooms won’t clean themselves,” Verla finally said. Luke glanced in her direction and she knew the moment he spotted Elliot. Shock flickered in his eyes, replaced by an angry hardness that he quickly concealed.

“Elliot. I hadn’t heard you were in town.”

“I only checked in last night.”

There it was. Meg closed her eyes briefly then opened them to find her brother gazing between the two of them in shock.

“You’re staying here ? At the inn? ”

“Yes. In one of the cottages. Right next door to Megan, actually.”

Luke’s expression darkened further and tension seemed to broil off the two men, thick and heavy like the August sky above the lake just before a thunderstorm.

“Hi. I’m Cassie Hamilton and this is my brother, Bridger. I’m nine and he’s seven and a half. He always gets mad if I forget the half.”

To her surprise, Elliot’s features softened a little as he looked at the girl. “Hi. I’m Elliot. And the half is very important.”

“That’s what Bridger says. He says we’re only eighteen months apart, not two years, and I don’t have to be so bossy all the time.”

“That’s probably true. But sometimes you have to take charge, when it’s the right thing to do.”

“That’s what I always say. Like if he was just about to sit on a big spider, I would have to be bossy and tell him not to.”

“Somebody has to make the hard decisions and say what needs to be said. But it doesn’t always make you the most popular person, I’m afraid,” Elliot said.

“Hey, I hurt my arm, too. I was skiing and I fell. What did you do?” Bridger asked.

Elliot glanced down at his sling as if he’d forgotten all about it. “Long story. It was a work thing. Nothing as fun as skiing. But it’s fine, really. Sorry about your baseball game. You’ll be playing again before you know it.”

Bridger seemed to take comfort in that and Elliot gave a general wave to the group. “I should go. Bridger, Cassie, it was nice to meet you.”

A moment later, he took off in the direction of Cedarwood Cottage, leaving a tense awkwardness behind him.

The children didn’t seem to notice anything. “Can we go make waffles in the breakfast room before we start weeding?” Bridger asked his father.

“If it’s okay with Megan.”

“Please, Aunt Meg? Can we? We only had cereal at home,” the boy said, looking disgusted at the apparent dearth of culinary options available to him that morning.

“It’s fine,” she said. “We’re only half-full, so there should be plenty of breakfast left.”

“I’m heading that way,” Verla said. “Here. You can help me push the cart.”

The kids jumped in willingly and headed for the door, chattering to the housekeeper about school getting out in only a few more weeks and what they planned to do with their summer vacation.

The moment they were out of earshot, she braced herself as Luke turned on her, his features tight. “Elliot Bailey? Seriously, Meggie?”

“What should I have done? He booked online before I knew what was happening. Even if I had known, I couldn’t legally refuse to rent to him simply because I don’t like the man.”

“This isn’t about whether Elliot could win a popularity contest with the Haven Point Helping Hands.” Luke glowered and Megan could feel her tension level ratchet up. When he was angry, Luke looked entirely too much like their father. Which made her tend to slip back into old childhood patterns and fight the urge to run and hide from what used to be hard fists and cruel words.

Luke wasn’t their father, she reminded herself. He might look like Paul Hamilton on the outside, but he was a very different man. No matter how angry he was, Luke never lost control of his emotions.

“It’s done now and I can’t cancel his reservation without reason. It’s only a few weeks. I don’t see the harm in allowing him to rent the cottage for a few weeks.”

“I can give you one really big one. The man would like to see me in prison...or worse.”

Would this nightmare ever end for their family? She cursed her selfish sister-in-law, who had left behind so much devastation.

“He’s here to see his family, I’m sure. Katrina’s reception is next week and that’s probably what brought him home. He’s not going to go digging up the past.”

As far as she knew, anyway.

“If he’s so keen on seeing his family, why isn’t he staying with one of them?”

She would like to hear the answer to that herself. “I don’t know. You could ask him.”

Luke made a face at that suggestion and she knew he wouldn’t do any such thing. He and Elliot hadn’t had a civil conversation in seven years.

“It’s only a few weeks,” she said again. “He’ll be gone before we all know it and then life can get back to normal. You’ll see.”

Luke didn’t look convinced and she couldn’t blame him. For her brother, life hadn’t been normal in seven years. He had lived under a dark cloud of suspicion and doubt.

He looked through the gap in the trees, where the roof of Cedarwood Cottage was only just visible. “I don’t like him being here at all, Meg, and especially not next door to you. I don’t like it one bit. If he gives you any trouble, you let me know.”

She forced a smile. What would Luke do? Take him on? If he thought she was in any sort of danger, he wouldn’t hesitate. But while that might make her brother feel better, he would end up in jail for assaulting an FBI agent.

No, she would just have to make sure the two men didn’t come into contact much during Elliot’s stay at the inn. Considering that Luke was a silent partner at the inn—and hadn’t wanted even the 25 percent share her grandmother insisted on leaving her step-grandson—that shouldn’t be impossible. The only time he came around was to drop off the kids or do some handyman job for her.

“He’s not going to give me any trouble. This is Elliot Bailey you’re talking about. What’s he going to do? Bore me to death reciting all the recent FBI policy directives?”

Luke didn’t look convinced. He gazed over at the cottages again, shook his head as if to clear away a headache, then climbed into his pickup truck.

“I should be done at the job site before lunchtime. I’ll get the kids then. Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome,” Megan said.

Luke looked like he wanted to say something else, but he finally waved, put the pickup in gear and drove away.

She watched after him for a moment, until his taillights turned onto the main road, trying to push away the sense of impending disaster.

CHAPTER THREE

“THAT’S IT, CASSIE. You’re doing great. Focus on your sweet spot.”

Megan grinned through the chain-link fence at her niece on the pitcher’s mound, and Cassie shifted her steely-eyed attention from the pigtailed batter at the plate to send Megan a quick flash of smile. The slanted lavender light from the dying sun hit the girl perfectly, turning her face golden in the reflection. Almost without thinking, Megan lifted her camera between links of the fence, focused and clicked away.

The evening somehow managed to improve on the perfection of the morning. The air was soft and warm and lovely with the scents of freshly cut grass, popcorn and cotton candy from the Lions’ Club booth a few hundred yards away.

Behind Megan, families of the girls cheered them on with enthusiasm.

She snapped several more of Cassie then turned her 70-200 zoom lens to the batter for the opposing team, Rosie Sparks, whose parents went to school with Megan. She was a power hitter—if such a thing could exist in a softball league of nine-and ten-year-old girls—and she stared down Cassie, her face screwed up with concentration as the count rose to two strikes and one ball.