Linda Lee - Eva's Deadline

He took a step back. “What do you mean?”

“Did you know Seb was going to leave the Beacon to both of us?”

Her outrageous accusation chased away all thoughts of offering comfort. “No. If you’re suggesting I somehow influenced him, you’re dead wrong. Why would I want a mess like this?”

“Half owner is better than being totally cut out, isn’t it?”

“Not if I have to work with you,” he ground out.

Dear Reader,

I love visiting small towns and making up stories about people who might live there. What are their lives like? What are their hopes and dreams, their joys, their disappointments and tragedies?

Eva’s Deadline is such a story. The drama takes place in Willow Beach, Washington, a fictitious town on Washington’s coast. Many times I’ve driven the same route that my heroine, Eva Sinclair, drives as she travels from her new home in Seattle to her hometown of Willow Beach. But, unlike Eva, I have always made these trips in happy anticipation.

Eva makes the trip to Willow Beach not for a vacation, as I have done, but because her father, Sebastian Sinclair, has suddenly passed away, and so for her, the trip is a sad one. The one saving grace is that she will soon be back in Seattle, where she can continue her promising career as a writer for a prestigious magazine.

Imagine her distress when Eva learns that her father had found a way to keep her in Willow Beach. Why, she wonders, would he do this, when he knew that what happened there eleven years ago caused her so much pain?

Mark Townson’s life has also been changed by Sebastian’s death, for it throws him and Eva together in ways that he finds difficult, if not impossible, to accept. But Mark loves his life in Willow Beach, and his job as editor of Seb’s newspaper is the fulfillment of a dream he’s not about to abandon. But, like Eva, he has a past that haunts him.

How these two deal with their challenges and, oh, yes, manage to fall in love, too, is what I envisioned happening in Willow Beach. I hope you enjoy reading the story.

Visit my website at www.lindahopelee.com. Email me at linda@lindahopelee.com or write to me at P.O. Box 238, Edmonds, WA. I am also on Facebook and Twitter (@LindaHopeLee).

Linda

Eva’s Deadline

Linda Hope Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LINDA HOPE LEElives in the Pacific Northwest. She likes traveling to new places, especially to small towns that might serve as settings for her novels. In addition to contemporary romance, she writes in the romantic suspense and mystery genres, as well. When she is not writing, she’s busy creating watercolor paintings or drawing in colored pencil or pen and ink. Another pastime is photography, which she uses as inspiration for her art and for her stories. She also collects children’s books and anything to do with wire-haired fox terriers.

To my new friend, Billy.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER ONE

“I’M SORRY TO BRING you bad news,” Mark Townson said, “but your father is dead.”

“What?” The pen Eva Sinclair held slipped from her fingers and clattered onto her desk. When she’d answered the phone, the last person she’d expected to hear on the other end of the line was someone from her hometown. “No, no...”

“I’m afraid so.”

“When? How?”

“Early this morning. When he didn’t show up at the office or answer his home phone or his cell, I came over here to his house. I found him and called nine-one-one.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“Not for sure. He was slumped over the kitchen table where he’d been eating breakfast. My guess would be a heart attack. I’m sure someone official will be in touch with you soon. I just thought you should know right away.”

“Yes, but a heart attack... I didn’t know he had a bad heart.”

“I suspect there’s a lot you didn’t know about him.”

His reproachful tone stung. Yet, the statement was true. She hadn’t spoken to her father more than three or four times in the past five years, and those occasions had been short and strained.

“He told me about your, uh, disagreement,” Mark Townson said. “And that you chose moving to Seattle over staying in Willow Beach and working for him at the Herald.”

The Willow Beach Herald. Why would she want to write for a small-town weekly newspaper when she could work for a prestigious magazine like Seattle’s Best? But, of course, that wasn’t the only reason she didn’t want to stay in Willow Beach.

She wondered how much Mark Townson knew about the reason for her leaving. Not the entire story, she’d bet, because her father didn’t like to talk about the past any more than she did.

What Mr. Townson knew or did not know was not important now. His shocking news took precedence. At the age of fifty-two, her father, Sebastian Sinclair, was dead.

“I’ll drive to Willow Beach right away.” She checked her wristwatch. “If I leave by noon, I should be there by six.”

“Come to the Herald’s office when you get into town. We can get started on plans for a memorial.”

“Yes, I suppose there should be some kind of service, but you don’t need...”

“I want to be involved. Seb meant a lot to me and to the entire town. Everyone will want to say their last goodbyes.”

“Well...all right. We’ll talk about it when I get there.”

An hour and a half later, after informing her boss of her father’s sudden death and then driving to her Queen Anne Hill condo to toss some clothes into a suitcase, Eva headed south along the I-5 Freeway to Willow Beach. The blazing June sun turned the downtown skyscrapers into silver towers and glittered off the pewter waters of Elliott Bay.

As she left the city behind, her father dominated her thoughts. The most vivid recollection was his voice, deep and resonant when he was in a good mood and sharp and biting when he was angry. All too often, especially after her older brother, Brett, died, he’d been angry—and he’d taken out his anger on her. He’d pin her with a laser gaze and make his demands. Finally, after the ultimate battle over whether or not she would stay in their small town and work for him, she’d walked out.

At the thought of Brett, she fingered the silver chain she wore around her neck. A silver medal attached to the chain was hidden under her blouse. She visualized the words embossed there: First Place. Brett won the medal in a footrace on the beach the summer he was fifteen. Three years later, he was dead. Now she wore it. Although the memories were painful, she didn’t want to forget him, ever.

When she reached Olympia, Eva focused on taking the exit leading to the coast. A few miles later, a turn south swept her past logging operations where stacks of timber waited for transport to paper mills. The acrid smell of the mills filled the air. The towns grew farther and farther apart as the road wound through thick evergreen forests and flat stretches of undeveloped land.

The last leg of the journey took her directly west toward the ocean, where a string of towns dotted the coast like beads on a necklace. Soon the sign for Willow Beach, Population 3,521, greeted her. On Main Street, familiar establishments popped into view: Bon Ton Bakery, Barnett’s Drugs, Cooper’s Hardware. So far, nothing had changed in the five years she’d been gone. Had time really stood still for her hometown?