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“Good. Good. He’s working construction with his brother. He was living with a gal, but they broke up a few weeks ago. She kicked him out, if you want the truth. I don’t know why, because they seemed so happy together. So now he’s back living in my basement.”
“Didn’t he have a little boy a few years back with some girl in Boise?” Sam asked.
The red-painted corners of Filene’s mouth turned up as she scanned their groceries. “He’s got two. Different mamas, of course. Six months apart. They’re the cutest little things. Spittin’ image of their daddy. You should see them.”
She doubted that would happen, since she and Bryan Harding didn’t run in the same social circles. They never really had, she supposed.
When she was about thirteen, Bryan had been one of the first guys who noticed she was finally starting to grow into her features and had begun to develop some curves. They had flirted a little, just in fun, and she sneaked out of the house to go to the movies with him a few times, until she figured out he only wanted to see how lucky he could get with StupidKat.
She supposed Bryan was the first in a long line of dumb decisions she had made when it came to the male of the species. No more. She was done wasting her time and energy on the players of the world.
“I’ll be sure to tell Bryan I ran into you,” Filene said as she rang up the last of their groceries. “You staying at your mom’s place while you’re in town?”
“For now,” she hedged as she swiped her debit card, ever mindful of the depleting balance in her account. “Thank you. See you.”
She scooped up one bag while Samantha grabbed the other and hurried out of the store.
She didn’t want Bryan to find her. Or any other guy, for that matter.
In a few months, she would have everything she never knew she wanted. Everything else seemed unimportant.
CHAPTER THREE (#u8447eef0-0e4a-5b31-be04-0115090733b8)
“THANKS SO MUCH for offering to host the party here, Jules.”
Julia Winston smiled, though it didn’t quite push away that subtle air of sadness that encircled her. “My pleasure, really. Especially since McKenzie is doing all the work. This house needs more parties.”
Julia lived in one of a handful of gorgeous Victorian mansions about a block off the water that had been built by early mining and business magnates, in the days when the area around Lake Haven had been an exclusive retreat renowned for the healing nature of the hot springs in abundance around the area.
Katrina had always loved this neighborhood. Steeped in history and beauty, it always felt graceful and elegant to her, even when she was a girl.
“How are you doing?” her mother, Charlene, asked Julia with a concerned expression. “How’s your mom?”
The town librarian gave a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She had lived here with her elderly mother until Mariah Winston had a stroke a few months earlier. Mariah was now in a rehab center in Shelter Springs, the same one where Katrina’s father had spent the last few years of his life.
“Fine. Every day she seems to be showing a little improvement. Or at least I would like to think so. It’s hard to be sure.”
Oh, Katrina remembered those difficult days after her father had suffered a debilitating brain injury after being shot on the job. How many hours had she sat by his bedside, watching for a blink or a facial tic or anything that might indicate the man she adored was still inside the shell lying on that hospital bed?
She squeezed Julia’s hand. “I’m sorry. Hosting a bridal shower is probably the last thing you felt like doing.”
“Not at all. I wouldn’t have offered if I hadn’t wanted to do it. I needed the distraction, if you want the truth. The house seems too quiet sometimes.”
“It’s such a lovely home. Every time I come here, I feel like I’m stepping back into another era,” Kat said.
Julia made a face. “Your great-grandma’s era, maybe.”
“I love it,” Sam declared. “You’ve got that classy, retro vibe going on. That’s really in right now.”
“There’s nothing wrong with old-fashioned,” Charlene assured Julia.
“I agree,” Kat said. “I wish I had been able to see Haven Point in its heyday.”
“Totally,” Sam said. “All those rich dudes coming here to soak in the hot springs. I’d be all over that.”
Before Julia could answer, Eliza Caine walked into the room. She looked around them as if wondering if someone else was hiding behind the grandfather clock in the entryway. “You don’t happen to have brought the guest of honor with you, did you? She’s fifteen minutes late, and that’s totally not like our Wynona.”
“She’ll be here,” Katrina assured her. “She called us before we left the house and said she had to help Cade with something.”
Samantha gave an inelegant snort with a distinctively naughty edge.
“Get your mind out of the gutter, young lady,” her mother, Linda, said, glaring at her only daughter.
“What? I didn’t even say anything,” Sam protested.
“Something at the police station,” Charlene said quickly. “I think one of the cases she investigated last summer when she still worked for the police department is going to trial, and he had some questions for her. She’ll be here soon. She said she was on her way.”
As if on cue, an old-fashioned doorbell chimed through the graceful entryway.
Kat was closest to it. She opened the door and was the first to hug her sister.
“Sorry I’m late,” Wynona said. “I didn’t mean to keep everyone waiting.”
“You didn’t,” Katrina assured her. “We just arrived ourselves.”
“Everyone’s in the back, if you’d like to follow me.”
Julia led the way through the house, filled with antiques and collectibles. It really was like a museum. How did Julia walk down for a midnight snack without worrying about breaking some sort of priceless family heirloom? she wondered.
This neighborhood was set on a hill some distance from downtown, but the huge screened sunroom Julia led them to offered spectacular views of the lake and the Redemption Mountains.
“Oh, look what you’ve done to this place,” Charlene exclaimed. “It’s absolutely stunning, Kenzie.”
McKenzie Kilpatrick, the Haven Point mayor and floral shop owner who loved nothing so much as throwing a big party—except maybe her husband, Ben—had pulled out the perfect bridal shower decor for Wynona. Though Wyn had been a police officer, she was a girlie-girl at heart, and the decorations reflected that, with large paper parasols in soft pastel shades hanging from the ceiling and heart-shaped balloons in the same shades in every corner.
“I had a lot of help. Katrina and Sam were here for several hours this afternoon.”
As maid of honor, Katrina probably should have handled many of the shower details. She had participated in the planning with Julia, Eliza and McKenzie via Skype and email, but it was a little hard to do much more from another country.
“I hope you didn’t go up on the ladder to hang those parasols, honey,” Charlene said to Katrina. “With your luck, you’d fall off and break something. Wouldn’t that be a sorry state of affairs, if you had a broken arm in a cast to go with your bridesmaid dress?”
She managed to refrain from rolling her eyes—which she wanted to think was a sign that she was indeed maturing at least a little bit. “Yes. Terrible.”
“Although, maybe if you had a broken arm,” her mother said tartly, “you would have to stick around home longer than a few weeks.”
As Katrina was well aware of her mother’s negative attitude about her return to Colombia, she opted to ignore that broad hint. “I’m going to go set this salad over on the table and say hello to Hazel and Eppie,” she said, then escaped before her mother could call her back.
She adored the two Brewer sisters, sisters ten months apart who had married twin brothers and spent their entire lives living next to each other. She and Samantha often said they wanted to grow up to be just like them, sassy and funny and full of spice.
She set the salad down and hugged each of them in turn. “How are my favorite troublemakers? What have you been up to while I’ve been gone?”
“Why, there’s our favorite world traveler,” Hazel said. “It’s about time you came back.”
“I’m so happy you made it in time for the wedding,” Eppie exclaimed.
Surely they knew she wouldn’t have missed Wyn and Cade’s wedding, no matter what. Even if she had been stuck in a tiny village on the Amazon River without a boat, she would have swum through barracudas to be here if necessary.
“Sit here by us,” Hazel insisted. “We want to hear every juicy detail. What sort of hunky guys have you been hanging out with down there?”
“I can picture you now, lounging around on the beaches of Rio or living it up in some penthouse apartment in Bogotá.”
For one moment, she could vividly picture Gabriela’s orphanage, where she had been spending virtually all of her free time when she wasn’t teaching English at the nearby secondary school. She saw the run-down facility as clearly as if she had just left—the peeling paint, the bare mattresses on the floor, the plain, dangling light bulbs overhead.
She had to get Gabi out of that environment, no matter what.
The dedicated staff at the orphanage tried to shower love on the children, but they had limited time and even more limited means to make a real difference.
Her heart ached all over again at the confusion and sadness in Gabi’s sweet face when Katrina had hugged her goodbye the week before. Though she wasn’t yet four, she had already been disappointed twice when previous adoptions fell through. Children with Down syndrome could be difficult to place in developing countries, especially when they already struggled with complicated medical conditions that could accompany that diagnosis.
Gabi would eventually need heart surgery for a congenital defect, which was highly unlikely in her current circumstances.
“Come back?” Gabi had whispered the plea in Spanish, her brow furrowed and her mouth twisted into a frown.
Katrina had kissed her cheek while running a hand over her dark hair. “I swear it,” she had answered, not at all sure how much the girl understood or believed.
She hated to leave her. Under other circumstances, she might have opted to skip the wedding and put the necessary travel expenses toward the ever-rising adoption fees.
But she loved Wyn dearly. Katrina was her maid of honor and couldn’t even contemplate missing her wedding to Police Chief Cade Emmett, who had been friends with their older brother Marshall and had been part of their lives as long as Katrina could remember.
She was here, right now, in Haven Point, at Julia Winston’s beautiful home celebrating Wynona’s upcoming wedding. She needed to be present, she reminded herself. As much as her heart might yearn to be with the child whose generosity and courage had stolen her heart, she wouldn’t ruin her sister’s wedding celebrations and this gathering with her dear friends of the Haven Point Helping Hands by pining to be somewhere else.
She pushed the ache away. “All right, girls,” she said to Eppie and Hazel, who hadn’t been girls for about seven decades. “Tell me everything that’s been going on around town while I’ve been gone. You two always know the good dirt.”
Eppie giggled. “Oh my. How much time do you have?”
“As long as it takes.”
They had only about ten minutes to visit before McKenzie Kilpatrick took charge and told everyone they should eat now so they could save their strength for the games to come.
Katrina suggested the Brewer sisters let her grab plates for them, an offer they accepted with alacrity. After she prepared their plates, she returned to the buffet line for one of her own. While she was chatting with Devin Barrett—McKenzie’s sister, whose stepdaughter had been in Katrina’s class—Lindy Grace Keegan took her spot next to Hazel and Eppie.
“There’s a spot over here,” Charlene called.
With a little inward sigh, Katrina manufactured a smile—she was becoming an expert at it—and made her way to the long table where her mother sat with several of their other friends.
“Everything is so delicious, don’t you think?” Charlene asked the table at large and received a positive response in return. “I’m especially loving this cheesecake. Who made it?”
Barbara Serrano, whose family owned a restaurant, raised her hand. “It’s a new recipe we’re trying out.”
“I’d say it’s a hit,” McKenzie said.
“I have got to get this recipe,” Andie Montgomery said. “Marshall would love it. You know how much he loves sweets.”
Andie, a widow with two adorable kids, was marrying Katrina’s brother Marshall in the fall. Kat had met her a few times the previous summer and thought her very nice but a little too quiet for the rambunctious Bailey family. She hadn’t known about Andie’s painful past until pieces of it slithered into town and threatened Andie, those cute kids and Wynona.
She still wasn’t sure how she felt about Andie becoming her sister-in-law as she didn’t know her well yet, but it was obvious Marshall adored her—and vice versa.
“You have to try this,” Charlene said, holding her fork just inches away from Katrina’s mouth. Her mother never seemed to remember she didn’t like cheesecake.
“No, thanks. You have it. I’m good with fruit. Thanks, though.”
“Are you sure? It’s delicious.”
“Positive.”
“I don’t know why you won’t at least have a taste. It’s not like you can’t afford the calories, unlike some of us. You’re so thin,” Charlene said with a sigh.
Her mother could win Olympic gold in fussing.
“I’m fine. Really. Look at all this food I’ve taken.”
“But how much of it will you eat?” Charlene countered.
Again, she wondered what her mother would say if she knew some of the interesting meals Katrina had eaten in South America.
“I think you look beautiful,” Barbara said with her kind smile. “What have you been up to? You went to South America with that sexy mountain climber who used to come into the restaurant with you, right? What was his name again? How’s he doing?”
Her mother’s mouth straightened into a thin line, probably from the effort it was taking Charlene not to spill out her own opinions about Carter Ross. Her mother had strongly opposed Katrina’s decision to go with him on his quest to climb the highest point in every country in South America.
It’s too dangerous. You aren’t serious with the man, anyway. Why do you have to go halfway across the world with him?
All valid points, Kat could admit now. At one point, her mother had even sworn she would never speak with her again if she left with him. Obviously, that had been a hollow threat. More’s the pity.
To her mother’s credit, she hadn’t uttered so much as an I-told-you-so after Katrina’s tenuous relationship with Carter barely survived two of the countries on the list. That didn’t make it any easier for Kat to admit her mother had been right all along.
“No doubt he’s fine, but I couldn’t say for certain. We went our separate ways several months ago.”
That was a polite way of sugarcoating the truth, she supposed. He had been an ass and she had been stupid. Her mistakes still stung, though not with the pain of a broken heart. She hadn’t wanted forever, she reminded herself. That didn’t prevent her from feeling betrayed when he had basically abandoned her in a foreign country without money, credit cards or her passport.
“I still don’t understand why you didn’t just pack your bags and come back home after you and he-who-shall-remain-nameless broke up,” Sam said.
Funny, how a lack of money, credit cards and passport could impact travel plans. Even after all that had been remedied with help from the embassy in Bogotá, something had kept her there.
“I didn’t really go down to South America for him. He was the excuse, not the reason,” she said, which had been one of the points of contention between her and Carter. He’d wanted her undivided attention.
“Once I was already there, immersed in other cultures and getting to know the people, I found I really enjoyed the adventure of it. Except for the years I was in college in Boise, I’ve never lived anywhere else but Haven Point. I decided this was a good chance for me to travel the world a bit, see what might be out there beyond the border of our little town.”
“That’s easy,” Barbara Serrano said with a laugh. “Shelter Springs starts about three miles north of us. But take my advice, don’t bother going there unless you absolutely have to. The natives aren’t very friendly.”
