Redemption Bay (Haven Point Book 2) (Contemporary Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page A

now she had to worry about Ben Kilpatrick living next door.
    It was enough to make a woman want to tear her hair out—or want to curl up in her bed under the blankets and pretend she didn’t have a business
or
a town to run.
    * * *
    A FTER THEIR NEIGHBORS went inside their house, Ben led Hondo next door. The dog immediately found a stick under the big birch tree, carried it to the water’s edge, then flopped down on his belly and started to chew it.
    Ben watched him for a moment, then took a few more steps to a double swing overlooking the water just a few yards from the dock.
    It was beautiful here. Wispy clouds encircled the tops of the Redemption Mountains and the setting sun painted them pink and coral and lavender, a scene perfectly reflected in the clear waters of the lake.
    Because of the way the shoreline curved, he could see the lights of downtown begin to twinkle in the twilight and with a piercing cry, a red-tailed hawk suddenly soared from one of the tall pines that grew in such abundance around the lake, lending their crisp, tart scent to the scene.
    Haven Point was an idyllic spot, really. How had he forgotten that over the years? Somehow he must have let the darkness and despair of his home life swallow the memory.
    Yes, it was pretty. That didn’t make him any happier at being forced to come back.
    He could have said no.
    He wasn’t exactly an indentured servant. When Aidan asked him to take on this assignment after Marsh’s sudden fatal heart attack, Ben could have told him to kiss off, to send someone else at Caine Tech.
    Yes, they were facing a top-level decision but he could have picked two or three others on his team or Aidan’s, people he trusted, who were likely to be more objective about Haven Point than he was.
    It would have been the logical move—and Ben was nothing if not logical.
    So why hadn’t he? Why was he here on a beautiful late-June evening gazing out at a couple of colorful wood ducks swooping in to land on the water?
    He didn’t have a clear answer to that, even inside his own head. Something was tugging him back here and had been for some time. Closure, maybe? Some sense of unfinished business? He had left town so abruptly, the afternoon of Lily’s funeral, and he hadn’t been back since.
    Whatever the reason drawing him to Haven Point, he was here now. Aidan had wanted him to take over for Marshall Phillips on this fact-finding assignment and Ben had agreed.
    “I think it will be good for you to go back,” Aidan said three days earlier when he came to Ben’s house personally to ask him to come. “Take it from a man who survived a brain tumor. At some point in your life, before it’s too late, you have to grab your ghosts by the throat and tell them to back the hell off. The only way to do that is to face them head-on.”
    He hadn’t seen the point in arguing with Aidan that he didn’t have ghosts, unless he were counting the painful memories of the younger sister he adored.
    He didn’t hate Haven Point. It was merely a small, beautifully situated town where he had once lived—one he had intended to spend the rest of his life without ever stepping foot in again.
    “Besides,” Aidan had continued with that logic that was always so damn hard for Ben to refute. “You were just saying how that Killy you’ve been working to renovate for the last year is done and ready for her maiden voyage. It seems fitting that you put her in the water for the first time at Lake Haven, where she came from.”
    Through the well-landscaped shrubs and trees, he caught sight of a figure moving past the window of the pretty little lake house next door.
    He wasn’t sure he would be able to tolerate living next door to Haven Point’s vociferous mayor, even for a few days.
    He remembered McKenzie. Those long-lashed dark eyes in her dusky skin, the inky hair, the dimples, which tended to flash equally, whether she was angry or happy.
    How could he forget her, when she had been Lily’s