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

dearest and most loyal friend? While his sister’s other friends seemed to have dropped off the edge of the earth after her condition deteriorated and she was forced to curtail most activity outside Snow Angel Cove, McKenzie had come faithfully at least two or three times a week, bringing homework and goodies and movies for the two of them to watch.
    Yeah, he had been a self-absorbed, angry teenager, just trying to survive living in his father’s house until he could graduate from high school and get the hell out. But even
he
had been able to see that McKenzie had made Lily’s last year far more bearable—even
enjoyable
—than it would have been otherwise.
    He would have liked to be able to thank her for that—but considering her animosity toward him, he wasn’t sure she wanted to hear anything he had to say.
    He inhaled deeply then let out a sigh. What had he expected? He had burned every bridge he’d ever crossed here and had walked away without looking back.
    Now here he was again, fully aware that his history here with the people of this town—the difficult heritage he didn’t like to remember—would make the job much harder than it would have been for Marshall.

CHAPTER THREE
    A FTER A RESTLESS NIGHT filled with very strange dreams involving a certain sexy billionaire, McKenzie rose before sunrise and headed outside, leaving a disgruntled Rika behind. She grabbed her kayak and paddle from the shed next to the lake then launched it from the dock.
    The rim of the sun started to appear above the high peaks of the Redemptions as she paddled south along the shoreline through clear, quiet water.
    Only a few hardy anglers shared the water with her but they were way out in the deep water of the middle, probably going after the huge lake trout that could be found there. She hardly noticed them as she stroked through tendrils of mist that curled off the water on these mountain mornings.
    A few loons flapped their feathers and moved away from her as she paddled in their direction. To her left, a fish jumped, going after all the little morning bugs that skimmed across the surface, and in the pine trees offshore on the other side, she heard an owl hoot as he returned to bed after a night prowling the forests. Sometimes it seemed like a dream that she really had a life here—a good one, too, filled with good friends, responsibilities she did her best to tackle, a thriving business she loved.
    Things could have turned out very differently for her, the child of an overworked single mother who struggled every day to care for both of them.
    When she considered what could have happened to her if she had ended up in foster care in California after her mother died, she had to cringe.
    Okay. Things here hadn’t exactly been perfect for her. She glanced at the shoreline, still in shadows as the sun continued its slow climb over the mountains. From here, she could see the house of her father and stepmother, where she had come to live when she was ten—a frightened, lost, grieving young girl.
    Though nearly two decades had passed since the day Xochitl Vargas had arrived and been transformed slowly into McKenzie Shaw, she still felt the awkwardness of that first day when Richard had pulled into the driveway with her in the passenger seat of his BMW and her one suitcase of belongings in the trunk.
    As uncomfortable as it had been for her, how much worse must it have been for her father, showing up in a small town like Haven Point with the half-Mexican love child he fathered with a paralegal during a business trip a decade earlier?
    While it had taken her many years to come to this point, she had a more mature perspective now and could acknowledge the person who had been thrust in the
most
difficult situation—Adele, Devin’s mother and Richard’s wife.
    She had opened her home and her family to the by-product of a brief affair her husband had during a difficult time in their marriage. Maybe she hadn’t been