LITMIR.BIZ

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this point, she couldn’t do anything to change that. The only thing she could do was treat him with the same courtesy and respect she would any other guest at the inn.

      No matter how difficult that might prove.

      * * *

      WHAT THE HELL was he doing here?

      Elliot dragged his duffel to the larger of the cottage’s two bedrooms, where a folding wood-framed luggage stand had been set out, ready for guests.

      The cottage was tastefully decorated in what he termed Western chic—bold mission furniture, wood plank ceiling, colorful rugs on the floor. A river rock fireplace dominated the living room, probably perfect for those chilly evenings along the lakeshore.

      Cedarwood Cottage seemed comfortable and welcoming, a good place for him to huddle over his laptop and pound out the last few chapters of the book that was overdue to his editor.

      Even so, he could already tell this was a mistake.

      Why the hell hadn’t he simply told his mother and Katrina he wouldn’t be able to make it to the reception? He had flown to Cartagena for the wedding three months earlier, after all. Surely that showed enough personal commitment on his part to his baby sister’s nuptials.

      They would have protested a bit but would have understood—and in the end, it wouldn’t have much mattered whether he made it home for the event or not. The reception wasn’t about him; it was about Bowie and Katrina and the life they were building with Bowie’s younger brother Milo and Kat’s adopted daughter, Gabriella.

      For his part, Elliot was quite sure he would have been better off if he had stayed holed up in his condo in Denver to finish the book, no matter how awkward things had become for him there. If he closed the blinds, ignored the doorbell and just hunkered down, he could have typed one-handed or even dictated the changes he needed to make. The whole thing would have been done in a week.

      The manuscript wasn’t the problem.

      Elliot frowned, his head pounding in rhythm to each throbbing ache of his shoulder.

      He was the problem—and he couldn’t escape the mess he had created, no matter how far away from Denver he drove.

      He struggled to unzip the duffel one-handed, then finally gave up and stuck his right arm out of the sling to help. His shoulder ached even more in response, not happy with being subjected to eight hours of driving only days post-surgery.

      How was he going to explain the shoulder injury to his mother? He couldn’t tell her he was recovering from a gunshot wound, not given his family’s history.

      Charlene had lost a son and husband in the line of duty and had seen both a daughter and her other son injured on the job.

      Nor could he tell his brother Marshall or his brother-in-law Cade about all the trouble he found himself in. He was the model FBI agent, with the unblemished record.

      Until now.

      Moving into the cottage was an easy job that took him all of five minutes, transferring the packing cubes from his duffel into drawers, setting his toiletries in the bathroom, hanging the few dress shirts he had brought along. When he was done, he wandered back into the combined living room/kitchen.

      The front wall was made almost entirely of windows, perfect for looking out and enjoying the spectacular view of Lake Haven during one of its most beautiful seasons, late spring, before the tourist horde descended.

      On impulse, Elliot opened the door and walked out onto the wide front porch. The night was chilly but the mingled scents of pine and cedar and lake intoxicated him. He drew fresh mountain air deep into his lungs.

      This.

      If he needed to look for a reason why he had been compelled to come home during his suspension and the investigation into his actions, he only had to think about what this view would look like in the morning, with the sun creeping over the mountains.

      Lake Haven called to him like nowhere else on earth—not only the stunning blue waters or the mountains that jutted out of them in jagged peaks, but the calm, rhythmic lapping of the water against the shore, the ever-changing sky, the cry of wood ducks pedaling in for a landing.

      He had spent his entire professional life digging into the worst aspects of the human condition, investigating cruelty and injustice and people with no moral conscience whatsoever. No matter what sort of muck he waded through, he had figured out early in his career at the FBI that he could keep that ugliness from touching the core of him with thoughts of Haven Point and the people he loved who called this place home.

      He didn’t visit as often as he would like. Between his job at the Denver field office and the six true-crime books he had written, he didn’t have much free time.

      That all might be about to change. He might have more free time than he knew what to do with.

      His shoulder throbbed again and he adjusted the sling, gazing out at the stars that had begun to sparkle above the lake.

      After hitting rock bottom professionally, with his entire future at the FBI in doubt, where else would he come but home?

      He sighed and turned to go back inside. As he did, he spotted the lights still gleaming at the cottage next door, with its blue trim and the porch swing facing the water.

      The swing was empty now. She wasn’t there.

      Megan Hamilton. Auburn hair, green eyes, a smile that always seemed soft and genuine to everyone else but him.

      He drew in a breath, aware of a sharp little twinge of hunger deep in his gut.

      When he booked the cottage, he hadn’t really thought things through. He should have remembered that Megan and the Inn at Haven Point were a package deal. She owned the inn along with these picturesque little guest cottages on Silver Beach.

      In his defense, he had no idea she actually lived in one herself, though. If he had ever heard that little fact, he had forgotten it. Should he have remembered, he would have looked a little harder for a short-term rental property, rather than picking the most convenient lakeshore unit he had found in his web search.

      Usually, Elliot did his best to avoid her. Megan always left him...unsettled. It had been that way for ages, since long before he learned she and his younger brother had started dating.

      He could still remember his shock when he came home for some event or other and saw her and Wyatt together. As in, together, together. Holding hands, sneaking the occasional kiss, giving each other secret smiles. Elliot had felt as if Wyatt had peppered him with buckshot.

      He had tried to be happy for his younger brother, one of the most generous, helpful, loving people he’d ever known. Wyatt had been a genuinely good person and deserved to be happy with someone special.

      Elliot had felt small and selfish for wishing that someone hadn’t been Megan Hamilton.

      Watching their glowing happiness together had been tough. He mostly had managed to stay away for the four or five months they had been dating, though he tried to convince himself it hadn’t been on purpose. Work had been demanding and he had been busy carving out his place in the Bureau. He had also started the research that would become his first book, looking into a long-forgotten Montana case from a century earlier where a man had wooed, then married, then killed three spinster schoolteachers from New England for their life insurance money before finally being apprehended by a savvy local sheriff and the sister of one of the dead women.

      The few times Elliot returned home during the time Megan had been dating his brother, he had been forced to endure family gatherings knowing she would be there, upsetting his equilibrium and stealing any peace he usually found here.

      He couldn’t let her do it to him this time.

      Her porch light switched off a moment later and Elliot finally breathed a sigh of relief.

      He would only be here three weeks. Twenty-one days. Despite the proximity of his cabin to hers, he likely wouldn’t even

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