LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

left town years earlier, the week after she’d graduated from high school, saying she would never return to Catalina Cove again. She had her own issues with the town and the people in it. He was left to deal with the pain of Bryce’s betrayal alone.

      He certainly hadn’t expected Bryce to show up in North Carolina a week later wanting to see him and tell him her side of things. There was nothing she could tell him. It hadn’t been about what his father had told him but about what he’d seen with his own eyes. He doubted he would ever forget seeing her in Samuel’s arms as they’d been about to kiss.

      Coming back to Catalina Cove to live was the last thing he’d planned to do. When he had returned home after his father’s death it was to find a seafood shipping company that was barely making ends meet. On top of that, the machinery and boats were in need of repair or replacement, and it had been weeks since the crew, shrimpers and oyster shuckers had been paid.

      He had made the decision to close down the company, pay the workers out of money he had saved and move his mother with him to Maryland, where he’d settled after his military career ended. He had a pretty good job working for NASA as a program manager. The plans to return to Maryland changed the day he was approached by Reid LaCroix, the wealthiest man in the cove.

      Reid had invited him to his home and had made Kaegan an offer that nobody in their right mind could refuse. Everyone knew Reid was a man who detested change. He believed family-owned businesses in the cove should stay in the family. As a result of that belief, he’d offered Kaegan a low-interest loan to do whatever was needed to bring the shipping company up to par, but only if Kaegan returned to the cove and ran things.

      Sensing there had to be some catch, Kaegan had asked his attorney and friend Gregory Nelson, back in Maryland, to review the contract. Gregory indicated it was a damn good deal and he could only assume the reason Reid LaCroix had made him such an offer was the man’s doggedness to keep the family-operated companies in the cove in business so there would not be a need to bring in any new ones. Gregory saw LaCroix’s generosity as a really good strategy if LaCroix was as anti-progressive as Kaegan claimed.

      Even with such a good offer, Kaegan had to decide if moving back to Catalina Cove was something he wanted to do. He’d weighed the pros and cons. Living in Maryland and working in DC meant dealing with congested traffic, which had begun wearing him down. Then there were the advantages of being his own boss, an idea that he liked.

      Returning to the cove for his father’s funeral had shown him how much the people in the town had changed for the better. The old sheriff, who’d thought he ruled the town, was gone, and there was a new man in charge, a man he’d liked immediately upon meeting him—Sawyer Grisham. For the first time since leaving he could see himself making Catalina Cove his home again. The only problem he saw impeding his return was Bryce. Since there was no way the two of them could ever get back together, he figured the best way to deal with her was to ignore her very existence.

      After much consideration, Kaegan had accepted Reid’s offer. With the injection of money, Kaegan was able to pay his workers their back pay, call back the men his father had laid off, buy four new boats and update every last piece of his machinery. Reid even gave Kaegan and his crew permission to farm for tilapia and catfish on a tract of land off the ocean that Reid LaCroix owned but never used. That turned out to be an added investment for them both.

      With numerous restaurants in the area needing fresh seafood daily, Kaegan’s business began booming immediately. It was still doing well and in two more years he would be able to pay off his loan to Reid. Kaegan had discovered that without his father making his life miserable, he actually loved being on the water with the men. And he felt he had a dynamic office staff.

      The one thing he did make clear to the townspeople was that he didn’t want to be called K-Gee any longer. He couldn’t forget it had been Bryce who’d first begun calling him that in first grade when she couldn’t pronounce his name.

      Once he’d settled back in the cove, he’d done a pretty good job of keeping his distance from Bryce and vice versa. The only time they would run into each other was when he went into her parents’ café, which he tried limiting. At least he did until he and Sheriff Sawyer Grisham became good friends.

      They’d bonded because they’d had a lot in common. They’d both been marines who’d served multiple tours in Afghanistan. They’d even figured they’d been in the area about the same time, although their paths never crossed. They’d enjoyed sharing war stories over beer in the evenings at Collins Bar and Grill, or in the mornings over coffee and blueberry muffins at the Witherspoon Café.

      A couple of years later Ray Sullivan relocated to the cove to work for Kaegan. Since he was new to town and hadn’t known anyone, they extended their friendship to Ray, and the three of them would start their workday by meeting at the Witherspoon Café.

      Bryce was a Realtor in town but often helped her parents out at the café with the breakfast and dinner crowd. Just like he didn’t want to have anything to do with her, she had the same attitude toward him, which he found crazy because she was the one who’d been caught cheating. He’d also discovered that although most people in the cove knew they were no longer together, no one, not even her parents and brothers, knew the reason why. He figured she’d been too ashamed to admit to anyone that she’d betrayed him and people had known not to ask him about it, so the reason remained a mystery to everyone.

      Even though he saw her more often because of his daily breakfast meetings with Ray and Sawyer at her parents’ cafe, he’d made it a point to ignore her. He’d done a pretty damn good job of it until Vashti moved back to town. She was determined to reclaim her two best friends and couldn’t understand why two people who’d once been so into each other could share so much animosity.

      Sighing deeply, Kaegan put the box back in the safe and drew in a deep breath. Seeing it was a reminder that long-term relationships weren’t for him and he never intended to trust another woman with his heart again.

       CHAPTER THREE

      “GOOD MORNING, SHERIFF. Good morning, Ray. The usual?” Bryce asked the two men when they sat down at one of the booths.

      “Yes, I’ll take the usual,” Ray Sullivan said, smiling up at her.

      “So will I,” Sheriff Sawyer Grisham chimed in, smiling, as well.

      Bryce walked off while thinking that Vashti and Ashley were two lucky women to have found two men who were such jewels. Maybe one day her luck would change. She recalled an article she’d read just last week in a popular women’s magazine. It stated women outnumbered men four to one. With so few men, she needed to get motivated and find her Mr. Right. She’d once had high hopes for Marcel, a guy she’d met at a real-estate seminar in Atlanta. They’d dated for almost eight months. When his ex-wife had reentered the picture, he’d dropped her like a hot potato. That had been four years ago, and although she dated occasionally, she hadn’t gotten seriously involved with anyone since then.

      “You okay, honey?”

      She glanced over at her mother and pasted on a smile. “Sure, Mom, I’m okay. Just had a busy weekend. I showed five houses on Saturday and one after church yesterday.”

      “How did that go?”

      “I think it went well. No buyers yet, but I think one of the couples are really interested in the Flemings’ place.”

      “That’s good. Hmm, I wonder where Kaegan is this morning,” her mother said.

      Bryce bit down on her lip, coming close to saying that she didn’t know, nor did she give a royal damn. Of course, she wouldn’t say that since the woman standing beside her was her mother, although she’d been mistaken for Bryce’s older sister a number of times. Her mom looked just that good for her age and her father wasn’t bad-looking for his age, either. Good genes.

      Years ago when her father, Chester Witherspoon, had graduated from Catalina Cove High

Скачать книгу