Anna had flipped the Closed sign propped against the window of The Happy Cow so it faced the street and glanced at the clock.
She’d planned to run home and freshen up before she drove out to Sunni’s house to pick up the girls, but a trio of women dressed in clothing more suited to walking down a New York fashion runway than the network of hiking trails near Castle Falls had swept into The Happy Cow before she’d had a chance to lock the door.
Given the time of day, Anna had assumed the women were searching for something a little more substantial than ice cream to eat. The Happy Cow did have a few tables for customers to relax with their ice cream but it lacked the kitchen space for a grill, and sit-down restaurants were few and far between in the area, but the number of disappointed looks Anna received from tourists when they discovered The Happy Cow didn’t have a full menu had prompted a conversation with Olivia next door. The local coffee-shop owner—an artist in her own right when it came to creating masterpieces out of humble ingredients like eggs, butter and flour—personally delivered a batch of enormous, salt-encrusted pretzels fresh from the oven over to The Happy Cow on her lunch break. It was first come, first serve, of course, and because the locals knew exactly when Olivia took said lunch break, the pretzels were usually gone by midafternoon.
Anna had worked up a smile and inwardly braced herself to share the bad news about the lack of restaurants, but the oldest of the three women hadn’t so much as spared a glance at the chalkboard on the wall behind the counter that listed the flavors of ice cream. She’d announced they were looking for Anna’s Inspiration and the GPS on her cell had brought them—she’d held up the device as proof—here.
Anna had experienced a moment of sheer panic when she realized the women’s jewelry matched, in both quality and price, the tiny gold labels attached to the designer bags looped over their shoulders.
But she’d inhaled a deep breath, exhaled a silent prayer and ushered them upstairs to the second floor.
The absolute silence that followed had distilled Anna’s insecurities into a full-fledged case of outright panic...and sent visions of one-star reviews dancing in her head.
The oldest of the three women had smiled and glided into the room, but her friends hadn’t exerted the same control. They’d worked their way from display to display, enthusiastically oohing and aahing over the bracelets and lingering over the necklaces as if they were choosing penny candy from the variety store on the corner. They’d also helped themselves to Anna’s newly minted business cards, each one finding a home in the sleek inner pocket of a trendy leather bag.
The women had finally drifted out the front door, leaving Anna with a seven-minute window to drive over to Sunni’s house and pick up the twins.
Cassie and Chloe had been awake and dressed before the alarm clock went off that morning, excited about spending the day in what Cassie announced was “our new favorite spot.”
It hadn’t crossed Anna’s mind until she’d returned to The Happy Cow what her daughter might have meant by the statement. She could only hope it was the river and not Liam’s workshop.
One more reason to hurry...
The door rattled and Anna contemplated ducking behind the counter to avoid another last-minute customer.
“Anna?”
A muffled voice—a familiar voice—froze her in place.
Anna slowly turned toward the door. She wasn’t imagining things.
Douglas and Barbara Leighton—her former in-laws—were standing on the sidewalk.
Had she missed something? A card? An email? Because her former in-laws hadn’t warned—told—Anna they were coming for a visit.
Another rattle. “Aren’t you going to let us in?”
Anna realized that if she could see Ross’s parents, they could see her, too. She rushed over to open the door.
“Surprise!” Barbara kissed the air near Anna’s cheek. “You weren’t at home, so Douglas and I took a chance you might still be here.”
Ross’s father wasn’t a touchy-feely person, so Anna gave him a smile instead of a hug. “How was the drive up?”
“Long.” Douglas’s gaze swept over the interior of the dining room. “Did you finally decide to take my advice and extend your summer hours?”
If Anna extended her hours, the girls would be eating supper while they got ready for bed.
“No, I still close at six, but some customers snuck in and asked if they could see the studio before they checked into the bed-and-breakfast.”
“Studio?” Barbara looked confused.
“Anna’s Inspiration. My jewelry business?” The one Anna had mentioned in her emails. “I’ve had quite a few orders since my website went up.”
“You actually went through with that?” Ross’s father, who’d been Castle Falls’s only attorney before accepting a partnership in a prestigious law firm located in Grand Rapids, had a way of staring a person down as if they were on the witness stand. “Wouldn’t it have been a bit more prudent to find out if there’s a demand first?”
“My friend Lily helped me. She worked at a marketing firm, and she’s the one who helped me create a business plan.”
Douglas let the topic drop, but Anna had a feeling the conversation wasn’t over. Her father-in-law had earned a reputation for biding his time and waiting for the right moment to strike.
“Where are my granddaughters?” Barbara’s smile faded as she looked around. “I thought they’d be here with you.”
“My grandmother slipped and fell a few days ago, so Mom decided to stay in Florida until Gram can get around a little better on her own,” Anna explained. “Cassie and Chloe are over at Sunni’s house today.”
“Sonia Mason?” Douglas’s brows slid together over the bridge of his nose, and Anna wished she hadn’t mentioned that last part. She had never understood her father-in-law’s animosity toward a woman the rest of the community loved, but whenever someone mentioned Sunni’s name, the man’s expression turned chokecherry sour. “Is the canoe business doing so poorly she had to take in extra work?”
“My friend Lily is the one who offered to keep an eye on them for me. She and Brendan were married a few weeks ago.”
Douglas’s scowl only deepened, and Anna turned to Barbara before he could voice his opinion of Sunni’s adopted sons.
“How long will you be staying in Castle Falls?”
“I’m not sure.” Barbara stooped down and picked up a tiny piece of napkin Anna had missed when she’d swept the floor.
“We’ll be driving to Escanaba for a few days to visit some friends but plan to be back on the weekend. It always takes a few days to freshen things up and make the cabin livable again.”
The Leightons’ “cabin” was a year-round, four-bedroom split-log home with a hundred feet of frontage on a private lake. They hired a caretaker to keep up with the yard work and stock the refrigerator before they visited in the summer.
Anna, who’d grown up in a modest two-story home, had been in awe the first time Ross had invited her over to watch a movie after a football game. The Leightons had spared no expense when it came to their only child. They’d even converted an outbuilding into a gym so Ross could stay in shape for football during the long winter months.
The best brings out the best, Anna had heard Douglas boast to his friends in the bleachers.
Anna sometimes wondered if that was one of the reasons Ross’s father had been so angry when he’d found out she and Ross had eloped. Douglas hadn’t wanted anything—or anyone—to distract Ross from his goal of making the pros after college. When Anna had moved from being Ross’s high school sweetheart to his wife, Douglas’s attitude toward her had changed.
“Cassie and Chloe will be sorry they missed you,” Anna said. “Maybe we can get together after church tomorrow?”
Irritation flashed in Douglas’s eyes. “Barbara and I planned on taking you and the girls out for dinner tonight.”
What about her plans?
As soon as the thought formed in her mind, Anna felt a pinch of guilt. She’d called the other members of the reunion committee over the weekend to give them a brief update and they’d had some questions they wanted Lily to address when they met that afternoon. But the Leightons only returned to Castle Falls a few times a year and even though they didn’t have a close relationship with Anna, she knew they missed their grandchildren.
“I’m sure Cassie and Chloe would love that,” she said. “They’ve been begging me to take them out for pizza since school let out.”
“We already made reservations at Twin Pines,” Douglas said.
“It’s the only restaurant in the county that can make a decent steak.”
Twin Pines was also a half-hour drive from Castle Falls. By the time they drove home, it would be too late for Anna to return phone calls for the reunion committee. Or work on the necklace an online customer had commissioned as an anniversary gift for his wife.
“Should we pick up Cassie and Chloe while you go home and change clothes?” Barbara’s gaze lit on a smear of hot-fudge sauce decorating the pocket of Anna’s apron.
“No.” Had she said that too quickly? Given Douglas’s reaction to Anna’s choice of a babysitter, she didn’t want to take the chance he would say something to Sunni that might offend her. “If the girls have been playing outside all day, they’ll have to change their clothes, too.”
“All right.” Douglas consulted his Rolex. “We’ll pick you up at the house in twenty minutes.”
“I can’t wait to hear about the birthday present the girls got you,” Barbara called over her shoulder as Douglas ushered her toward the door. “They were very secretive about it. The only thing I could get them to tell me was that it was something you needed.”
The door closed behind them and Anna sagged against the counter.
Something she needed.
A day on the river wasn’t a gift Anna had been able to hold in her hands or place on a shelf in the house, but every moment had lodged in her heart and taken up residence there.
Sunlight sparkling on the water. The girls’ laughter as Liam caught a trout. The warmth of the campfire.
And a verse that continued to play in the background of Anna’s mind over the last few days, reminding her that God was always with her. Truth that had somehow gotten buried under the weight of Ross’s anger and accusations.
And Liam...
She had to stop thinking about Liam before he worked his way into her heart, too.
There was no room for him. Not with all the secrets Anna carried there.
* * *
Liam heard the low, unhappy growl of a muffler seconds before Anna’s minivan turned down the driveway.
Cassie heard it, too. “Mom’s here!”
“Shh.” Chloe sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by sleeping kittens. Ten minutes ago they’d been performing the feline version of Cirque du Soleil in his work space.
Liam caught a glimpse of Anna through the window as she walked toward the house. Because she assumed the twins would be with Lily. The woman who’d offered to keep an eye on them. But Lily had ended up taking a phone call that had somehow consumed the entire afternoon, and Sunni had had an emergency at the animal shelter, which left only one person in the family who was available to step in.
Him.
Liam jogged to the door and poked his head out before she reached the front steps.
“Anna?”
She froze. Slowly turned to face him. “I’m late picking up the girls.”
“They’re with me.”
Anna retraced her steps down the flagstone walkway. “Where is Lily?”
Matchmaking from afar, Liam was tempted to say. But he couldn’t make an accusation like that without solid proof. “On the phone with a customer, but I’m expecting her back any minute. And a water pipe broke at the shelter, so Mom had to drive over there and wait for a plumber,” he added, anticipating Anna’s next question.
“I hope the girls didn’t stop you from getting something accomplished.”
“Nope.” Liam had actually gotten a lot accomplished.
Anna slipped past him into the workshop, and he heard her suck in a breath.
Oh, yeah. He probably should explain the reason her daughters’ clothing was splattered with paint, too.
“Hi, Mom!” Cassie flew to Anna’s side. “We had so much fun today. Liam—”
“Is going to call Lily and find out what’s taking so long.” Liam reached for the cell phone in his back pocket. “A few questions came up when we were talking about the reunion last night, and she wanted to discuss them with you.”
Anna was already shaking her head. “I won’t have time tonight. We have plans for dinner.”
“Pizza!” Cassie broke into a little jig.
“Not this time, sweetheart. We’re going to Twin Pines.”
Cassie’s nose wrinkled. “But that’s a quiet place.”
“Your grandparents are here for a visit and it’s the place they chose.”
Douglas and Barbara Leighton. Liam struggled to keep his expression neutral. When Les Atkins accused Brendan of stealing his watch shortly after they’d moved to Castle Falls, it was Douglas Leighton who’d counseled Les’s father to press charges. Even though he was innocent, Brendan ended up being suspended from school for a week.
But that wasn’t enough for Atkins. Les and his friends had continued to make life miserable for Brendan until they’d graduated. The day Rich had suffered a heart attack, Les claimed Brendan had spray-painted profanity on the wall of the gymnasium. Brendan had been taken into police custody and charged with vandalism. Fortunately the truth had come out, and eventually Brendan’s name had been cleared.
Not that it had swayed public opinion. Brendan had been labeled a troublemaker, and since the same blood flowed through Liam and Aiden’s veins, they’d been judged guilty, as well.
It had taken years to earn the respect of the community, but Liam knew there were some people who would always view them as outsiders. Douglas Leighton was one of them.
“Do we have to go right now?” Chloe couldn’t quite conceal her disappointment as she rose to her feet, careful not to wake the kittens sprawled on the floor.
“Yes, we do.” Anna eyed the flecks of blue paint interspersed among Chloe’s freckles. “Grandpa and Grandma will be picking us up at the house, and you’ll have to get cleaned up before we leave.”
That was his bad.
Liam raked his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Anna. I had no idea that paint did this. Let me just state for the record that mine stayed on the brush.”
The corner of Anna’s lips trembled, and Liam would have jumped headfirst into a vat of paint if it had coaxed that tiny smile into full bloom.
“What were you painting?”
“We’ll show you, Mom!” Chloe grabbed Anna’s hand before she could protest and dragged her over to the lopsided Dr. Seuss-like structure behind Liam’s workbench.
They’d devoted the better part of the afternoon to the project. Liam had created two towers from wood and pieces of bright yellow carpeting, and linked them together with a tunnel made out of plastic ice-cream buckets. He and the twins had discovered some cans of leftover paint from Lily’s home makeover the summer before, but the girls couldn’t decide what color to paint the boards. So they’d used all of them.
“It’s a...” Anna paused and studied the curtain of feathers dangling from strips of leather over the entrance of the tunnel.
“A—”
“Playground.” Chloe came to her rescue. “Liam said the kittens needed something to keep them busy while he was working on his boat.”
“The kittens?” Anna stared at Liam over her daughter’s head.
Liam stared right back. “That’s right.”
“And now we’ll get our Caring for God’s Creatures pin because the kittens have a place to play.” Cassie slipped her arm through her mother’s. “Did you make that one yet?”
“I did.” Anna smoothed Cassie’s hair away from her forehead and uncovered a splotch of yellow paint. “Okay. Grab your backpacks, and let’s get going.”
“But we have one more thing to show you!”
“How long was Lily’s phone call?” Anna said under her breath.
Three...four hours. But, because it sounded like a rhetorical question, Liam didn’t say so out loud.
The twins towed Anna into a room adjacent to Liam’s shop, a holding cell for an eclectic collection of odds and ends no one quite knew what to do with.
“Sorry about the mess.” He pushed a box aside with his foot. “Now that we’re expanding into day trips again, Brendan and Lily have big plans for this space. Once I get the shelves up, we’re going to stock them with camping equipment and snacks and use it as a check-in point.”
“They’re going to call it The Trading Post.” Cassie pointed to a brand-new paddle hanging from brackets on the wall. “All the people who rent canoes get to sign their names, and Liam let us be the first ones!”
“’Cause they’re starting a new tradition and we were the first explorers of the season,” Chloe chimed in.
“That was very nice of you,” Anna murmured.
So why wouldn’t she look at him?
“Lily would call it good marketing.” Liam tried to ease the sudden tension by cracking a joke. It only worked for Aiden, apparently, because Anna’s gaze dropped to the floor.
Had he done something wrong? Other than give two eight-year-olds free access to the paint cabinet, of course.
I don’t know what to do, Lord. I want to be Anna’s friend, but this “one step forward, two steps back” thing is hard.
“You can sign your name, too, Mom,” Chloe said.
“Another time.” Anna tapped her daughter’s button nose. “If we don’t scrub this paint off, you’re going to have to wear it to the restaurant, and your grandparents will think you and Cassie joined the circus.”
“Your mom is right.” Liam might fail at DIY projects with third-grade girls, but he remembered the Leightons well enough to know that—for them—image was everything.
“Bye, Liam.” Cassie locked her arms around Liam’s waist and hugged him. “Don’t forget to take pictures of the kittens.”
Chloe was next. “Bye, Liam! I’ll see you Monday.”
Now Anna did look at him. And she appeared as shocked as Liam by the twins’ unexpected display of affection.
As he watched Anna shepherd the girls out the door, Liam had the sinking feeling they’d taken another gigantic step backward.
But that didn’t stop his thoughts from taking a dangerous little side trip as Liam imagined what it would be like to hold Anna in his arms.