Serenity Harbor

She might not sew as well as Samantha or be as good as McKenzie at throwing together a beautiful celebration, but she knew her sister and what she needed.

Katrina gripped Wyn’s hands tightly, there in the shadow of the beautiful Victorian house, with its gables and turrets.

“Stop it. Right now. You’re marrying an absolutely wonderful man—one who adores you and cherishes you. A man you have loved most of your life. You’re going to marry him, make a life with him, build a future, and it’s going to be beautiful. That’s what you’re doing.”

Wyn drew in a shaky breath, then another until the look of panic receded from her gaze.

“You’re right. You’re right. I don’t know what happened there for a moment. I think with the shower and all the gifts and everything tonight, the whole thing suddenly seems more real.”

“You haven’t had much time to soak in all the changes in your life. Last summer you were a police officer and Cade was your boss. Until a few weeks ago, you were in Boise finishing your degree. Now here you are, about to start the most exciting chapter of your life with your sexy police chief.”

“You’re right. You’re right.” Wyn gave a breathy laugh. “Oh, I can’t wait. Thank you for the pep talk. Promise me you won’t tell Mom or Cade I needed one.”

“Pinkie promise,” she said.

“Back to what I was saying about Bowie. I trust you to do what you think is best, but I don’t want you to worry a moment that you have to spend every moment that you’re home with me. Everything is under control for the wedding, and we’ll have plenty of time together after you adopt your sweet Gabi and bring her back to Haven Point. I’ll be the best aunt ever. You wait. That girl is going to be so spoiled.”

She had no doubt about it. Eventually even Charlene would have to come around and accept Gabi.

How could she not?

CHAPTER FOUR (#u8447eef0-0e4a-5b31-be04-0115090733b8)

“ARE YOU SURE you’re good for a little while?”

Lizzie Lawson, the teenage neighbor girl who had helped Bowie out a few times in a pinch, nodded and placed a hand on Milo’s head.

“We should be fine. Right, Milo?”

His brother didn’t pay her any attention. He was too entranced by the big golden retriever that had accompanied Lizzie. The dog—she had called him Jerry Lewis—had a blunt, friendly face and seemed extraordinarily patient as Milo petted him.

“You said you needed about thirty minutes for your conference call, is that right?” she said.

“Give or take a few minutes.”

“No problem. We’ll go for a little walk on the lakeside trail. Milo, you can hold the leash if you want.”

His brother didn’t smile, but his eyes did widen with excitement. This was Lizzie’s third time keeping an eye on Milo for Bowie when he had work obligations he couldn’t escape. She seemed very dependable, and Milo tolerated her as much as he did anyone, especially if she brought the dog along to help entertain him.

If only she could help him out for longer periods of time, but she already had a job working in McKenzie Kilpatrick’s store. Besides that, an hour or so with Milo was probably as much as a teenage girl should be expected to handle, no matter how well recommended she came from McKenzie.

He crouched down to Milo’s level. As usual, his brother avoided looking straight at him, his attention focused exclusively on the dog.

“Milo. Bud. Look at me.” His brother’s gaze danced to him for an instant, then quickly away. Bowie supposed he would have to be content with what he could get. “Listen to what Lizzie says. Got it? Nod if you understand me.”

Milo nodded, though he didn’t stop petting the dog.

“All right, kid,” Lizzie said. “Let’s do this. Here’s the leash. Hold on tight now. Got it?”

Milo clung to the leash handle as if his life depended on it and trotted after the retriever with Lizzie bringing up the rear.

Bowie watched them go, aware of the familiar tangle of his emotions. He was in so far over his head with Milo, all he could see above him was darkness and uncertainty. If this autism specialist didn’t work, he wasn’t sure what he would do. He hated the idea of putting Milo in some kind of facility somewhere—avoiding that had been the entire reason he had agreed to become his guardian—but he couldn’t completely rule out that might be the best option, down the road.

He didn’t have to worry about that right now, though, when he had people waiting for him. He tried to shift focus from Milo-worry to work-worry, aware the next few weeks were crucial for several of the projects he was spearheading at Caine Tech.

This conference call with one of their major vendors in Asia was vital. If they didn’t iron out some of the problems now, the ripple effect would completely screw their production schedule.

Thanks to the chaos with Milo, it felt like weeks since he had been able to fully focus on work—not a good situation when he was only just finding his way with his team at the new Haven Point facility.

He knew just whom to blame for this frustration. His mother.

An image of Stella the last time he had seen her flashed across his mind. He had been fifteen, almost the same age she had been when she gave birth to him. A child raising a child. The problem was, he eventually grew up. His mother had not.

Growing up with Stella had been tumultuous at best, a nightmare much of the time.

Guilt dug under his skin at the thought. He didn’t hate his mother. He never had, even after he had escaped the chaos. Yeah, she had been flighty and irresponsible, self-absorbed, emotional and totally without willpower.

Alcohol, drugs, men. She used all of them with regularity.

Milo’s early years apparently hadn’t been much different from his own. The social worker who had contacted him about Milo had pieced together enough information on his brother’s history to reveal that Stella had never really changed her ways. At the time of her death, she had been destitute, living on the streets of Portland with Milo, begging at street corners and high most of the time. Why his brother hadn’t been taken away from her years ago seemed to be a mystery to everybody in the system.

Bo slid into his office chair, catching a view out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the lake in the distance and the soaring mountains beyond.

He thought he had come so far in his own psyche. He hadn’t given much thought to his mother in several years, not since the private investigator he sent to find her came back empty-handed years ago.

He should have kept looking.

Again, guilt pinched at him—the familiar guilt of a son who loved his mother despite her failings and wanted more for her than the hardscrabble, free-living, moment-to-moment existence she insisted on.

He had no choice but to think about her now.

Milo—the troubled, silent, needy son she had given birth to more than twenty-five years after she had Bowie—was a constant reminder. The boy had his mother’s eyes. Their mother’s eyes. Mysterious, deep, dreamy.

With one last sigh, he shoved away the memories and forced himself to focus on the man he had become, someone far more comfortable in the safe, predictable world of technology than with the murky morass of his past.

* * *

“THAT WENT WELL, don’t you think?”

Bowie nodded at his personal assistant, the only person still linked into the video conference call. “Excellent. Sounds like with the information we gave them, they can iron out the supplier problems and be set to move into production by next quarter.”

Peggy Luchino shifted in her chair. She was plump and pretty, with long curly hair and eyes that always seemed to smile. In the two months since he had come to the Haven Point facility, she had taken him under wing—somewhat like the older sister he never had.

“Good work, Peggy. We never would have made so much progress if you hadn’t been there to keep us on track.”

“Thanks.” She gave a rueful smile. “Even so, it went longer than we anticipated. Sorry about that.”

He looked up at the clock above his desk and was shocked to realize he had been on the conference call for two solid hours. Amazing, how fast time went when he was solving a problem, making progress toward a goal. It had always been that way, since his first hacking attempts on a cobbled-together secondhand computer when he was eleven years old.