href="#u048b48b0-33fc-511a-99ab-60602b5647d4">Chapter Three
CHAPTER ONE
THERE WAS NOTHING LIKE walking into the town he’d almost killed twenty-five years earlier to make a man feel there was a bull’s-eye painted on his back.
For the fifth time in as many minutes, J. T. Delaney forced himself to stop checking over his shoulder. He wasn’t in danger—at least, not of the physical kind. Comeback Cove, Ontario, was a small tourist town on the St. Lawrence Seaway. Quiet was the word most often used to describe it, especially at dinnertime on an early June weeknight. He’d passed all of three people since he set off down Main Street toward the river.
But three people was enough. Especially when they were all old-timers who reached protectively toward their wallets the moment they recognized him. That hurt. He might have been the terror of the town when he was a teen, but he’d never picked pockets.
Taking the heat for things he’d done, he could handle. Taking the heat for things he hadn’t done was not gonna happen.
His steps slowed as he walked past the hardware store. Other than a new coat of paint and fresh awnings, it looked the same as it had back when he used to buy supplies for his adolescent pranks. Same story two doors down, in the drugstore where he’d shoplifted his first pack of condoms. Now, with the wisdom of forty-two years behind him, he knew what a damned fool chance that had been. But he still could empathize with the testosterone-driven youth who would rather risk being hauled in front of the police than pay for rubbers under the eagle eye of a pharmacist who’d known him since birth.
Ah, memories.
Seeing the stores and walking the still-familiar route to the river made him keenly aware of the fact only a fool would forget: small towns don’t change. Not the buildings, not the faces, not the sentiments. The only thing different, it seemed, was him.
For as he’d learned the hard way over the years, the last thing most people wanted was change. Especially when it came to changing their minds.
At last he reached the corner of Main Street and River Road and the sight that had drawn him downtown on his first night back: the St. Lawrence River. It lay straight ahead, peaceful on this cool evening, calling him from the other side of the parking lot that connected Patty’s Pizza Express and River Joe’s coffee shop.
Gravel crunched beneath his feet as he hurried across the lot. Technically, this land—and the pizza place and coffee shop, and a few other buildings around town—was now his, bequeathed to him by the father who had died last year. But he hadn’t come to play landlord. Not yet. Tomorrow he would begin the task that had brought him back to town—selling off the buildings and helping his mother move to Tucson with him.
Tonight, though, was his. He increased his pace as he rounded the corner of River Joe’s. Tonight, it was him and the river—
And a woman. There was a woman sitting in his spot.
J.T. stopped so fast that he had to grab the weathered cedar shakes of the coffee shop to steady himself. Talk about your reality checks. The alcove formed by the corner of the shop and fronted by the river was private, true, but come on. Had he really thought no one else would claim it in twenty-five years?
Okay. So every so often, some things did change.
He started to backtrack, but the woman raised her hand as if to wave. Since it was the first friendly overture he’d received all day, he stepped forward, stopping again when he realized she hadn’t been gesturing to him after all. She was talking on her phone and had no idea he was even there.
He should leave before she noticed him. Even in Comeback Cove, a lone woman would be startled by the sight of a strange man hovering nearby. But she seemed intent on her conversation, so he allowed himself a moment to place her.
She wasn’t a tourist. Not only was it too early in the season for weekday visitors, but she also didn’t have the air of someone who’d come to see the sights. No, this woman, with her reddish-blond hair pulled back and sneakers lying beside her bare feet, seemed to belong here.
That intrigued him. She appeared to be about his age, and the town was small enough that he used to know everyone within three grade levels. He studied her more closely, mentally ticking off vivid blue eye shadow, a shaggy hairstyle and higher breasts—all the features that had characterized the girls when he was in high school. Still no clue.
It was possible that she had moved here since he left. But who in their right mind would do that?
She said something and burst into laughter. Even if he’d wanted to leave, that sound alone would have stopped him. Her laugh was like the river—light at first, rippling, then dropping into something full and liquid, with just a hint of mystery.
Whoever was on the receiving end of that laugh was one lucky bastard.
Her “Bye, hon” skipped toward him like a stone across the water. She shoved the phone into a pocket of those pants women loved but men hated—the kind that ended halfway between knee and ankle, revealing enough skin to entice while hiding all the good parts beneath loose beige cotton.
She stood and stretched her arms over her head, fabric
