at the Yellow Kitchen for a late dinner. Have fun tomorrow.”
Savannah sighed. What was it about these Eternity Springs people? They were always touching her. And they were so darned friendly.
Maybe she should have asked permission to move to New York instead of Colorado. She’d come here to start over, to put her past behind her, and build something new and wonderful and exciting … and clean.
And here she was with a county sheriff on her heels and Francine’s twin holding court.
Using one of Grams’ old expressions, she muttered beneath her breath, “Lord, love a duck.”
Savannah still didn’t know exactly what that meant, but at this particular moment it felt like the perfect thing to say.
She slept poorly that night, and spent the morning brooding about the afternoon to come. Yet the hours flew by. After finishing her phone appointment with a supplier, she wasted twenty minutes debating what to wear before finally settling on a sundress and sandals. She touched up her makeup, spending a stupid amount of time over her choice of lipstick color, then gave Inny a cuddle and two dog treats.
Savannah drove toward Hummingbird Lake beneath a dark cloud of dread.
The fact that she did so annoyed her. She had nothing to fear from Sheriff Zach Turner. She’d done nothing wrong—well, not since spreading Grams’ ashes without a permit, anyway. Actually, she was doing everything right—adding to the tax base with her business, being a good citizen by joining the Chamber of Commerce, being friendly to her neighbors when she frankly wasn’t a friendly person. He had no right to harass her. But since when did cops ever care about that?
Once upon a time she’d been friendly and outgoing and oh so naive. Look where that had gotten her. She’d learned her lesson the hard way, so she’d developed a new motto to live by, one adopted from old television reruns: Trust no one.
Maybe she should get the phrase tattooed on her forehead. Under the barrage of seemingly genuine welcomes and offers of friendship since coming to Eternity Springs, she’d let down her guard—and ended up a volunteer. To help the sheriff. With a substance abuse education program.
Oh, the irony.
She wanted to turn her car around, floor the gas pedal, and speed off to … where? Another place where her past would eventually catch up to her?
“I’ll never outrun it,” she said glumly. She’d been a fool to think she could leave the trouble behind. “Once a con, always a con.”
She paused and listened hard, hoping to hear Grams’ chiding voice. But like every other day since her visit to Lover’s Leap, the voice in her head remained stubbornly silent.
Rather than running, she flicked on her turn signal like a good little law-abiding citizen and pulled onto the road leading to Reflection Point.
Zach worked the morning in town but drove out to his home on the lake for lunch. He’d bought the first chunk of property from the out-of-state owners. Then last fall, when the Raffertys decided that Sage’s dreams of a drowning child made lakeside living too stressful for the new mother, they’d dangled precious privacy before Zach by giving him first shot at their home. He’d mortgaged himself to the hilt to buy it, and now he—and the bank—owned all of Reflection Point.
The decision to remodel the buildings on the Reflection Point property into a comfortable house for him and an income-producing property had been sound. As a corporate retreat center, the facility worked great for small meetings, and Zach didn’t have to bother with overnight guests, since Angel’s Rest took care of that end. His time commitment was minimal. Other than keeping fishing supplies stocked and the retreat building clean and in repair, Zach had little to do to ensure that things ran smoothly.
The reward was substantial. Not only was the weight of his mortgage easier to bear, but except for a half dozen or so weekends a year, his beloved privacy remained intact, too.
He’d been glad to offer the center to the SARE program, but he wished he’d asked someone else to be in charge of putting together the planning packets. He needed help, but he figured the odds were fifty-fifty that the Georgia peach would actually show up.
He wanted to see her, to study her like a bug under a microscope and figure out her secrets.
“I need help,” he muttered. The psychological kind.
He grabbed a sandwich at home and spent five relaxing minutes throwing a tennis ball for Ace to fetch.