that Eliza and Aidan are allowing us to marry at Snow Angel Cove.”
“Oh, it’s our pleasure,” Eliza assured her. “Aidan is hoping that you’ll stick around at Caine Tech for a long time, now that you’re marrying someone local.”
Eliza’s husband, Aidan, was CEO of the largest employer in town, which had mainly been responsible for the rejuvenation of Haven Point. Samantha didn’t want to think about where the town might be if Aidan and Ben Kilpatrick hadn’t decided to open their research and development campus onto the site of the old boatworks that used to be owned by Ben’s family.
The town had been dying before that, sustained only by fleeting tourism during the summer months.
Those tourism dollars had been appreciated but weren’t enough to spur growth and keep the younger population from fleeing for other job opportunities elsewhere after high school.
Even Linda had agreed Caine Tech had been good for Haven Point, though she still complained about the new housing developments and increased traffic in town.
Fremont Fashions had benefited tremendously from the new growth. Samantha only had good feelings toward the tech company, especially because of the friends like Gemma it had brought into her life.
Right now, her friend seemed to glow with happiness and Sam sighed inside. All this talk of weddings made her feel like the only single person left in town. Except Hazel, anyway.
“How nice that your family is able to come,” Eppie went on. “By the way, we met your brother and niece and nephew the other day at the supermarket.”
“How did you know he was my brother?” Gemma looked surprised.
“We don’t have that many people in town with posh British accents who sound like they could be on Downton Abbey. Plus, the two of you look like you could be twins.”
Gemma gave a faint smile. “We’re not. He’s the older by two years. But when we were younger, people often used to mistake us for twins.”
“We saw the similarity between you two, and Hazel stopped him and asked straight out if he was related to you,” Eppie went on. “The children both were polite and well-mannered and your brother was ever so helpful. We couldn’t reach a can of tomatoes on the top shelf and he kindly agreed to get it for us and then we enlisted his help in the cereal aisle with that granola Ronald likes. He seemed like a lovely man,” Eppie said.
“Inside and out,” Hazel piped up with a wink to the table in general.
Everyone giggled except Sam.
“I haven’t met this paragon of a brother yet,” Roxy Nash, the only other unattached female in the group, said in a voice that sounded like a purr. “Maybe I need to time my grocery visits better.”
Sam chewed salad greens that suddenly tasted bitter. She usually liked Roxy but she didn’t care for that predatory tone. Anyway, Ian Summerhill wasn’t a topic she wanted to discuss. It was bad enough that she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the man, especially after their encounter with him in the moonlight the night before. She didn’t need to talk about him on her lunch break.
She tried to come up with another topic but Charlene Bailey spoke before she could.
“How nice that he can come in early. Is he helping you with all your wedding preparations?”
That seemed to amuse Gemma. “I would like to say yes, but I’m afraid that’s not really the case. He would be hopeless at it. Ian is a biologist and he’s writing a paper on a species of salmon native only to Lake Haven.”
“Oh, yes. The Lake Haven kokanee,” McKenzie said knowledgeably.
“How on earth do you know that?” Charlene stared at her.
Wynona, Charlene’s oldest daughter, laughed. “Surely you know that Mayor Kilpatrick knows everything that goes on within a hundred-mile radius of Lake Haven. She can tell you every rare bird that ever made a visit, even if it only stopped in a treetop for a few moments to eat a worm during its migration.”
“I can’t help that I like to stay informed,” McKenzie said haughtily, though she looked amused at Wynona’s teasing. “There’s an entire book at the city offices on the flora and fauna in and around Lake Haven. Though it was written in the 1930s, it still contains valuable information about some of the unique species of the area.”
“I’ll have to mention it to Ian,” Gemma said with interest. “I’m sure he’ll want to take a look at it. He’s trying to narrow down historical populations of the salmon