Deep River Promise (Alaska Homecoming #2) - Jackie Ashenden Page 0,3

of the tourist information center’s manager, Sandy Maclean—and the sun was shining and it was a beautiful blue-sky day, which was a rarity in late spring in Deep River.

She had a lot to do, and what she didn’t really have time for was to listen to her son’s current theories about Silas’s friend. Not to mention that he shouldn’t be skulking around outside the Moose, but catching Kevin Anderson’s ferry in preparation for getting the school bus.

She unzipped her parka a little way, enjoying the sun’s warmth. “You should be on your way to school, Con. Not skulking around spying on people.”

“I wasn’t spying,” Connor said, incensed. “I was watching.”

She shouldn’t find her son’s outrage amusing, but she did.

Connor had been very firmly convinced that Silas Quinn’s friend, and one of the new owners of Deep River, was up to no good and had been determinedly following him around, watching him with all the suspicion of a Deep River native.

Which, considering he and Astrid were relative newcomers to the town, having only been here five years, was an impressive feat.

“You don’t need to watch him,” she said with some patience. “He’s just a friend of Silas’s.” And an impressive specimen if what she’d observed of him on the balcony had been anything to go by. Not that she should have been looking herself, of course.

“Yeah, I know. But he’s from the city.” Connor scowled up at the balcony on the second story of the cheerfully rundown old building. “And city people are weird.”

A fair comment and one Astrid couldn’t argue with. But Damon Fitzgerald had been in Deep River for three days now, and while she hadn’t met him directly, going by the comments from the people who had he didn’t seem especially weird.

Ridiculously handsome, with an easy smile and a charming manner—according to April in the diner at least—but not, fundamentally, weird.

“Just because he’s from the city doesn’t mean you need to watch him,” she said. “Come to think of it, why are you watching him, anyway? What on earth do you think he’s going to do?”

“He could be an oilman,” Connor said darkly.

Astrid sighed. Ever since the town had found out that oil had been discovered beneath it, it was all anyone ever talked about. Well, that and the new tourism ventures that the town had collectively decided to contemplate.

They’d had to do something to combat the oil company offering people money for their leases and/or drilling rights, something that would return power over the town to the people who lived there and that would enable them to build a more sustainable, reliable income that wasn’t dependent on outsiders.

Still, everyone was on edge and even more suspicious than they normally were. Including, apparently, her son.

Ever since the news broke that Caleb West had died and the town had been given new owners, Connor had suddenly become very protective. He’d always been a caring kind of kid, but this protectiveness was new. As if he’d decided all at once that he was now the man he’d one day be and had taken responsibility for the whole of Deep River.

He would disappear on the weekends and sometimes in the evenings too, going God only knew where, and it wasn’t until later that she’d discovered he’d either been helping April in her diner, or talking to Mal in Mal’s Market, Deep River’s general store. Or offering his help to some of the fishermen, or going around to check on various people in the town.

All admirable things for him to do in the normal scheme of things. At least, it would have been admirable if he’d told her why he was doing them. And he wouldn’t. All she’d managed to get out of him was that there were things he needed to do and she shouldn’t be concerned because he was taking care of it.

Of course, that had only made her even more concerned, since he’d never hidden things from her before. He’d always told her everything.

She had an inkling about the reasons for his new behavior, but since it was something she had no idea how to talk to him about, she hadn’t broached it yet.

“He’s not an oilman,” she said firmly.

Connor’s suspicious blue gaze turned on her. “How do you know?”

“Well, oilmen don’t generally stand around stark-naked on balconies. Especially not if they want people to take them seriously.”

“Maybe.” Connor was clearly unconvinced. “But maybe that’s what he wants you to think. That you can’t take him seriously and you