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“We?” His head was feeling fuzzy. Had he heard her correctly? She wanted him to team up with her?
“I need your support to rally the townsfolk.” Her shoulders drooped and she let out a sigh. “As you know, I don’t have a lot of credibility here. But I do have an MBA and several projects to my credit.”
“What are you asking me to do? I have a business to run now.” Cameron looked around at the café. It meant the world to him. Making a success out of it had given him the redemption he’d craved. It gave him respectability after the cannery fiasco. Finally, people in town weren’t shaking their heads at him anymore. He’d won them all over with hard work and grit, convincing them to make the Moose Café a staple in town. No way! He was done stepping out on a limb and taking leaps of faith. Once bitten, twice shy.
“Sorry to burst your bubble, Paige, but this town closed the door on that pipe dream a long time ago.”
She narrowed her gaze. “Really? I’ve been keeping tabs on Love for a while now, Cameron. I know it’s still suffering financially.”
“Things have been improving bit by bit. Don’t believe everything you hear,” he snapped. For some reason it annoyed him to no end that Paige knew how badly they’d continued to struggle. They may have fallen on hard times, but the industrious townsfolk in Love had banded together to try to reverse the town’s fortunes. That single fact made him proud to be part of this community. The town was down at the moment but not out.
A low buzzing sound cut into the silence. Paige fished in her pocket and pulled out a cell phone. She knit her brows together and peered at the screen. Her eyes slightly widened. “I—I’m sorry. I have to go, Cameron.”
“Seriously, Paige? You can’t just show up here after all this time and drop a bombshell like this and take off,” he protested.
Paige locked gazes with him. “There’s a lot more I have to say. Things I should have said a long time ago. And whether or not you approve or disapprove, I’m going to try and make amends for my father’s crimes. It’s the only way I can look at myself in the mirror in the weeks and months ahead.”
There she was. The Paige he’d fallen in love with well before he’d ever had the courage to tell her how he felt. Obstinate. Opinionated. And now she was here in front of him, determined to right her father’s wrongs. Which meant she’d be staying right here in Love to make amends. There was no point in his standing in her way. That slight edge to her voice indicated she meant business.
“I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow.” With a nod in his direction, she turned on her heel and began to quickly walk away. Once she reached the door, Paige turned around and met his gaze. “By the way, I’m really proud of what you’ve done here. The Moose Café is beautiful. Some dreams can’t be denied, can they?”
Before he could even respond, the jingling of the door serenaded Paige as she sailed out the door and into the Alaskan night.
“What just happened?” he muttered as he stood in the middle of his establishment wondering if he should follow after her or just leave it alone for now. Like a true force of nature, she’d blown into his world and left him feeling as if he’d been caught in the path of an unexpected storm.
* * *
As soon as Paige turned off Jarvis Street onto Main Street, she let out a deeply held breath. She’d faced Cameron head-on without backing down. And she was still standing! It had turned out better than expected even though she hadn’t achieved her main objective during her visit. He needed to know about Emma.
A tight knot had been forming in her stomach all day. For weeks and months she’d planned for this very moment. And somehow it had slipped through her fingers. That only served to heighten the anxiety she felt about the situation. Leaving the Moose Café without telling Cameron the most important reason for her return hadn’t been her intention. The text message she’d received had interrupted them, and due to the pressing matter at hand, she’d had no choice but to table their discussion for another time.
Cameron, you’re a father. How exactly did one just blurt that news out? No matter how many times she had practiced her speech in the mirror, it never came out sounding right. Tears gathered in her eyes. She’d been so wrong about so many things.
If she was being honest with herself, telling Cameron about Emma wasn’t something she’d wanted to do with Hazel within earshot. In her heart she’d wanted to tell him in a private moment shared by just the two of them. And that moment hadn’t presented itself.
Ever since her daughter had come into the world, Paige had made her the number one priority in her life. Now it was time to give Cameron that choice, as well.
As a woman who’d moved toward her faith after becoming a mother, she harbored regrets about not being married to Emma’s father when her daughter was conceived. Her actions hadn’t been consistent with her upbringing or her own moral compass. But in the aftermath of her dad’s massive betrayal, she and Cameron had turned to each other for comfort. Days later she’d fallen under the town’s suspicion and Cameron had distanced himself completely from her. With no other options, she’d left Love and headed back to Seattle. Her life had been in shambles until she’d made the discovery some weeks later that she was pregnant.
Looking back on her life, she realized that what had been missing had been a spiritual base. Even though she had always considered herself a joyful, content person, there hadn’t been anything to anchor her to the world around her. Perhaps if her father had led a more spiritual life, he wouldn’t have been so tempted by financial gain.
Bringing her beloved daughter into the world had given her life meaning. God had given her a foundation on which to stand. With His forgiveness, she had been able to move forward. Praying, attending church and being part of the faith community had all taken center stage. Because of Emma, her relationship with the Lord had strengthened and blossomed. For fourteen months Paige had lived every day with some measure of contentment—all the bitterness and anger she’d been harboring about the past had been soothed because of Emma and her faith.
But being back in Love meant facing up to her truths. Somehow she had to find a way to tell Cameron that he was the father of a baby girl.
Chapter Two
Cameron watched helplessly as Paige walked out of the Moose Café and hustled down the street at a fast clip. He drifted toward the window, his gaze trailing after her as she faded from sight. He pressed his eyes closed as the ache of loss swept through him.
Still, after all this time, it hurt to acknowledge that Paige was no longer a part of his life. Getting over her had almost killed him. Yet here she was, back in Love and vowing to make amends. Suddenly everything he’d been trying to forget had come bubbling back to the surface. Pain. Embarrassment. Loss. He didn’t know what to do with all these chaotic feelings roiling around inside him. Even though he’d been trying to stuff down these raw emotions ever since he’d come face-to-face with Paige, they were still riding on the surface.
He couldn’t help but wonder if he was being played again. Hadn’t Paige mentioned returning a portion of the money her father had stolen? If that was true, it could help the community immensely. But he didn’t want to get his hopes up without seeing an actual check in his hands made out to the town of Love, Alaska. He’d already been burned once by Paige and Robert Reynolds.
It was all coming at him too fast now—like an out-of-control train. He pulled out a chair and sank down in it, his shoulders slumped forward as he held his head in his hands. The sound of Hazel’s clunky footsteps heralded her arrival. She bent down and began gathering up the ceramic pieces in a dustpan and wiping up the liquid on the hardwood floor.
She looked up at him. “Are you okay?” Her voice was filled with worry.
“Never better,” he said. Hazel had already seen him at his worst. He couldn’t count the number of times she’d consoled him when he’d broken down over Paige and the financial s
