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Chapter 1
Oh, thank heavens. There was one left.
Bethany Grant slid back the glass door of the food cabinet and reached for the delicacy sitting in splendid isolation on the top shelf just as a large and definitely male hand reached for it at the same time.
Beth, who’d never been faster than when it came to getting food she loved, quickly whipped the sausage roll off the shelf before her rival could get a good grip on it and slid it triumphantly into the paper bag she was holding in readiness.
Getting the last of Bill Preston’s sausage rolls in Brightwater Valley’s General Store was a feat equivalent to being the last gladiator standing in the Colosseum, and she was going to enjoy the hell out of it.
Ready to be magnanimous in victory and maybe offer him half, or at the very least be sympathetic, Beth glanced at her opponent, her gaze settling on a broad, muscular chest covered in a black cotton T-shirt with a familiar logo.
Her stomach dipped.
Really? Did it have to be?
She glanced farther up.
Her stomach dipped more.
Eyes the color of espresso coffee, check. Black hair worn just a little too long, check. High forehead, sharp cheekbones, and straight nose, check. Beautifully sculpted mouth, the kind that made you think of kissing, also check.
Brooding as hell and radiating I-have-a-secret-dark-past-that-I-don’t-like-to-talk-aboutvibes, double check.
It was Finn Kelly, all right.
Dammit.
The man was so reserved he made a stone seem garrulous and outgoing, and he had resisted all her efforts to make friends with him since she’d gotten here.
Quite frankly she was getting a little tired of it.
Beth had come to Brightwater Valley in New Zealand’s South Island six weeks ago, along with Izzy Montgomery and Indigo Jameson, and in that time she’d successfully befriended just about everyone in the tiny town.
Everyone except Finn.
He was the younger brother of Chase Kelly, whom Izzy had fallen for and was now living with, and part owner of Pure Adventure NZ, an outdoor adventure company based in Brightwater. The business was also owned by Chase and a third, their friend Levi King, and basically offered any outdoor experience you’d care to name. Hiking, hunting, kayaking, fishing, heli-skiing, horse riding…or all of the above.
Over the past few weeks, Beth had come to know the other two guys well. Chase was officious and bossy—he was ex-SAS and that kind of went with the territory—yet he was also a caring, kindhearted man, with a delightful, funny teenage daughter called Gus, and Beth liked them both very much.
Levi, by contrast, was pure playboy. Ridiculously good-looking, charming, and just a touch wicked, Beth would have considered him a nice distraction—if she’d been in New Zealand for men.
But she wasn’t in New Zealand for men.
She was in New Zealand ostensibly to find new markets for the jewelry she designed and made herself. But she also had a deeper, more private goal that she’d told no one else about.
She was here for escape and to find the happiness she’d lost back in her hometown of Deep River, Alaska.
Brightwater Valley was similar to Deep River, yet different enough that arriving here had felt like a balm to an aching wound.
It had the same snow-capped mountains, dark green bush-clad hills, and a large body of water in the shape of a lake instead of a river. But what Brightwater Valley had that Deep River didn’t were total strangers.
People who didn’t look at her with that awful combination of sympathy and uncertainty, as if they didn’t know what to do or what to say. As if she was some fragile thing made of glass that might break at any moment.
She’d gotten tired of that. Tired of the weight of their concern for her. What she wanted was people who didn’t know her or the past she was trying to leave behind.
Here was her new beginning, where she could be whoever she wanted to be, and what she wanted to be was strong, fearless, and definitelynotfragile. And happy. Just…happy.
Even if Finn Kelly was the one dark cloud on her blindingly bright horizon.
