Redemption Bay (Haven Point Book 2) (Contemporary Romance) by RaeAnne Thayne Page A

flight.
    “Have you had dinner?” he asked on impulse. “I was about to throw a steak on the grill. It would be no trouble to toss on another one.”
    She blinked at him in the fading sun, obviously caught off guard by the invitation.
    Another thing he enjoyed about McKenzie—she wasn’t very good at shielding her emotions. In her eyes, he saw surprise and confusion and, if he wasn’t mistaken, an unwilling but unmistakable attraction.
    So she felt this little sizzle between them, too. The realization heightened his own awareness of her.
    “I haven’t had dinner,” she admitted. “A steak sounds delicious. Maybe I can whip up a salad and cut up some vegetables.”
    Just as she finished the sentence, Hondo suddenly gave his deep-throated stranger-danger bark and planted his paws in a protective stance in front of both of them.
    “Hello? Is anyone there?” a familiar woman’s voice called.
    Tension suddenly gripped his shoulders, strengthened a moment later when his mother walked around the side of the house.
    She looked lovely and feminine, as always, well-dressed in a sundress and scarf with strappy sandals and big Jackie O sunglasses. She always looked to him at least a decade younger than her true age, with only a few laugh lines at the corners of the blue eyes he had inherited.
    She must have gained those after she divorced his father and walked away, because he didn’t remember her laughing much during his childhood.
    As always when faced with his mother, he was filled with that conflicting jumble of emotions—resentment and love and frustration, all wrapped into one big, delightful ball of angst he hated.
    Lydia’s face brightened when she spotted him standing with McKenzie. “Here you are. I rang the doorbell but you didn’t answer. I thought you weren’t here, even though that must be your vehicle in the driveway, and then I thought I heard voices back here and a dog. I’m so glad I caught you.”
    Lydia approached them, smiling brightly. He tried to hide his discomfort as he dutifully kissed her cheek.
    “Mom. Hi.”
    “Hello, my dear. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to town? Imagine my surprise when Russ called me a few days ago and told me he bumped into you at Serrano’s. I waited for you to call. When you didn’t, I decided to take matters into my own hands, since I’m meeting someone in town for dinner.”
    He had no reason to feel guilty. He had seen his mother just a few months earlier when he flew down to San Diego for her birthday. “I wasn’t sure you would be here,” he answered. “Didn’t you tell me you were heading to Tuscany over the summer? Some kind of extended art history class, wasn’t it?”
    She made a face. “It sounded like fun but it didn’t quite happen the way I planned. My friend Cynthia backed out at the last minute after she was lucky enough to be blessed with new twin granddaughters. They’re absolutely darling, by the way. Not that I’m hinting or anything.”
    Right. She had hinted plenty that she thought it was past time he started looking for something a little more stable than his steady string of short-lived relationships.
    “Anyway, I didn’t want to go to Italy by myself—what’s the fun in that?—so I decided to spend July here at the condo, where I could see my sisters.”
    He did not understand at all how his mother could feel such a connection to this place. Yes, she had grown up in Haven Point and several of her multitude of siblings had chosen to settle in the area. Maybe that connection to her younger life compensated somehow for the memories she must have of her unhappy marriage.
    “I stopped by yesterday but you weren’t here. We must have missed each other.”
    Yet another layer of tension and guilt knotted the muscles in his shoulders. He loved his mother and would love the kind of relationship Aidan Caine had with his father, Dermot, but every time he was with her, he couldn’t seem to shake all those difficult