A Lot Like Home

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“Damian wants to build a golf course to the east, with the river woven through it to form water hazards.” Hands fluttering as she shaped the air to illustrate her point with imaginary pictures, she continued. “We’re going to work with the land, become a part of it. Honor it. Can you unbend enough to see it?”

“I can see a lot of room for error with that approach,” he told her with a shrug because honesty was as much of an ingrained piece of his makeup as his drive to change the future for the better. “But I’m just here for the ride, so sell me on it.”

The lock of hair slipped from his arm as she took a deep breath and let it out slowly, savoring. “I love this spot. I came here a lot as a teenager, dreaming of getting out of here once and for all. I never in a million years thought I’d be back trying to save the town that didn’t welcome me home.”

Like the women who hadn’t reciprocated when she’d waved. He tore his gaze from the landscape and fixed it on the redhead, who had brought him here for what were still nebulous reasons. Her expression bordered on grave, and this was too beautiful of a setting to be so serious.

But that was not something he knew how to fix. The concept of home wasn’t his area of expertise either. “You’ve been gone what, six, seven years?”

“Something like that.”

This was not the conversation he’d prepped for, and all at once, she’d clammed up instead of working on the hard sell he’d expected. “But you still think of it as home?”

“Yeah, of course.” Surprise flitted across her face as she answered him. “Austin never felt that way, that’s for sure.”

“Maybe you should treat it like a home then,” he suggested gently, still not sure why she’d brought him along if all she planned to do was some soul searching. “Show people that you care about the things that are important to them. Shopping centers don’t seem to be it.”

Her brows drew together. “I do care. That’s why I’m doing this. Having choices is what’s important to people, not strong-arming them into leaving piles of money on the table because Aunt Serenity wants it that way. The town is falling apart. A total eyesore.”

“Eyesore? It’s…” Well, it wasn’t beautiful, that was for sure, but Caleb couldn’t find the right way to describe it that wouldn’t sound like he was agreeing with Havana. “Quaint. And needs work. I’m not afraid of hard work.”

“But you’re not the only one who has to do the work,” she reminded him. “And not everyone wants to stick around a dying town. I’m offering them the choice that I never had.”

Suddenly quite a few things fell into focus that he’d been missing. “You didn’t want to move here after your parents died, did you?”

Her expression froze into an emotionless mask. “Boy, Serenity kept no secrets from you, did she?”

Actually, that had been a complete and total guess, one she’d just confirmed. But regardless, once again, he found himself in the middle of this spat between Serenity and her niece. Or had he put himself in the middle, simply by coming here unannounced?

Well, Serenity could have told him to butt out and leave her be. But she hadn’t. She needed someone to curb Havana’s enthusiasm, and for a lot of reasons, he’d been the one to sign on the dotted line.

“Sorry if that bothers you. I’m here for good, and I won’t lay down so you can run over me either.”

She sighed. “I’m not trying to run over you. I know you think of me as a dictator. I don’t mean to come across that way.”

A little shocked, he eyed her in hopes of gauging her sincerity level. It was pretty high. He didn’t know what to do with that. Not only could she laugh at herself, she also had a sense of her own flaws and no trouble admitting them. That was a rare combo indeed.

His estimation of her grew. “Is that why you didn’t want to come live in Superstition Springs? Because you didn’t have a choice?”

“There were ten kids in our school. Total. In all twelve grades.” She gave him a moment to let that sink in, which didn’t take all that long. “Two of them were my sisters. Tallhorse was—still is—the only teacher in this area. He has a PhD from Yale in something outrageously inappropriate for school children, like Slavic Romantic Literature, but all the other students loved him. He told stories about the Tonkawa that roamed this area hundreds of years ago like he’d been alive at the time instead of being a descendent. Tallhorse is famous for doing rain dances in the middle of class for no reason. All of it was weird. I missed my parents, and I— Well, I just wanted a normal life.”

Yeah, a small school coupled with what sounded like yet another resident comfortable in his own unconventional mannerisms would be hard on a kid, especially after losing a home and parents in one fell swoop. When he’d lost his parents, he’d been twenty and on the ground in Iraq, covertly shutting down a Taliban party outside Kabul. It wasn’t the same at all.

And at the same time, they were exactly alike. Both searching for something that they knew was out there but had yet to find.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting a little normalcy in a life that has been turned upside down.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t ever get normal, not really. I thought I was moving toward it when I finally made the difficult choice to leave. And even then, that didn’t quite work out like I hoped.”

“What happened?”

Her mouth firmed into a no-nonsense line that said she’d reached the end of her patience with that subject. “Doesn’t matter. I’m home now, and I have the means to give people the choices I never had. Money. A new sense of purpose as we work toward a common goal. What’s so bad about that?”

Nothing. It was on the tip of his tongue to agree with her. She had a good heart, much more so than he’d guessed. That’s what was so difficult about all this. He genuinely believed that she thought she was doing the right thing.

Maybe she’d be willing to compromise. “Why not put the shopping center near the resort and give people even more choices? They can keep the town, revitalize it, and still choose to work at the resort if they want.”