Rough Harbor by Andrea Stein Read Free Book Online Page B

torn by guilt between duty and freedom.
    She had told him, that last night long ago, that there was a price to pay for his freedom. But it was too late. He had already told his father of his plans. She was silent, the mood, their intimacy, fading away. He thought that she wasn’t happy for him, didn’t believe in him, but now, with the luxury of time, he knew she had felt for him, knowing the pain that he would go through.
    Not a word between them for almost ten years. Why was she back? Had it been her idea or Maxwell’s? Why, he wondered, was Caitlyn Montgomery, with her Ivy League education and jet-setting ways back here in Queensbay? What was she searching for?
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    Caitlyn made her way down the stairs that led from the edge of her lawn to the beach below. She moved slowly, happy to breathe in the clean, bracing air. Her disappointment at finding out Maxwell’s plans had been short-lived. Anger had replaced it, a justifiable anger. And the beginnings of a plan. The Randall Group belonged to her. Her grandfather had meant for her to have it, she knew that. From generation to generation was how he had said it.
    Not just about the company. About the house, too – the house high on the bluff, built by a Montgomery sea captain ancestor. Everything in it, from the furniture to the rugs, even the knickknacks, had been collected slowly over time, and each and every thing meant something. The Montgomery-Randall Group had been Lucas’s whole life, especially after her grandmother died. Then after his death, it belonged to Maxwell. Lock, stock and barrel. It hadn’t quite added up to Caitlyn, but the lawyers had said that was just the way it was.
    A gull moved in the sky with a soft flap of wings and then dove for something into a cresting wave. It had felt good to move back, she thought, as she hit the rocky sand and set out towards the east. The beach, the house, the harbor, it all spoke to her. She liked the town, the glances of recognition, some curious, some happy, to see her again. She liked waking up to the sound of the waves, driving the winding shore road to work, and doing her job.
    The routine, the success she had found at the Randall Group were healing her, pushing her past what had happened in London, burying the painful memories of Michael St. John farther and farther away, until she couldn’t remember quite what he looked like or the sound of his voice.
    It was habit that drew her down to the beach, to walk along the shore, heading towards the comfort of Sailor’s Rock. When she’d been young, she had gone there almost every day in the summer, first thing in the morning, as a way of welcoming the day, perhaps with a quick swim in the warm, salty water, or a moment’s rest on the smooth, flat surface of the boulder.
    In the fall, she would watch the racing clouds flit by on a blue sky, tracking the trees along the bluffs cupping the harbor, watching the leaves as they turned from green to yellow to orange. In the winter, she still came, waiting until the afternoon to catch the warmest part of the day. When it snowed, which was rare, she would go to the rock and listen to the snowflakes as they hit the water, gentle soft whispers melting into each other, water to water.
    On this day, there was no possibility of snow, just the same, steady fall sunshine that did little to warm anything, but fought off the notion that winter was really coming. Her shoes crunched along the shore, her feet sliding now and then on the loose rocks. She turned around the point and stopped. Someone was there already. Knees drawn up, sitting, staring out over the water at the empty harbor and the quiet houses nestled amongst the almost-bare trees. She knew who it was without seeing anything more than his back and sun-lightened hair.
    Hesitating, she started to turn back when he looked over to her. She stopped, frozen, caught. They would have to meet sometime. He stood up, taller than life, a shadow thrown out over the rustling sea