Page 4 of All Roads Lead to You

Brightwater Valley was tiny, the town consisting of one street and three buildings. The first was a long, low stone building that housed Bill’s General Store and Brightwater Dreams, the new gallery. The second was a two-storied, ramshackle old wooden building that was the Rose hotel/pub/restaurant. The third was also wooden and two-storied but a lot newer and housed Pure Adventure NZ, Chase, Finn, and Levi’s outdoor adventure company.

Opposite the town’s buildings was the lake and a small gravel parking lot where some cars were already parked, a few tourists picnicking on the grassy lake shore.

The lake was a deep turquoise blue; the mountains ringing the entire valley were white-capped and sharp, while the foothills were covered in dark green native bush.

The colors in this place constantly astounded Beth, as did the wildness of the landscape. She loved it. Her sketchbook had never been so full of inspiration for new designs.

Except right now she wasn’t looking at the scenery. Her gaze was firmly on the Pure Adventure NZ building. Considering.

Finn Kelly was a man in need of a friend—she could sense that loud and clear. But it was also clear that she had to go about this carefully.

He had suffered a significant loss, so she couldn’t just blunder about trying to get a smile out of him or pushing for something he wasn’t ready to give. She had to go carefully and, as Bill had said, take it slowly.

Perhaps needing his help would be a good way in, such as making contact with the elusive Evan McCahon for example.

Apparently, the painter liked no one else in town but Finn, which meant if she wanted to convince him to show his paintings in the gallery, she was going to need someone to introduce her.

Evan didn’t have a landline, and since there was no cell phone service in Brightwater Valley, she couldn’t text him or call him on a cell. He didn’t have a computer either, so she couldn’t email him. In fact, the only way to get in touch with him was to visit him in person, and since he hadn’t answered the door the one time she’d made the trek to his house up the valley, she hadn’t managed to do that either.

All of which boiled down to a perfect excuse to talk to Finn Kelly.

The door to Pure Adventure NZ opened and Finn stepped out, heading toward the mud-splashed truck that was parked out front.

“Right,” Beth murmured under her breath. “Finn Kelly, I’m sorry, but be prepared to be aggressively friended.”

***

“Hey,” a sweet, lightly accented female voice called. “Hey, wait up, Finn.”

Dammit. It was Bethany Grant. What the hell did she want with him?

Finn debated ignoring her, but in the time it took to decide his options, she was already walking down the street from Bill’s toward him, the sun making the cloud of white-blond hair that had been tied in a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck look like a collection of thistledown.

She was of average height, though that was short to him, and had the lushest curves, especially in the jeans that molded nicely to her hips and thighs, and the green T-shirt—the exact color of her eyes—that did the most wonderful things to her chest.

Which he should not be looking at. In fact, he shouldn’t be looking at her, period.

It had been five years since Sheri, his wife, had died, and in that time, he’d never once been with another woman. Initially grief had put his libido on ice for a couple of years, and after that, he’d deliberately chosen to keep it in the deep freeze. His brother and Levi would be appalled if they knew he hadn’t had sex for five years—longer, considering Sheri had been ill for a while before she’d died.

But he hadn’t missed it. Nothing had been the same after Sheri had gone, and he hadn’t met anyone else since who even made him consider thawing a bit.

And then Bethany Grant had turned up. Bethany, with her delectable figure and the brightest, sunniest smile he’d ever seen. Bethany, with the small dusting of freckles over her nose and green eyes that stunned him every time he looked at them.

Bethany, who’d appeared like a sunbeam in the middle of the darkest pit of hell and who had not only turned his frozen libido molten in seconds flat, but who had also blown his previously rock-solid denial that he didn’t miss sex to smithereens.

And he was pissed about it. Majorly pissed.

It wasn’t fair to blame her. It wasn’t her fault that she was pretty and sweet and sunny, and that he was attracted to her. Just as it wasn’t her fault that he was a moody bastard who had lost his wife five years ago and didn’t want to be attracted to anyone else.

But he didn’t care what was fair or otherwise.

He’d been done with fairness when Sheri had first gotten her diagnosis.

It was too late to pretend he hadn’t heard Beth calling his name, so now if he ignored her, he was only going to seem rude. And while he was fine with being rude in private, there were enough tourists around that he didn’t want to do it in public since it wouldn’t exactly be good advertising for the company.

Muttering a curse under his breath, Finn paused opening the door to his truck and turned in Beth’s direction. Her sweet, heart-shaped face was pretty in a freshly scrubbed, girl-next-door fashion, with a turned-up nose and a generous, full mouth, currently curved in one of her infectious smiles.

In one hand she carried the paper bag that presumably held the last of Bill’s sausage rolls, the sight of which made him annoyed all over again.

---