Deep River Promise, Jackie Ashenden [large ebook reader .TXT] 📗

was expensive in Deep River, mainly because the bulk of it was airfreighted in, and so Astrid had been looking at ways to get the prices down. There were a couple of growers in the area, including Clive Henderson who had a greenhouse, so she’d decided to put together a co-op, where people could pay a flat fee and get a box of fresh, in-season produce each week. Mal had agreed to organize and stock the boxes in the market, and because Mal was a good guy, he hadn’t wanted a cut, since people generally bought things from him whenever they went in there anyway.

It undercut his own products, but he’d told Astrid that airfreighting was a pain in the butt and he’d prefer it if people bought locally.

With the co-op now certain to happen, Astrid needed to visit Clive and a couple of the other growers and have a chat with them, which was going to take a bit of time.

Then she had to go over the ideas that people had been presenting for generating tourism in Deep River, not to mention go through the boxes that were waiting in the library for processing, since she also managed Deep River’s library.

She was busy. Which was just the way she preferred it.

Astrid had never wanted to be mayor, but it was an old Deep River tradition to elect someone who didn’t want the position. Sometimes, when the populace didn’t like the selection of candidates, they voted for someone totally random in protest. Jesse, the goat, was mayor for a month before he was ousted in a cunning coup that involved a carrot and a very annoyed Kevin Anderson, who reluctantly took the position for the remainder of Jesse’s term.

The idea behind electing reluctant mayors was that the mayor concerned would be so irritated at being mayor that they wouldn’t do anything, leaving everyone alone to do their own thing, which was what the people of Deep River preferred.

Unfortunately, the opposite had happened with Astrid.

It was true that she never wanted to be mayor, but not only did she have a very strong sense of social responsibility, but she was also driven to make sure Deep River stayed a safe and stable environment for her and her son.

So, since she liked to be organized and in control of things, almost from the moment she was elected she embraced the role of mayor wholeheartedly, much to the initial annoyance of the town.

They’d mostly gotten over their annoyance—a fair few of them had even told her how much they’d been enjoying Gwen’s hot yoga for example—and were very tolerant of the initiatives she’d begun.

She appreciated that. While she’d been in Deep River five years, that was still not enough time for some people, and they regarded her with misgiving as a veritable newcomer. Though she’d been working to change that.

The oil business had naturally thrown a wrench in most of her plans, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t work through.

Certainly it was better working through that than it was thinking about certain other things that had been an issue since Caleb’s death.

Things such as how Connor was his son and no one including Connor himself knew. Yes, that was a problem. She was going to have to deal with that soon because it wasn’t fair that he didn’t know.

She’d always been going to tell him; it was just the timing had never been right.

And now it never will be.

Guilt snaked through her, along with a thread of old grief, disturbing her concentration. But now wasn’t the time to be thinking of that, so she put her pen down beside the big stack of papers on the desk and took a slow, deep breath.

There now, that was better. She was calm. Calm and in control.

A knock came on her office door.

Great, that was all she needed. Another distraction. Briefly she debated pretending not to be here.

The knock came again, louder this time.

She sighed. Ah well, she was distracted now anyway. Might as well see whoever it was. “Come in.”

The door opened and a man sauntered in, and for a second, all Astrid could do was stare at him, every single thought vanishing from her head. Mainly because the last time she’d seen him, he’d been standing on a balcony stark-naked.

Not that she’d looked. At all. He’d been too far away to see properly as it was.

She definitely hadn’t noticed that he’d been nothing but golden skin and hard, defined muscle, just like she definitely didn’t notice how all that golden skin and muscle was now covered up by a sky-blue T-shirt that had Wild Alaska Aviation written on the front and a pair of worn-looking jeans sitting low on narrow hips.

Not that the clothing detracted at all from his looks. The color of his T-shirt only served to draw attention to the dense blue of his eyes and highlight strands of caramel and gold in his dark-brown hair. His jaw was almost impossibly square and strong, his nose straight as a blade, and his mouth…his mouth was sin incarnate, curling as it did in the corners, as if he had the most delicious secret to share but only if you were very lucky.

Astrid stared because he was magnificent and she couldn’t help herself, and even though she’d caught glimpses of him around the town since he’d been here, those glimpses didn’t do justice to the reality right in front of her.

Damon Fitzgerald was possibly the handsomest man Astrid had ever seen.

Then he smiled, slow and charming, and it was devastating. Helen of Troy might have launched a thousand ships with her face, but this man could launch a million more with that smile.

He came into the office, moving with an easy, loose, and oddly graceful stride, like he wasn’t in any particular hurry but was nevertheless certain about where he was going and how he was going to get there.

“You Astrid James?” He came to a stop in front of her desk, his voice