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

since Cal had left Deep River to him, Silas, and Damon.

The other two now lived here, Silas with his fiancée, Hope, who owned the Happy Moose bar, and Damon with his soon-to-be wife, Astrid, Deep River’s mayor.

Morgan had been going to ask them if they wanted her to open a missing person’s investigation, but it hadn’t quite gotten to that point.

No need now, since he’d arrived here all by himself. A camp, he’d mentioned, which indicated he’d been living in the bush for…how long? And why? Why hadn’t he let them know he was here? And why hadn’t he gotten in contact with her earlier if Cal had supposedly told him to “look after her”?

Zeke’s eyes glittered in the late-afternoon light and she thought he might say something about her threatening to shoot him with her Taser, at least.

But he didn’t. He simply turned around without a word and walked down the porch, disappearing around the corner of the house.

For a second, Morgan could only gape after him.

Perhaps it was a dream he’d been there. Perhaps the single beer she’d had at the Moose just before she’d headed home had been one too many. Then again, could you really say one beer was one too many? And more importantly, what in God’s name was he doing?

The porch wrapped around the house and she went after him, peering around the corner. This side faced the river, and on summer days, if you sat on the chairs outside the living room windows, you could see the green water rushing by, glinting off rocks and sparkling in the sun. Her favorite view in the whole wide world.

It was that time of year now, the Deep River filling the afternoon with a liquid sound, the same soundtrack that had punctuated all the important moments in her life.

Along with the noise of the river came the spicy scent of the bush that surrounded the house, mixed with warm, dry earth and the green dampness of the river itself. The scent of home. It was a familiarity she never got tired of and never would.

Zeke had gone down the steps and out onto the lawn that lay between the house and the river and was now looking back up at the house. The sunlight threw his shadow against the stand of spruce and fir at his back, making him seem almost as tall as they were, a giant…

No, not a giant. A bear. A big black bear wandering into her home and sniffing around like he wanted to make it his den.

Pesky things, bears. There’d been a one hanging around the house lately, but her approach to the plentiful wildlife in Deep River was that if you left it alone, it would leave you alone.

Sadly, she didn’t think that applied to stubborn-ass men.

She walked along the porch, then went down the stairs that led onto the lawn and came up beside him.

“What part of ‘I’m going to arrest you for trespassing’ or ‘shoot you with my Taser’ didn’t you understand?” she said.

Zeke ignored her. “See there?” He pointed to the roof. “Definitely going to need some new shingles. Guttering, too, needs work.” His pointing finger lowered. “And the second-story windows. Some of the frames are going to give you trouble come winter.” Then he pointed at the pipes that ran down the side of the house. “And I’m thinking that the downpipes over there might need replacing too.”

Morgan glared at him, annoyed at his continuing inability to listen. “You want me to get the zip ties?”

“You can try.” Zeke didn’t look at her. “Cal asked me to take care of you. And that means fixing up the house.”

Ah. That explained things.

“Well, why didn’t you just say?” she muttered, her irritation lessening somewhat, since she was very familiar with the male tendency to want to fix things to show they cared. That had been Cal’s default too. Still, she didn’t want this particular male hammering at her guttering right now.

“It’s fine, Zeke,” she said. “You don’t have to—”

“I should take a look under the house, make sure the plumbing is okay. How’s your wood supply?”

Morgan frowned. Persistent, wasn’t he? “Are you listening to me?”

“About as much as you’re listening to me.”

She gritted her teeth. He still wasn’t looking at her, his dark eyes narrowed as he kept on scanning the house like an engineer looking for structural faults.

Really, she wasn’t sure why him offering to fix her house bugged her so. Because all the things he’d mentioned were things that she’d been going to fix herself, but hadn’t gotten around to it due to the fallout from Cal’s death.

Oil reserves had been discovered lying beneath the town, oil that now belonged not only to Cal’s three friends who’d inherited the town from him, but to all the people who leased land in Deep River—a.k.a. the entire town. The leases were bought and sold for nominal amounts of money, since when Jacob West had founded the town over a century earlier, during the gold rush years, he’d intended Deep River to be a haven for those who weren’t comfortable anywhere else.

A refuge and a sanctuary for those who needed it, even those who had no money.

Morgan believed very strongly in her ancestor’s vision and so had Cal, and the oil discovery had been a shock. Especially since Cal had kept it a secret from her.

She wasn’t sure why he hadn’t told her, but whatever, the town deciding to take up Silas’s suggestion of kickstarting tourism to replace oil dollars and getting some projects started had eaten up her time.

That and the usual duties of a VPSO—fire safety, search and rescue, first responder duties, plus all the paperwork—didn’t allow for much rest and relaxation. She also involved herself in the day-to-day running of Deep River, so yeah, busy.

But still, she could be handy with a hammer. She was an independent person who much preferred taking care of others to being taken care of herself, especially by persistent men with