Sweet Surprises Read Free

She’d be horrified. Or slightly disapproving. Or outspokenly and overly supportive.
    Things could go any of the three ways, because Janelle really tried to be the kind of mother her daughters needed. She just missed the boat. A lot.
    â€œThings don’t always work out the way we’ve planned. Right?” she said to the angel statue.
    â€œThey sure don’t,” someone responded, the masculine voice so surprising, she nearly tumbled sideways off the bench.
    Leaves crackled, a twig snapped, and a dark shadow appeared in front of her. Tall. Broad shouldered. A man, moonlight gleaming in his dark hair.
    She screamed so loudly she almost expected the angel to take flight.
    It didn’t, but she sure did, her head slamming into willow branches, leaves falling all around her as she darted behind the tree and raced back through the cemetery.
    She was pretty damn certain her feet never touched the ground.
    * * *
    Scaring the hell out of a woman wasn’t cool. Chasing her through a cemetery to apologize? Even worse.
    Both beat getting tossed in jail.
    Which could happen if River Maynard didn’t convince the lady he’d scared that he was harmless. Tough to do when he was wandering around a cemetery in the middle of the night.
    Of course, she’d been wandering around in the cemetery too.
    He’d say they were even, but he figured she was a local, and the police would be a lot more likely to listen to her side of things. He also figured that she had a better track record in town than he did. Not a farfetched assumption since River had been one of the worst things to happen to Benevolence in its hundred-and-twenty-year history.
    Not his words.
    Those were the words of the sheriff who’d been working in Benevolence when River was a teen. River couldn’t blame the guy for feeling that way. Breaking and entering. Petty theft. Arson. River had even taken the radio from a police car that had been left unlocked in the church parking lot. He’d been fifteen at the time. Just young enough that the sheriff had taken pity on him. Otherwise, he’d have been tossed right back into the juvenile detention center his foster parents had pulled him out of.
    Dillard and Belinda Keech had been taking in troubled teens for nearly a decade when they’d come for River. They’d heard about him through friends who worked with child protective services. A week later, they’d signed him out of juvenile detention and brought him to Freedom Ranch, a sprawling property right on the edge of a little town called Benevolence. A place for at-risk kids. That’s what River’s case worker had said.
    It had turned out to be way more than that.
    The Keeches had changed his life.
    He owed them. Big time.
    It was too late to repay Dillard, but as long as Belinda was around, River would keep trying to repay her.
    That would be difficult to do from a jail cell.
    â€œHold up!” he called as the woman reached the cemetery gate and sprinted through it. She moved fast, long legs eating up the ground, arms pumping like she’d spent the past few years training to run the hundred-meter dash.
    â€œMa’am?” he tried again, because if Belinda got wind of the fact that he’d scared the crap out of some woman in the cemetery, she’d be stressed, and that wasn’t going to help with her recovery from the stroke she’d suffered a month ago.
    â€œI’m calling the police!” the woman yelled back.
    The police? That was just what he didn’t need. Not only would Belinda be hearing about him chasing some woman through the cemetery, she’d be hitching a ride to come bail him out of jail.
    Again.
    Only this time, he wasn’t an angry young teen. He was a successful adult with two restaurants in Portland, Oregon, and no time to waste in a locked cell.
    â€œNo need for that,” he called, his tone calm and easy. No sense fanning the flames by being loud and demanding.