Deep River Promise by Jackie Ashenden (free ebook reader .txt) 📗

idiot. Didn’t he know she could see him from here? Clearly he either didn’t, or he didn’t care. She was thinking the latter.

Annoyance rippled through her, not helped by the interaction she’d just had with Damon.

Thank God, he’d taken himself off. Almost as soon as he’d gone, all the air in the room that had escaped when he’d entered it had rushed back in and she’d been able to breathe again.

Shock, of course. Nothing to do with the moment when his gaze had held hers and something hot had sparked to life in those sky-blue depths. And she’d felt herself blush in a way she hadn’t blushed in a very long time.

No, absolutely not.

It was shock that after so many years of secrecy, someone else knew who Connor’s father was.

You’re not entirely alone with it, then.

Astrid ignored the thought. It didn’t matter that she was alone with it. That’s what she’d wanted because she couldn’t tell everyone when she hadn’t even told her son, after all. And as to that, well…

She’d thought she’d have more time. She hadn’t thought Caleb would be killed in a plane crash. No one had seen that coming, least of all her, so she couldn’t blame herself for that.

But the fact that her boy hadn’t even had the opportunity to get to know the father he’d now lost, the father he hadn’t even known he’d had, yes, that was absolutely her fault.

Turning from the window, she moved over to the desk and picked up her pen, glancing down at her to-do list. But then she put the pen down again.

No. Busy was good and it was a nice distraction, but what she should be doing was going down and taking her recalcitrant son by the scruff and giving him a good lesson in the consequences of lying to her, since it was too late to send him to school. The high school was an hour and a half away by bus, and now that he’d missed that bus, there wasn’t another. She didn’t have a car either, so she couldn’t take him. And he knew it, the little ass.

The problem with Connor was that there wasn’t much she could use in the way of consequences. Forbid him to help people? That wouldn’t work, and it would only end up rebounding on the people who liked him helping. There was forbidding him internet time, but since—unlike seemingly every teenager on the planet—he didn’t spend much time online, that wasn’t likely to work either. Not helped by the fact that Deep River’s internet connection was patchy at best, nonexistent at worst.

She reached down and straightened the pen, then adjusted the paper stack of people’s various ideas for tourism ventures for Deep River.

Well, whatever. She needed to go down and give him a piece of her mind.

Astrid strode out of the mayor’s office and went downstairs, going through the little hall that led out onto the boardwalk. The door through to the tourist information center stood open as she went past, and Sandy Maclean, who ran it, lifted a hand in greeting from behind the counter, peering from over the tops of her very round glasses.

Astrid waved a hand in return but didn’t pause. Sandy was almost as bad as April in the diner when it came to gossip, and she wasn’t about to give her any ammunition. Instead she stepped outside and headed to the Moose a couple of doors down.

Connor hadn’t noticed her approach, still pressed up against one of the windows, trying to see inside through the dim glass.

“Hey,” Astrid said coolly as she stopped right behind him. “Weren’t you supposed to get on the ferry? At least that’s what I thought you were doing. Or did you somehow fail to find Kevin’s boat that you’ve successfully managed to find every day for the past three years?”

Her son started guiltily, then turned around to face her. The knuckles of his hand clutching the strap of the backpack he had slung over one shoulder whitened, but his bright-blue gaze was very direct. He didn’t look one whit ashamed of being caught.

“Mom, look,” he said very seriously. “I’m sorry. Yeah, I know I lied to you about going to school. But you weren’t going to let me stay, and someone needs to keep an eye on that guy.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the Moose. “Everyone else has jobs to go do, but I don’t. And I don’t mind sticking around to make sure everything’s okay.”

Seriously? He’d stayed home because of Damon? This had gone too far.

“You do have a job, Con,” she said flatly. “School is your job, and I have a legal obligation to make sure you go. Do you really want me to get Morgan to make you go?”

Morgan West, Caleb’s sister, was Deep River’s state trooper rural equivalent, a village public safety officer. Which meant she was the law in these parts.

“Morgan isn’t here,” Connor pointed out, not without some smugness. “She’s still on that training course.”

That was, sadly, true.

Sandy was fussing around ostentatiously with the postcard stand just outside the information center, but Astrid knew she was only out here to see what the kerfuffle was about.

Connor noticed too. “Oh, I think Ms. Maclean needs some help with—”

“No,” Astrid interrupted, feeling like she needed to lay down the law in some way. “No more help today. You’re officially grounded. Which means you need to go home and stay there.”

Connor’s chin came up at a belligerent angle. “Mom, really? Come on. I’m just trying to look out for the town.”

“Yeah, and I get that. But I don’t want you skipping school. That’s a hard no, Con.”

“School isn’t that important. It’s nearly done for the year anyway. All the things I need to learn, I can learn from Mal. Or Mr. Anderson. Or Joe at the—”

“You are not learning from Joe!” Astrid interrupted, horrified.

Joe was an old trapper who spent most of his time with his friend Lloyd getting drunk in