“It’s good, Mon.”
“How’s that precious little girl of yours?”
I smiled, thinking of my daughter, Renee. “She’s great,” I answered back, totally at ease with shouting a conversation across the street. It was just what people did in Whitecap. Being in a rush was no excuse for not being neighborly with these people. “An endless bundle of energy and destruction, as usual.”
The woman smiled so big I was able to see her teeth from across the street. “Ah, the life of a toddler.”
“Tell me about it. I’m hoping she wears herself out at daycare today, but I’m not holding my breath.”
“True enough. Well, I’ll let you get going. Stop in for a coffee later.”
“You got it.”
I finished my stroll down the block to Warren’s General Store, where I’d been working since shortly after arriving in town a few years back. It wasn’t some fancy corporate job where I had to wear heels every day and sit behind a desk in fancy designer skirts and blouses, and I freaking loved it. The work was honest, the husband and wife who ran the place were amazing, and the customers who came in were great. I loved the idea of this town being so small it had this quaint, family-owned, one-stop-shop kind of place where you could grab pretty much anything you needed instead of being littered with chain big box stores every couple blocks that blemished the hominess of the place.
Here, I got to see friends and neighbors on a regular basis and keep up with most of the local gossip—which also meant I was among the first to know if any new faces popped up in town. That made this whole hiding in plain sight gig a hell of a lot easier. I’d learned over the years to make sure I knew everything about my surroundings, that included all the faces—even those who were just passing through.
I kept my eyes and ears open, always prepared, and if I got even the slightest hint that something was off, as much as it would hurt, Renee and I would be gone before anyone had the chance to notice we were missing.
The bell over the door tinkled serenely as I pushed it open and stepped into the store.
A head full of frizzy slate-colored curls popped up over the top of the shelves of cereal boxes. “Morning, Sawyer!” my boss called in her usual cheerful voice.
“Hey, Georgia.” I flicked my wrist out in a wave as I headed for the cash register. Georgia Warren and her husband, Desmond, owned Warren’s General Store. It had been handed down to them from Desmond’s father, who got it from his father before him. When they finally decided to retire they had every hope that their only son would come back to carry on the family legacy, in spite of the fact that he’d been gone a really long time. I didn’t have the heart to tell them I wasn’t sure that was going to happen.
Apparently, he’d left their small town with dreams of bigger and better things than what Whitecap had to offer. In the years I’d been living here, he’d come back less than a handful of times for holidays and birthdays and such, and those trips never went past the three-day mark.
Georgia was incredibly proud of the family history behind the little store, and never failed to talk the ear off any new face that came through the doors, spouting on and on about the generations of Warrens that had been in Whitecap since the town was founded.
“How’s life?” I asked as I stowed my purse beneath the counter and pulled my nametag out of the little bin, pinning it to my chest.
“Well, I’m still here and kicking, so that’s a plus.”
I shot a wink her way. “You’ll outlive us all.”
She let out a harrumph. “Damn straight I will. My big behind will outlast all those new-age hippy-dippy dieters with all their no sugar, vegan, gluten-free crap.” She waggled her thumb toward her chest. “A pack of bacon every morning does a body good.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. I was pretty certain her doctor had already lectured her on her cholesterol quite a few times, but who was I to burst the woman’s bubble?
I headed down the aisle, shooing her away from the boxes of inventory she’d been in the process of shelving. “Go ahead and get that aforementioned behind to the register. I’ll finish this up for you.”
She stood from her crouch, her knees and hips cracking frighteningly loud, making me wonder how it was possible she hadn’t broken, or at the very least, dislocated something on her way back up. “Thanks, honey,” she said with a groan, reaching around to massage the small of her back with a wince. “On the inside I feel like I’m nineteen. Then my body has to go and mock me.”
“Yeah, well. That’s what you have me for. To do the heavy lifting—literally. Now go on.”
She scuttled down the aisle toward the counter at the front of the store. I watched as she hoisted herself up on the cushioned stool and pulled out one of the many romance novels she kept hidden at the back of the shelf beneath the register, thinking we didn’t all know her little secret. We all knew. Hell, when things were slow, I tended to raid her stash as a way to pass the time. She had a penchant for historical romances that had rubbed off on me. I’d take a sexy plundering pirate or a rakish duke over real-life men every day of the week.
I shook my head on a grin as she started reading, and got down to re-stocking, moving my way through the shelves. Just as I was finishing up with the cereal, the bell tinkled as the door whooshed open in a rush, bringing the sea breeze in with it.
“What’s the rush, Luna?” Georgia asked from her place at the counter.
I lifted my head, and my eyes landed on my friend just as hers found me. “Oh good, you’re here!”
I lifted my arms out at my sides. “Where else would I be, Lu? I’m here five days a week. It’s my job.”
Luna Copeland was the closest thing I had to a best friend, considering the only things she knew about me were the lies I’d told her and everyone else in Whitecap. She only knew me as Sawyer Darcy. She knew absolutely nothing about Cheyanne Knightly. There had been a few close calls over the years—mainly after we’d had a bit too much to drink during our monthly Margarita Mondays—when I came this close to telling her all my secrets, but I’d always managed to pull myself back before my mouth could get away from me.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her. If there was anyone I knew I could count on, it was her, but the risks were just too great. I had to put Renee’s safety first. I’d run before Graham could discover I was pregnant. If he found out about the daughter we shared, he’d hunt us down and take her away from me, and that wasn’t going to happen. I kept her safe. I loved her. I did everything in my power to protect her. If her father had the first clue she existed, she’d be in danger and I’d die before I let that happen.
Luna skip-walked down the aisle, a huge, shit-eating grin on her face. “Have you seen him yet?” she asked excitedly.
“Seen who?”
She let out a whistle and danced a little jig. “If you’re asking that, you definitely haven’t.”
I smacked her in the stomach with an unopened box of marshmallow puff cereal. She snatched it out of my hand and peeled the flap open, tearing the interior bag and stuffing a handful of cereal into her mouth. “Will you stop speaking in code and just spit it out already?” I pointed at the cereal box. “And you’re paying for that.”