Chapter One
Kinley
“You must be the infamous Ed.” Kinley James stood at the top of the small knoll that once held a prominent wooden sign, welcoming visitors and residents alike to Sunset Ridge. That massive sign, though freshened up with some paint, was the same one Kinley saw in her rearview mirror the day she graduated high school.
She never intended to see it again.
Now, it lay on the ground, splintered and face down.
The notorious moose, Ed,somehow a local favorite though Kinley couldn’t quite figure out why, stood off to the side of the sign. Blinking at her. Just blinking.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to pay for the damages?” Kinley retreated from the top of the grassy mound to lean against the side of the older Buick, thankful the bumper was not only still attached but mostly intact. Aunt Fiona had enough to worry about with her broken wrist. Kinley didn’t want her worrying about their only mode of transportation being out of commission.
The bull took a step toward the tree line then stopped, looking over his shoulder. As if he intended to sneak away without her noticing.
“Go ahead.” Kinley threw her hands up in exasperation. “Leave the scene of the crime sono onebelieves me.”
She’d only been back in town for three days. Three wonderful days in which not a soul recognized her. Had it not been for the relic of a car she was forced to drive, she might’ve pulled off her tourist guise for the duration of her two-week stay.
At least, that was a nice lie to tell herself before she took out the town’s sign with Fiona’s Buick. It would be easier to book a ticket to the moon than keep her return a secret.
Since Ed had decided to saunter onto the road as though he didn’t have a single care in the world, forcing her to swerve a hard right into the ditch to miss him, Kinley felt certain her cover was already blown. She gave it half a day before all of Sunset Ridge decided she used her aunt’s car as a battering ram to take her disdain out on the town sign.
Probably shouldn’t have given that speech at graduation.
“You couldn’t even give me one more day to hide out?” Though it was easy enough to blame the moose, it was really the letter that had caused all this. A letter written by her mother—deceased more than a decade—that Kinley had been sitting on since it arrived in her mailbox.
For two years, she’d kept it at the bottom of a shoebox filled with letters and birthday cards sent to her over the duration of her Army enlistment. Every time she slid the box from beneath her bed to add a new piece of mail, she resisted the urge to read her mother’s handwritten letter hidden at the bottom of the stack. No good could come from drumming up past secrets.
But as she found herself at a crossroads, the urge to know tugged at her. Answers the letter promised were readily available, waiting. Before Kinley made the decision that would shape the better part of her future, she wanted to uncover the truth.
“What do I do now, Ed?” she asked the bull, though she hardly understood why. She wouldnotbecome one of those locals who talked to the wildlife as if they understood.
Yet, here she was.
The moose lingered at the tree line, almost as if it pitied Kinley’s predicament. Luckily, she was spared the brunt of embarrassment by unusually light traffic. The fewer witnesses, the better. Sunset Ridge was a tourist trap all summer long. She hoped to be long gone before the start of that madness.
The Buick was too high-centered on the embankment to drive in reverse. All she’d accomplish was digging her tires deeper into the soft earth. But without friends who’d answer her call, Kinley was at a loss about a next step.
“Coming back was a mistake,” she muttered. “Stupid letter.”
Fate had given her a not-so-gentle nudge the day Aunt Fiona called and confessed a broken arm. The shoebox containing the letter she hadn’t touched in two years spilled out during that conversation. The light blue envelope—right on top of the scattered pile—taunted her.
Before that letter, Kinley had accepted that learning the identity of her father was impossible. That her mother took that secret to the grave. But the letter promised one other person knew the truth. Kinley was on a plane two days later, making good on an offer to help Fiona while her arm healed.
“Guess I’ll call Fiona,” she mumbled, fishing her phone from the center console of the car. Would anyone believe shewasn’ttexting and driving when Ed wandered onto the road? She hoped for a signal, hard to come by on the outskirts of Sunset Ridge. A landline at Fiona’s cabin did little good if she couldn’t get a call to go through.
As she reached her phone up toward the sky, hoping for at least one more bar, Ed let out a loud snorting huff then sauntered off into the woods. At least she was convinced it was Ed. No other moose she encountered before had ever acted that way, like a stray dog who couldn’t quite decide whether or not to trust the intriguing human. Add to that his slightly unusual antlers, and he matched Fiona’s description to a tee.
No signal.
She leaned in through the open driver’s side window to grab her purse. The offending blueberry scones that caused this mess could endure their punishment on the passenger side floor. Had they not slipped off the seat, Kinley would already be back at the cabin instead of a tourist eyesore on the side of the road.
The whine of a siren caused every muscle in her body to freeze.
“Great,” she muttered, annoyed to discover that the first passerby to stop would be a cop. “So much for stayingunderthe radar.”
Kinley wondered which of Sunset Ridge’s finest might be arresting her today. Or at least, writing her up and promising a hefty bill in the mail. She could tolerate almost anyone except Ryder Grant, the boy who stole her first kiss when they were fourteen. Kinley had been doing her best to avoid him ever since Fiona told her he was the Sunset Ridge police chief.
