Reflection Point

chapter FIVE





As the meeting broke up, Savannah’s thoughts were spinning. How had she gotten herself into this mess? Volunteering to help Zach Turner? He didn’t look any happier than she was about the whole thing.

How could she get out of it? Her stomach certainly felt queasy—was it bad enough to make her throw up?

Look at Celeste Blessing and think of Francine Vaughn. That should do the trick.

It was as if the woman had heard her. Savannah looked up and Celeste was there, standing before her, a wide smile on her face. To Savannah’s distress and despite the fact that they’d never exchanged so much as a word, Celeste reached out and hugged her.

“Thank you so much for stepping up to help Zach with the planning meeting,” Celeste said. “Volunteering is an excellent way to become part of the fabric of the town.”

Oh, jeez. She’s from the South, too. She even sounds like Francine!

Her spine stiff, her hands fisted at her sides, Savannah endured the embrace. After what seemed like ten minutes but was in reality only a few seconds, Celeste stepped back. She held Savannah’s gaze for a long minute. How weird. A cold, empty place inside her heart suddenly didn’t seem so cold and empty.

“You are going to love it here in Eternity Springs,” Celeste said. “This little valley has a special energy about it, a healing energy that soothes troubled souls.”

Savannah’s chin came up. “My soul isn’t troubled.”

Celeste simply smiled.

The sheriff stepped toward them, a challenge gleaming in his piercing blue eyes. Did he know she was looking for a way to get out of helping him? He leaned down and kissed Celeste on the cheek, then addressed Savannah. “Thanks for offering to help. The SARE meeting begins the day after tomorrow, and I’m really behind the eight ball.”

Too bad he wasn’t in front of the wrecking ball.

Celeste said, “It’s so generous of you to volunteer your time, Savannah.”

“I’m happy to do so,” she lied.

The look in the sheriff’s eyes said she didn’t fool him one bit. “How much time can you give me tomorrow?”

Five minutes? “How much time do you need?”

“Whatever I can get. To be honest, due to my workload of late, I’ve let a lot of things pile up.”

She put an extra tablespoon of sugar in her tone as she asked, “Lots of picnickers to harass?”

“You wouldn’t believe the litterbugs I have to defend the county against,” he replied in a droll tone. “Look, if you want to back out—”

Yes! Except she had more pride than that, and he looked entirely too sure of her as he stood there, all manly and lawly and … gorgeous. Gorgeous? Have I lost my mind? “I said I’d help. Where and when?”

One corner of his mouth tilted in a knowing smirk. “Reflection Point meeting center. I’ll be working there all afternoon tomorrow.”

“I have a full morning and a phone appointment at one-thirty. I could probably get there around three.”

“Perfect.”

In some alternate universe, maybe.

Celeste beamed. “Maybe once things settle down for you, Zach, you can return the favor by helping Savannah get her shop ready to open.”

Savannah couldn’t prevent her eyes from going wide, and his glimmered with amusement as he replied, “That’s a great idea, Celeste.”

“I’m glad you think so. Now, I have a million things to catch up on at Angel’s Rest, so I’m going to run. Before I go, Savannah, allow me to say welcome to Eternity Springs. I just know that you’re going to be so happy here.”

Savannah momentarily forgot about the sheriff as she watched her enemy’s twin depart the room with waves and farewells. Celeste and the sheriff. This wasn’t an alternate universe. This was a nightmare.

Damned if the lawman didn’t tip an imaginary hat as he said, “So, I’ll see you tomorrow around three.”

“I’ll be there.” Unless she had a convenient appendectomy or something.

Savannah watched Zach Turner walk away and pause in the hallway outside to speak with the mayor. The formfitting stretch of his shirt across his broad shoulders once again reminded her of Kyle Vaughn. Kyle’s uniform shirt had been blue, not khaki, and it had brought out the blue in his eyes. Blue eyes hauntingly similar to the sheriff’s.

When she dragged her gaze away from him, she saw Sarah watching her, her eyes alight with delight and her lips lifted in a satisfied smile. She dipped her head in the sheriff’s direction. “Man candy for the eyes. He’s not just pretty to look at, Savannah. Zach is a really great guy.”

“Wait a minute.” Savannah held up her index finger. “If you are thinking what I think you are thinking, you can just stop it. I’m not interested.”

Sarah Murphy clasped her hands to her chest, the very picture of innocence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Uh-huh.” Savannah folded her arms. “You are as obvious as a weevil in the cake flour, and I’m telling you to let it go.”

“Weevil in the cake flour? I love it! That’s so southern of you.” She put her arms around Savannah and gave her a quick hug. “I need to run. I’m meeting my husband at the Yellow Kitchen for a late dinner. Have fun tomorrow.”

Savannah sighed. What was it about these Eternity Springs people? They were always touching her. And they were so darned friendly.

Maybe she should have asked permission to move to New York instead of Colorado. She’d come here to start over, to put her past behind her, and build something new and wonderful and exciting … and clean.

And here she was with a county sheriff on her heels and Francine’s twin holding court.

Using one of Grams’ old expressions, she muttered beneath her breath, “Lord, love a duck.”

Savannah still didn’t know exactly what that meant, but at this particular moment it felt like the perfect thing to say.

She slept poorly that night, and spent the morning brooding about the afternoon to come. Yet the hours flew by. After finishing her phone appointment with a supplier, she wasted twenty minutes debating what to wear before finally settling on a sundress and sandals. She touched up her makeup, spending a stupid amount of time over her choice of lipstick color, then gave Inny a cuddle and two dog treats.

Savannah drove toward Hummingbird Lake beneath a dark cloud of dread.

The fact that she did so annoyed her. She had nothing to fear from Sheriff Zach Turner. She’d done nothing wrong—well, not since spreading Grams’ ashes without a permit, anyway. Actually, she was doing everything right—adding to the tax base with her business, being a good citizen by joining the Chamber of Commerce, being friendly to her neighbors when she frankly wasn’t a friendly person. He had no right to harass her. But since when did cops ever care about that?

Once upon a time she’d been friendly and outgoing and oh so naive. Look where that had gotten her. She’d learned her lesson the hard way, so she’d developed a new motto to live by, one adopted from old television reruns: Trust no one.

Maybe she should get the phrase tattooed on her forehead. Under the barrage of seemingly genuine welcomes and offers of friendship since coming to Eternity Springs, she’d let down her guard—and ended up a volunteer. To help the sheriff. With a substance abuse education program.

Oh, the irony.

She wanted to turn her car around, floor the gas pedal, and speed off to … where? Another place where her past would eventually catch up to her?

“I’ll never outrun it,” she said glumly. She’d been a fool to think she could leave the trouble behind. “Once a con, always a con.”

She paused and listened hard, hoping to hear Grams’ chiding voice. But like every other day since her visit to Lover’s Leap, the voice in her head remained stubbornly silent.

Rather than running, she flicked on her turn signal like a good little law-abiding citizen and pulled onto the road leading to Reflection Point.



Zach worked the morning in town but drove out to his home on the lake for lunch. He’d bought the first chunk of property from the out-of-state owners. Then last fall, when the Raffertys decided that Sage’s dreams of a drowning child made lakeside living too stressful for the new mother, they’d dangled precious privacy before Zach by giving him first shot at their home. He’d mortgaged himself to the hilt to buy it, and now he—and the bank—owned all of Reflection Point.

The decision to remodel the buildings on the Reflection Point property into a comfortable house for him and an income-producing property had been sound. As a corporate retreat center, the facility worked great for small meetings, and Zach didn’t have to bother with overnight guests, since Angel’s Rest took care of that end. His time commitment was minimal. Other than keeping fishing supplies stocked and the retreat building clean and in repair, Zach had little to do to ensure that things ran smoothly.

The reward was substantial. Not only was the weight of his mortgage easier to bear, but except for a half dozen or so weekends a year, his beloved privacy remained intact, too.

He’d been glad to offer the center to the SARE program, but he wished he’d asked someone else to be in charge of putting together the planning packets. He needed help, but he figured the odds were fifty-fifty that the Georgia peach would actually show up.

He wanted to see her, to study her like a bug under a microscope and figure out her secrets.

“I need help,” he muttered. The psychological kind.

He grabbed a sandwich at home and spent five relaxing minutes throwing a tennis ball for Ace to fetch. With his dog trailing at his heels, he headed to the meeting center and tackled the yard work while Ace plopped down to guard the door and supervise his owner’s work.

Zach mowed and ran the Weed Eater and leaf blower and wondered why he didn’t hire a teenager to do this for him. It was stubborn of him, really, to continue to do this himself, but he enjoyed the physical labor. It helped him clear his mind.

It needed clearing after dealing with the Georgia peach.

Sweaty, he ducked into his house for a quick shower, and if he lingered for a moment trying to decide which shirt to wear, he chalked it up to having an overflowing laundry hamper rather than any desire to look nice.

“I wish you would learn to do laundry,” he said to Ace, who displayed his lack of interest in the idea by padding to his bed and settling down for a nap.

Back at the meeting center, Zach taped a note on the door instructing Savannah to come on in, then he made his way to the small storage room, where he prepared to make copies on what he guessed might be the only ditto machine still in use in America.

As the first few printed pages rolled out, Zach absently brought a sheet up to his nose and inhaled the scent of the purple ink. He forgot all about Savannah Moore and his SARE to-do list as the fragrance catapulted him back to third grade and math tests. His mom used to wonder why he scored so poorly when he was a whiz at numbers. He’d never confessed that he spent too much time sniffing the paper and too little time doing the work.

The machine, ink, and paper had been one of the treasures stored in the basement at Angel’s Rest, and when Celeste offered to donate it to the meeting center, he’d been happy to take it, primarily for nostalgia’s sake. The center did have a state-of-the-art copier, but as luck would have it, it was currently out of service until a replacement part arrived, so the ditto machine was coming in handy.

As the machine produced pages for his packets, memories of grade school drifted through his mind: reading groups, dodgeball at recess, cursive writing. Did they still teach handwriting in schools? He wondered if teachers still used that tool with five sticks of chalk to draw equidistant lines on the chalkboard. For that matter, he wondered if they still used chalkboards.

That thought led him to recall his after-school punishment in the fourth grade—writing “I will not fight” on the board one hundred times. It had been a fair price to pay for the joy of pounding on Barry Hill after he’d taunted Zach because “your real mother hated you so much she gave you away.” His adoptive parents had agreed with the punishment—then they’d taken him out for pizza, a real treat.

When the last of the purple-inked pages rolled from the machine, he gathered up the stack and exited the room just in time to see Savannah Moore’s car pull to a stop in front of the center. Zach drew in a deep, lung-clearing breath. It wouldn’t do to have the drug dealer walk into the room and accuse him of being high on the solvents used in spirit duplicators.

He walked through the front door to the porch and gazed out at the old Ford sedan she drove. Bet that ride is a big step down for a drug dealer. She switched off the engine and opened her door. His gaze fastened on the bright red polish on toes slipped into heeled red patent leather sandals. Sexy. Thin ankles, long, tanned legs, and a flirty skirt on a yellow sundress. Very sexy.

Zach set his teeth and watched her walk toward him.

Very felonious.

He tried to smile, but when her eyes widened, then went narrow, he suspected it came off more like a snarl. But dammit, he’d spent five years of his life working undercover to help disrupt the flow of drugs into schools and parks and lives. He didn’t care how hot she was—the woman was drug-dealing scum.

After he’d finally read her rap sheet, he’d made some phone calls to Georgia. He’d yet to hear back from the messages he’d left at the department that had made her arrest, but a cop in the small rural town where she’d been born had remembered her well. He’d been downright chatty relaying information about her youth. Apparently Savannah Moore had been quite the juvenile delinquent before being sent away to live with her grandmother.

The Moore family had been moonshiners, and Savannah had been sixteen when she was arrested for two counts of sale of non-tax-paid whiskey resulting from purchases made by an undercover cop. The cop also recalled shoplifting and check-walking accusations. Of course, those were minor infractions when compared to what had sent her to prison.

She’d served six years for cultivation and trafficking. Sexy Savannah was an ex-con.

Who’d moved to Eternity Springs.

Who’d cozied up to his friends.

Who planned to sell soap.

Soap? Really? Or maybe some other kind of crystals?

As she approached the porch, he greeted her with an inadvertent bite to his tone. “Hello, Ms. Moore.”

Her chin came up, and he knew he’d inadvertently put her on the defensive. Dial it back, Turner. You want to observe and learn, don’t you? You won’t manage that if you alienate her right off the bat.

Channeling his old undercover days, he made his smile genuine. “Am I glad to see you.”

Her look turned wary. “You are?”

“I sure am. I can’t thank you enough for volunteering to help me.”

She studied him for a long moment, as if trying to judge his sincerity. “I wasn’t exactly sure what you needed help with, so I wasn’t sure what to wear. I have old clothes in the car if I need to change.”

“No, you’re fine.” You’re beautiful. Dammit. “Honestly, I’ve been so busy with work that I’ve put off preparations for this meeting until the last minute. There’s so much to do, I don’t quite know where to start. I have bags that need to be stuffed and vendors who need to be called. I need to test the AV equipment, process last-minute registrations, and clean the bathrooms.” He shot her his best sheepish, aw-shucks smile. “I’ll do those, of course. They’re not bad, but I wouldn’t ask you to clean bathrooms.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Why don’t I show you around and fill you in on what I’m up against, and we can go from there?” He opened the front door and gestured for her to precede him inside.

She walked to the center of the room. “This is a lovely facility. The view is fabulous.”

A wall of windows showed off the sapphire blue of Hummingbird Lake and the snowcapped mountains beyond. “This building started out as a vacation home for a large family from out of state. When I bought the house next door, Celeste suggested converting it to a corporate retreat.”

“So this is not a city facility?”

“No. It’s private. It’s mine. Well, mine and the bank’s.”

She turned to look at him. “You asked for volunteers to help you make money with your personal business?”

Could she sound more disgusted?

Annoyed, he replied, “No. I asked for help for a non-profit program I care deeply about. The SARE program isn’t paying for the space. In reality, it’s costing me money, but this is an excellent program that does a lot of good, and I’m happy to help support it. Let me tell you a little bit about what we do.”

He was off and running now, explaining how the privately funded group had been formed a decade earlier with a program similar to the wilderness expeditions of Outward Bound that focused on youth at risk of falling into the drug culture. As he talked, Zach thought, She was an at-risk youth at one time. She should appreciate SARE better than most.

She should be impressed.

She obviously wasn’t.

As he further explained about the program, Zach sensed a peculiar tension brewing in the room, that same sort of anticipatory energy that heralded a summer thunderstorm. The kind of tension that made a man feel alive.

He finished his explanation by saying, “I’ve been a group leader for the past three years, and let me tell you, a week of camping in the Rockies can change the lives of these kids, change them for the better. I’ve seen it myself.”

Savannah lifted both hands, palms out. Her smile was neutral, but her eyes flashed with an emotion he couldn’t quite read. Temper, definitely, but something else, too. What was it?

“No argument here,” she said. “My bad. I misunderstood. It sounds like a great cause. Now, what can I do to help?”

Zach frowned. He’d expected further argument from her. He’d looked forward to it, in fact. He needed to blow off some steam.

I want to kiss her.

Whoa. Wait just one minute. Have you gone crazy? Your intention was to charm, not be charmed.

He had to get control of his buttons—all his buttons. Apparently she had the ability to push them without even trying.

Zach cleared his throat and attempted to steer the conversation back to safe grounds. “If you could knock out the bag stuffing, that would be a tremendous help.”

“Fine. Lead the way.”

He pretended not to notice the insincerity in her smile as he led her into the workroom. A long table piled high with stacks of paper, folders, canvas bags, and tchotchkes stood against one wall. He gestured toward it, saying, “Everything is lined up. I need three folders made for each bag, with pages in the top row going in the red folders, those in middle row put in the yellow folders, and the ones in the bottom row in the blue folders. Each bag gets one of the giveaway items.”

Savannah crossed to the table and picked up a mini flashlight on a locking carabiner. “These things come in handy.”

“That they do.”

“All right, then. I can handle this task. Why don’t you go … clean the bathrooms?”

He hesitated, then nodded and walked toward the door. At the threshold he paused. He knew he should keep on going, one foot in front of the other, mouth zipped tight. But while he still grasped for button control, the storm broke. He turned around and asked, “You don’t like me, do you?”

She shot him a wary look. “I don’t know you.”

“No, you don’t.” He folded his arms and leaned casually against the doorjamb, though he felt anything but casual. “So why don’t you like me? I haven’t done anything to you … other than attempt to save your life.”

She picked up a carabiner and twirled it around her finger. “I wasn’t jumping off Lover’s Leap.”

“I didn’t know that.” Giving up casual, he strode forward. “I risked my life to save yours and you … you …”

“I what?”

“You called me Barney Fife!”

She went still, then dropped her head and brushed an imaginary speck of something off her skirt. Were her lips twitching? If she laughs at me out loud, I swear I’m going to blow a gasket.

Her tongue snaked out and moistened her lips. “When did you hear me say that?”

Zach had to pull his gaze away from her mouth. “You don’t know?”

“It’s possible I might have used the name more than once.”

Zach sucked air past his teeth. She went on the offensive and demanded, “Why have you been spying on me?”

“I haven’t been spying on you,” he fired back. Though he had run a make on her. Did she suspect that? Was that behind this attitude of hers?

“Obviously you have spied on me,” she continued. “I wouldn’t use a derogatory term like that in public, only in private. I admit I tend to talk to myself, so if you heard me call you Barney Fife, you obviously eavesdropped on a private moment.”

She didn’t apologize. She didn’t explain. Really, little Savannah the drug dealer shouldn’t look so superior. Zach felt the urge to cut her down a peg or two. He smiled the smile he’d learned from Cam Murphy, a shark’s grin that was all teeth. “If I’d wanted to spy, Ms. Moore, I’d have gone to work for the CIA. Instead, I investigate. I’m an excellent investigator.”

She audibly gasped, diverting Zach’s attention from her mouth to her breasts. Unfortunately, she caught him staring, and when she spoke again, though she didn’t use the words “Go to hell,” they came through loud and clear. “In that case, Sheriff Turner, perhaps you should investigate the state of the restrooms rather than my chest. I need to stuff your … bags.”

Zach couldn’t allow her to send him away. Since he’d already been caught staring and because she’d chosen to wear that short, flirty skirt, he allowed his gaze to slowly drift down to her long, shapely, sexy legs and told himself he was being insulting rather than feeding his inconvenient attraction to her.

He also had one more question he wanted to ask. “Why did you come here today?”

“I can leave.”

“No, you promised to … stuff my bags.” He looked her in the eye—not without an annoying bit of regret—and asked, “I’d like to know why you volunteered.”

“Because I’m—” She broke off abruptly and sighed, the starch draining from her spine like air from a balloon. “I don’t know. I just … did. It’s Sarah Murphy’s fault. She poked me. That woman is a terrier.”

Relating to her sentiment, this time Zach was the one who sighed. “She is. So are her friends. Still, you could have come up with an excuse for not showing up.”

“I keep my word, Sheriff. And I do not lie.” Her gaze was steady, and sincerity rang in her voice.

If Zach hadn’t known better, he’d have believed her.

Knowing the time had come for a strategic retreat, he left her alone with her volunteer work while he made quick work of cleaning the restrooms, then went outside to the toolshed. Earlier he had noticed that a couple of nails had worked their way loose on the back porch. Pounding nails struck him as the perfect task to do at this particular moment, so he grabbed his hammer and went to work.

Thwack. Why did she throw him off his game so bad?

You’re attracted to her.

Thwack. Thwack. Okay, fine. So what? It was understandable. She was gorgeous. Sexy. Spirited. He liked a little attitude in his women. And those legs …

Savannah Sophia Moore isn’t your woman. She will never be your woman. You can never go there. It would go against all your principles.

True. He had to squash this attraction like a bug.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

With the porch nails sufficiently pounded, he reentered the building and commenced his AV equipment check. Once he completed that, he grabbed his cell phone and the folder he’d left on a table in the main room and began making the vendor calls. He was halfway through his list when a noise in the doorway to the office caught his attention and he looked up. Savannah stood in a beam of sunshine, and streaks of burnished fire highlighted the curls in her golden hair. She looked like an angel, he thought, and again, frustratingly, his blood heated.

“I’ve run short on three of the handouts,” Savannah said. “If you’ll show me how to work the copy machine, I’ll finish up. I’ve never seen one like it.”

Zach slipped his phone in his pocket. “It’s a ditto machine, and I suspect it qualifies as an antique. But it works, so I’ll use it until it gives up the ghost. Which pages do we need more copies of?”

“These. I’m short six copies of the first two and seven copies of the third.”

When she passed over the pages, their hands brushed. The touch was electric, and judging from the slight widening of her eyes, he suspected she felt it, too. She didn’t look any happier about it than he did.

That made Zach feel marginally better. It made sense that an ex-con drug dealer would harbor hard feelings toward law enforcement. It seemed only fair that if he was going to suffer, then so should she.

For the first time since he checked her rap sheet, Zach wondered how someone like her had gotten tangled up in the drug trade. She should be teaching school or baking cookies or, well, making soap. Not growing weed or cooking meth or recruiting members for her drug ring. What circumstances had caused her life to veer off the straight and narrow?

Family influence had to be part of it. Or lack of influence from a family. He’d seen that often enough.

He turned his attention to a demonstration of how to use the machine. When she leaned forward to study the paper feed, he caught a whiff of her clean, fresh scent—a blend of lavender and summer rain—and the workroom suddenly felt crowded. One of her own soaps, he surmised. She’ll make a mint.

He jabbed at the on switch with his thumb.

The ditto machine spat pages. Savannah picked up a sheet stained with fresh purple ink, brought it close to her nose, and inhaled deeply. Her full lips stretched into a sensuous smile. She literally purred. “Oh, wow. This makes me think of third grade.”

Zach went hard as Murphy Mountain. The urge to kiss her swamped him, and Zach leaned forward.

A sliver of self-preservation guided words onto his tongue and he drawled, “That’s the closest you’ll find to cocaine around here, Ms. Moore.”

She froze. The paper slipped from her hand. Her gaze flew up to meet his. Grimly she said, “You know.”