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Back Black Rock Bay Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
  1. TITLE PAGE
  2. COPYRIGHT
  3. DEDICATION
  4. CONTENTS
  5. PROLOGUE
  6. CHAPTER ONE
  7. CHAPTER TWO
  8. CHAPTER THREE
  9. CHAPTER FOUR
  10. CHAPTER FIVE
  11. CHAPTER SIX
  12. CHAPTER SEVEN
  13. CHAPTER EIGHT
  14. CHAPTER NINE
  15. CHAPTER TEN
  16. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  17. CHAPTER TWELVE
  18. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  19. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  20. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  21. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  22. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  23. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  24. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  34. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  41. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  42. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I didn’t leave a suicide note, either.

There was a question that Izzy had earlier refused to let properly form but couldn’t deny any longer.

Was the reason Mia hadn’t left a suicide note because she’d always known she’d come out of the lighthouse alive?

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN

MIA

“Mia.” Cash didn’t say her name like a prayer or a plea. This was accusation, annoyance, and sixteen years of familiarity that couldn’t be erased by fifteen years of silence.

He had come over to her booth, though. Approached her despite the way she hadn’t said goodbye before she’d left, hadn’t answered his calls in the weeks following.

“Cash,” she said, meeting his eyes because she was never one to play coy.

He watched her closely. “What are you . . . ?” That’s when the realization struck, and something that looked like relief flashed quick as lightning across his face. “The reporter.”

The word rippled across the room, a pebble dropped in a lake that had been still. Eyes shifted and bodies leaned, ever so slightly, toward her and Cash.

It wasn’t like she was going to confirm it, so she just smiled a little and let that be answer enough.

He grinned, that slow, easy one that used to let loose butterflies in her belly. For a heartbeat, she was disoriented, off-balance. Here was the boy in that photo, laughing into the camera. But gone was the baby fat. That jawline had sharpened and was now dusted with scruff; his shoulders had filled out, but his hips had stayed narrow.

“Let me get you a drink?” Cash finally said when the silence between them stretched to awkward. “Come on.”

He walked away without waiting for her.

When Mia had been a teenager, she’d enjoyed the way Cash, a skilled conductor, directed those around him, bodies becoming the music that bent to his will. As a thirty-one-year-old woman, she found it less than appealing.

But he was already four steps ahead, already at the bar. Once he nodded back toward her, Max got the message and reached for the Eagle Rare one more time. Her ulcer flared, but she ignored it.

Mia spared one more look toward where Izzy was attempting to win over Patty Masterson, before she followed Cash to a booth on the other side of the room.

Sliding in across from him, she let her eyes trace over his face. Here was a stranger she knew so well and didn’t know at all.

“I should call you Mr. Mayor, I guess,” she finally said. Although she hadn’t been back to the island, Mama still told her things.

There was no mockery intended, but he grimaced anyway. “Maura Chapman took over after Dad retired, but stepped down a few years back.”

“A Bishop back in charge,” Mia said. “Seems right.”

“Not much changed since you left.”