The Way Back Home Read online

  “On Shadow Beach teems with action, drama, and compelling situations … a fast-paced page-turner.” —BookPage

  In the small California town of River Rock, the river is always there—sometimes unpredictable and wild, sometimes a source of comfort, always a part of life. Bestselling author Barbara Freethy will capture your heart with an emotional story about love, family … and fighting for what matters most.

  Ex-Marine Gabe Ryder is fulfilling the last request of his best friend, Rob, who was killed in a firefight during their final days of service. He promised to help Rob’s family—especially Rob’s twin sister, Alicia—with their struggling river rafting business. Gabe has a hidden past with Alicia, though. She’s the woman who taught him that love might exist, yet he walked away from her.

  Alicia has more than enough on her plate with her brother’s death, her father’s injury from a tragic rafting accident, the entire town turning against them, and a series of dangerous attacks on her business. She doesn’t need this rugged loner who broke her heart. But passion flares between them, and this time, they can’t walk away. Alicia can’t help wondering: did Rob really send Gabe to watch over her—or did he want her to show Gabe the way home?

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

  THE SOURCE FOR READING GROUPS

  BARBARA FREETHY is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Angel’s Bay series from Pocket Books—Suddenly One Summer, On Shadow Beach, In Shelter Cove, At Hidden Falls, and Garden of Secrets—as well as more than twenty-five other novels. She has been nominated for the Romance Writers of America RITA™ Award four times and won it for her acclaimed novel Daniel’s Gift. A native Californian, she lives near the exciting, intriguing city of San Francisco. Visit her website at barbarafreethy.com.

  Praise for the Angel’s Bay novels by

  BARBARA FREETHY

  “HEART, COMMUNITY, AND CHARACTERS WHO WILL REMAIN WITH YOU.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

  “IT IS ALWAYS FUN TO VISIT THE LITTLE TOWN ON THE BAY.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Garden of Secrets

  “The relationships among the inhabitants of Angel’s Bay … are intriguing and make for fascinating, interesting stories. The touch of paranormal … is delightful, the romance heartwarming, and the secondary mystery is nicely done.”

  —RT Book Reviews (4 stars)

  “A fabulously intriguing mystery layered with romance and some very interesting characters … a nice escape from the real world.”

  —Joyfully Reviewed

  “A well-rounded and satisfying novel…. Intriguing suspense, passionate romance, and countless unique characters.”

  —Single Titles

  At Hidden Falls

  “Freethy updates the lives of continuing characters, adds several memorable new ones, and dusts it all with magic and hope.”

  —Library Journal

  “Truly a work of art … a very satisfying read.”

  —Joyfully Reviewed

  “A lovely romance…. It is always fun to visit the little town on the bay.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  In Shelter Cove

  “A compelling story of intrigue, along with a romantic story of love, forgiveness, and faithfulness.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “A good solid romance and a spine-tingling mystery all in a tidy package.”

  —A Romance Review

  On Shadow Beach

  “A lovely contemporary romance.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “A fast-paced page-turner that unravels small-town scandals and secrets.”

  —BookPage

  “A fascinating touch of magic plus an abundance of genuinely heartfelt emotions, where everything is wrapped around an intriguing mystery.”

  —Single Titles

  “This compelling story is fast-paced, filled with renewed acquaintances, complicated relationships and plenty of mystery.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Flows beautifully with intriguing and appealing characters.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  Suddenly One Summer

  “Delivers a double whammy to the heart. Ms. Freethy cuts to the core with her depiction of a woman in jeopardy and a man who no longer believes that life has anything to offer…. A story that will keep you spellbound.”

  —Winter Haven News Chief

  “Intriguing, suspenseful.”

  —Library Journal

  “Transported me to a beautiful place and drew me into a story of family secrets, passion, betrayal and redemption.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs

  “Angel’s Bay … promises many poignant and heartwarming stories.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “A suspenseful and captivating story, weaving in human frailty along with true compassion, making every page a delight.”

  —Reader to Reader

  “Freethy has done a beautiful job of weaving a compelling story.”

  —Romance Novel TV

  “A well-written, captivating story.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  Also by Barbara Freethy

  Garden of Secrets

  At Hidden Falls

  In Shelter Cove

  On Shadow Beach

  Suddenly One Summer

  Now Available from Pocket Star

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  Pocket Books

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Barbara Freethy

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Pocket Books paperback edition July 2012

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Jacquelynne Hudson

  ISBN 978-1-4516-3654-3

  ISBN 978-1-4516-3655-0 (ebook)

  To Terry, Kristen, and Logan for their support and encouragement!

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments


  I would like to thank my writing friends who offered creative brainstorming, business support, and plenty of chocolate! To the ladies that lunch: Bella Andre, Anne Mallory, Carol Culver, Veronica Wolff, Jami Alden, Monica McCarty, Lynn Hanna, Kate Moore, Barbara McMahon, Candice Hern, Diana Dempsey, and Tracy Grant. And thanks also to Christie Ridgway, who always answered the phone when I needed to come up with a new plot twist!

  One

  We need to buy rafts, hire guides, and update the reservation software, and I have no idea where we’re getting the money to do any of that,” Alicia Hayden told her father, frustration overwhelming her as she walked across the back deck of Hayden River Adventures. The one-story building, set on the banks of Northern California’s Smoky River, was the launchpad for their world-class river-rafting adventures company. Next to the one-room office was the boatyard where they kept their rafting equipment. On the other side of the building, tucked behind the trees, was a dirt parking lot that was empty now. About a hundred yards away and up a grassy incline stood the family home.

  In the spring and summer months, they rented rafts and launched day trips off the pier. For more adventurous white-water experiences, they bused their guests ten miles north for the higher-class guided rapids tours. They’d been in business for more than sixty years, and three generations of Haydens had run the company. But now their business was sinking fast, and Alicia wasn’t sure they could save it.

  Her father, George Hayden, didn’t reply. Leaning heavily on his cane, he’d fixed his gaze on the wide, winding river that ran through the Sierra Nevada mountains. The late-afternoon foggy mist that had given the river its name was a little thicker than usual. While the winter rains had finally tapered off, the late-March air was cold, and luminous clouds shadowed the sun.

  As a brisk wind lifted the hair off the back of her neck, Alicia shivered and wrapped her arms around her waist, wishing she’d thrown a jacket over her knit shirt and worn jeans. She’d been hunkered down in the office all afternoon, trying to find a way out of the mess they’d gotten themselves into, but there was no clear path. Rafting season would officially open in two weeks, and they weren’t even close to being ready. She needed her father to understand that, but he was living in a world of denial, believing that nothing had changed since the rafting accident six months before, since her brother’s death three weeks before. But everything had changed. Their world had turned completely upside down in less than a year.

  Sadness, anger, and fear ran through her, but she couldn’t let her emotions take hold. This was the time for thinking, not feeling. She’d been trying to talk to her dad about the business since her brother’s funeral three weeks earlier, and he’d always managed to evade her. But not now, not today.

  “Dad,” she prodded, stepping up to the railing next to him. “We need to talk about whether or not we can keep on going.”

  He slowly turned his head. In his early sixties, her father had aged considerably in the last year. But while there was weariness in the weathered lines of his square face and more white than gray in his rapidly thinning hair, he still had some fight in his eyes.

  “We’ve never missed an opening day, and we won’t start now, Alicia,” he said.

  She sighed. “We need more than just a ‘can-do’ attitude, Dad. We need money and manpower, and we don’t have either.”

  “We’ll get the money, and we’ll find some guides. We have time.”

  “Very little.”

  “We’ll figure it out. This is our family business, a business that will one day go to Justin. You don’t want to jeopardize your son’s future, do you?”

  “His future is exactly what I’m worried about. I’m afraid our family business will take every last penny we have and still fail, and then where will we be? I need to make sure I can send Justin to college.”

  “He’s nine years old, Alicia.”

  “Almost ten, and I should be saving now. I’m a single mother, so it’s up to me.”

  “Being a single mother was your choice,” he said with a frown.

  She wasn’t about to get into that old conversation. “We’re getting off track.”

  “Bill already got us some rafts. We just have to pick them up tomorrow.”

  Bill ran the local hardware store and was one of her father’s best friends, but he was also one of her father’s enablers, continuing to tell him that he would be back on the river any day now, when the doctors were saying the opposite.

  “Dad, we need to face reality.” She drew in a deep breath, then plunged ahead with words that needed to be said. “People have to trust us to keep them safe, and they don’t anymore. They don’t want us to reopen. They want us to shut our doors for good.”

  Her father’s face paled. “Once we get back on the river, the trust will come back. We’ve had one accident in sixty years. It’s a damn good record. And it wasn’t our fault.”

  Fault was debatable, but she wasn’t going to get into that. “Wild River Tours is breathing down our necks. They’re a national company with a sophisticated Web site, and they want our rivers, our runs. How will we compete with corporate money?”

  “We’ll find a way. I’m not afraid of them. We know the river better than anyone, and we’ve always made our money on it. The river gives us life.”

  “And sometimes it takes it away,” she reminded him.

  It wasn’t only her father who had been hurt last year. A local man, twenty-nine-year-old Brian Farr, had lost his life when one of their rafts flipped over, and she’d come close to drowning herself. Another chill ran through her at the memory of those terrifying moments.

  “Let’s go inside,” she said abruptly. “It’s getting cold.”

  “In a minute.” He turned his gaze back to the water. “She tested us, that’s all, wanted to know if we were worthy.”

  “We weren’t.”

  “We will be next time.” Her father raised his fist to the river. “I’ll give you another run for your money. You can’t take me down.”

  Her father often spoke of the river as if it were a woman. Her mother had complained on more than one occasion that George was more married to the river than he was to her. It was probably why she’d left when Alicia was twelve years old; Margaret Hayden just couldn’t take coming in second.

  Distracted by the sound of barking, Alicia turned her head as Justin, her nine-year-old son, came running up the steps of the back deck, followed by Sadie, their very excited golden retriever.

  “Grandpa, look,” he said. “I finished Uncle Rob’s boat.”

  Her son held up a model boat that he’d been working on. Her brother had sent Justin the kit a few months earlier. It was a project they’d planned to do together when Rob got out of the Marines. But Rob had been killed in action on the other side of the world six days before he would have completed his service. Just six days, and then he would have been safe. She couldn’t get the bitter taste of injustice out of her mouth.

  They’d taken one hit after another in the past few months, and she couldn’t quite get her feet under her. But she pretended she was coping, because that’s what her family needed her to do.

  “I did it all by myself,” Justin added as he let his grandfather inspect the boat.

  With his sandy brown hair, freckled cheeks, and blue eyes beaming with pride, Justin looked a lot like her twin brother. She and Rob had shared blue eyes but not much else. Her hair was golden blond, her skin tanned instead of freckled, and she’d never made it past five foot five, while her brother had topped the family at six foot three. Her heart ached as Rob’s smiling face flashed through her mind. Whenever she thought of her brother, she thought of his big toothy grin, his goofy personality. He’d been the bright, shining light of their family, and now everything seemed darker.

  “Good job,” her father told Justin.

  “Can I try her out, Mom?” He turned to her with a plea in his eyes.

  “It’s getting late. You have homework, and I have dinner to make,�
� she said. “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

  His face fell. “But Mom—”

  “Why don’t you let him try it out?” her father cut in. “Homework can wait.”

  It was difficult to face down the two of them, and she was reminded of many other times when her father had gotten Rob or Justin to side against her. It hadn’t been easy being the only female in a house full of males. Her dad was a guy’s guy, and Rob had been the same. While she’d grown up more tomboy than girlie girl, she was still a woman. Right now, she was a really annoyed, tired, frustrated, overwhelmed woman with a million things on her to-do list.

  So why did she hear herself saying “Fine” when what she really wanted to say was no?

  Justin led the charge to the edge of the riverbank, her father following far more slowly. As Justin knelt down to launch his boat, she heard the phone ring in the office.

  “Go get it,” her father said. “I’ll watch Justin.”

  She ran back into the office and grabbed the phone. It was Keith Andrews, the man she’d been seeing for the last few months. Keith and his ten-year-old son, David, had moved to town in September, just in time for the start of the school year. Keith was a history teacher and a soccer coach at the local high school, and David was in Justin’s grade. The two boys had become fast friends, and in turn, she and Keith had discovered a connection, too.

  Unfortunately, she hadn’t been much of a girlfriend in the last few weeks.