One

      Vicki Bingham stood on the porch of the country store. The shiver of trepidation started as a little twinge, then spread throughout her body. After fifteen years, Wyatt Edwards was about to step back into her life.

      Hunching her shoulders against the cold tremor that engulfed her, she stared up at the empty house standing in stately grandeur on top of the hill. It seemed to look across the valley and out to the ocean like a dark, brooding monarch surveying his kingdom. No one from the Edwards family had lived in the house since the death of Henry Edwards ten years ago. And now it was about to be occupied again by Wyatt, Henry’s only child.

      Her ever increasing anxiety forced her to look away. Nothing good could come from this, but she did not know what to do about it.

      “Victoria Dalton Bingham!”

      Vicki stiffened at the sound of her name. She recognized the voice immediately. It had the same quality as chalk squeaking on a blackboard and affected her the same way. Alice Thackery, a prim woman in her early sixties, was the town busybody and selfappointed guardian of everyone’s morals. Vicki forced a smile and turned around to face the unavoidable.

      “Yes, Mrs. Thackery, what can I do for you?” She could tell by the woman’s pinched expression and tightly pursed lips that she was about io be involved in yet another unpleasant confrontation.

      “I realize, Victoria, that you had to make certain adjustments when you returned to Sea Cliff to run the store after your father died, but you’ve been here for two months now and I feel that’s long enough. I’ve mentioned this to you on numerous occasions in an attempt to be a good neighbor, but you seem determined to ignore all my attempts to be gracious in this matter.” Mrs. Thackery shifted her shopping basket from one arm to the other as she waited for a response.

      Vicki allowed a sigh of resignation. “What seems to be the problem this time, Mrs. Thackery?”

      “It’s that boy of yours. You’re allowing that teenage hooligan to run wild around the streets and I won’t have it!”

      Vicki stretched herself to her full five-foot-seveninch height and glared down at the shorter woman. She took a calming breath, determined to control her temper. “I will thank you to stop referring to my son as a ‘teenage hooligan.’ Richie is no such thing. He’s a healthy, normal boy who needs his exercise. He’s not a troublemaker and does not run wild around the streets.”

      “Not an hour ago, Victoria, he came speeding around the corner on that two-wheeled contraption of his and nearly ran into me. He was with that Forsythe boy and everyone in town knows that little hooligan is just a breath away from reform school.”

      “That