Last Call

Lacey LeBeau has been focused on family and managing The Salty Dog ever since Zach Channing walked out of her life ten years ago. Granted, he was a summer crush and they were barely out of school. She understood that he wanted to see the world as an outdoor photographer and she was a homebody, loving her small town, but she couldn't help but wait for him every time June rolled around, to not avail. Just when she had given up hope, he saunters back into her life to blow it all up again.

Zach Channing loved Lacey but yearned to see the world and prove himself as a photographer. After a freak accident that shatters his leg and his career, he comes back to the one place that soothed his soul - Swan's Creek Maine. Only this time, he's coming back to take his uncle home to Boston after his uncle's heart attack, effectively closing the bar that Lacey loves and ending her dreams of ownership.

Can Zach and Lacey find their love together and a new path forward to happiness?

“I’m looking for my fiancée.”
The words echoed in the bar, hanging heavy in the sweltering heat of the late Saturday afternoon. The few regulars in The Salty Dog swiveled their heads and stared at the woman behind the bar, sensing gossip like sharks scenting blood in the water. Lacey LeBeau stared at the man standing in the doorway, the sun shining around him, blinding her. But that voice. She hadn’t heard it in over a decade, but late at night that dark rasp still echoed in her dreams. Zachary Channing.
“You’ve been M.I.A. for ten years. I kind of figured I was a free agent,” she replied coolly, trying to calm her racing heart, her hands wringing the towel she’d been using to dry glasses.
“You’re breaking my heart, darling,” he drawled and stepped further into the bar.
The boy she once pretended to be engaged to had matured into a dark and sexy man, possibly even more lethal to her than he was at eighteen. In moments of weakness, she had kept tabs on him via social media. His trips overseas, his photos in various magazine spreads, his dating history. Pictures didn’t prepare her for the sheer physical presence of the man, the raw masculinity he hadn’t exhibited the last summer he had been in Swan’s Creek. While he’d been just out of college, he’d still been a boy compared to the virile man prowling into her dive bar in coastal Maine. Though, as he came closer, she noted a stiffness to his gait, a limp, that belied the strength in the rest of him.
She cocked her hip and leaned against the bar, conscious of all the eyes on them. “Highly unlikely. You’re just someone I used to date.”
His eyebrow quirked, and a smirk crossed his face. “I’m touched. Don’t get so mushy, Lacey.”
“Now we know why she wouldn’t date me,” Cy Miller, a local lobsterman, leaned over to his buddies and spoke just loud enough for Lacey to hear.
Without sparing him a glance, Lacey snorted. “Trust me, Cy. That wasn’t the reason.” The bar cracked up with laughter and Cy grimaced but shrugged it off. Lacey refocused on Zach. “Besides, we were never really married. A fake engagement to keep bar flies at bay. Nothing more.”
Zach slid onto a bar stool, his left leg stretched out to the side. His voice lowered to a husky drawl. “If I recall, it wasn’t all fake.”
Her face burned, and she slung the towel over her shoulder. “Can I get you something?”
“A beer and a glass of water. Whatever you have on tap.”
She poured a draft of Seadog and set it front of him, a glass of water following a few minutes later. The rest of the customers turned back into their conversations or the ballgame, leaving her and Zach in their own bubble. She leaned over the counter and studied him, seeing the way his lips pressed together tightly, the fine lines of strain around his eyes, and the way he held himself stiffly. He shook out a couple of pills from his pocket and took them with his water, washing it down with the beer.
“Everything okay, Zach?”
He glanced at her. “Yeah, just a long drive. I’m a little stiff, that’s all.”
She sensed there was something else but she let it go. “What brings you to our little corner of the world? I would have thought we’re a little too small for the great world traveler now.”
He narrowed his gaze at her. “Don’t do that, Lacey. Don’t put yourself or Swan’s Creek down. I never once did that. Just because I wanted to see the world didn’t mean Swan’s Creek was lesser. I came to see Uncle Andy. I expected him to be here.”
Involuntarily, they both glanced at the stool at the far end of the bar, the stool Andy always sat when he wasn’t working. But it had been years since he’d worked the counter. Occasionally, he spent time in the office checking on the accounts and receipts. He left almost all of that to Lacey now and she reported to him weekly with their status. But the bar was unmistakably still his, since he wouldn’t allow a single change.
“He doesn’t come in as often as he used to. I manage the place now.” A hint of pride threaded her voice, and she didn’t bother to hide it. She loved The Salty Dog, had been working there since she turned twenty-one.
Zach scanned the place, a neutral expression on his face. “I see nothing has changed.”
While he hadn’t meant anything by his words, they stung, but she settled for being noncommittal. “You know Andy. He doesn’t like change. You’re here for a visit?”
She placed a subtle emphasis on the last word, a sly innuendo since he hadn’t been back for years. There had been a time when he had spent every summer there and professed to want to live there. But then he grew up and found new dreams, away from Swan’s Creek and Lacey.
He heard the underlying snark because he winced. “I’m taking a vacation and thought I’d check on Andy. It’s been a while and wanted to see how he was doing.”
She straightened. “You should have been here a few months ago when he had his heart attack, when he needed you. Don’t worry. People in Swan’s Creek look after each other. Excuse me. I have customers to look after.”
And she stalked away before she really let him have it.