Dancing Tides

by Vickie McKeehan

  She was about to step off the curb at Main and cross the street when she spotted a familiar man zigzagging his way through the vendor tents. He lifted his face up to the storm clouds as if to study every movement, every rumble. Keegan’s heart did a double beat as he turned, spotted her and raised his hand in a neighborly wave. Before she could get her mouth to work, she watched the man vanish into thin air.

  She swallowed her shock.

  Scott Phillips. She’d seen with her own eyes, Scott Phillips, as he took a stroll along Main Street. Scott Phillips, the solider who had died in Iraq two years earlier.

  She turned around and dashed back to the center to get her truck.

  At the same time Keegan tried to overcome her shock, Harold Boedecker and his son, Drake, bobbed on the lip of Smuggler’s Bay in Harold’s twenty-foot fishing boat, Orion’s Song under overcast skies, hoping to catch enough striped bass for their supper.

  On the south side of the bay, the craggy shoreline gave way to patchy stretches of beach dotted with scrub brush and low hanging juniper. Drake squinted into the distance, watched the rise and fall of the tides and commented, “Dad, do you see that? Over there. What is that hung up in that low-hanging cluster of cypress?”

  Harold narrowed his eyes. “Can’t make it out from here. Eyes aren’t what they used to be. Let me grab my field glasses.” He reached in his bag, dug out the binoculars, held them up, and adjusted the focus where he could see what his son had spotted.

  “Shit. Start the motor!”

  “Why? What do you think it is?”

  “That’s a floater for sure.”

  “No way. Let me see the glasses.”

  Harold handed them off to his son and shifted to pull the cord on the motor himself. “We need to get closer. If it’s a body—”

  “But there’s no one in town missing. Gotta be a tourist,” Drake reasoned, eyeballing the ballooned form hung up in the cypress trees, rising and falling in the white caps.

  While Harold steered them through the choppy waves, he began taking a mental inventory. There were only two people in town unaccounted for and had been for several months back. After stealing in excess of half a million dollars from the bank, Kent Springer and Sissy Carr had snuck off six months earlier in the dead of night. Police choppers had searched up and down the coast for three straight days looking for any sign of Kent’s boat, East Money. They hadn’t turned up a single thing.

  Closing the distance, Harold decided that from the looks of the bloated body, it appeared to be unmistakably female. At least the bleached, blonde hair on her head indicated that much.

  But eyeing the corpse, Harold said to his son, “Drake, there ain’t much left here. But I think we might’ve just found Sissy Carr.” Harold scratched his scruffy chin. “Even if it ain’t her, Ethan’s gonna have himself a shitload of paperwork.”

  Drake drew his phone from his pocket, held it skyward as fat drops of rain began to fall. “Getting a weak signal on my cell.”

  “Good. Let’s call her in.”

  And with that, Drake punched in Ethan’s number.

  Cord had several issues to deal with at the farm, issues he couldn’t avoid before he headed to Keegan’s for the night. While he straightened out a problem with a supplier via email, the image of Keegan, and what they had done to each other the night before, popped into his head.

  Lately, he didn’t seem to be able to go an hour without thinking about her. He didn’t doubt for a minute they were moving faster than Jeff Gordon in a race to capture the checkered flag at Daytona. But they weren’t hurting anyone. He needed her. And she needed him. It was as simple as that.

  As he listened to the rain beat down on the barn roof—he hadn’t understood what a dark place he’d been in—not until escaping it. He certainly hadn’t known just how close he had ventured to the edge without ever coming back. That is, until he’d met Keegan. She made him want to keep that light glowing inside he’d thought was gone forever and never lose it again.

  He took care of other work, checked on delivery schedules, made sure orders were updated. The calendar on his desk reminded him he hadn’t had a drop of alcohol in three weeks.

  He hadn’t missed an AA meeting or a trip to see the shrink. He’d gone three for three each Sunday afternoon and six for six every Monday and Thursday to hash out his past with Dr. Pontadera. He’d kept every appointment and his promise to the judge. He’d been on his new medication now for two weeks without any horrible side effects, no headaches, no nervousness, and no drop in libido.

  He had to admit the sex couldn’t get any better. And how in the world had he gone a year and half without it? An earlier visit to a grief counselor would’ve probably been the ticket. It was his bad luck he’d passed that up. Instead he’d opted to waste a lot of valuable time he’d never get back, time he’d spent picking fights with anyone willing to slug it out, and generally feeling sorry about his situation.

  Having Keegan in his life was nothing short of a miracle.

  When he heard a car drive into the common area outside the barn, he went on immediate alert. He picked up the pitchfork from beside the door and peeked outside.

  To his surprise he saw Keegan make a run for the porch in the rain. He called out to her so she’d know he was in the barn instead.

  “Hey, what’re you doing here?” he yelled.

  She wheeled on her heels with Guinness in tow and he could tell even from this distance she was upset. When she started running toward him, he dropped the makeshift weapon and took off.

  She all but collapsed in his arms. The dog circled them twice and then loped off for the shelter of the porch.

  “What’s wrong, Keegan? Did you see Robby Mack?” He noted the look of distress on her face and shook her shoulders a little to get her to answer him.

  “What? No. I…I saw Scott,” she announced. Out of breath, she related what she’d seen.

  “Is that all? You scared the life out of me. I told you about Scott. What’s the big deal?”

  “Well, excuse me. But the first time you see a man who’s been dead two years standing right there in the middle of the street around other people calmly going about their work, you get a little unnerved.”

  “I see that.”

  “Cord, he was twenty feet in front of me looking up at the sky, watching the storm move in just like a regular person might, the joy on his face spoke volumes.”

  It was the snicker she heard that had her punching his arm.

  “Ow! What was that for?”

  “You laughed at me.”

  He stifled a chuckle. “Who me? I thought something terrible had happened. You looked like you’d seen a ghost. Oh, wait.” He did laugh then. He threw back his head with a howl of laughter, and it bellowed upward into the storm.

  Then his head whipped around and their eyes met, he wound her wet hair around his fingers and said, “Don’t you have an umbrella? This rain’s freezing cold.” He ran his hands up and down her arms in a weak attempt to warm her up. “You look so beautiful wet though.” He started to spread kisses along her face, licking at some of the drops. “You’re shivering.”

  But in spite of the downpour and the cold they didn’t move from that spot as they stood wrapped up in each other. She whispered his name and the husky sound did him in.

  “We better get you out of your wet clothes.”

  “And you. You aren’t even wearing a jacket.”

  “It’s not that cold.” He was burning up for her. Together they slogged up to the house.

  Guinness greeted them with a bark and a wag of his tail as he eagerly waited to get inside.

  Once in the living room, Cord went over to the fireplace, started stacking logs for a fire.

  But when he turned around Keegan was already shedding her clothes.

  He watched as she pulled up her sweater, shimmied out of her wet, black leggings. By the time she got down to panties and bra, he dragged her against him. “Hot shower. Now.”

  S
he undressed him on the way down the hallway, and sticky wet, they both bumped up the water to hot. While they waited for the spray to heat, they created their own steam, skin-to-skin.

  Once they stepped into the narrow stall, foreplay had reached the frenzy stage. Here, fingertips soaped, slick and fast, while hands traveled up and down over curves and valleys. Impatient for each other, he backed her up against the tile and drove himself inside.

  Glorious color framed her senses. Keegan dropped her head back and rode the crest, full out and hard.

  Cord quickened his pace, drove them both until they shattered together in golden circles of light.

  She ran a hand down his face. The minute she could speak, she told him, “That just keeps getting better and better…every time.”

  He grinned. “I’m making it my personal mission to make up for lost time.”

  Later in the kitchen, wearing one of his oversized T-shirts and a pair of sweat pants, she rolled out her own dough for spinach, tomato and cheese pizza.

  When he didn’t grumble too much at the prospect of eating a vegetarian pie for dinner, she knew they were progressing into a comfort zone of sorts on both sides.

  “I won’t hold you to putting your meat-eating days behind you.”

  “I meant what I said at Gabe’s. I’m beginning to see the advantages.”

  “For real? Most people don’t.”

  He cocked his head. “Haven’t we had this conversation before? I thought we established, I’m not most people.”

  She sighed. It was true. Cord Bennett had to be the strongest person she’d ever known. What he’d been through as a kid had to be tough, and yet, it seemed to her as though he’d put that early disappointment from life behind him. It was the memory of Cassie he had trouble letting go of.

  As Guinness spread out in one corner of the kitchen, as rain continued to beat down outside, Cord gathered up their wet clothes from the living room and stuffed them into the washer.

  He couldn’t help it. The sense of domestic bliss struck a happy chord with him. Somewhere in the last three weeks, he’d turned a corner.

  He glanced over and stared at the woman at the counter, throwing together a meal. Was there anything the woman couldn’t do?

  “Who’s on duty tonight at the center?”

  “Pete and Russell. God, I hope they don’t kill each other,” she groaned, as she removed the piping hot pan from the oven.

  “They don’t get along?”

  “Like oil and water. One’s a leftover from the sixties, the other still tries to live the life of Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever.”

  “Sounds like they have more in common than they know.”

  “Oh, they do, but it would take nothing short of torture for either one to admit it. How’s Pete working out as your sponsor?”

  “He’s okay. I haven’t had to call him so all we do is share a little bit more of our past each Sunday afternoon. Some of it is pretty raw. Why?”

  “I guess he shared what happened to his wife?”

  “You know about that? Of course, you do. You’ve known him your whole life.”

  “Just about.”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about what’s said at the meeting.”

  “It’s okay, you don’t have to. I wasn’t even living here when it happened. But I’ve heard Pete talk about it, cry about it, blame himself, sitting right there in my grandparents’ kitchen. Apparently, Pete had a terrible drinking problem back then that resulted in him driving drunk one night out on the Coast Highway. He walked away from the accident without scratch. His wife, Cheryl, wasn’t that lucky. He was devastated. I guess the six years he spent in jail sobered him up.”

  “Twenty-two years of sobriety. Do you suppose I’ll make it that far?”

  She gave him an incredulous stare, anger bubbled at the fringe. “You will if you want to. No one but you can make it happen, Cord.”

  He went to her then, lifted her chin, met her eyes. “It’s a struggle I want to win every day. I don’t have an option.”

  “I know. But some days I don’t like seeing you have to fight so hard.”

  He had to swallow twice before he got his mouth to work and get out what he had to say. “This is a demon I have to take down. If you feel it’s too much, if you feel you want to walk away, tell me now. I won’t hold it against you.” He held his breath and waited for her answer.

  “Why? Why are you always so willing to give me up, let me walk away just like that?”

  He rested his head on hers. “It’s anything but easy. But I don’t want to drag you down. I’m no prize.”

  “Stop saying that!” She shouted. “You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met.”

  “Come on—”

  “You’ve been through a lot in your life and you’re so strong and sweet.” She slumped against him. “I don’t want to walk though. I’m no quitter.”

  “Thank God. It’s tough, I know.” He rubbed her back. “There’s no quick fix. I wish there was.”

  “I’m not looking for that. I just want to help and I don’t know how.”

  “You said it yourself. It’s up to me. Most days, it’s just up to me.”

  That night snuggled up in bed, Keegan woke to a noise coming from somewhere inside the house. Glancing at the clock on the nightstand, the digital alarm clock told her the time was five minutes after two. For several long minutes she lay there not moving, listening. Maybe she’d imagined the noise. After all, this was her first time spending the night in his house, a strange place, a strange bed.

  When she heard what sounded like the closing of a door, she jabbed Cord in the ribs and whispered, “Cord, Cord, wake up. I heard something. I think there’s someone in the house.”

  With his eyes still closed, he mumbled, “It’s probably nothing, just an old house. Go back to sleep.”

  “No! Cord, wake up.” She shook him harder.

  This time the unmistakable sound of a door closing from some other room was more pronounced.

  Cord’s eyes fluttered open. He bolted upright and in one fluid motion reached for his jeans. Staggering a bit to pull on his pants, he hopped on one foot before groping in the dark for the baseball bat he kept hidden under the bed.

  Keegan on the other hand, threw a blanket around her shoulders and followed him out into the hallway. She wondered why Guinness hadn’t so much as barked.

  Together they both tip-toed into the living room and tried to avoid making the old floor squeak beneath their bare feet.

  Standing in the front room, they both heard what sounded like footsteps on the old porch. Cord went to the window and pulled back the curtain.

  Outside the rain had stopped. Drifts of moonlight streaked down in wide swaths from porch to barn. Cord spotted a form in the shadows.

  “Stay here,” he murmured.

  “Not on your life. You go out that door, I go with you. I heard something inside here. Don’t even bother telling me I didn’t. I’m not staying inside alone.”

  “Fine. But keep behind me.”

  Cord flipped the lock on the front door and sighed when it creaked open. They stepped out onto the wooden porch as a unit struggling mightily with the old planks not to tip their hand. Cord gripped the bat tighter as he prepared to move down the steps.

  But the old slats groaned in protest and gave away their position.

  At the sound, the shadowy form looked back over his shoulder at the house and lifted an arm in greeting. Guinness stood next to Scott, wagging his tail in happy welcome.

  “Oh, for chrissakes,” Cord said aloud at the same time he loosened his grip on the bat.

  “What,” Keegan asked bumping into him from behind.

  “It’s Scott.”

  She peered around Cord and there, standing in the middle of the yard, was Scott Phillips. “Good grief.”

  “That’s what I said. Ghosts may not need their eight hours, but we do,” Cord shouted in furious clipped tones.

  Scott stepped out
into the moonlight with a huge grin on his face, took a few steps closer, as did the dog.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

  At his approach, she couldn’t help it, her mouth dropped open.

  “You guys go back to sleep. Don’t mind me. I’m just restless tonight.”

  Cord charged down the steps doing a slow burn only to growl when his bare feet hit the damp, gravel driveway. Hopping around on one foot, chunky bits of rock bored into the soles of his feet, which infuriated him all the more.

  He marched right up to where Scott stood, got in his face.

  “Goddamn it, you scared the hell out of us! It’s one thing to haunt the grounds during the day. It’s another to scare the wits out of people when they’re trying to sleep.”

  Like any good apparition, Scott threw his head back and roared with laughter. Then his face sobered and he held up his hands in peace. But that only lasted a couple of seconds before he started guffawing all over again. “Sorry. But…if you could only see the look on both your faces.”

  Cord ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. “Get out of here. Go haunt someone else for a change!”

  “Okay, okay, I’m gone. But no one makes a better sentry than I do. Who better to be on the lookout for Robby Mack?”

  That caught Cord off guard. “And I’m the one seeing a psychiatrist?” he muttered as he made his way back to Keegan still standing on the porch a little in awe of the entire exchange.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I still say we need to talk to an expert,” Keegan argued the next morning at breakfast. “Find out why he’s still earthbound.”

  Cord dropped two pieces of bread into the toaster and said, “Listen to you, it wasn’t that long ago you thought I was nuts.”

  She cracked eggs into a bowl and explained, “That was before I actually saw him. Seeing him was different. Has he ever done that before? Come in and out of the house like that, doors opening and closing? That was unsettling.”