“Mean,” Cord corrected. “Unbalanced, sure, but he needed to be in prison not taking up a bed in a mental health facility. Hey, I told you I’d already figured it all out anyway. It doesn’t matter, not anymore. For the first time in a long time I truly feel that part of my life is done. I’ve got a brand-new start in a new town, even have a relationship with my father I never thought I’d ever have. The only way I could get any luckier is knowing I have you in my life. I want you in my life, Keegan.”
“I’m right here, Cord.”
“That isn’t good enough. I love you, Keegan. I want to make my life with you. Can you see spending your life with a recovering alcoholic? I’ll never be able to take a drink.”
She abruptly sat up, leaned into him. She ran her hand down his cheek and said, “We’re all recovering from something in one form or another. And besides, I love you, I have for weeks now. If you don’t believe me, just ask Scott.”
His brow furrowed. “What does that mean? What does Scott have to do with us?”
She stroked another line down his jaw. “Ask him sometime.”
Epilogue
Four months later
First day of fall classes
“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” Keegan assured him when she saw Cord fidget with his backpack.
“Easy for you to say, Miss Three Degrees,” Cord replied in mock disdain. “Why do I feel like I’m six again and this is my first day of school?”
“I don’t know, maybe because you have on brand-new sneakers. Or that you insisted you needed to buy new jeans and shirts. Or it might be the fact your backpack has all new school supplies in it. Yeah, it’s probably that.”
“Smart ass.”
“Now see, your snappy comebacks will do you proud in class. Just don’t make a habit of it, or fall asleep no matter how dull the professor is, or in some cases, the TA.”
“Too bad TA doesn’t stand for tits and ass.” When he saw the look on her face, he grinned. “Okay, I don’t feel six anymore. But the first time around I was really into college t and a.”
She bumped his shoulder. “I bet you were. Teaching assistants are usually hot. So you be sure to stay away from any t and a, or I’ll be forced to show you my nasty side.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve already seen your nasty side. Come to think of it, I really prefer your dirty side.” To prove it, he leaned in, gave her a quick tug on the lips until he got a nice little moan out of her. “I haven’t been in a classroom in almost ten years.”
“It’ll come back to you. Now shut up, buck up, and get to class.”
“How about you be my personal TA?”
“I’ll show you t and a—later. Quit stalling.”
“You’ve got lab first thing this morning, right?”
“Yep, on my way to Anatomic Pathology now. We’ll meet up in the student union for lunch, okay with you?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Cord, you’ll do fine. Think about the two of us practicing veterinary medicine together in the not so distant future. Both of us taking over Bran’s practice and making it coincide with our work at the center. College is mostly a ton of reading anyway and you like to read, so—”
“You really think I can do this?”
“Baby, I know you can. All your courses transferred without a hitch. And the advance placement cut a good nine months off your curriculum.” She kissed his cheek and slapped him on the butt. “Now, get going. You don’t want to be a straggler on your first day. I’ll see you at lunch.”
“Maybe I should’ve gotten a haircut.”
“Are you kidding? I love it long. It looks great, you look great. Now go.”
Cord trudged off, his long legs eating up the ground. He’d be pushing forty by the time he completed his internship. But he could do that at FMRC. He shook his head. He’d done crazier things he supposed than setting out to become a veterinarian at this late stage of his life.
When he got to the Life Sciences Building, he pulled open the door and stepped into the hallway, scanned the nameplates beside each door.
After finding his first class, Molecular and Cellular Biology, he settled into his preferred seating, a desk in the very back of the room.
There were some things that stayed the same and never changed, he thought.
And some things did. Even though he didn’t need the financial help, his father, Gabe, had agreed to foot the entire bill for his stint in college and vet school. In fact, Gabe had donated a very generous sum to make sure FMRC stayed afloat for the rest of the year.
Cord had to admit that in a matter of six short months, Gabe Bennett had become a permanent, steady fixture in his life, something Cord had never thought possible. Only three hours away, the man made a point of visiting him often and when that wasn’t feasible, he still would text or phone Cord almost every day.
Cord couldn’t believe his good fortune in the father department.
Or his good luck. Keegan had agreed to marry him over Christmas break.
While he waited for class to start, Cord nervously drummed his fingers on the wood and decided to open his textbook. He had to look twice at the signature line on the inside front cover that listed all the students who had owned the book over the years. There scrawled on the second line was the name Scott Phillips.
For some reason, Cord felt compelled to thumb through the book.
There it was, practically in the middle, sandwiched between pages 260 and 261, a piece of paper, folded in two, and used like a bookmark at the beginning of Chapter Ten, Biomembrane Structure.
Cord slipped it out, unfolded the note.
I told you it wasn’t your time to go, that you still had a lifetime of things to do. And that’s the fun part. Make sure you never take life for granted again.
Grow old, Cord, live life every day like a precious gift because you never know from one day to the next what the dancing tides will bring to shore.
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Lighthouse Reef
Prologue
Twenty-five years earlier
Pelican Pointe, California
The waves crashed up against the rocks. The wind whipped in gusts while a slice of moonlight trailed along the sand, glistening like silver. On the deserted stretch of beach, three young men huddled in front of a campfire they’d built up trying to stay warm in the chilly, damp night air. Two were brothers—the other an older tag-along already of legal age they’d talked into buying beer and cigarettes in the neighboring town of San Sebastian—where you could purchase liquor if you were twenty-one.
But San Sebastian was farther inland and it didn’t offer the Coast Highway to tour up and down cruising for chicks, especially in the summertime, or during spring break when babes wearing string bikinis were as common as surfboards. Oddly, that was usually the best time of year to pick up hitchhikers, too.
Not four hours earlier, the trio had set off an alarm on Main Street when they’d broken a window to get inside Ferguson’s Hardware store. Their plan had been to rob old man Ferguson, take whatever cash they could find. Who knew Ferguson had gone and installed an alarm system? Probably something the son had come up with to impress his old man, a step toward progress, signaling a change in ownership
one day in the not too distant future. Something to show the town he deserved the cushy job he’d fallen into as daddy’s right-hand man.
After all, nepotism ran strong in this shitwater of a town, didn’t it? Fathers turned the reins over to their sons to inherit the business, whatever the business happened to be. It was a practical matter, a legacy that had held its own ritual for years and would continue to do so for future generations.
Future generations? What a joke that was. Like anyone with a brain would stay in Pelican Pointe their whole life and hope to have a future here.
Flames rose higher on the fire as they took turns tossing more driftwood onto the pyre hoping to make it more like a bonfire.
“Why do you want to do that?” the younger one asked. “We’re just attracting attention to ourselves.”
“Shut up,” the older brother barked. “Didn’t we just gather up all this wood? It’s freezing out here in the mist. Besides, I call the shots. Don’t forget that,” he warned as he chucked another log into the blaze, making the tips of the flames shoot up higher, as if trying to reach all the way to the top of the bluffs where the lighthouse sat high atop its craggy perch.
Up to now, the discarded beer cans that littered their feet were the only true indication the three had been drinking. But as they got drunker—they also got more surly—and louder. Nasty tempers began to clash as they always did between these same companions and flare like rockets on the Fourth of July.
The youngest, barely sixteen, spared a glance in the direction of the young teen girl they’d tied up earlier and placed close to the fire. Her eyes told him she looked scared to death. Not an hour earlier, his brother had stuck a gag in her mouth to shut her up and keep her from screaming. “What should we do about her?”
The older brother didn’t take long to think about it. “Let’s take the bitch up to the lighthouse. Whaddya say we go up there and have ourselves some fun. We’ll put it to her good and hard. No one will hear a thing.”
“He’s right. The longer we stay down here on the beach, the more we risk somebody could come along and spot us,” the tag-along agreed without much hesitation. “But shit. How do we get the bitch up there? You feel like toting her all that way?”
“Hell no. We’ll stick her in the back of my pickup while we make our way through town. That way it just looks like it’s the three of us same as it usually does.”
“Then let’s do it.”
“I’m in. How do we choose which one of us goes first though? Should be the oldest that gets first dibs, dontcha think? Since that’s me—”
“No. No different than the way we always do things. I go first, then my little brother. You last.”
“Why does it always have to be your way?”
“Because it’s my damn truck that’s why. Now shut the fuck up and help me get this bitch loaded up. Anymore crap from you—?”
“Okay. Okay. No need to get your panties in a wad. How much do you think she weighs?”
“How the hell should I know! The three of us should be able to handle her though.” With that the oldest brother went over and pulled the terrified girl to her feet. He brought out the knife he carried and stuck it to her throat. He looked into the blonde’s brilliant-blue eyes and wondered what it would be like to watch the life go out of them. He’d been thinking about it a lot lately, reading about it, too. Tonight he had his chance to see what it was like for himself. He just had to bring the others around to his way of thinking.
“Grab her feet,” he ordered the tag-along. To his brother, he yelled over the sound of the wind and surf, “Open up the tailgate.”
“What about the fire?”
“We’ll come back. For what I have in mind, this won’t take that long at all.”
Don't miss these exciting titles by bestselling author
Vickie McKeehan
Exclusively at Amazon in print and Kindle format
The Pelican Pointe Series
Starlight Dunes, the fifth in the series
Coming Christmas 2013
The Evil Trilogy
Skye Cree Novels
The Box of Bones
Coming 2014
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vickie McKeehan is the author of nine novels and makes her home
in Southern California, next to the ocean she loves.
Visit with Vickie on her Website or Facebook at
www.facebook.com/VickieMcKeehan
www.vickiemckeehan.com/
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