Lavender Beach (4 page)

Sitting atop the tractor that her boss had borrowed from Taggert Organic Farms, she watched the sun come up over the rolling hills to the east. The crimson and gold sky gave her pause. It reminded her of all the times she’d watched the sun come up from a cockpit.

She fought off the nostalgic walk down memory lane and focused on the goal at hand. With one last section of field to go, she’d be done with the plowing by Saturday. That’s when the volunteers would show up to start planting the seedlings.

Irrigation would be a problem. In the midst of the worst drought in a hundred years, the state tipped on the verge of running dry. But unlike other parts of California, Pelican Pointe relied solely on groundwater—one main basin and several sub-basins—for their water source.

Still, they intended to seek out help from the professional growers at Taggert Farms, who had long ago come up with their own conservation system that relied on rainwater and roof runoff as the main water supply. So far, their collaborative effort had paid off.

This morning, while Eastlyn turned over the dirt, another crew installed a micro-drip system running from the water storage facility.

It was during the quiet times spent plowing she couldn’t believe she’d resisted coming to this Mayberry-like little town. The fictional place had jumped to mind the minute she’d laid eyes on Main Street.

Those first few days at Promise Cove, she’d wasted her time resenting how Nick had manipulated her to get her here.

There had never been a warrant out for her arrest. She’d known that from the beginning. That fact hadn’t lessened her anger. It took the end of the first week for her annoyance to slide into grudging acquiescence.

After those initial days, no matter how she’d tried, she couldn’t find much to bitch about the place, certainly not with her room. The accommodations were first-rate. The innkeepers saw to that. Nick and Jordan routinely treated their guests like kings and queens however long their stay.

Her room came well stocked with toiletries she hadn’t thought to pack, like luxurious body lotion and fancy soaps she rarely took the extra coin to splurge on, certainly not the fancy conditioners and shampoos.

Each night she’d slept on high-thread-count sheets, dried her body with super-plush towels, and headed down to a delicious home-cooked supper. Each morning a complimentary breakfast waited for her in the kitchen, and she could grab an apple or an orange for lunch from the bowl of fruit sitting out on the buffet in the dining room on her way out the door.

The congenial couple proved hard to dislike—which made her feel petty about trying. What was there not to adore about hardworking Nick and Jordan Harris or their two little kids? It was hard to knock the friendship they offered, the conversations they tried to start, or the family atmosphere she found herself longing for, not to mention their stellar dedication to guests.

Once upon a time, she’d considered trying their lifestyle—married with kids. But that had all changed by the time she’d celebrated her eighteenth birthday. She’d wanted to fly helicopters for the army more than wedded bliss. Both lofty plans seemed impossible now. Things had changed. Not many men wanted a woman whose ritual of getting dressed in the morning included strapping on a prosthesis.

No matter how many state-of-the-art improvements doctors hyped, no matter how much upgraded technology experts touted, the device was still a turnoff for most men, at least those she’d attempted to date.

So she’d followed Nick’s lead and Jordan’s advice and settled in at Promise Cove to give Pelican Pointe a shot. Try as she might she couldn’t find a thing wrong with the stunning backdrop. Concealed from the two-lane road by towering cypress trees, the massive old Victorian the Harrises had renovated backed up to rocky cliffs.

Below the bluff was a pristine cove with sugar sand that stretched the length of the forty yards of beach. She’d been a frequent visitor there. She found it her favorite place to walk in the evening, to think about her life and contemplate how she’d so disappointed her father.

Kennan Parker had been the reason she’d learned to fly. Her dad had first taken her up over Bakersfield’s farmlands while he sat at the controls of a Piper Super Cub. She’d spent years dusting acres of crops throughout Kern County, sitting beside him, often begging for him to touch the sky.

Once or twice, she almost had.

That’s what flying meant to her—freedom.

It was that love of flying with her dad that had been the reason she’d pursued all the requirements to become a warrant officer, a rank necessary to get into army flight school. An eager seventeen-year-old had written her essay by herself and wheedled everyone she knew to draft letters of recommendation. From there, she’d aced the aptitude tests, cleared basic training, and gone on to complete classroom instruction at Fort Rucker.

Her father had been rooting for her on the day she graduated.

When she climbed into the cockpit of her first Black Hawk helicopter, no one had been prouder than Kennan Parker.

If only she’d been able to maintain that swell of pride. If only she’d had the opportunity to make it right before his death. That’s what kept her on the straight and narrow now, the idea of trying to get her life back on track. Surely that had to count for something.

She should’ve known, though, her father wouldn’t understand how she’d handled losing the ability to fly. She hadn’t wanted to spend time in the army grounded, her ass parked behind a desk. If she couldn’t fly, what was the point of becoming a desk jockey?

She’d proved over the years she could do just about any job. One good leg and a prosthetic didn’t make her handicapped. The VA felt differently. Every month the government sent her a check. Since she wasn’t considered full disability, the money wasn’t all that much. Whatever she got, she banked, stuck it into a savings account hoping one day she’d have enough for a house, maybe even her own plane.

Yeah right, she thought now. She didn’t even have her pilot’s license.

But one thing Eastlyn Parker didn’t do—she didn’t take handouts.

And as long as she stayed busy, she could keep her mind off the past.

Less than a
year earlier, Cooper Richmond had been living in Sausalito making his living as a photographer. He’d traveled all over the U.S. and abroad. No doubt with each move he’d been doing his best to run from his past.

Now, he’d relocated back to the town where it all started. He’d spent his first eighteen years of life here watching his parents verbally battle each other on a daily basis. He’d surprised a few longtime residents with his choice to come back.  These days if he felt like it, Coop could have dinner with his brother, Caleb, or his sister, Drea, or his adoptive parents—who were really his aunt and uncle—Shelby and Landon Jennings.

He’d learned early on that family dynamics could be a minefield. Because history had taught him relationships were often mired in crazy, erratic behavior—most notably his mother. Over the years all three siblings had struggled mightily to put their dysfunctional early childhood behind them as much as possible.

But Cooper, by far, had the worst time of it.

Not everyone had a mother as sick or as mean as theirs had been. Not everyone could so easily get past Eleanor Jennings Richmond’s misdeeds, certainly not her children. Not everyone had a mother who’d been arrested for taking two lives so violently—a double murder—one of whom had been his own father.

It might’ve taken twenty years after the fact to put Eleanor behind bars, but Cooper knew that his mother was exactly where she needed to be.

Cooper had lived a lifetime bogged down in the guilt of helping Eleanor dispose of the bodies. As a nine-year-old boy, he’d helped her dig the hole. He’d used a wagon belonging to his siblings to wheel the bodies to his uncle’s landscape nursery. He’d had to make two trips. When the truth of it all had been exposed, Cooper had felt shame.

Even now he was surprised his uncle and siblings had forgiven him.

Since moving back he’d let his chestnut hair drape to his shoulders. His blue eyes didn’t miss much despite his low-key approach to life. He preferred spending quiet times and turned to his books for solace.

He rarely went out. Even when he lived in the big city he hadn’t dated all that much. He preferred spending his evenings repairing his trains, making frames for the photographs he’d taken over the years, or reading a good book—all the while listening to Rachmaninoff, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, or Bach.

Inside Layne’s Trains,
Cooper Richmond tinkered with the wheels on a Burlington Northern engine attempting to get it to roll again.

During the months his train shop had been opened, business had picked up. The Christmas season had been a boon. One thing about living in Pelican Pointe, residents supported local enterprises.

Thanks to his neighbors—Kinsey Donnelly, Julianne McLachlan, Bree Dayton—he could fall back on his photography skills. Occasionally he did weddings, passport photos, even took school shots. His services had been in such demand he’d dedicated one corner of his shop to taking portraits, much like others did at Sears, he mused.

Drea had talked him into creating a website so people could find his work online and purchase his landscape photographs. Sunsets proved his most popular item, but his pictures of rainforests and mountain ranges sold incredibly well. People even seemed interested in buying photos he’d taken around San Francisco.

He put the finishing touches on the frame he’d been working on and glanced out the window. The newcomer, Eastlyn Parker, caught his eye as she pulled up to his sister’s flower shop across the street. The blonde often dropped off floral deliveries from his uncle’s nursery to Drea’s place, especially when Caleb got stuck somewhere else in the county.

It wasn’t like he kept tabs on the woman. But since Eastlyn had settled into the guest cottage behind the animal clinic, he’d noticed her a time or two.

Like the times he’d seen her walking along the beach near the pier, or spotted her with a basket on her arm picking up a few items at Murphy’s Market. He’d even bumped into her while browsing the literature section at Hidden Moon Bay Books.

As small town scuttlebutt went, he’d been told about Eastlyn’s tour in Iraq, that she’d lost a leg in combat. He’d also heard rumors that she’d worked as a stripper or a drug informant back in Bakersfield depending on which conversation he caught at the drug store.

Cooper didn’t believe half of what he heard. He liked to think when it came to a person’s past very few people could top his. That’s why he was in no position to judge anyone.

He was in the midst of those thoughts when the door to his shop opened and in walked the woman in question. He watched her look around at all the trains before settling her eyes on him.

“Hi. This is a toy store, right? I mean, you sell other stuff besides trains, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Great. Point me to your model airplane kits. You know, the kind that comes in pieces and you put them together with glue.”

Coop finally got his feet to move. He swung around the counter, made his way to the back. “Kits are next to the balsa wood projects that kids use in school. A few in town make their own miniature buildings for their railroad sets. The thing is, I don’t keep a lot of model kits in stock. Most kids these days don’t have the patience to put them together and there aren’t enough adults around anymore who do that kind of thing as a hobby. So it would depend on what you’re looking for whether I’d have it on hand or not. Certain model kits are special order.”

Eastlyn browsed the meager selections. “I don’t see it on the shelf. The Huey AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter.”

“Ah, the workhorse of the Vietnam War, the chopper that provided fire support for ground forces and additional aerial rocket artillery. Now they’re used mostly for fighting forest fires. The army also used it to work in tandem with the light observation helicopter or LOH as hunter teams.”

Eastlyn hooked a finger in the loop of her jeans. “I’m impressed. Most people know very little about the Huey Cobra’s role in Southeast Asia, let alone how they worked in teams with the LOH.”