Nightingale Way: An Eternity Springs Novel (27 page)

By the time they were ready to leave, waiting beside their Gold Wings for Celeste, who had dawdled in the gift shop, Cat had squealed and screamed and laughed more than she had in years. “I’m going to have to bring Mac here,” Ali said. “This was a blast.”

“They promised thrills and delivered,” Sarah agreed.

Nic nodded seriously, but the glint in her eye was wicked as she said, “Zip lining is almost as thrilling as having sex with Gabe Callahan.” When Cat glanced at her in surprise, she added, “This is supposed to be a bachelorette party. We have to talk about sex.”

Getting into the spirit, Ali said, “Excellent point, Nic. I’ll add that zip line soaring is almost as thrilling as waterfall sex with Mac Timberlake.”

Sarah gasped. “You had sex at Heartache Falls? But that water is freezing!”

“No, this was a waterfall at a resort in Hawaii. The water temperature was just right.” Ali looked at Cat.
“Anything to add to the conversation? You were married to the mystery man of Eternity Springs, after all.”

Cat made a show of staring at her fingernails. “As exciting as I found soaring through Aspen Alley a few minutes ago, it doesn’t compare with Caribbean beach sex with Jack Davenport.”

“Ooh,” Nic said. “That’s a good one.”

Sarah grinned impishly. “I haven’t had Caribbean beach sex with Jack Davenport, but I can vouch for the thrill of his kisses.”

Cat scowled at her. “I do believe that I have some sympathy for Cam.”

Sarah laughed, then exhaled a dreamy sigh. “Well, in another couple of weeks, I’ll be having South Pacific yacht sex with Cam Murphy. Isn’t that something?” She looked at Nic, her oldest and dearest friend, and shook her head in wonder. “Can you believe that? I’m marrying Cam Murphy!”

Nic gave her a quick, hard hug. “And we are all thrilled for both of you.”

While Sarah blinked back happy tears, Ali said, “Here comes Celeste.”

Nic noted the gift bag in her hand. “I swear, she never passes a gift shop without buying something.”

“It’s market research,” Celeste replied. “I have to make sure that our shop at Angel’s Rest is better than the competition’s. They did have something unique here that I just couldn’t pass up. Look.”

She pulled a little figurine from her bag—an angel hanging from a zip line. Cat grinned as she mentally pictured the drawing room at Angel’s Rest, otherwise known as the Angel Room. “It’s perfect.”

The others agreed, then they donned their helmets and roared off toward the next stage of the bachelorette adventure weekend—a trip to the Wild, Wild West.

* * *

Jack chewed the end of an unlit cigar and lined up his putt on the twelfth hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links on the Monterey Peninsula. The foursome of himself, Mac Timberlake, Gabe Callahan, and Cam Murphy had proved to be a competitive bunch. As it stood now, he and Mac each had three skins. Gabe had managed only one. Cam was ahead by one, but Jack would tie him if he made this putt. He stood over the ball. From behind him, he heard Cam channel his inner
Caddyshack
fan by saying, “M-m-m-miss it, Noonan.”

Jack hit the ball cleanly and sank the putt. The others groaned. They walked off the green, then took advantage of the proximity of the halfway house to use the facilities. As Gabe stood in line to buy a round of beers, Cam said, “I think I’m going to call and check on the girls. I don’t like this whole soaring idea. Sounds dangerous as hell to me.”

“They’ll be fine,” Mac said. “I’ve done it with our sons. It’s a lot of fun.”

Cam wasn’t pacified. “Why can’t they have an ordinary bachelorette party? Go have a spa weekend or a shopping extravaganza? Oh, no. Our women want to go ride motorcycles and hang from trees.”

“We are with extraordinary women,” Gabe said as he walked up and passed out cans of beer.

“We may be with them, but we’re not
with
them. That’s the problem.” Cam accepted the beer and stepped away, saying, “Looks like there’s a bit of a backup on the tee box. I’ll catch up.”

Jack watched with amusement as his cousin pulled his cell phone from his pocket and placed a call, he was certain, to his bride-to-be. When the time came for them to tee off, Jack waved at Cam, catching his attention. He returned to the group saying, “They’re all back on the ground, safe and sound, so you guys can quit worrying about them.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Jack said. “Gabe, were you worried?”

“Not me. What about you, Mac?”

“Not at all.”

“You are all a bunch of liars.”

“No,” Jack fired back. “We’re golfers. You’re up, Nancy.”

Cam replied with a solid drive, and a smirk. “Who you calling Nancy, spy boy?”

The golf game and insults resumed, and everyone enjoyed himself. By the time they stood at the tee box of the picturesque eighteenth hole, Cam said, “What a great golf course. Thank you guys for being here.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it,” Mac said. “Playing Pebble Beach has been on my bucket list for a long time. This was a great idea for a bachelor party.”

“Not according to Devin.” Cam studied his golf bag, debating his club choice. “I thought I was being a pretty cool dad inviting him along, but he declared our bachelor weekend lame.”

Mac had honors and stepped up to the tee. “He’s a teenager. To him, bachelor parties mean strippers and booze.”

“True,” Cam agreed. “At least the cigars are Cuban.”

“We’re living on the edge,” Gabe observed after Mac split the fairway with his tee shot. “I will admit there have been a couple of bachelor parties I attended that I will never forget.”

“There have been a couple I attended that I’ll never remember,” Jack added, stepping up to address the ball.

After Cam and Gabe hit their tee shots, Cam relayed a story about a bachelor party fishing charter he’d captained years ago. “Guys were out of control. I made them all wear vests the entire time, which was a good thing, because before the weekend was over, we had five instances of man overboard. One guy fell in twice.”

The men exchanged bachelor party war stories as they finished up the round. Mac told one about barhopping along a seedy boulevard in Dallas. “The groom was a big-time Packers fan, so for his party, we took a road trip to the Dallas–Green Bay game. We’re in some dive the night before the game, and the best man starts hitting on a woman who claimed to be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. She had big hair and bigger … pompoms … and before long she’d invited him to sneak onto the playing field at Texas Stadium.”

“Touchdown,” Cam said.

“Not hardly,” Mac returned, grinning at the memory.

“She was a pro?” Jack asked. “The best man got rolled?”

“The best man made it back to the hotel with this wallet. He even got into the stadium. The problem was that the cheerleader turned out to be a maintenance man, and the best man had a heckuva time avoiding the interception, so to speak. The next day the poor guy kept looking over his shoulder the entire game. As far as I know, that’s the last time he ever even thought about picking up a girl in a bar.”

Mac’s story left them laughing, and they finished up the round in high spirits.

Later, following an excellent steak dinner, the four men gathered on Jack’s patio, smoked cigars, polished off a couple bottles of fine port, and watched a breathtaking crimson and gold sunset. The mood was mellow, and as the shadows of dusk deepened, Jack built a fire in an outdoor fireplace. Soon, cedar-scented wood smoke mingled with the salty fragrance of the sea on the night air.

Bouts of comfortable silence alternated with spates of convivial conversation. They talked sports and cars and dogs, and they sat in quiet reflection. Mac asked Cam if he missed the life of a sailor. “Sometimes, I do. More
now, where I can smell the ocean and hear the surf, than I do at home.”

“Did you and Sarah ever talk about living in Australia rather than Eternity Springs?” Jack asked.

“For maybe ten seconds. We have too many ties here, and frankly, I waited a long time to come home. I’m in no rush to leave.”

“Hear, hear!” Gabe declared. “There would be no living with Nic if Sarah moved away.”

At the sound of a cell phone’s ringtone, Fred lifted his head from his place at Jack’s feet. Absently, Jack scratched him behind his ears. Devin was taking care of Cam’s and Mac’s dogs, but Jack had chosen to bring his new pet along. One of the perks of being both pilot and host.

Cam dug his phone from his pocket and checked the number. Immediately, he stood. “It’s Lori. Oh, man. I hope there’s not a problem. Excuse me, guys.”

Illuminated by the firelight, Jack and Gabe shared a concerned look as Cam stepped to the end of the patio and answered the call. Almost immediately, the tension in his stance dissolved, so the others relaxed. Ten minutes later, he rejoined the group wearing a wide smile. “Everything okay?” Jack asked, feeling certain that it was.

“Yeah. She called to tell me that she’s been offered another internship next summer and now she has three to choose from. She’s so excited.” He paused a moment, then said, “She called me because she wanted to share the news. With me. Can you believe that? Said she couldn’t wait until morning.”

“That’s really great, Cam.” Understanding the significance of the moment, Jack topped off everyone’s glasses, then lifted his in salute. After a tumultuous beginning over the Fourth of July weekend, Lori and Cam were trying to define their father-daughter relationship. Not
an easy task considering that Lori was already an adult when the two first met.

Cam sipped his drink, stretched out his legs, and stared into the fire that crackled and hissed with the new wood Jack had fed it. Following a few minutes of reflective silence, Cam observed, “A moment like this is damn bittersweet. I’m so proud of the young woman she is, and at the same time, I know I had nothing to do with it. I missed so much. I regret it so much. I look at your girls, Gabe, and I just get this big old hole in my chest.”

Me, too
. Jack stubbed out his cigar and silently scolded himself.
Don’t go there
. He’d had just enough to drink to be lured toward the maudlin. Tony’s death was still too close to the surface, and the last thing he wanted to do at Cam’s bachelor party was descend into depression.

It didn’t help that Cam seemed determined to … emote. “I look at Meg and Cari, and I can’t help but think of all those firsts I didn’t experience. Lori’s first step. Her first word. Her first day at school.”

Jack picked up the poker and stabbed at the fire. It was either that or break out the scotch. Ordinarily, his cousin didn’t open up this way. Jack chalked it up to fatigue and alcohol, and the import of the event taking place next Saturday.

Mac extended his hand toward the ground and snapped his fingers. No dummy, Fred rose and went to him to receive another one of the dog treats Mac had pilfered from the jar in the kitchen and had been doling out to Fred for the past hour. “The years when the kids are little just fly past,” he said. “Ali and I always told ourselves that we were glad we started our family when we were young, but now that we’re not so young anymore and neither are our kids, we’re not so sure.”

“You’re not that much older than me, Mac,” Gabe
said. “There are days with the girls when I seriously think I’m aging in dog years.”

“You are looking a little long in the tooth these days, Callahan,” Jack said, seizing on the crack like a lifeline.

“Bite me.”

“Nah, I’m saving my appetite for my steak.” Giving his friend a hard time was an automatic response, but his heart wasn’t in it, and even as he spoke the words, a treacherous question formed right behind them. He surprised even himself by asking the question aloud. “Is being a dad to the twins harder because you lost your son?”

“Everything is harder because I lost Matt, but everything is also sweeter because of it. I try never to take a day or a smile or even a dirty diaper for granted.”

“I call b.s. on the dirty diaper,” Cam declared.

“Oh, all right. I think—” Gabe paused when his own cell phone rang. “I should ignore it,” he muttered, fishing in his pants pocket. When he pulled out the cell and checked the caller, his indrawn breath was audible. His voice suddenly flat, he said, “It’s Zach.”

Zach Turner was the sheriff in Eternity Springs. He had no good reason to be calling Gabe, Jack thought. Only bad.

The possibilities ran through his mind—in light of the recent conversation, the first one being that something had happened to one of the Callahan twins. Jack mentally began preparing for the swiftest way to get home even as Gabe spoke into the phone. “What’s wrong, Zach?”

Time hung suspended. All eyes were on Gabe, who listened for a moment, then loudly exclaimed, “They what!”

Noting the absence of fear in his friend’s tone, Jack’s tension eased. He knew Gabe Callahan well enough to know that fear made him deadly quiet. He wasn’t quiet
one bit as he snapped out the words, “All right. Yes. No. Hold on.”

Gabe glanced at Jack. “Zach doesn’t have your cell number.”

Warily, Jack asked, “What does he want it for?”

“Not your work phone. Personal. He has a photo he’s going to send you, to send all of us.”

Jack repeated the number as Cam sat up straight. “Huh? What’s this about?”

“Has to be the women,” Mac said, rising to retrieve his phone from where he’d left it beside the dog biscuit jar.

“Are they okay?” Cam demanded.

Gabe held up his hand and continued the conversation. “You’re damn right I want to talk to her. Have her call as soon as she’s able. Have them all call.”

Mac exited the house, cell phone in hand. “Yep, it’s the women.”

Gabe said, “Sure. Uh-huh. Yeah. Thanks, Zach. I owe you one.”

The moment he disconnected the call, Cam demanded, “What the hell is going on?”

“Well, it appears that our women managed to get themselves into a little trouble. They’re all okay, but I don’t have a good explanation. I
think
what Zach said was that a picture is worth a thousand words. It was hard to hear what he was saying because he was laughing so hard.”

Four cell phones made four sounds to indicate an incoming text message.

Jack watched the photo appear. He blinked. He tapped the screen to enlarge it. Mac said, “Well now.”