Longing for Eagle Cove

Chapter 1-4

Cal didn’t have a goddamn clue how Natalya had got her hooks in him. She hadn’t even done anything.

He tried to recall the stick that the girl had been, growing up like a w**d before she…grew out. Always overshadowed by her friends.

It wasn’t that Natalya Lamont was some sort of weakfish—even as a girl she’d had a spine made out of steel. It even showed in her dancer’s posture, so poised that she made everyone else appear to be slouching just a little. Too bad Frau Schmidt, the only decent dance teacher for thirty miles around, had died when Natalya was still a kid or she might have really become something.

No, it wasn’t that she was overshadowed.

It was more as if her two friends were such amazing distractors.

Becky was just so out there, a whirling dervish of energy and ideas. She’d started brewing and selling root beer while they were still in grade school. Now she was a hell of a craft-beer brewer. Focused and as ambitious as hell. Once she’d set her sights on Harry Slater, Cal’s best friend hadn’t stood a chance.

Since birth, Jessica was always blond, elegant, and so damned smart. She’d been able to speak her words as well as write them and always won every argument. He remembered class debates in social studies where she’d pick the crappy side of the argument, yet so dazzle everyone with her words that her team was inevitably the winner. She used to start arguments just so she could win them.

Natalya had always been the quiet one. But not shy kind of quiet. It had taken him a long time, and some bitter experiences that now made him smile even if they hadn’t then, to understand that she was the hidden ringleader of the Terrifying Trio. The three of them were always in trouble—no, they always were trouble. And any man watching would swear that it was Jessica’s or Becky’s doing, Natalya just along for the ride.

Unless you caught her quiet smile. She didn’t need to brag or show off to others, but she did love stirring things up.

Like the last soccer game of senior year, his final time ever on the field and everyone had known it. Most of the town had turned out, they’d never had such a winning season. He’d long since announced that he was joining his dad in the family bakery straight out of school—didn’t need some fancy degree to enjoy himself—though he’d been bummed to have no chance at college soccer.

For that final game, he and Harry had decided that the Eagle Cove Pufflings were going to go out victors even if they had to kill the other team. That it was against their archrivals from just down the coast, the Siuslaw Vikings, would make it all the more satisfying. Then the Terrifying Trio had arrived in homemade cheerleader outfits so goddamn cute and skimpy that it was impossible to look away. However, they had made their costumes up as Viking maidens complete with fake fur and horned helmets and were cheering for the other side. It was so messed up—and classic Natalya. No thanks to them, the good-guy Pufflings had won…in overtime…barely.

Well, Natalya was sure stirring up some things for him. Not just memories, but definite ideas.

There was a roar from the crowd and he blinked. He’d missed Harry doing his first official gig as judge, which was too bad; would have been fun to give him some s**t about it later. Maybe he would anyway, though maybe not.

It was cool seeing the Judge unwind enough to lean down and kiss Peggy in public—even if they were…older. The Judge didn’t go quite as far as Harry and Becky—making a man wonder if they were going to do it right there on the altar—but he did a fair job of kissing the bride and it was just a little uncomfortable, like the time he’d caught his dad necking with Melanie Andriessen in the back of her own movie theater. It had been long after Mom had flaked and run off with that Corvallis stockbroker but it had still been weird. He knew s*x wasn’t just for young people—he hoped to god that wasn’t the case—but it didn’t mean that he wanted to think about it either.

It had taken Cal years to understand why his dad had told Cal’s mom to go to hell when she’d tried to come back two months later. It had taken Cal even longer to forgive him. But as far as Cal knew, his mother had gone and done just that, all the way to hell. No birthday or Christmas cards, squat. Damned b***h! No wonder his dad had never remarried. Women were good for only one—