A Pelican Pointe Christmas (A Pelican Pointe Novel Book 12) Read online

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  A PELICAN POINTE CHRISTMAS

  A Pelican Pointe Novel

  Published by Beachdevils Press

  Copyright © 2018 Vickie McKeehan

  All rights reserved.

  A Pelican Pointe Christmas

  A Pelican Pointe Novel

  Copyright © 2018 Vickie McKeehan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic format without written permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, locales, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, businesses or companies, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-10: 1790624720

  ISBN-13: 9781790624720

  Published by

  Beachdevils Press

  Printed in the USA

  Titles Available at Amazon

  Cover art by Vanessa Mendozzi

  You can visit the author at:

  www.vickiemckeehan.com

  www.facebook.com/VickieMcKeehan

  http://vickiemckeehan.wordpress.com/

  www.twitter.com/VickieMcKeehan

  For Santa

  May the gift of Christmas be with you, all the year round.

  …when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

  ~ FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Cast of Characters

  A Pelican Pointe Christmas

  by

  VICKIE McKEEHAN

  Prologue

  Twenty-two years earlier

  Grand Island, Nebraska

  Fire.

  Within minutes, it had grown in heat and smoke and volume. It shook the earth as it roared its way into the night, hanging around until the early-morning dawn. It licked and clawed its way up the walls consuming everything in its path. Like a creature devouring its prey, it gobbled up anything that was weaker, crawling and slithering along the foundation until it inched its way to the roof, consuming old shingles and everything else in its path.

  It became its own entity, eating up wood, bending steel, wiping out years of memories. The wall of fire even laid waste to the garden and the arbor beneath summer bougainvillea and late-blooming wisteria.

  The red-hot rush destroyed and killed and wiped out any trace of hearth and home. The smell of burning flesh alone was unbearable, leaving a stench to the road and back that could never be forgotten.

  Just when you thought it might die down, the ferocity of the flames kicked up again, licking and leaping toward the sky. The hot summer wind stirred, fanning the blaze, causing it to jump to the fields where the crops had once grown lush and tall. Now the corn and sorghum were nothing more than kindling, food for a spiraling firestorm that refused to quit.

  By the time the first siren pierced the air, the farmhouse that had been in the family for generations was charred, wiped out, reduced to bits of simmering rubble.

  The house and the land lay in ruin even as the firemen piled out of their trucks to rush forward to deal with what was left. They were met by fierce flames still flicking along the ground, torching bricks and mortar, melting debris that couldn’t be salvaged. There wasn’t enough available water. Their hoses only stretched so far. The fields were out of reach, so the crops burned hot and out of control until there was nothing left but black terrain.

  By sunrise, the awful truth lay bare. Scorched earth as far as the eye could see. Summer cornfields turned black as coal dust with soot and ash swirling like wind devils. In the middle, a family homestead, once home to six souls, sat in ruin. Smoldering ground and the stench of smoke were all that remained.

  One

  Present day

  Pelican Pointe, California

  Naomi Townsend’s childhood ended that hot and humid night the last week in August just a few hours after her family had returned home from manning their annual booth at the State Fair.

  If anyone had asked, she would have told them that she’d left behind that awful memory the day she moved thirteen hundred miles away from the spot where her family had perished.

  But on days like today when the November sun drilled through the puffy white clouds across Smuggler’s Bay in shafts of golden light, she knew she’d never truly be rid of it. How could she? She’d learned the hard way that years didn’t make the sadness fade any faster and distance didn’t ease the pain.

  Real-life nightmares like that never truly ended. Deep down she knew that. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, it was a reminder that holidays, any holiday, were especially hard to take. As it got closer, memories of happier times would come rushing back and she’d have to face them yet again, along with what she’d lost. She knew the next two months would be tough.

  For her, there was no more sharing a joke with a sibling or laughing uncontrollably at a dozen silly things that only sisters could think to say. No more squabbling over toys with her brothers, no fighting over the last piece of pumpkin pie. No more verbal battles over who got the last bit of leftover dressing.

  This Thursday morning, two weeks before Thanksgiving, she breathed out a sigh knowing she had to get out of this nostalgic mood pulling her down into an abyss. She’d been there before. Plenty of times. There was just so much that expensive therapy could accomplish before you had to take responsibility for your own healing and let the anger and sadness go. Go where? She still wasn’t sure.

  Even after all this time, she cou
ld only keep to the path she’d taken at the age of eight when she’d gone to live with her aunt and uncle. She kept her head down, her nose to the grindstone, and focused on school.

  Once she reached her teenage years, her outward demeanor was that of a young girl who did well in every subject, over-achieving to a fault at each assignment she encountered. Nothing seemed too great for Naomi Townsend to conquer once she set her mind to it.

  She’d graduated from high school at seventeen and entered the University of Nebraska that fall with an eye on finance. A whiz at math, she excelled in all her classes because she had no social life. It didn’t become an issue until sophomore year when the other girls in her dorm started to tease her about it. Using words like “bookworm” and “nerd,” they taunted Naomi for her good grades and awkward appearance. She’d come to Lincoln on an academic scholarship. But for girls who seemed to have everything—looks and money and families back home—they didn’t seem to get that Naomi still had to work in the cafeteria to support herself and take on a second job at the bookstore just to pay for the basics.

  She blinked out of the past and hurled herself into the present. Looking around at her shell of a kitchen, at the fixer-upper she’d foolishly bought, she stared at the first new friend she’d made since moving to town. Today Drea Jennings, the florist, seemed as perky as Naomi was brooding.

  “What’s wrong?” Drea asked with a frown and a nudge of her elbow.

  “Look at this place. I’ve bitten off more than I can handle. Mr. Donnelly warned me. He tried to tell me not to take this on so soon after moving here, tried to remind me what a daunting task it would probably be this time of year. He tried to point me in the direction of a house that didn’t need quite so much work. But I wouldn’t listen. I thought I could handle all the hammering and intrusions. But I don’t even have a kitchen. Turns out…this is driving me nuts. I should be offering you a nice homemade muffin and a cup of coffee right about now. Instead, we’re standing in the middle of chaos, holding the coffee you brought with you.”

  “Latte for you, cappuccino for me,” Drea said cheerily before realizing Naomi was close to a meltdown. “Look, these guys haven’t been at it for that long. If it’s any consolation, you hired the best contractors in town. Trust me, Zach Dennison, Ryder McLachlan, and Troy Dayton know what they’re doing. You just have to be a little more patient, give them time to work their magic.”

  Naomi knew Logan Donnelly had assured her of the same thing. But it wasn’t any consolation. She glanced around the small house until her eyes landed on one of the guys in the work crew. She recognized him from the day before. She licked her lips and took a deep gulp of the hot brew, still steaming with heat.

  While her mouth burned with the liquid, she took in the new guy, who was downright gorgeous. He wasn’t all that tall, maybe five-ten, but he had thick black hair that curled all the way to his shoulders. His tanned arms bunched out of his T-shirt whenever he moved. It seemed as though his muscles had muscles. He had broad shoulders. She stared at the way his body tapered down to a trim and fit waistline before his tool belt wrapped around a shapely rear end. His jeans were snug, which made her wonder how he could possibly build anything while wearing them. She couldn’t seem to pull her eyes away from him, even when he pivoted to say something to one of the other men.

  She fumbled with the container and managed to swallow the rest of what was there. She never tasted the liquid but continued to gape at the prettiest mouth she’d ever seen on a man. He had a sculpted chin that reminded her of a Greek god. Or maybe of a Native American warrior. The pull in her belly was as much of a surprise to her as anything else. That sudden attraction reminded her that she hadn’t had sex in…she couldn’t even remember the last time.

  She felt Drea jab another elbow into her ribs. “Ouch! Stop doing that!”

  “You looked mesmerized. I was just trying to get you back from wherever you were just now. Maybe you should close your mouth. You’re gaping at Colton Del Rio.”

  “I was not gaping.”

  “Maybe you’re right. More like ogling. I hear that he’s only been in town a week, some Army buddy of Simon Bremmer’s. They were in the Rangers together. I heard Simon and Cord got him out of some trouble down in New Mexico.”

  Naomi cut her eyes back to Drea’s. “Is there anything you don’t know about anyone? Don’t let anyone in town tell you that you aren’t the go-to source for the latest information on all the gossip. You should seriously think about starting a newsletter.”

  “Hey, the rumor mill starts in my shop. I hear everything first. But that doesn’t explain why you’re ogling Colt Del Rio.”

  “I’m just trying to determine if he knows what he’s doing.”

  “I’ll bet you a hundred bucks he knows exactly what he’s doing wherever he goes or whatever he does.”

  “Oh, stop it. He’s just a man.” A good-looking, hunky man who built stuff with his hands. “It’s just that I appreciate good craftsmanship.”

  “Sure you do. Don’t we all? A man who looks like that and gets a reaction out of you that I haven’t ever seen before, not in the six weeks I’ve known you, is…gotta be something special. Don’t deny it.”

  No, Naomi thought, she couldn’t deny it and wouldn’t. “So I had a normal female reaction to an attractive man. Happens all the time. Stop making a big deal out of it.”

  Drea rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath, “Doesn’t happen to you.”

  “I heard that. I don’t have time to waste standing around staring at…”

  “Colton’s butt?” Drea added. “Agreed.”

  Naomi ignored her friend. “I need to ask Troy about the timeframe for the cabinets. I thought they should’ve been in by now. Be right back.”

  She crossed over to where Troy stood. He might’ve been the youngest of the lot, but Naomi knew he’d taken the lead on her renovation. She was sure it was because he could best handle a nervous Nellie like herself in the midst of having second thoughts. “Is there any way my kitchen will be done soon?”

  Troy turned from his crew to stare at the newcomer. He felt a certain amount of sympathy for her and sent her his friendliest downhome smile. “We’re right on schedule. We only just recently knocked down the interior wall separating the living room from the kitchen. We added a support beam because we were opening this area up in a great-room design. I know you’re anxious for us to get out of your hair, but we haven’t yet walled in the pantry. That should be done by this afternoon and then we’ll start hanging the sheetrock for your brand-new utility room. In other words, we aren’t nearly done yet.”

  Out of habit, Naomi chewed her lip and nervously ran a hand through strands of dark wheat-colored hair, locks that stylist Abby Bonner had convinced her to make lighter the week before. The decision had left her with bands of golden caramel streaking through the otherwise brown mop. By allowing Abby to talk her into the new ’do, Naomi thought she might fit into her new surroundings better, throw business around town, keep the locals happy. But the color only made her look like a slightly cheap hooker, a look she intended to fix in Santa Cruz first chance she got.

  But at this moment, she doubted Troy cared about any of that. “Look, patience isn’t something I’m very good at, certainly not in the middle of all this. I know you’re all doing your very best and I appreciate it. But I need…” How could she explain to him that she required more order in her life…and quiet…lots of quiet? Isn’t that why she’d picked this rundown house in a section of town with nothing but weed lots on either side? After a long day at the bank, it was solitude she craved.

  “I’m just a little overwhelmed right now,” she finally admitted.

  “I get that. We all do. You’re in a hurry to settle in for real,” Troy began. “We’re working as quickly as we can to get this done by the first week of December. I’ve even taken on an extra carpenter to make sure we meet our deadline. Since he came onboard, Colton over there has been working late into the night,
every night this week, on your cabinets.”

  Naomi blushed with embarrassment. She wasn’t a brutal taskmaster who demanded people work tirelessly just for her. “Oh, but I don’t expect anyone to put in such long hours like that because of me.”

  “It’s okay. Colt doesn’t mind the work. This project is keeping him hopping. All the work here is spreading us all a little thin, which is why we’re lucky to get a new man with his skills. Plus, he’s the only one of us willing to put in time on your house on the weekends. That’s huge. Ryder and I just can’t do that. Tonight, he’s even agreed to finish the stain on your cabinets so that they’ll be ready to install by Saturday.”

  After a week of looking at ugly sheetrock and breathing dust, the news caused a jolt of excitement to shortwave straight to her heart. “Really? Now see, that would be wonderful.”

  “The plan is for Zach and Colt to get here early and be done by noon. I’d help, but my wife’s attending a baby fair at the convention center in Santa Cruz with a group of other moms and I’m babysitting. They’re making a weekend out of it, checking into a spa Friday afternoon and staying until Sunday, treating themselves to all kinds of facials and massages. You know, the girly stuff.”

  Drea had moved closer and let out an envious sigh. “That’s what happens when you run your own shop. Saturdays are my busiest days.” She lightly tapped Naomi’s arm. “We should plan to do that, though, during the week. You, me, and Hannah spend a full day at a spa. I could sweet talk Caleb into watching the store for me. How does that sound?”

  It sounded like the answer to a prayer, Naomi decided. She could use a week day away from the bank and the dust and noise from renovation. She could indulge in a facial and a manicure, could almost feel the soothing hands of a masseuse ease away the knots out of her tight muscles. She let herself daydream about it before realizing Drea and Troy were staring at her. “Sorry. My mind wandered to taking a day off.”