Starlight Dunes Read Free

place.
    B y the time he’d turned twenty-one he’d been an MP in the army. It meant he didn’t know how to make a living doing anything else.  If his career ended at forty, he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to handle that.
    Even now, he knew there were politics at play in getting back to his job. Those twice a week PT visits to Santa Cruz weren’t just for medical reasons. They also included mandatory trips to a shrink, paid for by the department. Brent had decided after the second visit, he might need to watch what he admitted—he wasn’t sure the sessions were completely privileged information. Even if he needed to address a few issues, like the daily grind of his job, it was best to remember to keep certain aspects of his life—private. So far, he’d managed to maintain the focus on getting his body working and his life back to the way it had been before.
    While he’d been out of it, his friends and family had gone through what remained of his home and possessions. They’d tried to salvage whatever they could from the debris. It hadn’t been a lot. Before he’d regained consciousness, his optimistic father had even leased him a truck to use. The Chevy Silverado, a model father and son had admired on the showroom floor together, had been waiting in the hospital parking lot for Ethan to chauffer him over to Pelican Pointe.
    A fter he’d said goodbye to his hospital bed, he’d moved into Autumn Lassiter’s house. The same house his brother, Ethan and wife, Hayden, had occupied up until six weeks ago when they’d purchased a larger place on Landings Bay.
    Brent would have preferred to stay in Santa Cruz. But as soon as his mother started a campaign to get him to move in with her, he’d opted for his late grandmother’s little bungalow on Ocean Street. It made the most sense. Even though it meant he’d have to hobble around on his own, fix meals on his own, even though the cottage didn’t have all that much furniture left inside, he needed and wanted his solitude.
    That’s why b efore his release, his mother and Hayden had furnished the rooms with a few odds and ends people had donated. The rest they’d picked up at thrift stores in Santa Cruz and San Sebastian and had hauled over for him.
    Brent found the gesture incredibly generous, especially since Hayden had her own house to fix up. For the last couple of months, she and Ethan had been involved in major renovations on the home they’d bought, the much-larger one that had once belonged to Sissy Carr, the one-time banker’s daughter and embezzler.
    The couple had wisely put the history of the Carr house behind them. Good thing too because with an eight-month-old baby, no family needed the extra space more than the Codys did. His nephew, Nate, was sprouting up faster than a weed in spring.
    As Brent wobbled along Ocean Street toward the beach, he glanced over at his brother walking beside him, pushing a stroller. He couldn’t believe fatherhood had taken Ethan Cody full circle.
    “ Sorry, Nate, I know you love to go faster but your uncle here is having trouble keeping up.”
    “Kiss my ass,” Brent muttered.
    “Hey, is that anyway to talk in front of my baby boy?”
    Brent looked over to see Nate sound asleep. “I doubt I could get in position anyway. Funny thing happened to me last night though.”
    “If this is about your sordid sex life I’m all ears.”
    “I don’t have a sordid sex life.”
    “That’s just sad, bro. You’re a single guy with no strings and no significant other in your life. And no prospects on the horizon either—at least none that I know anything about.”
    “Not unless you count the cute brun ette who kept sticking a bedpan under my ass the entire time I spent flat on my back and couldn’t make it to the bathroom on my own.”
    Ethan shook his head. “If that’s all the action you’ve gotten lately, I’ll say it again. That’s just pathetic. So what happened last night?”
    “You know that rumor about