ETERNAL Read online

  Praise For Inseverable: A Carolina Beach Novel

  “Robson builds a sweet and lightly dramatic romance that deals with love, hope, and forgiveness. Well plotted with an array of personable and defined characters. Smooth flowing conversational dialogue engulfs you and draws you right into the middle of their lives.” –Smexy Books

  “Unforgettable! Callahan and Trinity will tug at your heart strings and keep you turning the pages. Inseverable is a great love story that will leave you smiling and in tears." –USA Today bestselling author, Jamie K. Schmidt

  “This is, hands down, one of my favorite books of 2016 thus far… INSEVERABLE, the first book in the upcoming Carolina Beach series, is FUNNY, like really funny. Heartfelt and sweet and goofy and just plain amazing.” –Top Pick, The Romance Reviews

  “Call this Rom-Com on Steroids-This story has teeth and it leaves little love bites” –Addicted to Happily Ever After

  “2016 Editor’s Choice Winner…The emotion is so well grounded and layered, the characters rich and believable, the conflict complex with just the right amount of hopelessness. Inseverable is a beautiful romance and a story worth dedicating a weekend to.” –Grave Tells Romance

  “This is just the start of a new series by Ms. Robson, and already a favorite. I can't wait for more.”

  --5 stars, Give Me Books

  “Equal parts sexy and funny! Cecy Robson's new book had me swooning and laughing out loud! A perfect beach read!” –USA Today Bestselling Author Annie Rains

  “Absolutely loved this story! ... A great start to a new series - I'm looking forward to getting books on the rest of Trinity's friends. I see great things for all of them!” –Sizzling Pages Romance Reviews

  "I wanted to hug this book... All the feels Robson gave me as I devoured Inseverable provided that book high I am constantly craving." –Caffeinated Book Reviewer

  "A sexy, sweet, heart-rending story. Cecy Robson pushed every single one of my reader buttons. Loved this book!" –Kate Meader, Author of Playing with Fire

  “This was my first Cecy Robson read, and it will absolutely not be my last. From the minute I picked up this book, I knew I wouldn’t be able to put it down. Inseverable is definitely going on my list of memorable books that I can’t wait to reread.” –Reviews From the Heart

  "Already [Cecy] Robson was becoming one of my favorite authors but Inseverable sealed the deal. Inseverable shows Robson's different writing style and I couldn't get enough of this new setting and the new characters that were introduced." –Lush Book Reviews

  By Cecy Robson

  The Carolina Beach Novels

  Inseverable

  Eternal

  Infinite (coming soon)

  The Shattered Past Series

  Once Perfect

  Once Loved

  Once Pure

  The O’Brien Family Novels

  Once Kissed

  Let Me

  Feel Me

  Crave Me

  The Weird Girls

  A Curse Awakened (novella)

  The Weird Girls (novella)

  Sealed with a Curse

  A Cursed Embrace

  Of Flame and Promise

  A Cursed Moon (novella)

  Cursed by Destiny

  A Cursed Bloodline

  A Curse Unbroken

  Of Flame and Light

  Of Flame and Fate

  ETERNAL

  A Carolina Beach Novel

  Cecy Robson

  Eternal is purely a work of fiction. Names, places, and occurrences are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Cecy Robson

  Cover design © Kristin Clifton, Sweet Bird Designs

  Edited by Gaele L. Hince of BippityBoppityBook.com

  Formatting by BippityBoppityBook.com

  Excerpts from Inseverable, Let Me, Crave Me, and Feel Me by Cecy Robson copyright © 2016 and 2017 by Cecy Robson. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Cecy Robson, LLC.

  This book contains excerpts from Let Me, Crave Me, and Feel Me from the O’Brien Family novels by Cecy Robson in addition to Inseverable, the first novel in the Carolina Beach novels. The excerpts have been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the final novels.

  Amazon ASIN: B074HZB8GK

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-947330-02-3

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Inseverable

  Let Me

  Feel Me

  Crave Me

  Cecy Robson

  Dedication

  To all the dreamers: may you land among the stars.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to Nicole and Jamie as always. One is my agent, one is my husband, and both are my friends. Nic, you believed from the moment you read. Jamie, you believed from the start. I wouldn’t be anywhere without either of you.

  To Kim, you started out as my assistant and became so much more. Thank you for your dedication to my success.

  To Kristin, my artist and (very patient) creator of fabulous covers. No one understands my visions like you!

  To my copyeditor Gaele who works hard, yet takes the time to enjoy my stories.

  To my fellow authors and friends, Amanda Flower, Beth Vrabel, and Mary Kate SeRine. We share the good, the bad, and the sometimes way too ugly. Thank you for the virtual comfort food and the laughs when the tears threatened to fall.

  To my readers, those who write me, interact with me on social media, those who visit me with smiles and tears in their eyes, those who know my characters as well as I do, those who speak of them as they are as real as I believe them to be, thank you for making my publishing journey worth it all. You have my heart and gratitude.

  Lastly, to my beloved children. Don’t be me, be better. Take the path beside me and follow it further than I’ve travelled, lived, dreamed, and loved. Mommy loves you.

  Chapter One

  Landon

  The wind picks up, brushing the gritty sand along the shore in that graceful way it only seems to do during winter. Kiawah is always bustin’ at the seams in the summer, drawing tourists from as close as North Carolina to as far away as Sweden.

  I take a long pull of my beer and dig my feet further into the sand. This time of year there are two a kinds of people: the locals and the lonely. I was always the former and only mildly entertained the latter. That changed when I caught my wife blowing her manager with the same wild enthusiasm she blew me.

  “God damn it,” I mutter.

  I’m not sure which part was more disturbing. Her blowing him in the kitchen, the same place we’d fucked earlier that morning; or her finishing him off while I stood there like an idiot.

  I’m going to go with her finishing him off.

  I can still picture her rising from her kneeling position, the front of the four-hundred-dollar blous
e she insisted on buying flapping open, exposing her bare breasts with each step she took.

  “It didn’t mean anything, Landon,” she told me, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Maybe. But his teeth meant something to him. I could tell by the way he kept batting his face looking for them when the police finally pulled me off him.

  The pathetic way he looked bordered on comical. Shit, the whole damn thing was comical. I might have even laughed if my heart wasn’t busy joining his teeth on the floor.

  Bernadette wasn’t a perfect person. I knew that long before I put a ring on her finger. But I’m not either so I thought we’d be perfect together. She needed someone to help her after the rough life she’d had, and someone to take care of her, seeing how bad she still had it when we first met. I was willing to do it. Hell, I was willing to do anything for her.

  Up until that moment when I found her on her knees.

  Call me a fool in love.

  But don’t make me look like one.

  I push my half-drunk bottle into the sand, reminding myself it’s been over a year and time to move on. Sounds great in theory, but pride to a man is as important as working hard, decency, and family. That’s how I was raised. That’s how it should be. Bernadette, however briefly, was family. She kicked my pride almost as hard as I nailed Blaze (nice fucking name, by the way) in the jaw. All that left me to do was work hard, and damn, didn’t I give that shit my all?

  The wind picks up, creating swirls of bleached sand and ghosting them across the water. Mother Nature is doing her best to soothe me, gifting me with the peace and quiet I need and luring my focus to the vast ocean where the cresting waves build and crash along the shore.

  Peace, I repeat in my head.

  “Quiet,” I say out loud.

  “Trin,” I mumble when my phone vibrates in my back pocket.

  I pull it out, sure enough it’s my baby sister Trinity. The peace and quiet on Kiawah is no match for her. “Yeah?”

  “Now, Landon,” she says, her South Carolina accent as thick as mine. “Is that any way to say hello?”

  She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “What if I was Miss Universe, calling to tell you I had the cure for global warming, and whether or not I shared it with the Environmental Protection Agency depended on how well you answered the phone? Wouldn’t you feel bad for all those polar bears out there, floating on some crumbling glacier ice because you answered the phone with ‘Yeah?’ sounding broodier than shit, crankier than a leprechaun shoved up some poor unsuspecting bull’s ass, and about as pleasant as the matador trying to coax him out—”

  “What the hell does that even mean, Trin?”

  “It means you should go to Becca’s New Year’s Eve party tomorrow night,” she explains like it’s obvious.

  “I’m busy,” I tell her.

  “Doing what? Besides drinking a beer and looking out at an ocean that’s not going anywhere?”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose, muttering a curse when she plops down beside me.

  Like me, she’s barefoot. Most people wouldn’t dare walk on the beach in the middle of winter. But ever since we were little, Trin and I have always loved the feel of the sand sliding beneath our feet, even in the cold.

  Her jeans are rolled up like mine and she’s wearing a heavy coat like me. Hers is burgundy; mine is navy. I didn’t bother with a hat. She did, sporting a gray beanie tight enough to keep her long black hair away from her small face. Even after having my nephew, she’s still stick thin, lacking the bulky muscles keeping me warm.

  She motions to my beer. “Sir, where are your manners? Aren’t you going to offer me a drink? I am a lady after all.” She huffs. “Your momma raised you better than that.”

  I pass her the bottle. She takes a sip and makes a face. “It’s warm.”

  “I kept rolling it in my hands,” I admit. “I suppose it’s hard to keep it cold that way, even in forty-degree weather.”

  She nods like she understands. “How long have you been out here?”

  I lie. “Not long.”

  “How long have you been out here?”

  I smirk. “A while.”

  “How long have you been out here?”

  “I guess long enough.”

  I start to stand when her slender arms wrap around me, keeping me in place. “Landon, as your favorite and only sister on God’s green earth, I owe it to you to tell you that dark, hairy, and cranky doesn’t fit you.” She rubs the scruff on my jaw like she’s trying to swipe it off. “Lord, it’s like an opossum crawled up your chest and spit out a litter of babies across your jaw.”

  I edge away. “Your husband has the same damn beard,” I remind her.

  “Oh, that’s not true.” She smiles and turns her attention toward the ocean, her gaze getting that dreamy look it always gets when she thinks of Callahan. “My man’s beard is alpha and sexy.” She makes a face. “Yours is, well, possumy.” She holds out her hand. “And if that’s not a word, it should be. At least when it comes to whatever the hell is laying on your face.”

  “Trin, if you’re trying to use your charm to talk me into going to Becca’s party, it’s not working.”

  “Why? She was nice enough to invite you.” She shrugs. “Besides, it’s almost New Year’s Eve. Time for a fresh start and a new beginning.”

  Her voice quiets at her last few words. She doesn’t mention Bernadette. But after everything that happened, I suppose I’ve mentioned her enough, and so has Trin.

  If hate were a super power, Trin’s hate for Bernadette would have crushed the Fortress of Solitude and slapped Superman upside the head for being a little bitch. And Trin, she likes everyone.

  My family is from money. It’s not something I really think about, or obsess over, it’s just always been there. We were taught to take care of it, add to it, but most of all be generous with it since we have so much. Maybe that’s why it was easy for me to give as much as I did to Bernadette. I wanted to see her happy and maybe give her the life she always dreamed of. But where Trin and our Momma would drop a few grand setting up an auction to help raise money for the children’s hospital, Bernadette would drop a few grand on herself.

  My parents had insisted on an air-tight pre-nup. It pissed me off at the time, especially since they didn’t insist on the same thing when Trin married Callahan. But they saw Bernadette for the gold-digger she was, not the victim I did. Love makes you blind, but it doesn’t make you deaf when the woman you thought you knew accuses you of hitting her, even knowing you’d never harm any woman.

  It should have been an easy divorce. Sign here, initial there and then walk away. Instead I dropped close to a hundred grand defending the abuse charges she filed against me.

  “He’s always been violent,” she cried to the judge. “Look at what he did to my manager.”

  Her attorney was more than happy to present the pictures of Bernadette’s manager’s busted up face and put the police officers who responded on the stand. Those fine members of law enforcement admitted they hauled me off Blaze (again, nice fucking name), but were more than happy to mention Blaze’s pants and drawers were down to his ankles when they found him, and that the missus was only partially dressed.

  “Landon,” Trin says, her voice sad.

  It’s never a good sign when my sister grows quiet. The way she wraps her arms around mine and leans her head against my shoulder . . . Christ, the last time she did that, it was at our granddaddy Palmer’s funeral.

  She knows I’m remembering what all I went through, and she doesn’t like it one bit.

  It was bad enough Bernadette had accused me of abuse. But to try to make me look like a monster, and get all the gossip mags talking about Landon Summers, wealthy son of Owen and Silvia Summers, accused of threatening his wife’s life, and soiling the Summers name, it was more than I could take. She wasn’t just messing with me, she was messing with my folks, two of the best people I know.

 
“She said I hit her, and that it wasn’t the first time,” I say aloud, before giving it too much thought.

  “I know,” Trin says. She adjusts her hold. “But Landon, anyone who knows you didn’t believe her.”

  “But there are a lot of people who don’t know me, Trin.”

  She sighs. “I know that, too.”

  The waves draw closer, but it’s not until a large one breaks like an insolent slap against the shore that she speaks again. “Did she ever hit you?”

  I don’t bother telling her about all the shit Bernadette threw at me, including her hair dryer and the damn crystal jewelry box, nor do I mention all those dishes she’d smash when she wasn’t getting her way. I don’t need to. When Trin lifts her head, it’s clear she knows enough.

  “Landon, why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I couldn’t do that to her.”

  Trin scrambles to her feet, knocking over the beer, her face pink with rage. “But she did it to you—even when it wasn’t true!”

  “That doesn’t make it right,” I say. “To be accused of something like that, it’s total horseshit.”

  “Horseshit she was more than happy to fling your way.” Her breaths come quick. “She didn’t even blink on the stand. You saw that, right? She wanted money and she didn’t care what she had to do to get it.”

  Which was why I spent as much as I did on the best divorce attorney in the state. Messed up childhood or not, no way was I giving her more than she was legally entitled to.

  “You should have said something,” she says again.