Sunrise Point

around appreciatively. “This isn’t ugly…”
    “I don’t think there’s a place for that wave runner close by,” Luke said. “Too many rocks in the river. Beachfront is a little rough up north here. You could head for the lake, but it’s getting cold on the water. But you’re going to enjoy the Rhino and the Harley—you won’t find more beautiful country. Need a little help hooking up and unloading?”
    “Just point me in the right direction,” he said. “And Luke. Great to see you, man. How long has it been?”
    “I don’t know. Six years? Eight?”
    “Too long,” Coop said. And then he jumped back into his truck and pulled the trailer around behind the cabins.
    * * *
    Coop had kept in touch enough with Luke to have the facts, that he’d come up to Virgin River after retiring from the Army to check out some old cabins he and a brother had invested in. Luke had nothing better to do, so he stayed, fixed them up, met a woman, got married, et cetera.
    But there was no way for Coop to prepare himself for the new Luke, or his wife.
    When these two men had met some fifteen years ago or so, Coop was a kid of twenty-three and Luke was a few years older and a helicopter instructor who was just coming off a really bad marriage. When Luke got back from Somalia he’d found his wife pregnant with another man’s child. And not just any other guy, but an officer in Luke’s command. It screwed Luke up so bad, it was legend. Almost as big a legend as Coop’s brush with disaster over a woman. But at least Coop hadn’t married her. He’d merely gone to jail over her.
    To say they had been a scrappy pair was putting it mildly.
    And here was Luke now, a changed man. Or rather, a man changing a diaper! That was a sight Coop never expected to see. Oh, Coop had married friends here and there, but not this domesticated. And when Luke’s young knockout of a wife got home from work, Coop almost passed out. Luke had said she was young; he had failed to mention she wasn’t quite thirty years old and a stunner.
    “You dirty old man, you,” Coop said with a very large grin. “Where did you find this beauty?”
    “Right here, my man,” Luke replied. “Twenty-five years old and ripe for the picking.”
    “I thought you’d sworn off.”
    “Yeah, so much for big proclamations. The minute I saw her—”
    Luke was cut off by the ripple of laughter coming from his wife, Shelby. “He’s such a liar,” she said. “He fought me every step of the way.”
    But Coop found this new Luke fascinating. In addition to a pretty young wife and rambunctious little kid whom he clearly adored, Luke was also the guardian to a loveable man in his thirties who had Down Syndrome—Art. While Art set the table, Luke served his wife a glass of wine and turned steaks on the grill. Brett drove his miniature quad around in the yard and the catching up on old times commenced. Then through dinner, there was more of the same. And after Brett was tucked in for the night, Luke lit a fire in the pit in front of the porch.
    “What were you and Luke like in the good old days?” Shelby asked. “When you first became friends?”
    Coop laughed, a tinge of embarrassment included. He was grateful Shelby wouldn’t be able to see the slight stain on his cheeks. “Nothing like this,” he said. “I was just a kid, that’s my excuse. But you wouldn’t have liked us much, I’m pretty sure. We drank too much, drove too fast, got in the occasional fight when we took a break from chasing women.”
    “I have no trouble seeing Luke as a womanizer,” Shelby said.
    “Yeah, he wasn’t that slick with women,” Coop told her. “One hit him over the head with a beer pitcher once. I never did find out what his offense was.”
    “Breathing,” Luke muttered. “I was coming off a bad relationship. I might’ve been a little bitter… .”
    Coop let go a big laugh. “Ya think? At least you never went to jail!”
    Shelby sat up straighter and faced Coop. “What did you do?”
    “Turned out I did nothing, but since I was passed out, I wasn’t much good in my own defense.”
    “Passed out with bruised knuckles…” Luke contributed.
    “Yeah, that’s the missing link, I guess. I have no idea how that happened, but there was a time I had a bad habit of losing my cool and punching a door or a wall, because, that’s how intelligent I was back then. It took a few years to occur to me that didn’t hurt anyone but me.”
    “But how did you end up in