Take A Chance (Lake Placid Series Book 4) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Epilogue

  Table of Contents

  No Control

  Information Overload

  Super Mutant Powers

  Feel Better

  A Little Buzzed

  World of Adulthood

  Mate

  More Going On

  Everything

  Fine

  Just a Friend

  Easy Enough

  Made Him Think

  A Type

  It Was Nice

  The Way You Are

  A Wild Ride

  What We Do

  Pushy

  Real Thing

  No Regrets

  Rescue

  Not Now

  Stupid Things

  How Does It Feel

  Approve

  No Idea

  Changes

  Messed Up

  Get a Grip

  In Love

  My Promise

  Takes Two

  Faults

  Different

  Move On

  Wouldn’t Understand

  The Future

  Ultrasound

  Need to Know

  Who You Are

  Copyright 2017 Natalie Ann

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without a written consent.

  Dedication- For all of us out there just waiting for our turn.

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The Road Series

  Lucas and Brooke’s Story- Road to Recovery

  Jack and Cori’s Story – Road to Redemption

  Mac and Beth’s Story – Road to Reality

  Ryan and Kaitlin’s Story - Road to Reason

  The All Series

  Ben and Presley’s Story – All Or Nothing

  Phil and Sophia’s Story – All Of Me

  Alec and Brynn’s Story – All The Way

  Sean and Carly’s Story — All I Want

  Drew and Jordyn’s Story— All My Love

  Finn and Olivia’s Story— All About You

  The Lake Placid Series

  Nick and Mallory’s Story- Second Chance

  Max and Quinn’s Story – Give Me A Chance

  Caleb and Celeste’s Story – Our Chance

  Cole and Rene’s Story – Take A Chance

  Zach and Amber’s Story – Deserve A Chance

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  No Control

  Information Overload

  Super Mutant Powers

  Feel Better

  A Little Buzzed

  World of Adulthood

  Mate

  More Going On

  Everything

  Fine

  Just a Friend

  Easy Enough

  Made Him Think

  A Type

  It Was Nice

  The Way You Are

  A Wild Ride

  What We Do

  Pushy

  Real Thing

  No Regrets

  Rescue

  Not Now

  Stupid Things

  How Does It Feel

  Approve

  No Idea

  Changes

  Messed Up

  Get a Grip

  In Love

  My Promise

  Takes Two

  Faults

  Different

  Move On

  Wouldn’t Understand

  The Future

  Ultrasound

  Need to Know

  Who You Are

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Cole looked up quickly when his father walked into the sterile room. Most people stopped what they were doing when Big Bad Tom McGuire showed up. He very rarely smiled, was tough as nails, and his voice could make a saint cringe. The nurse—who didn’t happen to be a saint—stopped checking Cole’s vitals and moved back to give them some privacy.

  “How are you holding up?” his father asked in as quiet a voice as he could muster. It still seemed to echo off the walls, though. Cole was used to it, knowing his own voice, like his height and build, would most likely mirror his father’s.

  “I’m fine. How’s Celeste?” Cole asked of his sister, holding his father’s stare. That was another thing: his father’s stare could turn a man to stone. Not Cole. He’d learned the same skill at an early age.

  “She’s strong like always. Your mother is with her right now.”

  “Yeah, I know. She just left here,” Cole said.

  All their lives, his mother came to him first, his father to Celeste. After fifteen years, Cole expected no different…especially after the last year.

  “You need to stay strong for this,” his father said, his voice stern, his eyes narrowing.

  “I am. It’s going to be okay,” Cole said, returning the cold stare.

  He didn’t need a lecture right now. He knew it was going to be okay. It had to be okay. Celeste was his sister—his twin—nothing could go wrong now. Nothing. They’d been through too much already.

  Correction, Celeste had been through too much. He was just an innocent bystander that felt more than he should feel but kept it to himself, always wondering why it was her and not him. He was stronger; it should have been him.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” his father said, but his tired eyes told a different story in the brief moment he dropped his guard. Cole could often read into his parents’ mannerisms. They tried to hide things from him and Celeste, but they didn’t always succeed. “Just remember, it’s your job to care for her. To protect her. To keep her safe.”

  Cole had heard this before. His whole life, he was told he had to care for his sister. He had to watch out for her, he had to protect her. He didn’t need to hear it again. Not now, especially not now.

  He knew his role. He didn’t need to have his father tell him anything he hadn’t felt or known since the day they were born way too early with Celeste tinier than she should have been. They’d both made it once; they could do it again.

  “I’ve got it covered, Dad.”

  “You always say that. I always say that, but the honest truth is, we can’t control much at all.” His father paused and looked around the room, gathering some composure. It was the first time Cole had really seen his father this raw, and that alone scared him silly. “I’m not always going to be around. We’ve talked about this. When I’m not, you have to step up and be the man of the house.”

  “I do it all the time when you’re gone. I can handle it,” Cole said, reminding his father he’d been stepping up long before now. He pushed the bitterness away. It wasn’t the time to get annoyed that he had so much responsibility on his shoulders.

  He’d been the big brother and stand-in “man” for a long time. Fixing things that needed to be done, and being there for his mother when his father was at work. Protecting the family at night, if necessary.

  “You do a good job. I probably don’t tell you enough, and I should. I’m sorry for that.”

  No, his father never told him before and Cole was surprised he did now. Nothing like a life-or-death situation to put things in perspective.

  “I just do what needs to be done,” Cole said, his eyes unmoving, much like his father’s. Maybe too much like his father, his mother often said, and not in a good way. It seemed like lately his mother didn’t have a lot of good t
hings to say about her husband.

  “That’s the best attitude to have,” his father said, nodding his head.

  When another person in scrubs and a white lab coat walked into the room, his father moved aside…for once in his life.

  “We’re going to give you some happy juice right now,” the newcomer said. “You won’t remember much more, then you’ll wake up next to your sister.”

  Cole blinked his eyes and swallowed quickly, then pulled within himself to push those fears away. Fears that he was being knocked out, that he had no control over what was happening to his body, what was happening to his sister or what the future would hold.

  But if his sister could do this, then he could too. It wasn’t like anything she was going to go through. Nothing like what she’d been through already.

  His eyes started to glaze over, but he could have sworn his father grabbed his hand quick and said, “I’m proud of you.”

  No Control

  Sixteen Years Later

  Rene Buchanan gripped the steering wheel tightly through her wool gloves, not that it was helping any. She felt completely out of control in her new SUV.

  What could she have been thinking, moving here? What was wrong with her? And why did she do it in the middle of the winter, no less?

  Sure, this new job was a dream come true. She would have been nuts to turn it down, but that didn’t quell the fear she was feeling as the tires started to slip on the road.

  She eased off the gas a bit and tapped the brakes. Nope, wrong thing to do, she realized when the rear end fishtailed to the right. Did the salesman lie to her about the traction control?

  Barely crawling at this point, she pressed on the gas pedal a fraction and felt the vehicle slip. Braking wasn’t the thing to do either, she’d just learned, so she made a tiny wish and tried a bit more gas, hoping to get somewhere.

  As luck would have it, her tires started to grab at something, finally moving her forward at a nice steady clip. She could handle this; it wasn’t that bad. Only three miles left to go to her new office. Piece of cake.

  Since she felt a teeny more confident, she pressed the gas down and then wished she hadn’t when the rear end slid to the right again. Wrong choice this time. It seemed she always made the wrong choice. Nothing new there.

  When she glanced down, she saw she was barely going twenty miles an hour. It was pretty embarrassing, if she was honest with herself, that she couldn’t go any faster than this without wanting to curl into a ball and cry.

  It wasn’t even snowing out. The roads looked fairly clear to her, just some slush, yet she still couldn’t get this thing to drive as steadily as she was told it would when she bought it a month ago before the move.

  She was slowly making her way up the hill and knew the turn was coming. Knowing she needed to accelerate now or she’d never make it, she gingerly tapped the gas. More spinning tires, but at the moment she was the little engine that could. Maybe it would have been better if she’d bought something with a little engine instead of this monster she had no control over.

  Feeling positive that she was going to make it, she added more gas, then wished she hadn’t when a deer dashed in front of her. She slammed on the brakes, did a complete three-sixty, and ended up off the side of the road facing the wrong direction on the other side.

  Great. Just great. Only her third day on the job and she was going to be late. What else could go wrong?

  She sat there taking inventory of her body and realized other than her racing heart, everything was good. Of course it’s not like she was going fast enough to really do any damage to anything other than her pride.

  Pulling her gloves off her fingers one by one, she fished her phone out of her purse to call her brother, Nick. He’d know what to do. He knew what to do about everything. Unlike her.

  She’d bet he’d never slid off the road when he moved here. Nick probably drove twenty miles over the speed limit in a blizzard with one hand on the steering wheel, the other sipping a coffee, and had complete control at all times.

  Stop being childish, she told herself…until she realized there was no reception on her phone. Double great. Now what?

  She also knew there were houses set back in the woods, but she wasn’t sure how far away they were since she hadn’t paid much attention to those things while she commuted the last two days.

  That was always her biggest problem. She never paid attention to the things around her that she should have. Now here she was stuck on the side of the road in the freezing cold with a vehicle she paid way too much money for that didn’t even want to stay on the pavement to begin with.

  She was going to die out here in the cold.

  She was going to starve.

  No one would ever find her.

  Well maybe not starve—she still had a plethora of snacks in her big tote she carried everywhere. And since the engine was running, it was toasty warm, so it wasn’t as dire as her overactive imagination was making it out to be.

  Think, think, think. What should she do right now? She was never good in these situations. If directions weren’t in a book or a manual in front of her, she was clueless. She didn’t need people telling her that her whole life, either.

  Doubters always doubt, she told herself, and that was the motto she used to get through college. All ten years of it while she kept getting degree after degree until she found her calling.

  Laying her forehead against the steering wheel, she tried to do exactly what she did for years. Think. Instead, she started to panic.

  When she heard a knock on her window she screamed and jumped, but the darn seatbelt only locked her back in place.

  She pushed the beanie back on her forehead, except it fell down to her eyebrows again. Not enough that she couldn’t see a man in uniform tapping on the glass.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice loud through the window.

  Thank God. She hit the button and rolled the window down, looking at her own reflection in his sunglasses. She looked a mess, but what else was new?

  “Yeah. A deer ran in front of me and I lost control. I seem to be stuck.”

  He looked around, and she followed his gaze. Now she was realizing she was just barely off the road, not really in a ditch and not really stuck. Hmm, maybe she should have at least tried to drive away. Why hadn’t that thought occurred to her?

  “We’ll try to get you out of here. Shouldn’t be a problem in this vehicle,” he said.

  She wished she could see his face. Or maybe not, because he sounded kind of condescending right now. He looked young, not more than a few years older than her. Too young to have a voice that deep. And big, too. She was pretty high up in her SUV and he wasn’t dwarfed by it at all.

  “What are you doing?” she asked when he started to lean his head into her vehicle and look around. Did he think she was under the influence? It just went from bad to worse.

  “Where are you heading right now?” he asked.

  “Work. It’s only my third day and I’m going to be late,” she said, hoping he got the hint to help her get out of this situation. Instead he continued to look around and her pulse started to kick up again. Was he supposed to smell so good? Was she even supposed to notice? Probably not, and wise to keep it to herself.

  “Not from around here, are you?” he asked, his lips starting to twitch.

  Okay, she knew she was slow at times, but he was definitely making fun of her. “I just moved here from Virginia. I must confess I’m not used to these conditions. I thought buying this SUV would help, but I was all over the road. Must be icier than I thought.”

  A smile from him this time, almost a teasing one. She pushed her too-big hat up again and wished she didn’t look like a kid in oversized clothing, but no hat ever fit her head, and headbands and earmuffs just looked sillier than the big hats.

  Next thing she knew, he was reaching his long arm across her. She fought back a giggle when “long arm of the law” popped into her head.

  �
�It’d probably drive better if you put it in four-wheel drive. You’ve been driving this big, heavy rear-wheeled drive vehicle in slush, with an engine equally as big. If you don’t know how to handle it, it can get away from you.”

  No crap, she wanted to say, but then caught on to something else he’d said. “Four-wheel drive? They told me it’s all-wheel drive. What’s the difference?”

  Now he laughed. “The difference is staying on the road, or sitting here talking to me.”

  She wrinkled her nose. Okay, he was cute when he smiled, but she really wished she could see more of his face…or maybe not. She was already self-conscious, so it was probably better she didn’t know what he was thinking, or couldn’t figure it out. Especially when he smelled nice and smiled so sweet. None of that went with the timbre of his voice, just confusing her more.

  She gathered her wits and said, “So that button you just pointed out. That puts it in four-wheel drive and it would have prevented me from going off the road?”

  Now she wanted to kick herself for not reading the manual when she bought the thing.

  “Well now, that’s not a guarantee, but it might have helped. It really all comes down to the driver.”

  She ground her teeth. “Thanks for the help. I’ll try to get out now.”

  “Not so fast. I know you’ll get out just fine. Can I see your license and registration though?” he asked nicely. Not at all like an officer trying to throw his weight around.

  So much for getting on her way. “Of course,” she said, remembering he was law enforcement. She looked closer now and realized he was one of the troopers in the area, not from the sheriff’s office.

  She leaned over and pulled her wallet out of her purse, then handed her license to him while she reached in the glove compartment for her registration.

  “Rene?” he said, some wonder in his voice.

  “Yes. Rene Buchanan,” she said back.

  He smiled again, then lifted his sunglasses off his face. That pulse that was beating rapidly when she spun off the road was nothing compared to the rate it was racing now.