Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Houston drove his Jeep across the sand at Acadia Inlet Beach and glanced at the water.
The sight was incredible. The waves of the Florida coast were normally mild-mannered, making for only recreational surfing as opposed to the competitive level of beaches in Australia and Hawaii.
But today they were high and glorious, and he couldn’t wait to test them out. He parked next to half a dozen other cars and cut out the engine, taking in a deep breath of the salty air. He loved the beach. He loved the feel of the hot sand beneath his feet and the warm water lapping around him.
It soothed him. It was the only place he let go, the one time in his life when he was willing to sacrifice control and let the ocean guide him. But even then, surfing was a fight against nature, a determination to control the wave, the ride, the outcome of each time he lifted onto his board.
As a kid he hadn’t known control, watching his father abuse his mother, knocking her around and more often than not coming home smelling like stale beer and sweat.
The day his father had left for good was the best day of his life, and at that moment Houston had taken control.
Of his life, his mother’s, and his little sister Kori’s.
He had only been fifteen, but he had been single-minded from then on, determined that he would find a way to be successful, to support his mother and sister. Emotionally and financially.
He had achieved that. He enjoyed being a surgeon, and he knew he was good at it. When he did something, he liked to be successful at it. Sometimes he wondered if that’s why he had never considered marriage. He didn’t like to lose.
A game, a challenge, or his heart.
He fought for control to the bloody end of every battle, and knew he was far too cynical to make anyone a good husband.
So he dated casually and spent the majority of his time focusing on his career now that his sister had married one of Houston’s oldest friends and his mom was busy being a grandmother.
Giving quality of life back to elderly patients was satisfying.
He took himself and that responsibility very seriously, and he was meticulous in his methods, checking and rechecking himself and his co-workers over and over again.
His patients trusted him to heal them to the best of his ability, and he never wanted to compromise that trust.
Houston had been aware over the years that his bedside manner was a little lacking, but it had never been easy for him to start up conversations with people.
He wasn’t a talker. It was something he had to work at, force himself to remember to smile and make conversation.
Unlike Josie Adkins, who he thought could chat with a tree stump.
After leaving the hospital for the day, he’d stopped off at home and changed into a T-shirt and swimming trunks. He pulled off the shirt and tossed it on the seat of his Jeep, shaking his head just at the thought of Josie.
He must have lost his fucking mind.
Instead of counseling her, like he had intended to, he had kissed the hell out of her and asked her to spend the night with him. He was just about certain she was going to say no.
Josie was already hanging on to her residency by a thread, and was clearly nervous that being involved with him would snap that tenuous hold.
He didn’t understand her logic. If one looked at her med school records, she was brilliant.
Her rapport with the patients was fantastic.
Yet she was nervous, tentative, and downright clumsy, none of which could be explained by an attraction to him alone.
He suspected at times that her heart wasn’t in surgery, and that she would be happier in a more patient-oriented specialization. It was why he had held back on allowing Josie control in the operating room.
She was an enigma he hadn’t figured out yet.
Not to mention she was damn adorable. And he was more interested in stripping off her little dick-tease lip-print panties than psychoanalyzing her.
Grabbing his shortboard out of the back of the Jeep, he turned his mind resolutely back to the surf. Josie was back in the cool, sterile, hushed hospital, while he was out here in the glorious sun facing the best swells all summer.
“Hey, Houston!”
He looked up to see Dennis and Christian walking across the sand towards him. He’d been surfing with these guys since high school, and he’d never doubted for a minute they’d be out here today, even if they all had more responsibilities now than they’d had fifteen years ago.
“Hey, guys, what’s up?”
“What took you so long?” Dennis scolded as he dropped his board in the sand, and then himself.
“A patient. What do you think?” His friend would never guess he’d been begging for sex from a hospital colleague and he wasn’t about to tell him.
Houston prodded Dennis’s leg with his foot. “What are you laying down for? I’m ready to go out.”
“I’m sitting this one out. I’m whipped today.”
“Don’t be an old man,” Houston said in disbelief. “These are the best waves all year.”
Dennis rested back in the sand and closed his eyes, dropping his hands on his chest. “You don’t understand. I’m married. Tammy kept me up all last night.”
“Jesus, that’s more information than I need.” Not to mention he was still partially erect from his teasing encounter with Josie an hour ago. He didn’t need sex talk right now.
“What, are you embarrassed? You’ve gotten a conscience or something? You used to be a big talker from what I remember.” Dennis snorted.
“Yeah, well, you can’t talk about what you’re not getting.” Not getting on a regular basis, anyway. He did envy Dennis and Christian that.
His buddies laughed at him, while he grumbled and pretended to check the wax on his board. “Besides, I never was one to blab about what I was doing with girls. That was you.”
“You need a life outside of that germ-filled hospital, Houston,” Christian said. “Kori’s got another woman all lined up for you.”
Oh, hell.
Houston frowned.
He’d been friends with Christian for twenty years, way before the guy had gone and fallen for Houston’s younger sister, Kori.
While Houston had gotten over his buddy sleeping with his baby sister and had learned to appreciate that Kori was in good hands since she’d married Christian, it also meant that his friendship with Christian was always tied to his sister. Which he could do without.
But he had a definite soft spot for Kori, despite her tendency to think the answer to all his problems lay in marrying one of her friends.
He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he was never getting married, and that while he wasn’t above having some company for dinner, there was no woman he would ask out twice. More than one date, and they started to have expectations.
Expectations he couldn’t live up to.
Besides, he hadn’t met anyone yet who had intrigued him enough to want more than one date.
Except for Josie Adkins.
Whose alluring qualities centered around her lush curves and how soon he could lick every inch of them.
“All right. I’ll go on the date with Kori’s friend,” he told Christian with a shrug.
Christian clapped him on the back. “See, that’s what I like about you. You’re so easy-going. And all this matchmaking business keeps Kori’s mind off having another baby, which is what she really wants to do.”
“Two aren’t enough?” Houston loved his two little nieces, ages four and two, but damn, they wore him out. He had serious doubts about his personal ability to deal with that kind of constant diaper-ridden chaos.
“It’s plenty for me,” Christian assured him. “But Kori’s a born nurturer, you know, and with Abby out of the crib, she’s got an empty spot.”
“Buy her a dog,” Dennis suggested. “They shit just as much, but they cost less.”
Christian laughed. “Yeah, I’ll suggest it to Kori just like that. I’m sure that will win her over.”
As Dennis and Christian argued the merit of Labs versus Irish setters, Houston found himself wondering about Josie.
He didn’t know her very well, but he suspected she fell solidly into the category of a nurturer.
Which disturbed the hell out of him. He should count himself lucky that Josie looked inclined to say no to his offer of a single night of passion.
She wasn’t the one-night-stand type, and he might have found himself entangled in a big old emotional mess that wouldn’t have fixed the tension between them, but increased it tenfold.
Yeah, he was feeling lucky all right. Too bad his rock-solid and sadly neglected dick didn’t agree.
He interrupted the dog conversation. “So you’re really sitting out this wave?” he asked Dennis.
When Dennis nodded, he said to Christian, “That’s enough bullshitting for me, boys, I’m heading out. You coming?”
As Christian nodded, Houston kicked off his shoes and dropped his towel down on the sand next to Dennis. He tossed his phone onto it. He wasn’t on call, and he didn’t really expect Josie to text him, but on the off chance...he sure in the hell didn’t want to miss her if she did.
With a firm grip on his board, he went down to the edge of the water, squishing the wet sand beneath his toes. He bent over and attached his leash to his ankle. The device kept him and his board from being separated if he fell off.
Then he was on his stomach, paddling out, relaxing under the hot sun. Christian was next to him, but they didn’t talk. This time was for silence. For just enjoying the ocean and listening to the melodic roar of the waves rising and falling in a timeless pattern.
There were shouts of excitement and groans as other surfers rode and crashed, but Houston blocked those sounds out and concentrated just on stroking back and forth with his hands lightly skimming the surface of the warm water.
When he came to a wave, he lifted his waist and let the water pass between him and the board.
Josie was on his mind again, a disturbing floating presence in his thoughts constantly, confusing him with her unexplainable attraction.