Chapter 30
Hunter
“I barely know my way around. I swear I won’t be able to guess where we’re going.” Gracie sits in the passenger seat of the Range Rover with a bandanna I tied over her eyes. “Can I take this off?”
“Nope. I want it to be a total surprise.”
“It will be. How can it not? I told you I’ve been to like three places since I got here, most of them within a stone’s throw of work.”
I can be a stubborn son of a bitch when I want to, and right now, her protests are only egging me on. “Nope. Sorry.”
Even under the bandanna, she has the sensory ability to elbow me in the side. “You’re not sorry. Not even a little.”
“Correct.”
Her hand goes to the bandanna but mine is quicker. I take her hand and keep it wrapped in mine. “Patience, grasshopper. I promise, it will be worth the torture.”
A few minutes later, I pull onto Pacific Coast Highway from Kanan and everything changes. The serene Pacific sprawls to our left, blocked by intermittent houses that pop up along the drive, and the scattered restaurants and shops to our right. “Okay, you can take it off now.”
Gracie squints for a moment as her eyes acclimate to the light, but she immediately smiles when she sees where we are. “I’ll take a view of the beach any day. This is gorgeous.”
She’s right. It’s a bluebird sky day, and the few fat, white clouds look like they were painted there to make the sky look better. There aren’t a lot of cars on the road. We glide past the occasional cyclist in bright spandex, but it feels like a world away from where we were earlier.
“This isn’t just the beach. This is Malibu.
Nice, clean water, not super crowded, lotta surfers.
I come here when I need to get out of my head.
” I point at the water, which is closer to the highway along this stretch.
“When I stand on the beach there and look at the water, I can let everything else go.”
She puts the window down and inhales deeply. “I can imagine. That ocean air is cleansing.”
I put my hand on her knee. “Have you ever been stand-up paddleboarding?”
“What’s that?”
“You’ve probably seen people doing it. Standing up on what looks like a big surfboard and paddling along on top of the water?”
She nods. “Oh, yeah. People do that at Shoreline Lake, near my house in the Bay Area.”
“Good stuff. It gets you onto the water, super chill. I had a couple of boards at my house, but the fire took ’em.”
Her face falls like it does every time I mention the loss of my house. “Sorry to hear that. Would’ve been fun to try it.”
I cough out a laugh. “You’re such a bad liar. In no universe do you think it would be fun to get up on a board on the ocean, but we’re going to do it, Gracie. You need to trust me.”
She presses her lips together, brows furrowed. I feel like something set off a land mine in her brain, and I’m not sure it’s the idea of standing on a foam board.
Grazing her chin with the tip of my thumb, I tip her face up to see the confidence in my eyes. I’m not sure if it’s confidence in her ability to handle a paddleboard or confidence in her ability to handle me, but I need her to see and understand it. “You can trust me, Tink.”
Her almost imperceptible flinch tells me I’ve hit the nail on the head. She’s having a hard time trusting me. Fair enough. I need to earn it.
“I promise. I won’t let you get hurt. And I don’t just mean the paddleboard.”
Her eyes flicker, and she sucks in a breath. I wait for her to exhale, grateful to see some of the resistance leave her expression. “I…I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”
I slip a finger under the hem of her white denim shorts and caress her skin. “These’ll work fine. We’ll go in a little cove where the water’s gentle. You probably won’t get anything wet besides your feet.”
“I know a big fat liar when I see one,” she says. “But you’re also a sweet talker. So…I trust you.”
It feels like a victory. It’s all I can do not to dance.
When we’ve parked at the cove, I walk Gracie over to my buddy Ricardo, who’s loaning us two of his boards and oars. Leaning against his pickup truck, he runs his thumb and finger over his beard.
“Nice to meet you,” she says politely, extending her hand.
Ricardo holds both of his hands up like she’s pulled a gun. “Oh no. We’ll have none of that.” He pulls her into a bear hug and lifts her off her feet.
Gracie shrieks and giggles until he puts her down.
Ricardo takes off his straw hat and pops it onto Gracie’s head. “You’ll need this in the sun. This character should know better than to bring you out here without sun protection.”
“I told her to bring a hat and she has one. Don’t you think for one second that I’m not taking care of my girl.”
My girl.
The words come out before I can stop them. Ricardo doesn’t seem to notice, but Gracie does. I look at her apologetically, ready to backpedal, but her cheeks warm and she puts her hand in mine. If she likes being called my girl, I have no intention of quitting.
“I’m new at this,” Gracie admits. Ricardo doesn’t waste a second, putting his arm around her like an old friend and guiding her over to the two boards he has laid out on the sand.
He gets down on his knees on one and points at the other one for Gracie to do the same.
Then he picks up an oar and places it on the board next to him.
“This is all you need to do.”
Sitting on her heels, she gives Ricardo a side-eye. “Isn’t it called standup paddleboarding? Seems like I’m missing the point if I stay down here.”
“She’s a sharp one.” Ricardo points his oar at me, and I swat it away.
“Smart-ass. You gonna teach her right, or should I?”
He stands up and hands me the oar. “Thought you’d never ask.” He winks at Gracie. “This guy knows more than I do, if I’m being honest. I was messing with you two.”
Ricardo slaps me on the back and goes back to his truck, where he’s stashed some other gear. He’ll probably take out a kayak or swim while we’re doing our thing.
It’s a perfect day for paddling. The water is always calm in the cove thanks to the breakwater built just offshore, but today it looks especially glassy.
I get down on my knees next to Gracie and walk her through the basics of paddleboarding.
“You start on your knees. You’re super stable like this, so you can push out into the water and get away from shore.
Then when you feel comfortable floating, you get up onto your feet.
Crouch first, then stand.” I demonstrate, holding the paddle in my hand.
She watches me studiously but nothing in her expression says she likes the idea of this.
“Uh-huh. And when in this process do I lose my balance and belly flop into the freezing ocean?”
“I’m not gonna lie. It happens. But the worst thing is maybe you get a little wet and you scramble back onto your board and try again.”
“Scramble? I don’t scramble.”
It occurred to me that she might feel this way, and I don’t want to force her out of her comfort zone. So I turn and march back to my truck, returning a moment later with a pristine beach chair and a towel.
“That’s it? You’re giving up on me?” She sounds outraged, but the relief on her face tells a different story. “So I’m going to watch while you paddle? Come on, soccer star, at least make me feel a little bit lame for copping out. It’s only fair.”
I grin. “You’re not copping out.”
“I’m not?”
Shaking my head, I put the chair down and wrap her in my arms. Leaning down, I kiss the tops of her cheeks and then her lips.
“Nope. We’ll go together. And I promise you’ll stay dry.” I unfold the beach chair, set it on the front of one of the boards, and put the towel over it, making a nice, comfortable passenger seat. Extending my hand, I invite her aboard.
“Milady.”
She takes my hand, and I escort her to the chair. Then I lift the board, carefully balancing her on top, and tote it on my shoulder, enjoying Gracie’s squeal when she’s hefted high. I balance the board carefully so she doesn’t fall.
Once we get to the water’s edge, I ease the board onto the water.
Gracie looks like a princess, bobbing in her chair at the helm. I push the board along as I wade into the water. Once we’re a hundred feet from shore, I hop on and start paddling, staying on my knees at first.
The afternoon sun is starting to dip, so I’m paddling directly into the glare, but I don’t care. I’m happy to be here with her, happy that she went along with my crazy plan. Happy she trusts me.
We get farther out, and I push myself up to stand on the board. She peeks behind her to see my oar sweep through the water. “See? Nothing to it.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re an athlete with impeccable balance and strength.”
She wiggles forward in her chair so she’s lounging now, tipping her face toward the sun.
“You could do this, but there’s plenty of time for that later. Enjoy the ride.”
It’s so quiet out here, so removed from the bustle of LA. Anything that could possibly crush my vibe is literally behind me as I paddle atop the deep blue water. A couple of gulls circle in the distance, eventually diving down when they spot a fish. But otherwise, we’re alone.
“This is so nice.” Gracie stretches her legs to the tip of the board, and her hair whips lightly in the breeze.
“Right? It’s one of my happy places.”
“I can see why. Now I’m excited to see more of them.”
The only sounds out here are the swish of my paddle and the lap of the board on the uneven water. We move in silence for a while, and eventually, I turn the board so we’re parallel to the shore, which makes for an even smoother ride.
I continue navigating around the cove until we’re back in shallow water. Gracie looks so content in her chair that I decide to leave her be. No reason to insist she try paddling if she doesn’t want to, not when we’re having such a perfect time as it is.
That’s why it shocks me when she turns around and confidently says she’s ready to try paddling on her own. “What’s the worst that could happen? I could get wet. I’m waterproof.”
“Yeah?” I can’t help grinning at how chill she is. The power of the ocean, I guess.
“Yeah. Let’s do it.”
I hop off the board and hold it steady while she shifts out of the chair and gets into position on her knees in the center. “You good here for a sec while I get my board?”
The board shifts beneath her when I let go, and she panics for a second, grabbing onto the edges and humming anxiously. “Yeah. Okay. I can do this.”
Moving as fast as I can, I hold the beach chair overhead and slog through the shallow surf. I chuck the chair onto the sand and grab the other board. In under a minute, I’m back in the water.
Her look of relief when I’m next to her makes me feel a hundred feet tall. I hold on to her board to steady it. “I’ve got you. Want to try popping up?”
We’re deep enough for her to try standing, but shallow enough that she won’t get soaked if she falls. Gracie puts one foot and then the other one beneath her and stays in a squat for a moment, white knuckling the edges of the board.
“That’s great. Now use the paddle to steady yourself and see if you can stand. If it feels wobbly, you can drop back to your knees.”
She does as instructed, wobbling as she slowly rises. I think the wobble is more about her shaky knees than the motion of the water, but I’m not about to distract her with that information.
“Okay, I think I’m up.”
I laugh. “You’re definitely up. Now try paddling.”
She carefully puts her oar in the water, and once again, I marvel at the care she takes in everything she does. Her oar moves through the ocean methodically. Twice on one side, twice on the other.
Watching her sail out toward the horizon, I feel so proud of her that I forget I’m supposed to be paddling along next to her. She turns to look at me before I can tell her to keep her eyes forward.
I catch the round-eyed look of fear right before she topples off the board and falls into the water, which is still only waist-deep. Drops cling to her face and hair. Cringing and paddling quickly toward her, I half expect our excursion to be short-lived.
“I’m sorry,” I say when I reach her. Her tee is half soaked as she stands with both hands on the board. “I got so distracted watching you that I didn’t stay next to you. Are you over it?”
“Over it?”
“Want to call it a day?”
“Are you kidding? I can’t get much wetter. Let’s do this.”
Before I can give her a boost, she pushes herself atop her board and gets back onto her knees in the center. She blows out an impatient breath. “Are you ready, or what?”
I give her a little salute. “Ready, boss. Let’s go.”
For the next half hour, we paddle side by side as the sun teases us with a sunset that’s still at least a few hours away. And that’s a good thing because I have a lot more planned for us before our sunset kiss.