Chapter Four
Erin had stayed much longer than she’d intended to at Jay’s and now she had to hurry if she was going to pick up her dog Boswell and get to work on time. She followed a fairly loose schedule, as she was often out reporting on events or talking to the local residents, so she tended to come and go as she pleased, making sure she hit all her deadlines.
But today was their editorial meeting, and she was never late for that. Her editor did not take kindly to people showing up late to her meetings.
As she entered her one-bedroom apartment, she tried not to notice how small it felt after Jay’s mansion. Buzzy bounded over to greet her and she bent to pat him. He had been a rescue dog, featured in the Sea Shell , and she couldn’t resist rescuing him herself when she saw his photo. He was a mix of breeds, but closely resembled a cockapoo with his shaggy, toffee-colored hair and large, soulful eyes. It had been love at first sight.
“Hello, you,” she said affectionately. “We’re off to work now. I just have to grab a few things.”
Buzzy barked happily. He was excited to go anywhere Erin went.
As she moved about her apartment, she tried again to take pleasure in how compact it was. To Buzzy, she said, “We don’t need an ensuite bathroom, do we now?” And then, “This Formica countertop is practical. The whole place is quick to clean. And who needs a home gym when you have hills to walk and waves to surf?”
Buzzy barked his agreement.
“Okay, my view is of a schoolyard and not as inspiring as the ocean, but I’m happy to have it.” When Erin bought the place, she had been worried that the noise of the children might disturb her on days she worked on her articles at home. But on days their laughter and singing travelled on the breeze, she found it made her happy. She would let herself imagine what it might be like to walk her own child across the road to school and wave good-bye at the school gates. These reveries always made her smile, although she never let herself get carried away. She was about as single as they came and for now, that was just fine.
She clipped on Buzzy’s leash. “I have you, and that’s enough,” she said, rubbing his soft coat.
But for the first time, she wondered if that was still true. She looked around her apartment again and realized it felt a little lonely. What would Jay make of it? If he were here, he’d be sure to take up all the air in the room, like he always did, but strangely, she thought he might fit in. He always did at the Davenport family home.
She had mixed feelings about Jay ending up with her dream house, the one she’d never been able to walk past without imagining herself inside. On a reporter’s pay, there was no way she could afford that house—even if she saved every cent of every paycheck for the rest of her life. But Jay had simply said, “I want it,” and it was his. If she had chosen a different career, she might have been in that position too, but she’d always known her path wasn’t like those of her movie-star brother or her rock-star brother or their agent-to-the-stars friend. She didn’t want to be a top Realtor like Mila or a house builder or an app developer like Nick and Finn. She was a writer. It was all she’d ever wanted and in her small way, she was proud of what she’d accomplished.
Like all Carmel locals, she’d loved the Sea Shell since she was a little girl and had been thrilled to begin working there as an intern when she came back to Carmel with her English degree from Stanford. She’d worked her way up to the role of main reporter and one day she hoped to be the editor of the Sea Shell , maybe even own it. That was a dream she could conceivably accomplish with a lot of hard work—to say nothing of determination to make it on her own. She didn’t want to ask any of her rich relatives for help. That was important to her too. Whatever she accomplished, Erin wanted to do it with her own talent and her own money.
As she locked the door behind her, her thoughts turned to the meeting ahead. Pat Sinclair had been a top editor at the Chicago Tribune and then, burned out from stress, she’d arrived in Carmel-by-the-Sea with her wife for a holiday and fallen in love with it. When she’d taken over as editor of the Sea Shell , no one could believe it. Erin had given the woman six months before she ran screaming back to the bright lights and buzz of Chicago, but it hadn’t worked out that way. The editorial standard had definitely risen since Pat had taken over, but she’d kept the heart of the Sea Shell —the local stories, the Dog of the Week, the weekly advice column—and if anything, the paper was a lot better now than it had been. Erin admired the heck out of her and wanted to learn all she could from Pat while she helmed the paper.
Erin let the midmorning sun warm her cheeks and thought how lucky she was that her job let her bring her dog to work. Buzzy loved the Sea Shell office. It was situated on a cobbled side street with a walk-in front office where people could place classified ads or drop off press releases for local events.
They walked in and Buzzy sat immediately, his whole hind end wagging as he waited for the treat that Bobby, the receptionist, kept for the dogs who came through the door. As soon as Erin crossed the threshold into the editorial office, a wave of happiness filled her as she took in the familiar sight of the desks cluttered with multiple computer screens and stacks and stacks of paper. To an outsider it might have looked a mess, but everyone who worked there knew exactly where everything was. It was like a family home in that way, with all its quirks that made little sense to anyone but its family members.
Pat came out of her office, already going over the week’s schedule as she walked to the conference room. She ran a hand through her short mop of salt-and-pepper hair. As always, she was chewing nicotine gum, caught as she was in a perpetual struggle to quit smoking that she never quite seemed to nuke. Pat liked to blame her wife, to whom she’d been married for ten years, and who staunchly refused to give up the habit. Next to her was tall, shy Clark, the photographer, with whom Erin had become firm friends over the years; Louis the editorial assistant; and Carrie, the junior reporter and copy editor. Erin took her place at the long table they used for editorial meetings, among other things. She sat next to Pat, who was looking more irritated than usual.
Carrie wanted to pitch a story about a school funding shortfall, but Pat was scowling. “We need something new, something exciting,” she said, interrupting Carrie. “We could have had a scoop on the huge story of an A-list actor getting married secretly right here in Carmel before flying off to Scotland ...” She paused and shot Erin a hard look.
Uh-oh. Erin got a sinking feeling in her stomach.
“But sadly, that opportunity passed us by.” She grabbed a pen, holding it like a cigarette, and began to twiddle it between her fingers.
Erin gulped and felt guilty. She admired Pat hugely and knew she was lucky to have such an incredible mentor, but surely she could understand that Erin couldn’t—wouldn’t—betray her family just for the sake of a scoop. Erin had been in a tough position, caught between her job and her duty to her family, but family would always win.
She stayed silent. Pat hated to hear excuses.
“Luckily,” Pat continued, “I’ve managed to get something of a scoop myself.”
At this, Erin perked up. A distraction from her misdemeanor. Perfect.
“I’ve had my ear to the ground and word is that another Hollywood hotshot has just bought one of the most expensive homes in Carmel.” Pat’s mouth twitched in its telltale way when she had a good story. Erin felt her heart sink into her sandals. She knew exactly what Pat was about to ask.
She turned to Erin. “Jay Malone is the latest in a string of Hollywood celebrities to buy a place in Carmel-by-the-Sea. There’s a good story here, Erin, and I want you to find it. What is driving this move? Who is Jay Malone? I want a full profile.”
Erin felt backed into a corner. This was her punishment for not giving the Sea Shell the story of the year by offering up Arch and Tessa’s secret wedding in Carmel before they jetted off to Scotland for the lavish public celebration. Jay wasn’t family, so in Pat’s mind he was fair game. Since he’d been Arch’s agent forever, Pat knew Erin could get access. And who better than a family friend to get to the heart of a story?
She thought that Pat understood deep down that Erin had done what was right, but she couldn’t let it go unchallenged. Interviewing Jay was her punishment. She got that, and the journalist side of her felt that Pat had handled the situation well. She only hoped she’d do as well when her time came to be editor.
But the idea of interviewing Jay made something stick in her throat. She didn’t like to use her family connections in her work, and she was certain that Jay was far too busy making multimillion-dollar deals to spend time being interviewed for the local paper.
She swallowed. “He’s probably very difficult to get hold of and won’t be in Carmel very much—”
But Pat cut her off with an upraised hand before she could come up with any more lame excuses. “It’s your job to convince Jay Malone to spare you some of his precious time.”
Erin persisted, “Perhaps one of our freelancers might have a better chance? Jay is more likely to talk to someone he doesn’t know—he’s professional like that.”
Pat shook her head. “Erin, I assigned the story to you and I expect a full profile for the next issue.” She glanced down at her papers. “Now, what’s the story with the school funding crisis?” she asked Carrie, and Erin knew she’d better get an interview with Jay. Or else.
Her mind turned to the tricky task ahead. How to even approach Jay for what ultimately amounted to a favor? What could she say? Hey Jay, can I please invade your privacy because we have a personal connection and my editor wants your profile in our weekly community newspaper? Jay’s previous profiles had been in Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair . And once, memorably, in GQ , where he and Archer had done a joint interview.
She doubted he would be very impressed by the likes of the Sea Shell .
* * *
By the next evening, Erin was still processing Pat’s request while balanced on a wave. Like a lot of her family, Erin tended to work out her problems on the surfboard. There was something about being out on the waves, sometimes near people, sometimes alone, but always separated from others so that her board felt like her own tiny island. She had to focus on her footwork, on wave patterns, on what other surfers around her were doing, but behind all that busy work, her brain could mull over whatever was bothering her.
She wasn’t sure why it felt like such a big deal to interview Jay. She perfectly understood Pat’s position—that Erin had withheld the scoop of the century from the Sea Shell . While Pat would probably have done the same thing in her place, and protected the privacy of her beloved brother, she still had to make an example of Erin.
Erin totally got that. But of all the punishments Pat could have come up with, did it have to be an interview with Jay Malone?
She’d thought about calling Mila to see if she wanted to surf with her, but somehow she knew she needed to work these problems out herself. Mila was already too invested in Jay—to the point of suggesting he might be a possible suitor. She didn’t want to give her big sister any more ideas.
The best surf was not far from Jay’s house. She could still recall that day not so very many months ago when Jay had been out surfing with them, and had said to her so confidently that one day he’d own one of those waterfront properties they could see from the waves. She remembered mocking him at the time. Those properties hardly ever came up for sale, and when they did, they tended to go so fast that Erin, who kept her ears pretty close to the ground in Carmel-by-the-Sea, often didn’t even hear about them. So to discover that he’d made good on that promise, and in such a short time, was quite astonishing.
She shook her head as she rode in, gazing toward Jay’s beautiful house. She might be astonished, but she wasn’t surprised. Put her very determined sister together with the most single-minded man she’d ever met, and it was inevitable they were going to get what they wanted.
She paddled out and rode back in again, and out and in again, and then she just sat out for a while, watching the sun go down. It was so beautiful she didn’t mind that she was getting cold, even in a wetsuit over her old black bikini. She hadn’t reached for her surfing gloves or booties, though, which she now regretted. It was time she headed back.
She was still riding the waves when the lights came on in Jay’s house. He was home.
Okay, she couldn’t call herself a journalist and be such a weenie she couldn’t ask a celebrity for an interview. She had to get a grip. She’d just catch another couple of waves, and then she’d text him. She’d keep it professional, making it clear she wasn’t asking for a personal favor—even though obviously she was—and if he said no, at least she’d have tried.
Pat could not ask more of her than that.
* * *
Jay had once been the kind of workaholic who put other workaholics to shame. He’d learned to manage on four hours of sleep a night, five if he was sleeping in, and when he wasn’t having to comply with his body’s irritating need for rest, he was either working, working out, promoting the list of clients he had, or doing his damnedest to increase his list. When he looked back on those years, they were a blur. And then one day, he’d ended up in the ER thinking he was having a heart attack. He was only thirty-one, and after ruling out a heart attack, to his great relief, the ER doc had sat him down and read him the riot act.
It turned out his diagnosis wasn’t that unusual: He was suffering from stress and burnout. Humiliatingly, what he’d thought had been cardiac arrest was in fact a panic attack. Naturally, no one, but no one, knew the truth. When he’d emerged from the hospital hours later, embarrassed and chastened, the doc’s words rang in his ears.
“It was a panic attack this time. Consider it a warning. You keep going at the pace you are, and the next time you’re in here it will be a heart attack for sure. You want to be dead at forty? Keep on doing what you’re doing.”
It was the kind of dialogue his actors said in movies, not something Jay Malone had ever expected to hear in real life.
However, he’d listened. It hadn’t been easy, but slowly he’d begun to change. He started eating better. He kept up his weightlifting routine, but dialed it back from seven days a week to three, and instead added in swimming, surfing, and wilderness hikes. He would make the effort to take in the beautiful vistas while he walked, listen to the birds sing. Sometimes he even stopped to smell a rose, or pat a dog. He had learned to reconnect with life.
It wasn’t just his body that needed a change, it was his mind too. He’d always been a reader—it was how he’d educated himself. But instead of racing through Plato and Aurelius and Dickens in one sitting, as though he were taking a university of life crash course, he made the effort to slow down and absorb more of what he read. He expanded his choices, reading for pure pleasure rather than self-improvement. Sometimes poetry, sometimes a novel, sometimes a book on history or biology or astronomy, especially now that he was working with Herschel Greenfield.
To his surprise, he’d found he enjoyed old English detective novels written by people like Wilkie Collins and Agatha Christie, and passed whole evenings turning the pages with a small Scotch in hand (well, he couldn’t be a complete angel). He let his staff take on more responsibility. He also changed his relationship to his phone. From being always on, he selectively switched it to Do Not Disturb. There were a few exceptions, of course. Archer Davenport and Smith Sullivan could phone him day or night and he’d always pick up, but there weren’t many other people who made that list. Not many at all.
By that time, he was already successful enough and rich enough that he didn’t have to keep working if he didn’t want to. But he did want to. He loved his work and the thought of giving it up never crossed his mind. Now, a few years later, he still worked hard, still enjoyed the finer things in life, but he made darned sure to take time for himself. Life was precious.
This evening was one of those prized quiet ones when he didn’t have an event to attend or an important meeting and since his day was packed tomorrow, he was relaxing in the new leather chair in his library and re-reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. Herschel had offered to clarify some points he hadn’t understood the first time around.
That was another thing that had changed since his time in hospital. Before the panic attack, he’d exerted so much effort in trying to pretend he always knew everything. Now he’d learned that no one knew everything, and to his mind, a mark of wisdom was not being afraid to ask questions.
He settled his new silver-rimmed reading glasses on his nose, glanced with pleasure around his library, now stocked with books he loved or books he intended to read. His gaze moved to the window, where he noticed a lone surfer out on the water. He loved this view so much, he was always keeping track of who was out there and what they were doing. There’d been a group of them earlier, but now there was only one.
He could tell she was female, and as he watched, he suddenly, instinctively knew it was Erin Davenport.
Something about the way she moved, the way she stood, was as unique as a fingerprint. As she rode closer, her wet hair streamed out behind her, and even though he couldn’t make out her face, he could picture the concentration etched across her usually smooth and unruffled brow.
He smiled. It was strangely comforting to know she was out there, enjoying herself. She was a superb surfer. Technically adept and elegant with it, too. As he watched, he came to realize how much Mila, who had been a world-famous champion surfer, had overshadowed her sister’s abilities. Erin wasn’t a pro-level surfer, but she was a darned good amateur.
How had he never noticed that before? And how much more had he never noticed?
He went back to his book, but every few minutes he checked on Erin again. She was still going, riding those waves with a confidence he admired. The more he watched, the more he finally saw how often Erin was overshadowed by her overachieving siblings, and yet it slowly dawned on him that hers was the voice he had unconsciously listened to all those years when the Davenport family were exchanging views—or arguing.
It was Erin who made the most sense.
He put his book down, unable to concentrate. She’d been out there a long time. The last of the sun was being swallowed in a teal horizon—she had to be getting cold. When he grew truly worried, he took action. He went up to the master bathroom and chose one of the super plush, fluffy gray towels from the custom towel warmer that he’d decided to always keep turned on. Tucking it under his arm, he headed out, crossed the street and reached the beach just as Erin was coming in.
As he walked closer, he could see she was shivering as she pulled off her wetsuit. Underneath she had on a black bikini and even in the dim light, he appreciated the curves of her petite frame.
Trying to be a gentleman, he averted his eyes and spoke in a low voice so as not to startle her. “Hi. I was getting worried about you.”
She jumped slightly and turned, her eyes widening with recognition. “I got carried away.” She shivered again. “Stayed out too long.”
Without thinking to ask, he wrapped the still-warm towel around her shoulders. “You must be freezing,” he said by way of explanation, trying not to notice how sweet she looked swamped in his oversized towel.
“Oh, wow,” she said, pulling the towel tightly around her. “Thanks. You read my mind.”
Briefly, he wondered if she was as conscious as he that she’d been standing there in a bikini, but then shoved the thought from his mind. As she shivered again, it was all he could do not to scold her for staying out too long. What had she been thinking?
Instead he said, “Why don’t you come to my place for hot chocolate? Warm up.”
She looked a little embarrassed. “I don’t want to bother you. I’m fine.”
He held back a grin. Erin was so different from her siblings he sometimes forgot she was a Davenport and as stubborn as the rest of them. “Erin, your lips are blue and you’re shivering. I’m not taking no for an answer.”
He bent to gather up her things and then began the short walk back up to his house, trying to ignore how good it felt to be the one who could offer Erin some comfort.