Chapter 1 #4
Shrugging in admission while he snapped a lens cap on his Nikon, packed away the camera, and knocked off clumps of sand clinging to his heels, he encouraged the Jeep’s engine to turn over. He edged back onto the highway.
“We’ve got everything we really need here. Don’t we, Baby?”
Except that he wouldn’t sleep in her front seat if he had other options.
Baby’s interior would keep off the dew in a pinch—and had many times when he’d been in his twenties, dirt-broke, though with the foolhardy resilience of youth.
Now that same pinch would make itself known in his neck the next morning.
Along with a bed, he wouldn’t sneer at some extra cash.
He couldn’t. Not if the Nauti Lass was ever going to manifest as more than a sun-twinkle on the horizon.
A live-aboard vessel with an airy salon and cockpit above the waterline, a snug cabin in the bulkhead and galley kitchen below (a bunk and a folding desk against a shiplap hull studded with shelves and hooks for shells and model boats and a guitar, SCUBA hoses and fins, his cameras and casings), plus a deck with chairs and towels drying on railings, overlooking a new shore every morning?
Independence. Gone would be the embarrassment of asking for help from either his parents, or the siblings who’d always looked to him for answers.
Even used, the boat would cost an easy six figures.
So for now, Erin’s beach house it was.
Another few miles in the fog returned him from the pine-edged coastline of Monterey Bay to the light pollution of civilization.
He passed through Monterey’s industrial sector to its residential streets, trundling by dark doorways on roads with sea-themed names, before creeping almost to the shore again on Tide Avenue.
Baby’s tires crunched over sand blown onto the asphalt from the nearby dunes of Del Monte Beach.
The yodeling of a lone sea lion was the only sound to disturb the silence.
He pulled up at the address that Erin had shared with him: a slope-roofed bungalow crested with terracotta tiles, its golden stucco patterned by haphazard shards of pottery.
The house was as silent as its neighbors.
A single dim light glittered inside. But a familiar hatchback, its rear windows decorated by nose and paw prints, was parked near a half-moon driftwood gate set into a succulent hedge—“Nice to Sea You!” read the gate’s sign—that pointed toward the front door.
Erin and Ethan must have already arrived.
He crawled Baby past the house and cooled her engine down the street.
No time or experience could erase an older brother’s prerogative to surprise his sister.
Extracting his duffels from the Jeep, he shuffled quietly through the gate, up the steps to the porch, and felt under the eaves for a key. More quietly still, he jiggled open the lock, ready to rush over the threshold with a shout and a bear hug—but the bungalow was almost as hushed inside as out.
A bulb under a rattan shade winked beside a gurgling fish tank.
No golden retriever tried to eat his sandals.
No Erin. No Ethan.
The sole greeting was a rumble from his own stomach.
“Huh.”
Wes kicked off his shoes. He meandered over a zebra rug, past a novelty beach clock, the aquarium, and a squashy sofa, and into the kitchen.
A refrigerator with a pull-handle door was stocked with champagne and a dish of chocolate-covered strawberries.
Nothing else. After a more cautious check of the bedroom and its ensuite bathroom, he confirmed: he was alone in the house.
“Are they taking a midnight stroll before popping the cork?” he asked the refrigerator.
The antique appliance hummed back at him.
“No. Knowing them, they’re being speed-walked by Bunsen.”
He still had the element of surprise.
He also still needed that damn shower.
Dropping his bags beside the couch and yanking off his shirt, he retreated to the bathroom and stepped into a blissful spray of scalding water.
“Fuck, that’s good. . .”
Flushed, damp hair raked into a bun, breath minty, he emerged from the steam and back into the living room fifteen minutes later, wrapping a towel around his hips, whistling a Bobby Darin tune while wondering exactly how much Erin and Ethan would miss their strawberries, when the key he’d replaced under the eaves turned in the door.
Great timing.
Though he wouldn’t have minded if Erin had waited until he’d had a few minutes with the fruit.
Except—the woman stepping into the bungalow now wasn’t Erin.
She wore a white dress. The wet silk was transparent.
It clung to her slender shoulders, the cold-pebbled peaks of her breasts, the divot of her navel, and her narrow hips.
Mascara streaked her sharp cheekbones and her chapped mouth, and stuck in the silvery blonde hair that tangled against her throat.
She stood barefoot with a pair of spiked heels and the handles of an overnight bag in one hand, the bungalow key clutched between the diamond-studded fingers of the other.
She smelled of salt water. Gray as mist, her eyes were wide with shock.
Beautiful, and definitely not Erin.
“Shit.”
Wes fumbled for his shirt.
And dropped his towel.