Chapter 13
I’d never seen Sunset Beach so empty. Although there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun was shining down on the turquoise waves, there were only a few towels scattered about the sand. A couple of surfers were out in the water, and I caught myself on the lookout for bright-red trunks.
“Looking for someone?” I heard a familiar voice behind me.
I spun around and saw Vince coming toward me with his surfboard. Just like this morning, he was wearing his wet suit, but it was only zipped up to his chest, allowing a glimpse of tanned skin.
“Umm…no. I…just wanted to go swimming.”
“Done with training for today?”
I nodded. “And you?” I looked at his board. “Ready for some more?”
“Always,” he replied with a strange glint in his eyes. And a voice that didn’t sound like his own. Darker, huskier.
I was still wondering whether his innuendo was intentional when he said, “You ever done it?”
“What?!” I said, shocked, while my body reacted out of all proportion to his brazenness.
“Have you ever done it?” Vince repeated, nodding his head at his surfboard.
“Oh, surfing!” I sighed and began to stutter. “N-no, n-not yet. Never.”
Oh god, how embarrassing. How ridiculously embarrassing.
“You want to give it a try?”
Somehow, the look in his eyes—dark, heavy—just didn’t seem to fit his question. But it certainly fit two of our strange encounters.
“I don’t think I can.”
“There’s only one way to find out.” I watched him walk down to the water. He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “Well, come on!”
For some reason my legs began to move on their own.
“But I don’t have a wet suit.”
“You don’t need one,” he replied casually.
“What about the jellyfish?”
“There aren’t any jellyfish here.”
Confused, I waded behind him to a place where small waves were breaking on a natural sandbank.
Vince held the surfboard in position and motioned for me to sit down.
I couldn’t believe how effortlessly I managed to do so.
Tying the leash around my ankle, he touched my skin, and a shiver ran through my body.
I immediately crossed my arms across my chest. Oh…
wow. He wasn’t the only one with something going on.
“And now?”
“Now you’re going to learn how to sit and wait for the right wave,” he said, laughing.
But from that moment on, none came. Which was strange. Very strange. The water gurgled calmly and peacefully around my knees while Vince stood next to me and looked skeptically out at the ocean.
“How long have you been surfing?”
He thought for a moment. “Ever since our first vacation here on Hawaii. I must have been…seven or eight. Jim taught me. And you? How long have you been playing tennis?”
I didn’t have to think at all, as it was a typical interview question. “I started at four.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Of course,” I replied, a little annoyed. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have kept with it.”
“I don’t think every athlete would say that about themselves. Especially not when they had such successful parents.”
“You googled me.”
A grin darted across his face.
“I was the one who wanted to go pro. Not my parents.”
“But without them as examples it probably wouldn’t have been a thought.”
“Probably not.” I looked at him quizzically. “What else did you find out about me?”
He hesitated.
“Come on!”
He gave himself time. Either he really had to think about it or he enjoyed making me squirm.
“Your middle name is Charlotte.”
“Char-LOT-te,” I corrected him. “I’m named after my two grandmothers. Louisa was my dad’s mother, and Charlotte my mom’s.”
“You’re a Virgo.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“I’m a Virgo too. That’s why I paid attention.” He grinned. “Umm…you primarily listen to German music. Some band whose name I can’t pronounce.”
“AnnenMayKantereit.”
He made an attempt to repeat it, and failed miserably, which made me laugh.
“And when you laugh, the left corner of your mouth is always a little bit higher than your right.”
“You googled that?”
“No,” he whispered, looking right into my eyes.
I drew my lower lip in between my teeth.
“And when you’re nervous, you do that.”
“What?” I croaked.
He carefully lifted his hand and touched my lower lip with his index finger.
Gently slid his fingertip between my incisors and lip.
“That.” The tip of my tongue met the tip of his index finger, and I tasted salt.
He groaned when, ever so slightly, I moved my tongue.
Maybe he had said my name. The noise in my ears was so loud that I couldn’t hear it.
He pulled his finger out of my mouth and let it glide across my lower lip.
My chin, my neck, my breasts. I felt a mix of goose bumps, palpitations, and tingling in my stomach.
My nipples began to grow hard. My abdomen tightened.
Feeling restricted, I began to impatiently slide back and forth on the board.
I wanted to wrap my legs around his hips.
He let me, before lifting me off the surfboard almost effortlessly.
I draped my arms around his neck and pulled myself against him, pressing against his warm, aroused body.
His hands gripped my buttocks tighter, pulling me in even closer.
More friction. He tilted his head, and I thought he was finally going to kiss me.
But no, instead he let his lips wander across my neck, my collarbone, my shoulders.
I moaned his name and pressed myself even tighter against him…
until all of a sudden I felt a terrible pain in my calf.
“Ow!” I groaned, opened my eyes, and shot up from the treatment table.
“Good morning,” Gabe said amusedly.
Stuck somewhere between dream and reality, I looked around. Disoriented, sleepy and…excited. A telltale throbbing between my legs. Heat shot into my cheeks as I realized what I had just been dreaming about. Who I had just been dreaming about.
“Took you pretty hard today, huh?”
I stared at Gabe in shock as he continued to massage my calf.
“I saw the two of you earlier. That girl is really good.”
Only now did I realize he was talking about Malia.
“Yeah.”
My feeling of relief was mixed with embarrassment.
“Kay’s sure got a nose for these things.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she saw her playing on a public court in Honolulu and offered to train her. For free.”
“I didn’t know that.” Kay had told me she thought Malia had a lot of talent and that she was worth supporting. But not that she was the one doing it.
“This here,” he said, making a circular movement with his index finger, “is something most Hawaiian families could never afford.” He tilted his head toward my phone on the table.
“Anyway, your phone there vibrated a few times. Maybe it’s important.
” He handed it to me. All of the messages were from Laurie.
We’d already exchanged numbers the first time we met and had texted here and there ever since the barbecue.
Hey, you want to come over tonight? Ladies’ night?
It was followed by a GIF of two oversize wineglasses.
Yours will be iced tea, of course…??
I had to smirk. Then came the last text.
Don’t worry, Vince isn’t here.
It had come just a few minutes later. As if my not having responded immediately was due to the tension with her brother. Who, in the meantime, had taken up a starring role in my dreams.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, it was just Laurie.”
I decided to answer later and put my phone back down.
“Laurie Greenfield?”
I nodded.
“You all become friends?”
“Umm…yeah, somehow or other.” I probably sounded just as surprised as he was. “Ever since the barbecue we’ve texted here and there.”
“You went over?”
“Yeah. That’s why I wasn’t at home when Kay had her date and you stopped by.”
“Kay had a date?”
He tried to make it sound casual, but there was something in his voice, and for a split second there was a pause in his movements.
“She met an old friend.”
“An old friend.”
“Hmm…” I watched his reaction.
Within seconds his face was relaxed again. “What’d she have to say? About you going to the barbecue?”
“I only told her the next morning. And asked her to withdraw her complaint against Vince. Which she did.”
His eyebrows shot up.
“Yeah, I was a little surprised myself. Maybe I can get her to change her mind about the hostel too.”
“Sounds like you’ve already changed yours,” he said with a grin. In response to my quizzical glance he said, “Well, the last time you were here, it sounded like you wanted to beat Vince over the head with your racket and now…”
You’re dreaming of him.
“You’re taking his side.”
“Well, I’m on the side of life not being so difficult.”
“And? How’s that looking?” he asked, a tinge of amusement in his voice.
“Hard to say. But I think a lot of the problems will take care of themselves if the two of them manage to talk to each other more calmly.”
“Yeah, that’s usually the case,” he said, but somehow I got the feeling he wasn’t referring to Kay and Vince.