Love At The Shore

by Teri Wilson

  Tank glanced at the smoke billowing in the air from the other side of the fence, then stared pointedly at Lucas. When Lucas failed to produce a filet mignon out of thin air, Tank let out a pitiful whine.

  “Okay, I can take a hint, bud.” Lucas put down his book, headed toward the house and held the door open so Tank could follow him inside.

  The dog’s tail was a little white blur of glee as Lucas got his bowl down from the cupboard and filled it with food. Tank’s excitement took a serious hit when he saw nothing but plain kibble in his bowl, and he shot another soulful look at Lucas.

  “Believe me, I’d rather be eating steak too.” Lucas tossed a biscuit into his bowl. It was a poor substitution, but Tank happily scarfed it down. “How about we head out to the beach with a shovel instead?”

  Tank’s tail started wagging again, which Lucas took as a yes. Once the dog bowl was empty and Lucas had made himself a sandwich—also a poor substitution for sirloin—he threw on a hoodie and grabbed the tall shovel he took down to the shore most evenings. Tank scampered at his heels, and they made their way down the outdoor steps of the beach house. Lucas couldn’t help venturing a glance over the top of the fence, but Jenna and her kids had apparently finished eating dinner. An animated fish was swimming across the television in the living room while Nick and Ally sat on the sofa with a big bowl of popcorn between them.

  Lucas wondered briefly what their mother was up to. For some reason, he kept forgetting that they’d gotten off on the wrong foot—maybe because he admired the close relationship she had with her kids.

  Lucas would have given anything to have that sort of closeness with his father when he’d been growing up. Jenna was obviously very serious about her writing career. Her frequent noise complaints had gotten that message across loud and clear, but she was even more serious about her parenting. Yes, she was a tad on the controlling side. There was no denying that, but he’d also witnessed the easy affection between her, Ally and Nick, and at times it made him feel oddly hollow inside. Wistful.

  But then he’d catch another glimpse of the fence and remember he and Jenna were not interested in each other. Besides, Tank was all he needed.

  The dog yipped and ran circles around Lucas’s feet when they reached the foot of the stairs. Their evening beach ritual was one of the dog’s favorite things.

  “Lookie here, bud. We already found one,” Lucas said as he stepped off the wooden deck onto the cool sand of the dune.

  Tank barked into the empty hole in the ground, his yips echoing in the purple shadows of twilight. Lucas scooped a generous portion of sand back into the hole and tapped it down with the head of his shovel while Tank darted back and forth through the sea oats in search of another hole.

  “Don’t dogs usually dig holes?” Jenna’s voice seemed softer with the eventide, but it was most definitely her. Lucas turned around and saw her lingering at the foot of the stairs with a trash bag in her hands. Of course she was doing chores. She looked past him toward Tank. “I swear it looks like he wants to help you fill them in.”

  Lucas squinted at his dog, dancing merrily around a wide crater in the damp sand closer to the shore. “He does, actually.”

  “Wait.” Jenna tossed the plastic bag into the big, shared trash can on the corner of the deck, kicked off her flip-flops and joined him on the dune. “Seriously?”

  Lucas shrugged. “It’s kind of our thing.”

  He gave the hole he’d just filled in another pat with his shovel, fully expecting her to turn around and head back upstairs. When she stayed put instead, he felt himself smile.

  “It’s for the turtles,” he said by way of explanation.

  She tilted her head, and her hair fell over her shoulder in a dark curtain of beachy waves.

  For one nonsensical second, Lucas wondered what it would be like to reach out and wind a loose curl around his fingertips. A completely irrational notion that he blamed on the full moon shining bright over the ocean’s salty waves.

  “The turtles?” She gave him a slow smile that built with each passing second.

  It happened to be Lucas’s favorite kind of smile. He nodded. “You’ve probably heard the island is a nesting ground for endangered sea turtles. We’re still early in the season, but the eggs will start to hatch soon and when they do, the turtle hatchlings have to crawl from the dune to the ocean. It can be a treacherous journey for a turtle no bigger than a silver dollar.”

  Jenna blinked. “So you and Tank go around filling in holes in the sand every night, so the baby turtles can make it safely to the ocean?”

  Was that really so hard to believe? The island was his home. He loved it with his whole heart. “We might miss a night here and there.”

  She shook her head. “I just…”

  “What?” He speared the shovel into the sand and leaned against it, studying her. She was gaping at him as if he’d just surfed straight into her living room on a loggerhead turtle’s back.

  “Just wow.” Jenna took a deep breath. “That’s so…sweet.”

  “I’m not all bad,” he said.

  He had no clue why he was trying to convince her that he was a decent guy despite his lack of houseplants.

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  Their gazes locked, and for a long moment neither of them said a word. Lucas was so focused on the charged silence that he didn’t notice Tank bounding toward them until the dog planted himself at Jenna’s feet. Before Lucas could stop what was about to happen, Tank gave his coat a hard shake, spraying Jenna with sand.

  She jumped backward, squealing and wiping bits of sand from her white shorts.

  So much for their almost-truce.

  “Sorry about that,” Lucas said, but his apology was drowned out by Nick and Ally calling down from the balcony above them.

  “Mom,” they said in unison.

  “Are you okay?” Ally asked. She sounded like she might be talking around a mouthful of chocolate.

  Jenna glared at Lucas, even though, technically, Tank had been the troublemaker.

  This time.

  “I’m fine,” she said sharply. Then she squared her shoulders, spun on her heel and marched back toward enemy territory.

  After a full week of summer camp, the kids were exhausted. They both slept in the following morning, allowing Jenna to get a few pages written before breakfast. The house seemed too quiet without Ally’s usual morning chatter, so at around eight o’clock Jenna finally tiptoed between their bunk beds and pulled open the curtains.

  “Rise and shine, monkeys! It’s the weekend.” Sunlight streamed into the brightly decorated bedroom.

  It was an awfully cute space, but Jenna was no longer such a fan of the surfboard-themed bunks. She was having very confusing feelings about surfers.

  Nick sat up, rubbing his eyes. “What time is it?”

  Ally groaned. “I’m hungry.”

  “Then I guess we’d better hurry up and figure out what we want to do today. We could go to the sand dunes or the butterfly park?” Jenna glanced back and forth between Nick and Ally. Neither appeared thrilled at her suggestions.

  Nick yawned. “Can’t we just go to the beach?”

  A day at the beach made the most sense, seeing as it was practically right outside their door. But Jenna was really hoping to steer Nick’s thoughts away from his surfing fantasy before it took root.

  “Yeah, I guess we could go to the beach,” she said. But she still wasn’t giving up on the butterfly park. Butterflies, after all, were completely innocuous. “What do you want to do, Ally?”

  Her little girl grinned. “I want to go to the beach.”

  Jenna knew when she was outnumbered. “All right, the beach it is. Let’s do it.”

  An hour later, she was halfway buried in sand—not a butterfly in sight. It wasn’t so bad, really. The ocean shimmered in the morning l
ight, sunshine glinting off the water like scattered gemstones. She closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the warm sun, letting the sound of rushing waves ease the tension in her neck and shoulders. The air smelled like salt and sea—the sweet perfume of her childhood summers.

  Jenna couldn’t believe she’d been at the beach for a week already and this was the first time she’d had a chance to wiggle her toes in the sand. If Ally had her way, she wouldn’t be able to wiggle them much longer, though. She’d already completely buried Jenna from her waist to her ankles, and she’d vowed not to stop until she’d transformed her mother into a sandy mermaid.

  “Wow, you’re doing a really thorough job,” Jenna said.

  Ally patted the sand around her torso more firmly in place as she surveyed her handiwork. Her brow furrowed. “I can still see your toes.”

  “Maybe we should let them breathe a little bit.”

  “Nope. I need another bucket.” Ally plunged her plastic shovel into the sand.

  Jenna laughed, but then she spotted Lucas farther down the beach and grew pensive. “Is that our neighbor out there?”

  Of course it was. He had all the standard Lucas accessories—surfboard, wetsuit and lazy grin, complete with charming dimples. Watching him stand at the water’s edge with foam swirling around his ankles made her heart beat hard for some strange reason.

  Ally squinted at him in the distance and then dumped a fresh load of sand onto Jenna’s feet. “He’s not a criminal, Mom. Why don’t you like him?”

  “What?” Jenna blinked and tore her gaze away from Lucas. “I didn’t say I didn’t like him.”

  Ally scooped more sand into her bucket. “He has to be nice. His dog is nice.”

  Ah, if only such logic could be trusted. “I think owners look like their dogs, sweetie. I’m not sure they act like them.”

  Maybe that was a good thing. She wasn’t sure she wanted her human neighbor pawing through her manuscript.

  On second thought, she definitely didn’t want that.

  But she also didn’t want Ally to think she disliked Lucas because she didn’t. She just disliked his self-purported bachelor lifestyle. Every time she started to cave and think he might be a great guy, she remembered what he’d said about keeping her kids contained.

  I’ll keep my furry kid on this side if you keep your kids on that side.

  What kind of person had a soft spot for baby turtles but didn’t like kids?

  Then again, who built a fence to keep a cute dog off their side of the patio?

  There was more to it than that.

  She needed a barrier around her heart even more than she needed one around her living space. Had the divorce really been four long years ago? Sometimes she felt as tender and wounded as if it had happened yesterday. She felt like she was walking around with her broken heart on display for the entire world to see, and she just needed to hide for a while. To rest. Trying to keep everything in her life in perfect working order was exhausting, and somehow when Lucas was around, Jenna felt more unsettled than ever.

  She didn’t have a thing to feel guilty about but her throat grew thick all the same.

  She swallowed hard and concentrated all her attention on the shells Ally was pressing into the sand around her legs.

  “Where’s my mermaid tail?”

  Lucas shielded his face from the sun with his hand and watched the waves pound the sand. He couldn’t have asked for better surfing conditions. The water was glassy with a fine spray coming off the tops of the waves, breaking in a nice, steady line parallel to the shore.

  All signs pointed toward a great morning, but he should probably act fast. The surf report predicted a stormy afternoon.

  He waded farther into the water, just past the swirl of foam where the sandpipers darted in and out of the surf.

  And then he paused.

  A little boy was coming out of the water, carrying a boogie board. The board had the same shark pattern as the swim trunks Nick wore yesterday at camp. And the boy had the same slender frame that reminded Lucas so much of himself at that age.

  Lucas’s heart gave a little squeeze and before he fully realized what he was doing, he grabbed hold of his board and met the boy at the water’s edge. “Hey buddy, how’s it going? How are your lap times coming?”

  Nick’s answer was flat. Lifeless. “They’re fine.”

  “Fine? What’s that supposed to mean?” Lucas said.

  Nick shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not trying out for swim team anymore.”

  Lucas wasn’t buying it. Nick wouldn’t have asked him for help if making the team wasn’t important to him. “Because you don’t want to, or because you’re afraid to try?”

  Lucas knew a little something about the latter.

  You don’t want to get involved, remember?

  He didn’t…he wouldn’t…but maybe he could just give the kid a pep talk. What harm would that do?

  “Listen,” Nick said, suddenly sounding like a tiny adult. “I know this isn’t your ‘thing.’”

  Ouch. “Did I say that?”

  Nick nodded. “Twice.”

  Guilty as charged. But maybe it wasn’t too late to provide some encouragement.

  Lucas shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “You know, a very wise dude once said ‘you miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.’”

  Nick gave him a blank look. “Is that some sort of Yoda quote?”

  “No. That’s a pretty good guess, but no.” So much for his genius pep talk. “It was Wayne Gretzky.”

  Surely the kid knew who The Great One was.

  “Does he surf?” Nick asked.

  Lucas sighed.

  “That’s not the point. The point is, if you’re interested…” He took a deep breath. Was he really going to do this? “…if my schedule lightens up…”

  “My mom said you don’t have a schedule,” Nick countered.

  Oh, she did, did she? “Your mom doesn’t know everything.”

  Nick let out a laugh.

  “Like I said, I’ve been thinking. If you’re interested, I could give you some pointers.”

  The little boy’s face lit up like it was Christmas morning. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” What had he just gotten himself into? “I mean, don’t get too excited. Just like twenty minutes here and there. Nothing major.”

  “Cool!” Nick bit back a smile and did his best to imitate Lucas’s casual demeanor. “I mean, yeah. Sure. I’d be up for that.”

  If Lucas didn’t know better, he would have thought the boy looked up to him. It wasn’t possible though, was it? He hadn’t given Nick any actual help.

  Yet.

  “All right, we’ll figure it out.” Lucas held up his hand.

  Nick slapped it in a high five.

  Lucas didn’t know what to add at that point. He’d already said more than he’d planned to, and honestly he wasn’t even sure he was up to the task of helping Nick. He’d be better off sticking to things he actually knew a little bit about, like surfing.

  Plus, he had a feeling Jenna might not approve of his offer to give the kid a few pointers. He probably should have cleared it with her first, but it was too late now.

  As he slid past Nick to head back to the water, the boy called after him. “Hey, Lucas?”

  He stopped. What now? Lucas no longer trusted himself to think straight around the poor kid. Next thing he knew, he’d probably be volunteering to coach his swim team in the fall.

  That wasn’t quite what Nick had in mind, though. “Can we maybe not tell my mom about this? I’m not sure she’d like it.”

  Lucas followed Nick’s gaze as he shot a meaningful glance toward the spot on the beach where Jenna was half-buried in the sand. Lucas was so accustomed to seeing her pounding away on her laptop at the picnic table that
he hadn’t noticed her.

  She and Ally were just a stone’s throw away, surrounded by a colorful collection of plastic shovels and buckets. Jenna wore a bright green swimsuit and an elaborately crafted mermaid tail carved out of sand and covered in delicate shells. When she tossed her head back and laughed at something her daughter said, Lucas’s breath caught in his throat. Summer looked good on Jenna Turner.

  Then she glanced his direction and the tender curve of her lips flattened into a straight, unimpressed line. Lucas looked away.

  The kid had a point. After all, Jenna had disliked him so much at first that she’d put up a barrier between them…even if, sometimes, he got the feeling that her opinion of him was changing.

  “Mum’s the word,” he said. “You get it?”

  Nick rolled his eyes at the terrible pun.

  “Sorry, I had to.” Lucas shrugged and it wasn’t until he walked away that he realized what he’d just done.

  He’d made an actual dad joke.

  Chapter Five

  After thinking on it all night, Lucas was convinced that the best way to help Nick with his swim times was to coach him while he was at day camp. Otherwise, Jenna was sure to find out.

  He’d also determined that keeping her out of the loop was probably a mistake. A big one. But he’d already promised Nick he wouldn’t say anything to her about it, and he didn’t want to go back on his word.

  Lucas could help Nick. He knew he could. He also knew what it felt like to be smaller than the rest of the kids his age, to be slower. Always a step behind.

  So even though he knew it was probably a terrible idea, he showed up at camp bright and early the next morning with a stopwatch around his neck and a plan to get Nick going a little faster.

  “All right, now to strengthen your stroke you need to learn to swim like a surfer.” Lucas glanced down at the middle lane of the swimming pool and back up at Nick.

  The boy’s slim arms dangled at his sides. “Seriously?”

  Okay, maybe that wasn’t the most useful advice for someone who didn’t know how to surf. “Just focus on shortening the number of strokes it takes for you to get to the end of the pool, and I promise it’ll help you catch lots of waves.”