“I’ve gotta get going.” I hooked a thumb in the direction of my SUV. “I need to swing by Mona’s to get a replacement leash before she closes, but I promise I’ll give your stuff a listen after dinner. I’ll email you later tonight. Will that work for you?”
Tasha smiled and nodded enthusiastically. And Mr. Protective even relaxed a little. I remembered the days when the guys and I had been as revved up about our music. For me it had once filled the void between hookup after meaningless hookup. But it didn’t have that power for me anymore. Nothing did.
Chapter Two
* * *
Karen
“Where you off to, Sunshine?”
“To work Daddy. I’m covering for Simone at the surf shop, remember?”
“That’s right.” He nodded and scratched the top of his head, mussing what little of his grey hair that remained. The way he studied me, squinting hazel eyes like my own over the rim of his glasses, he reminded me of one of my Yale professors from my college days. “You wearing a bikini top to work?”
“No. I’m going to catch a few waves first.” I grabbed one of the slices of bread as soon as it popped up from the toaster. My dad slid the two eggs he had been frying onto the plate and turned off the burner. Moving the empty pan to the back of the stovetop he turned toward me. The wistful expression he wore gave my heart a pang.
“Wish I could go with you.”
“I wish you could, too.” He was the one who had taught me how to surf. I missed him beside me out on the waves, missed the conversations on our walks to the beach. But the memory lapses he had been having lately made it unsafe for him on the ocean. At my mom’s insistence, he had reluctantly given up surfing. She saw how it pained him, but since his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, she had become increasingly protective. Through good times and bad, they remained constant to each other, the affection between them as strong as ever. I knew that she was doing what she thought was best. “I love you, Daddy.” I wrapped my arms around his only slightly soft middle and laid my head on his shoulder feeling more settled about my decision to come home to Ocean Beach.
“I love you, too. But stay a minute,” he cajoled. “You’re always in motion nowadays. Eat one of the eggs I made. You’re too thin, and I only want one anyway. Let’s just talk the way we used to.” My chest squeezed tight with regret and guilt, twin emotions that were my constant companions.
“I’m sorry, Daddy.” I took a step backward. “Sure, I’ll have one. I love your eggs.” I pulled out a chair from the weathered kitchen table that bore the evidence of my childhood, including teeth marks on one end from my terrible twos. As an only child, I had been lavished with love, but I had always wished I could have shared the affection my parents focused on me with a sibling. But like so many others, that wish never came to pass.
Sweeping sorrowful thoughts aside, I took a seat across the table from my dad. We ate and made small talk, yet I savored every word knowing the man whose love and wise counsel I had always relied upon was slowly slipping away. After I helped him clean up the kitchen, I hugged him again, braided my hair and stepped into the garage. Towel around my waist, I shimmied out of my shorts and bikini bottom and slid into my wet suit. Stowing the clothing and my towel in my black and pink Roxy backpack, I threw it over one shoulder and removed my favorite powder pink and lime green surfboard from the rack on the wall. I used the control panel to close the garage door. Flip flops snapping with eagerness, they ate up the sidewalk as I headed downhill toward Sunset Cliffs. The residential streets I navigated lay quiet, the craftsman bungalows, the Cape Cod clapboard houses and the Spanish style ones with Mediterranean influences still asleep as I passed by them. The fronds of the palms rustled softly forty feet overhead in the predawn breeze. The star jasmine clinging to fences and walls clotted the humid air with its rich floral fragrance. My thoughts inevitably slid backward on the long walk to the water from my house, but too many ghosts haunted the pier for me to contemplate taking the shorter path there.
The dramatic bluffs and arches at the cliffs remained indistinct shadows in the low light rather than colorful like a russet sunset when I reached them. I kept to the designated path heeding the warning signs about the crumbly footing along the edge. At the staircase down to the water, I grasped the steel handrail, wet with dew in my grip and cold like lost dreams. I descended the steep stairs, the surfboard awkward in the tight space and the concrete unyieldingly hard beneath the thin soles of my flip flops. The roar of the ocean chastened me for my caution, tempting me to take the steps two or three at a time.
When I finally made it to the bottom, the sun broke free, turning the sky from grainy grey to a sugary cotton candy pink. The expanse of the Pacific filled my vision as far as my eyes could see, and the boom of the surf soothed me the way nothing else in my life currently could. I filled my lungs with deep draughts of briny air and scrambled quickly over the slabs of uneven rocks. I set my board down on a flat sandstone outcropping, slipped off my shoes and dropped my bag. A moment later I had my ankle leash fastened. I lowered myself into the ocean, wading into deeper water with my board floating amiably beside me. I scanned the horizon, not surprised that only a few other hardcore types had preceded me. Boards pointed toward the deep ocean, legs dangling off the sides, they bobbed on the surface like seals in their dark wetsuits. All guys today as usual. I would have to wait my turn for a decent ride. Still a little wary of the interloper in their all boys club, nonetheless they gave me lifted chins of grudging respect once I started carving up the waves. I might not be as fluid on the water as I had once been before a move to New York City to take a position with Roxy’s East Coast Division eight long, lonely years ago, but after surfing every single day for over a month I was getting there.
I ducked my head into a large wave as it crested over me. Surfacing on the other side, completely drenched, I blinked the salt from my eyes and my worries from my mind. I scrambled into position on my board. If the surf cooperated, I planned to attempt a full air rotation. I was pretty confident I could pull it off. Though there hadn’t been any waves in Manhattan, there were plenty of skate parks. I had taken to skateboarding religiously needing the physical outlet to cope with the nearly paralyzing anxiety that had plagued me whenever Dominic had been away. Well, he was gone forever now. Nothing remained but my regret and guilt. Since I wasn’t allowing myself the option of drowning myself in wine anymore, surfing would be my therapy. It would have to do. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from searching for him on the waves.
• • •
It had been a long day at the surf shop. I puffed the long blonde strand of hair that had escaped my French braid out of my eyes and squinted at the Billabong East of Eden shoebox. The size on it was difficult to read from where it sat on the wall mounted shelf a couple of feet above me. “Dammit,” I huffed, wishing I had my readers with me so I could see the small print better. “I knew it. Shit,” I muttered under my breath. “It’s a nine not an eight.” Going up on the tips of my toes on the very top of the ladder, I reshuffled the two troublesome boxes, moving the size eight below the size nine. I cursed Lincoln Savage under my breath. With him and my friend out of town to promote their new song for the Donovan Blaine film, I labored alone on the ladder rearranging inventory all day. It was his brilliant idea to group all of the shoes together by size instead of by brand, style and then size. Simone should have left things the old way, the right way, the way it had been when I had owned the surf shop.
Ravenous from reorganizing all day with frighteningly few customers to interrupt my dusty toil, I fantasized about a huge Hodad’s burger. I would scarf it down on the walk home. Once there, I would slink quietly upstairs to my room for a long hot shower. Since my mom and dad lounged together on the sofa most evenings watching the television, I would have to be stealthy to avoid another uncomfortable discussion about how badly I had mishandled my life by quitting my high paying Roxy job and returning to Ocean Beach. A revised version of the speech they had given me wh
en I had run away from OB all those years ago.
The bell to the shop jingled, distracting me from my daydream.
“Welcome to Mona’s,” I chirped, lowering my feet back into the bed of my flip flops and retracting my outstretched arm. “If there’s anything you need…” I began, attempting to swivel around on my precarious perch. “I’d be happy to….” The stepladder didn’t cooperate, rocking side to side beneath me. “Ahhh!” I cried. The traitorous ladder went one way, and I went the other, flapping my arms like a seagull caught in a violent gale. The scalloped hem of my Rip Curl strapless white top fluttered as the ground rushed up to meet me. I squeezed my eyes shut and braced for impact.
Only…it never came.
Someone caught me.
Someone solid.
Someone strong.
Chapter Three
* * *
Karen
I latched onto the steely arms that banded me and opened my eyes to the one who had a history of softening my falls.
Ramon Martinez.
Though it had been ages since I had last seen him, my reaction was much the same as it had been the last time we had been alone together.
My thoughts scattered.
My throat burned.
And that familiar hollow yearning echoed inside the long-abandoned chambers of my broken heart.
Held by him almost like a lover, I searched his features relearning them all. Same tumbled black curls. Same strong nose and stubborn jaw. Same arresting gaze, his eyes the color of dark chocolate, another weakness of mine. His skin seemed a deeper bronze. Maybe a couple of new lines around his eyes. But they only made him look more interesting. More intriguing.
“Karen.” Ramon spoke my name firmly, his visage fierce like some Aztec warrior. His expression tightened as I continued to stare at him silently. “Are you hurt?” Concern narrowed thickly lashed sinfully dark eyes.
I shook my head, but apparently he wasn’t convinced. His examining gaze slid over me, starting at my feet. I wiggled my toes realizing my flip flops were gone, jettisoned somewhere during my plummet from the ladder. His perusal lingered on the length of my legs before it passed over my narrow hips and my favorite pair of frayed cutoffs that hung indecently low. His gaze continued north and came to a brief halt at my chest. My breasts swelled beneath my top as if he had actually shaped them in his hands. My nipples hardened. A warm surge swept through my body, an electrical current sparked by the heat of my desire. How little it took to bring those desires for Ramon Martinez roaring back to life.
“Everything looks…fine.” His voice scraped like sandpaper on a rough piece of timber. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. The tendons on either side of his neck drew visibly taut. He returned his piercing gaze to mine crumbling my thoughts. “You’re sure you’re ok?”
“No…I mean yes.” I couldn’t focus. He held me in thrall. I begged my brain to reboot, but it was as uncooperative as the ladder had been.
“Just in shock from the fall or perhaps from seeing me,” he guessed.
“Yes, exactly,” I breathed. “It’s been a while.” Every time the shop bell had jingled since I returned to OB, I had tensed wondering if it might be him. But I had let down my guard after Simone had informed me that Ramon had gone to Hawaii with Diesel.
“I’m glad that’s all it is. I’m surprised to see you, too. Surprised to catch you.” His biceps bulged beneath my fingertips as his arms tightened around me. “It’s not safe for you to be up on a ladder when no one is around.” His expression sharpened, revealing his displeasure.
“You shaved your beard,” I blurted, ignoring the reprimand, my attention diverted by the rugged planes of his handsome face and his sculpted lips. Oh, those luscious lips that curved up at the edges even when he wasn’t smiling. It had been something of a crime that the scruffy beard he had worn during the last Grammys had concealed them.
“I can’t even begin to guess what that has to do with your safety.” He arched a disapproving brow. “Karen, you could have been seriously injured.” I might be easily sidetracked, but he certainly wasn’t.
“Maybe,” I allowed. “But…”
“No maybe about it, if I hadn’t been here.” He frowned, his lips turning down at the edges. “Where’s Simone?”
“In LA with Linc and Ash.” My skin felt feverishly hot everywhere his touched mine. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. My pulse roared through my veins. Other parts of me awoke, reminding me that it had been a long, long time since I’d had sex. “I’m just helping her out while they’re doing PR stuff for the Blaine film. They’re hoping their song being in the movie will help promote Outside, their new record label.” I blathered inanely about things I’m sure he already knew, my tongue as out of control as my libido. His handsome face. His lean body. His strong arms. I wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to experience all of those things in a more intimate way. I found myself wishing he would do wild, wicked things to me like I had watched him do to the groupies over the years.
Those musings should have given me pause. I should have gotten on my proverbial surfboard and cutback hard. But I didn’t because I had grown accustomed to living in yesterday as if it were some idyllic Eden. Forever Eve, my Adam gone now, Ramon remained, as he always would be, the forbidden fruit. As that sobering wave of self-awareness crashed over me, I should have insisted he put me down, but I found myself burrowing closer to him instead.
“I didn’t know you were back in town.” I tried to find a neutral topic.
“I could say the same thing about you.” His voice dropped a sexy octave lower.
Was he holding me tighter? Was he caught in the same rip current of longing? Could he possibly feel the same desperate desire? A few times over the years I thought he might have. Most times I just didn’t know. I wet my parched lips. His chocolatey rich gaze dipped to them.
“Hey, surfer girl,” he whispered. That simple endearment spoken with a hint of his Latino flare was all it took to fully awaken the passionate woman I had once been. How easily he summoned her. How pathetically predictable.
Had he lowered his head? His mouth seemed closer. His warm breath bathed my lips. I crushed the front of his shirt in my hands, not to push him away, but to draw him nearer.
“Ramon,” I sighed. “Please…don’t…” Don’t stop, I had been about to say, but he set me down so fast my head spun. I wobbled on unsteady legs as my bare feet hit the cold floor. He stepped away, giving me his back and putting several feet of distance between us. It would take more than that amount of meager space to keep my heart from seeking his. It would take more than the length of time that we had been apart. It would take more than I could ever allow him to know. My eyes burned as I stared at the stiff line of his spine and the forbidding width of his muscular shoulders. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and I knew his jaw would be tense if I could see his face. Humiliation set my cheeks on fire. I realized that even now, even though this was nearly an exact replay of the past, I still wanted to ask. I still wanted to beg. I still wanted…him.
Unable to resist Ramon Martinez yet again.
I had wanted him the first time I had met him when I had been only nineteen. I had wanted him when I had been married to his best friend. I wanted him even now though I knew Dominic’s specter would always stand between us to make what I wanted always wrong for me.
I pressed my lips together, swallowing back the words. If I voiced my deepest desire I would drive him off again. Three years of nothing but chance encounters that made my heart shrivel and plunged my soul into a suffocating slumber.
I couldn’t do it anymore.
“I’m sorry.” I reached my decision as I watched him rake back a handful of unruly curls. His spine seemed to snap even straighter before he let me off the hook.
“It’s ok.”
“It’s not. It’s my fault.” I could douse the lust. I could. If I tried really hard. It was my heart that would be tricky. “I just…” I tra
iled off finding it difficult to speak. The pressure of tears built behind my eyes as I crammed all of the feelings back inside their customary closet. “It won’t happen again. I’ll promise if you want me to. Only don’t go. Don’t shut me out again.”
• • •
Ramon
“Karen,” I began, keeping my gaze on the storefront window, tracing the etched glass that spelled ‘Mona’s’ with my eyes when I would much rather have traced every single one of her sexy curves instead. Holding her had been heaven and hell. It had brought back so many memories. If I turned around and looked at her, I would say things I should never say. Express feelings I knew she would never accept. I would gather her close without the excuse of rescuing her from a fall. I would kiss those sweet raspberry flavored lips of hers. I would coax. I would seduce. I would coerce her into more. And that would be a mistake because she would only end up hating herself and resenting me. “You’re better off with me out of your life,” I concluded. The barbed words ripped away flesh, bone and pieces of my heart from the center of my chest.
(Complete Rock Stars, Surf and Second Chances #1-5) Page 30