by Nancy Warren
Kate taught another surf lesson at four. This time, her students were two women who’d decided it would be fun to try surfing. They were both somewhere in their forties and seemed to take as much delight in laughing at themselves and at each other as they did in the lesson.
They weren’t particularly athletic or competitive, unlike her last student.
One made it to her feet for a short run, the other spent more time falling off her board than staying on it, but Kate could see they were having fun, so she tried to help them a little bit and make sure nobody drowned.
They gave her a generous tip at the end of the lesson and thanked her for a fantastic day.
With the surf falling fast and the day ending, she knew there’d be no more lessons today.
She wished suddenly that she had some friends here. The pair of laughing women had made her realize how alone she was here.
She could drop by the surfers’ bar and hang out with a group who lived to ride the waves and talked of nothing else. But she had no one to call on the spur of the moment and say, “let’s go grab dinner, or see a movie,” or any one of a hundred other things.
Her isolation pretty much assured that she’d be eating one of her dinners for one and trying not to think about Nick sitting in a nice restaurant alone. Waiting for her.
She changed into active wear since teaching surfing wasn’t exactly a heavy workout, and took herself for a long run on the beach. The sun was setting as she pounded her way along the packed sand, dodging the odd family building a sand castle, a puddle here and there. She loved the sunsets, the slow build as dusk smudged the horizon pink and purple and then the sun began to drop, glowing redder, color expanding until the whole sky blushed.
Her run didn’t bring the peace that it usually did but at least the exercise burned off some of her nervous energy.
She walked the final half a mile home, letting her breathing settle back to normal. On the deck off her living room, she stretched, enjoying the last of the sunset. Then she went inside.
Her apartment was fine for a vacation rental but it lacked a certain hominess.
She contemplated her dinner options and didn’t feel like any of them.
Instead, she poured and drank a large glass of water, then a second. She stripped, turned on the shower and indulged in a long, hot shower. She washed her hair, then she shaved. While she had one foot resting on the edge of the tub and the razor scraping the light stubble from her lower legs, she noticed that her pedicure was in sad shape.
Of course, she’d been booked for the works, but had cancelled. Now she thought she should not let herself go simply because she’d discovered her fiancé wasn’t the man she’d believed he was.
A woman didn’t groom herself for a man, as any woman who’d read a single self-help book knew. She kept herself looking nice for herself.
“Tomorrow,” she promised her feet. Tomorrow she’d find a salon that offered manicures and pedicures.
By the time she’d blown her hair dry, moisturized every inch of her skin with the organic body lotion that smelled like coconuts, she felt better. Good, actually.
She slipped into a jean skirt—because she was getting bored of wearing jeans all the time—and a sleeveless cotton top. A glance at the wall clock showed it was seven o’clock.
Seven o’clock and Nick would be entering Mancini’s around now.
Would he glance around, hoping to see her? Maybe walk back outside and check up and down the street for her?
“Oh, as if,” she snapped aloud. And then she picked up the TV remote and flipped on the TV.
She flicked over a few channels and saw nothing but commercials and one of those awful fight channels. She flipped the TV off again.
She had books to read.
She had her laptop. She could spend some time looking for jobs. And, now she wasn’t marrying Ted, she didn’t even have to stay in the LA area. In fact, maybe it would be good for her to take a job in a different part of the country. She nibbled her bottom lip. She’d rediscovered her passion for surfing. That narrowed down the places where she was willing to relocate.
The clock mounted on an old surfboard told her it was twelve minutes past seven. The sight of the surfboard swept her back into the moment when Nick had kissed her. She licked her lips as though she could still taste him.
He’d be sipping a beer now, or a cocktail. Maybe he was sampling a glass of wine. He was probably perusing the menu, getting a fairly good idea at this point that his meal was going to be a solo one.
Unless he tried to pick up some poor woman at the restaurant.
She wandered back into the bathroom, pulled out her make-up bag. She didn’t consciously realize she was getting ready to go out until she’d finished her eye makeup and was slicking her lips with a rich plum lipstick that the tube informed her was called Courtesan.
What Nick needed, she realized, as she threw on a sweater and pushed her feet into sandals, was a good talking to.
She was only five minutes’ walk from the restaurant and so was there before seven-thirty.
She hovered outside for a moment, since the big garage door things were open to the street and she could see inside perfectly clearly. If he was at the bar yucking it up with a stranger—no doubt a female one—then she’d keep walking and find another restaurant where she’d treat herself to dinner.
However, when she spotted Nick, he wasn’t at the bar. He was at a table for two, sitting alone. As she’d guessed, he was sipping a cocktail.
What surprised her was that a second menu sat at the place across from him and he hadn’t let the server remove the place setting.
Did he believe she was a sure thing?
He raised his head and glanced around and for a moment she felt a kind of wanting coming off him. Not the cocky lady-killing attitude she usually felt, but almost a genuine sense of hope fading. She saw him glance at his watch and believed his shoulders slummed the tiniest bit.
She strode into the restaurant through the main door, walked to his table and sat down.
If he’d believed she wouldn’t show, he now hid it pretty well.
“You look fantastic,” he said to her as though her actually being here didn’t require comment. He also didn’t mention that she was half an hour late.
“Thank you.”
A waiter materialized at that moment and she ordered a glass of wine.
“Are you hungry?” Nick asked as they both considered the dinner options.
“Starving,” she said. And to her surprise, it was true. She ordered a salad to start and then a pasta dish with fresh seafood. Amazingly, in spite of the trauma of a broken engagement, a mother’s betrayal, and the fact that no one had officially canceled her wedding yet, she was starting to get her appetite back. The burning in her stomach hit a few times when anger surprised her, boiling up out of her depths, fiery and painful. But it wasn’t a constant irritation such as she’d experienced in the past couple of months.
She was out having dinner with a very attractive man. It occurred to her in that moment that if she wanted to ruin her chances of ever marrying Ted then sleeping with Nick would be the fastest, most efficient way to do that.
She had no need to go to elaborate lengths to remove her from the suitable bride for a Carnarvon list.
One simple act would take care of it.
She glanced over at Nick. He was watching her and the expression in his eyes pulled at her, made her want things
She dropped her gaze to her menu.
Once they’d ordered she leaned forward. “Tell me your story. The real one this time.”
“I’m more interested in yours.”
She snorted. “You are a private eye, and if the Carnarvons hired you then you are good. So good you already know everything there is to know about me. Because they always make sure they get their money’s worth.”
“Does that include you?” He challenged her, holding her gaze deliberately.
“You bet it does. I was an asset.�
�� She hadn’t realized it until after the awful night when she’d thrown her ring back in Ted’s face, but she’d been as much a part of the big picture for their family firm as the latest brewery deal. She was from a good family, she had no skeletons in her personal closet. She’d always been a good girl. And she supposed she’d have matured into a good woman. She’d look good on Ted’s arm, never embarrass him or his family, bear his children and, she supposed, they’d have found a way to ease her out of her job into a fundraising opportunity at a more prestigious charity. She wanted to believe they’d never have succeeded, but she wasn’t so sure.
Her lip curled at the notion.
“You didn’t seem so cynical last time we met.”
“Recent events have made me cynical about a lot of things. Like every word you told me at dinner the other night.”
“Most of what I told you was true.”
“Define ‘most of.’”
“Kate...”
“You lied about your profession, a pretty big part of a person’s life.”
“Not exactly a lie. I do work for an insurance company.”
She raised her eyebrows.
He grinned, acknowledging her skepticism. “I’m on retainer. I investigate a lot of insurance fraud. But the business card I gave you is genuine.” Then he sipped his drink. Regarded her. “Okay. Ask me anything.”
“Is your name really Nick?”
“Yes.”
“Are you married?”
“Oh, come on. Would I have come down to try and find you if I was married?”
“Probably. If Ted’s family paid you enough.”
“I am not apologizing for that. I was doing my job. And, as I’ve told you, I’m not here for the Carnarvons. I’m here for you.”
She tried to explain how she felt about him doing his job. “If I were defrauding an insurance company or cheating on my spouse, I could understand you following me and gathering evidence. But what you did? To try and tempt an engaged woman to betray her fiancé? That’s...” She trailed off, unable to come up with the right word.
“Contemptible. I know.” He took one of the bread rolls from the basket that had just been delivered and broke it in half, more, she thought, because he wanted to break something than that he wanted to eat the bread. “I wouldn’t have taken the job. I’ve never done anything like that and really thought it sucked. But I went to college with Ted and his family has given me a lot of business over the years. So I said yes. Against my better judgment.”
It was hard to stay angry with someone who owned up that what they’d done was contemptible. And he was right, that was exactly the right word for the way he’d tried to trap her. Or, to be more precise, the way Ted and his family had tried to lure her into indiscretion. To prove she was a worthy wife for Ted. She couldn’t even think about their behavior—never mind her own mother’s—so she turned her focus back on Nick. “So, you’re not married.”
“No.”
“Ever been married?”
“No.”
“Ever come close?”
He shook his head. “Never met the right girl at the right time, I guess.”
“I believe you said that you and Ted were roommates in college.”
“That’s right.”
“So you’re rich too?”
He grinned. “Not even in the same league. There was a bequest from my grandfather, scholarships. Summer jobs.”
Her salad came and she picked up her fork. “Am I like the girls Ted used to date in college?”
There was no hesitation. He said, “No.”
“You must have been surprised when you met me.”
“Honestly? I thought he finally got it right. What I mean is, Ted dated women who seem like you on the surface. Society girls, trust fund babies, women his family would like, but they were all awful. Every one. Cold and entitled. I thought you’d be exactly like that. But you’re not. You are so different.”
“What if Ted hadn’t hired you? I mean, what if you and I had ended up in that restaurant purely by coincidence, and Ted hadn’t set up a fake appointment, but truly had to leave and I’d stayed behind. Would you have moved in on me?”
“Definitely. I probably wouldn’t have been so pushy about it, but I’d have tried to get to know you better.”
“Even once you’d found out I was engaged?”
He leaned forward again. “Here’s what I witnessed. And please remember that I’m trained to interpret visuals. I saw a man more interested in tasting his wine and gulping down his foie gras than he was in the woman sitting across from him. I saw a woman picking at her food as though she wasn’t tasting it. The body language was not that of lovers. I’m sorry, but that’s what I witnessed.”
How sad that was. She couldn’t argue with his perceptions. “You don’t think Ted loves me?”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about Ted. But I don't think you love him.”
Chapter Ten