The Red Bikini (16 page)

And she wanted to have sex with him.

That last thought almost caused her to knock the sugar holder over. She’d never admitted anything like that to herself—having been the perfect girlfriend, then the perfect wife and perfect mother for so long, she’d never allowed herself to think about sex with anyone but Roy. But
yes
—she wanted to have sex with an almost-stranger.

She glanced at his tanned hands, which lay languidly on the dark-wood table, and thought about how they would feel running down her naked hip. . . . She took a gulp of air and hoped Fin couldn’t tell that her heart was nearly pounding out of her chest.

“This sounds dangerous, Giselle,” he said, low.

She moved her silverware around while she garnered the nerve to tell him what she wanted. Now that she knew, the next step was saying it.

“Lia
thinks
she knows what I want. She—and everyone, really; my mom and Noelle and my friends—they all seem to know what I ‘need’ these days. They tell me I
need
to rekindle a career; I
need
to move back out here to California; I
need
to meet a nice new man; I
need
a more involved father for Coco. . . .” Her mouth went dry, and she took a long sip of iced tea. “But I’m so tired of everyone else telling me what I need, or what I should do. They don’t know what I need.” She let out a long breath. It felt good to say that part out loud. She hadn’t been able to share that with anyone. It felt like a yoke had been lifted off her shoulders.

Fin was nodding, turning his water glass between his palms. “Are they wrong?”

It wasn’t a challenge. It wasn’t a criticism. It was pure, unadulterated interest. It had been so long since anyone had asked her such a question, asked what she really needed, or what she wanted—maybe even dating back to high school, or college, when she was first mapping out her adult life—that she didn’t even know how to answer. She met the ocean blue of his eyes, filled with actual
concern,
and felt a flutter deep in her stomach.

“There are differences between needs and wants,” she said.

Fin gave her a sad smile. “And I’ll bet you go after the needs, but ignore the wants.”

She shrugged. She supposed that was true. But that was the responsible way to live, right?

He moved the candle to the side. “I think I’m interested in hearing your wants right now,” he said in a voice that went suddenly husky.

Giselle took a deep breath and thought about this for a second. She wanted Fin. Right now. But she also wanted, maybe, someday, to get married again. And those two things weren’t on the same brass ring.

“Long-term or short-term?” she asked.

He gave her a long, slow smile. “Long-term. But I might be interested in your short-term answer, too.”

“You might be involved in the short-term answer.” As soon as the words left her lips, she marveled at them. She couldn’t remember ever saying anything so direct, so flirtatious, and here she was, saying them to this man who made her hands shake. And her hand didn’t even flutter to cover her mouth. And the world didn’t fall apart. In fact, the world seemed to open up. He moved back a fraction of an inch and eyed her with what looked like playfulness. She felt a huge surge of . . .
relief
, strangely. Relief that this blunt directness felt so good. Emboldened, she sat up in her chair.

But the playfulness she’d seen flash in Fin’s eyes turned to sadness. He twisted his water glass. “Unfortunately, I might need the long-term answer first,” he said.

The waitress arrived with their dinners, and he leaned back to let her place their plates in front of them. They each had two enormous fish tacos, wrapped in paper cones, with cabbage and tomatoes spilling out onto the plate. Red, white, and blue tortilla chips covered the other side, presumably as part of the upcoming Independence Day celebration.

“Are you Fin Hensen?” the waitress asked, as she let go of his plate.

He gave a brief nod.

“Oh, wow. Could you sign something for me?” She searched her waist apron.

“No problem, but I’m on . . .” He glanced at Giselle. “I’m on a date right now. How about if we do this after?”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely.” She looked at Giselle. “Absolutely. When I bring the check.” She flashed a huge set of teeth at Fin.

Once she left, Giselle smiled. “So we’re on a
date
now?”

Fin was already scanning his plate for the best place to dig in to his meal. “It sometimes keeps another ten people from funneling past our table.”

“Ah.”

Although she knew he threw the word in there as a ploy, she still felt a vague comfort in the fact that he wasn’t embarrassed to call her a date. Especially to a pretty young waitress he could’ve snagged instead. Her confidence went up another notch, and she tucked her hair behind her ear.

“Do you date much?” she asked.

“Probably not your definition of ‘date.’”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t date one person with the idea they’ll be in my future. Sharing my life with someone isn’t in the cards for me. I ask women out to have sex.”

Giselle blinked against the assault of honesty and reached for her tea.

“Sorry,” he said, low. “Sad but true.”

“Why do you assume sharing your life with someone isn’t in the cards for you?”

“I travel forty weeks out of the year, Giselle. I can’t even own a turtle, let alone have a girlfriend. It’s easier to just live a week at a time, with no responsibilities. That’s sad but true also.” He threw her a smile to try to make the comment ironic, but somehow too much sadness remained in his eyes.

“Do you like surfing, then, because it’s so independent? You like living life alone, on your own terms?”

He thought that over. “No. I love surfing because it’s . . .
surfing
.” The word held a sort of breathless wonder the way he said it.

She couldn’t imagine loving something that much, except Coco. She followed his gaze toward the ocean and wondered what it felt like, what could be the pull for so many people like Fin and Rabbit and Kino and the others. “What’s it like?”

He shifted and picked up his water glass. “Maybe you can try it while you’re here.”

“No.”

“Rabbit’s a pretty good teacher, and so am I. We’ve got several boards between us—he can even let you try on one of the kids’ foam boards.”

“No!”

He stared at her over the rim of his glass. “That was emphatic.”

“Yes, I’m very emphatic about that. But tell me: What’s it like? Is it like sex?”

She didn’t know what made her blurt that out—it was either his openness earlier, or his sexy eyes half-lidded over this flickering candle, or something, but she let it escape her lips before she could recapture it.

His face registered surprise before dissolving into an I-was-just-discovered kind of grin. “There
is
an element of that, yes.”

“Ah, so did I just stumble upon the massive surfer secret? The thing that makes legions of twenty-year-olds go out and chase the surf?”

He laughed. “You might have. There
are
some comparisons.”

“So tell me.”

He sighed and looked around the room, but then shook his head. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

He took another bite of his taco while he thought that over—maybe deciding how much he wanted to say.

“There
is
a kind of high to it. A ‘stoke.’ If all the conditions are exactly right—the wind is right, the wave is right, you’re the right one in the lineup to catch it, you chose the right board that day—if all that is ideal, sometimes you’re rewarded with an incredible ride. You have to be subservient to Mother Nature, though, which is unlike other sports. But when Mother Nature delivers you that perfect rise, you know it. You see the rise, and you know it’s got some face, and you get in there, and you hear that
whoosh
of wind right up the wall of the wave, and your board catches, and you find that hollow and start to fly. And the rest of the world falls away. It’s just you, and the ride, and the massive ocean, and nothing else.”

Giselle’s face went hot. It did sound a little like sex. Although not the kind of sex she’d had in a long time.

She cleared her throat. “So that’s what surfers chase? The perfect wave?”

“Well, the perfect moments. There’s not just one. You can have lots of them. Surfers will give up careers, relationships, homes, jobs, just to spend their days chasing those moments. One good stoke can last you a long time. You can mind-surf it for days.”

“Mind-surf it?”

“Relive it in your mind.”

“But then you’ll chase the next one,” she said.

“Yeah.” He nodded, almost sad. “Yeah, there’s always a next one.”

They both ate in silence for a moment.

“I don’t know how the hell you get me to talk so much, Giselle.” He laughed and dipped his chips in the salsa. “But now we’re going to talk about you—spill it. Long-term wants and short-term. Long-term first.”

“Why do you want long-term first?”

His eyes lifted up toward her without moving his head. “Depending on your answer there, I might not be able to hear the short-term.”

“What do you mean?”

“As enjoyable as I think your short-term wants might be—and as much as I’d like to help you out there—I’m guessing your long-term answer involves some of those things your sister wants for you—a nice, stable guy; maybe marriage again; maybe a father for Coco; at the very least, maybe a guy who can take you out for dinner without wanting to get you into bed before dessert. And I can’t give you any of those things. Which is why Lia would be pissed that you were spending time with me instead of going on your date with Dan Manfield.”

Giselle caught her breath at his brutal directness and took another sip of tea to cool herself. “Maybe Lia’s not paying attention to what I want short-term.”

“I’m sure it’s because she cares about you, and doesn’t want you to get hurt.”

Giselle eyed her plate. Despite the fact that Fin was turning her down for things she wasn’t even admitting to him, maybe he was right. Maybe Lia wasn’t trying to be pitying, or overbearing. Maybe her mom and Noelle weren’t trying to direct her life or save her from “ruin.” Maybe they all just cared about her, and their advice was meant to help, not to take over because they thought she was incompetent.

She picked up a red chip and nibbled on it. “I don’t think you would hurt me.”

Fin froze. Without taking his eyes off hers, his throat worked a few times. It felt like an eternity before he spoke. “I’m trying not to,” he said, his voice a rasp.

“Everything okay here?” the waitress interrupted in a much-too-chirpy tone.

Fin cleared his throat and nodded without looking up at her.

Giselle nodded her own agreement until the waitress went away, and then moved some food around on her plate. She wanted to spend more time with him—and would love to go to his event the next night instead of going out with Dan Manfield—but he was clearly not going to go there. The fact that he was citing Lia as the main obstacle seemed a little silly but, at the same time, his love and respect for Lia filled her with warmth. It was such a contrast to what she’d been dealing with for the last ten years with Roy, who couldn’t stand her sisters. And she couldn’t begrudge Fin the attempt to act with what he thought of as honor.

In fact, it made her want him all the more. . . .

“So you don’t want to know my short-term wants, then?” she asked.

“Was I wrong about the long-term ones?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then no.”

Giselle sighed. Darn. Maybe if she lowered her expectations, wanted less . . .

“Maybe my short-term wants are simpler than you think. Maybe they just involve gaining a little confidence.”

He eyed her suspiciously and then went back to his plate. “Define ‘gaining confidence.’”

“Learning to surf.”

He choked on his taco and had to swallow several sips of water. “I was under the impression you were afraid of the water.”

“Where did you get that impression?”

“Your emphatic reply about two minutes ago. And Rabbit.”

“I think you and Rabbit are doing too much discussing of me when I’m not around.”

He gave her another grin. “That’s probably too damned true. So am I wrong about your fear of the water?”

She wanted to say yes, but . . . “No,” she admitted. “Lia says I should learn to be unafraid of the ocean, so I don’t inhibit Coco.”

“I would agree with that.”

“So I think you could help me out there.”

Skepticism carved a line between his brows. “Okay . . .”

“Lia also tells me I need to learn to be more confident meeting new people. I’d love to go to your event tomorrow. I think that would help. If I could help you out, that would bolster my confidence.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And . . .”

Fin wiped his hands on his napkin and waited.

Giselle shrugged and moved her taco around, trying to garner her courage.

“And what?” Fin prompted.

She stared at a blue chip and forced the words out: “Maybe I want a little summer fling.”

There. She said it.
Having gotten the words out, she felt another surge of bravado—even enough to glance up to see his reaction.

Which was . . . impassive at best.

He cocked his head to one side and squinted at her. “And what exactly is involved in your idea of a ‘fling’?”

“Maybe . . .” She shifted in her chair and leaned forward to whisper. “Maybe
casual sex
?” The words sounded foreign coming from her lips.

Fin sat back and stared without much emotion. “Is this the part I’m involved in?” He didn’t seem too happy about it.

“Well . . . if you’d
like
.”

Fin shook his head. “Giselle, you’re not getting what I’m saying. What I’d
like
is not on the table here. What I’d
like
is to bring you back to my place and strip that dress off you and do amazing things to you in my bed. But, despite what you say you want, Lia would see this as taking advantage of you, or using you—
hurting
you—and she’d never speak to me again.”