The Red Bikini (8 page)

She dabbed at her eyes with the paper napkin. He was right. This was no time to fall apart. She lifted her eyelashes to one of the surfboards hanging from the ceiling to let the tears well back down. Criminy, what was the matter with her? She didn’t even know this guy. And here she was, crying all over her tacos.

“Let’s talk about something else.” His voice was laced with desperation.

She nodded again.

“You steer—what do you feel comfortable talking about right now?”

She kept her focus on the board—Fin’s autograph was on that one, too, along with Laird Hamilton’s. She took a deep breath. “Surfing.”

An expression of surprise crossed his face.

She poked at her taco with her fork and pushed some lettuce around. “Tell me how you learned,” she added, her voice still wobbly. “Where, when, why.”

She figured this conversation would give her enough time to let the pressure in her head die down.

Fin surveyed the room for a few moments, then took a deep breath and wiped his mouth with his napkin. She couldn’t help but stare at his lips when he did so—that full bottom lip, and the strong upper one, and what soul-stirring feeling they’d ignited when he’d stepped into that kiss. . . .

“Well, the ‘where’ would be San Onofre,” he said.

Giselle cleared her throat and tried to focus on what he was saying.

Fin paused, as if that were all he planned to say, then looked at her nervously as if he were worried another tear might escape if he stopped talking. “That’s about fifteen miles south of here,” he added quickly. “The ‘when’ would be age four. And the ‘why’ would be because my parents were both surfers at the time. I suppose I had salt water in my blood.”

“Really? Your parents were surfers? What was that like? Wow, Fin, these tacos are amazing.”

“Aren’t they? Here, have some more salsa.”

“So is that why you’re named ‘Fin’? Is it your real name?”

“Finnegan. But I’ve been ‘Fin’ for as long as I can remember.”

“So tell me about growing up with surfer parents.”

He studied the room for a minute, as if trying to decide where to start. Or whether he wanted to. “It was a nomad existence. We were traveling all the time, which wasn’t so bad—I got to see a lot of beautiful coastline from Indonesia to Hawaii—but we weren’t exactly staying in luxury hotels. It was a lot of camping in vans, sleeping in the sand, eating what fish we could catch, that kind of thing. My parents weren’t pro surfers like nowadays—with sponsors and magazine ads. They were amateurs who were the real deal. They surfed for love.”

The long swig he took of his drink hinted at some finality to this story. But Giselle imagined there was a lot more to it.

“That must have been hard, not knowing where your real home was,” she prompted.

He shrugged.

She waited for him to go on, but he focused on his food. Fin didn’t exactly seem like the type to tell his whole life story in the first hour or so. In fact, he didn’t seem like the type to tell his life story at all. So she decided she’d have to either pry or stick to the basics. Her sense of upbringing, though, held her to basics.

“Where did you go to school?”

“Didn’t.”

“You didn’t go to school?”

“School of life: Tahiti, Bali, Costa Rica. We traveled with a group of my parents’ friends, all surfers.”

“You never got a formal education?”

He shrugged. “I’m sure my parents thought they were teaching me more important things than algebra and cursive, so not until about the sixth grade.”

“That must have been hard.”

“Not really.”

She waited for him to go on.

He ate another chip and finally gave her a crooked smile. “I was a weird kid. I had been traveling with all these Zen surfers who were reading Jack Kerouac and Robert Aitken and who could talk all kinds of circles around Rick Griffin’s transcendental art. They taught me meditation and self-realization techniques at nine.”

“You sound like you were an interesting kid.”

He shook his head and laughed. “Definitely weird.”

“So where did you finally go to school? Here?”

“A little farther north: Central California, where the surf is good. We moved there in the eighties. But, you know—I never had the right sneakers, never had sack lunches with fruit cups in them. I had long hair, and ‘nomad’ written all over me. I saw what the other kids had—normal lives, new clothes for school, new folders with
Knight Rider
on them, or whatever, and they’d play together after school, or play in Little League. I just wanted that. I thought that would be the ideal life.”

“So was it?”

He took a deep breath. His tanned fingers touched the rim of his plate.

“My parents were still competing. My mom—she’s an amazing surfer. So they made another tour, but I had a friend named Ronny Romano—he lived inland a little—but he had a nice, normal family. And I wanted to live there. So my parents let me.”

“They
left
you there?” Giselle gasped.

His jaw muscle began to dance. “They’re good people, Giselle. I was fine.”

“Where are your parents now?”

“Bali.”

“Brothers, sisters?”

“Just me.”

Giselle couldn’t imagine not having any family, not having her sisters. Even though they didn’t all stay close all the time, she knew they were there. Fin, however, seemed terribly alone. She thought back over his house, his car, his suits. He’d accomplished a lot for a twenty-eight-year-old, all by himself. There was much more to this man than she realized.

He shifted in his seat. “So where did you grow up? I can’t remember what Lia told me.”

“Mostly Indiana.”

“What was it like there?”

She wanted to turn the conversation back on him—wanted to know more about his family, when he moved to Sandy Cove, when he last saw his parents—but she had the sense he’d hit his limit.

“Typical,” she answered. “We had a very normal lifestyle. We were those kids with the Knight Rider folders and new shoes.”

“Nah, those kids I’m talking about were jerks. You were probably very sweet. You and your sister. Or sisters. Isn’t there another one?”

“Yes, Noelle. She’s the youngest.”

“Is she as pretty as you and Lia?”

Giselle felt herself flush. Fin was awfully free with the compliments—she wasn’t used to it, having had pretty much a dry spell for the last ten years.

“Thank you,” she said, remembering that was what you were supposed to say. “I always thought Noelle was the prettiest, actually. She has this long, auburn hair I always admired. Lia and I got stuck as the blondes.”

“You seem to hold your own.” He smiled. “Tell me you weren’t the homecoming queen, or Miss Indiana.”

Giselle sucked in her breath. “Did Lia tell you that?” she whispered.

He raised his eyebrows, then chuckled. “Uh—Lia told me
nothing
. But I just impressed the hell out of myself. You’ve got ‘beauty queen’ written all over you.”

“I was Miss Strawberry,” she said with mock indignation.

“I have to hear this.”

Giselle laughed. She hadn’t thought about this in a long time. “Dane County has a strawberry festival every year in June, and they crown one of the girls from the local high schools as Miss Strawberry. There’s a parade, and you ride in this red convertible and wave your hand. But you get a scholarship, so that was nice.”

“Did you wear a crown?”

She nodded.

“Sash?”

She nodded again.

The corners of his mouth quirked up. “Did you have to cut a huge slice of strawberry shortcake?”

Giselle’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”

“We have something like that here. I can picture you sitting on the back of some red convertible.” Fin chuckled down at his plate, cleaning up the last few remnants of fish and rice.

A smile escaped Giselle’s lips.

After the table was cleared, Fin leaned toward Giselle, his muscular arms on the table so he could be heard at low volume.

“One more thing, before we go back . . .” The merriment was gone from his eyes. The navy rim was thicker now, making his eyes darker. He took her in for a while before shifting his gaze to tell her the one more thing.

“That kiss—” he finally said.

Oh, no.
Giselle closed her eyes. She didn’t want to talk about this. She knew he was going to say it was off-limits, that she had no right to ask that of him. She’d been way out of line. But goodness, that kiss was amazing. She wondered whether he’d felt the heat rising in her when he kissed her like that. He could probably feel her ready to ignite, for criminy’s sake. And he was probably putting a stop to that right now. Twenty-eight-year-old surfer dudes did not need to make out with thirty-five-year-old soccer moms.

“I know,” she started to say, shaking her head.

“—I’m sorry,” he said.

She glanced up at him.
Sorry?

“I . . .” he began. “Well, it got out of hand. I didn’t mean to . . .” He seemed to be searching the room for the answer. “I didn’t mean to let it get out of hand.”

Giselle cleared her throat and looked at her fingertips, which were now up on the table playing with her paper napkin. She could hardly meet his eyes. Out of hand? Well, she had certainly thought so. But she knew what he was saying—he simply wanted to play this part, to reciprocate this deal they had going, but he didn’t need her to get swept away.

“I understand,” was all she could manage. She shredded the edge of her napkin and hoped he’d change the subject. “No more,” she reiterated.

He watched her eyes for a long time, then nodded.

“Got it,” he said. “Are you ready to go back?”

They went over their signals: a signal for when she needed him to stay by her side and another for when she needed some privacy. She suggested they stay a half hour, just to pay their respects to Lovey, then collect Coco and leave.

Fin put his tie back on and collected his jacket off the chair. “And be prepared for that second bombshell your ex is going to drop. Maybe you should just paddle out—you know, take the wave full-force. Don’t put it off. Be ready for it. I’ll be there for you.”

Giselle watched as he patted his pockets, making sure he had his cell phone, his wallet. A warm feeling began in her stomach, and she forced herself to walk back through those last few words to make sure she’d heard him correctly:
I’ll be there for you.
Those words meant more to her than he could possibly know.

He glanced up. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

And, for a moment, she felt she’d be ready for anything.

 • • • 

The house was stellar.

Fin wandered past the living room bar and mused about what it would have felt like growing up here, with a doctor for a father, a boat dock in the backyard, and fancy living room furniture, instead of wondering where his next meal was coming from. The house backed up to a man-made lake, rimmed around its two-mile perimeter with enormous homes, white-stucco condos, and hillsides of tile-roofed townhomes standing shoulder to shoulder. Pristine sailboats and motorboats left a sparkling wake on the water.

“Here you go.” He handed Giselle a mimosa and leaned against the cement balustrade, staring at the boats and homes below. It was a beautiful place, but the man-made nature of the lake bothered him. He loved the grit of the ocean, throwing its sand and seaweed and debris around—debris that had been collected for years, even centuries, stolen from shores all over the world. This man-made lake was nice and all, but it wasn’t anything like natural beauty, which always had stories behind it.

“Cheers to us for handling this crowd so far,” Giselle said, lifting her glass.

Fin toasted. What he really wanted to do was hand her a scotch. She’d had a hell of an afternoon, with her ex giving her speculative glances as soon as she stepped through Lovey’s threshold, and that strange sister-in-law Ray-Lynn dripping with all those platitudes about how much Giselle was missed.

In fact, Fin could use a good scotch, too. But he figured it would be obnoxious to ask Lovey where she kept the Glenlivet.

He downed his mimosa and stared over the balcony railing at the sun, which was still hanging high in the sky. He wondered what the surf was like at home. But he stole a quick glance at Giselle and decided she was a beautiful distraction anyway.

He hadn’t known what had made him open up like that at the restaurant. That was strange. But it was nice to talk—he hadn’t told anyone about Ronny Romano in years. And hearing her stories was nice.
Miss Strawberry
. Good Lord. He’d had her number from the start. All those Rose queens and homecoming queens he’d seen on television had that same aura. Somewhere, God was still churning out that caliber of woman from his famous queen-making machine: They knew how to use the right forks; they cursed with words like “darned” instead of “fucking”; and they had elongated, pretty necks.

Like Giselle’s.

Which looked pretty fucking kissable from here.

He sighed and leaned into the rail. He wasn’t going to let his mind go there anymore. No more thinking about kissing Giselle. She was in another league.

He put his empty glass on a table behind them and moved farther down the rail.

“All right, thirty minutes and counting,” he told her, consulting his watch.

“You don’t want to stay another excruciating second?”

“Look, I could stand here forever—good champagne, pretty view, pretty Betty . . .”

She gave a mimosa-induced giggle. “I like . . .” She shifted her gaze before she could finish the sentence.

“You like what?” He couldn’t help but smile. And he knew he shouldn’t ask. He knew she was going to say something that was going to make him reverse all his well-laid plans and remind him of what a jerk he was. But he watched her anyway and waited for her answer.

“I like when you call me ‘Betty,’” she whispered, her voice dropping to a girlish level of inebriation and vulnerability he recognized as dangerous.

“It’s ‘a’ Betty,” he said.

“Like a noun.”

“Like a noun.”

Fin closed his eyes.
He was a mess.
He wanted her. She was so unlike any woman he’d ever allowed himself. So elegant. So smart. So pulled together . . .