“No, someone else just bought it.”
Lisa didn’t keep up with all the coffee dealings on the island of Getaway Bay, so she conceded the point. “So if you love coffee so much, why didn’t you order it tonight?”
“It’s after six,” he said. “I don’t drink coffee after six, or else I can’t sleep.”
“I think I’m caffeine immune,” Lisa said with a smile.
“Now, if you really want to know what gets me excited, you’ll put a scoop of pure vanilla bean ice cream in my coffee.” He smacked his lips and grinned like a little boy on his birthday. “That’s my kryptonite.”
“Coffee float,” Lisa said, surprised. “I’ve never had one of those.”
“I’ll get some of our local coffee and make you one.” Sparks flew from his eyes, and Lisa liked the electricity between them.
She giggled and ducked her head, forgetting that she’d tied her hair up tonight, and it didn’t fall down to hide her face the way she wished it would. Her trademark move was to tuck her hair and look up at a man through her eyelashes.
“I’ll be right back,” Cal said, his voice hard as granite.
“What?” Lisa watched him jump to his feet and stride away. She watched him go, where he stopped several tables over.
His voice was loud, but the din in the large area kept his words from making sense in her ears. She got up and went after him, because he seemed upset—and so did the teenage girl he was talking to.
She arrived at the same time Cal asked, “And who is this? Where’s Travis?”
“Dad,” Sierra said, her face bright red. “I didn’t come with Travis.”
“You asked if you could go to the outdoor cinema,” he said, glancing at Lisa.
“But I never said I was coming with Travis.” She glanced at Lisa, who tried to flash her a smile before she looked away. But the teen seemed to look right through her, and wow, that stung.
“You should’ve told me if you were coming with a boy I don’t know.” Cal glared at the boy in question. “How old are you?”
“You don’t have to answer that, Justin,” Sierra said.
“Someone better answer it,” Cal growled.
“I’m seventeen, sir,” Justin said, and he seemed semi-mature to Lisa. Her heartbeat ping-ponged around in her chest, because she didn’t know what to do in this situation. Side with Cal? Calm him down? Walk away and let him deal with this obvious family matter?
“You realize she’s fourteen years old?”
Justin looked at Sierra. “I, uh, actually thought she was older than that, sir.”
“Justin,” Sierra said.
“Maybe he didn’t ask,” Cal suggested, a slight sarcastic note to his voice. “Did you just let him assume what he wanted to?”
Sierra didn’t answer, and she looked at Lisa again.
She sucked in a breath. “Cal,” she said. “Maybe we should talk about this later.” She glanced over her shoulder to see Jonathan standing at their table, setting their plates of food down. “Our dinner just arrived.”
Cal looked at her, the frustration in his expression plain to see.
“Cal,” she said again, slipping her hands around his arm and hugging it. She wasn’t sure what else to say. She didn’t want to tell him how to parent his daughter.
“I’ll take her home right now, sir,” Justin said.
“Dad,” Sierra said, and Cal looked back at her.
“I don’t want her home alone.” He looked at Lisa. “Would you mind if they joined us?”
“Dad, I’m not double-dating with you and your girlfriend.” She glanced at Lisa. “Sorry. No offense.”
Lisa held up her hand as if to say, I get it. “I’m Lisa Ashford, by the way.”
“Sorry,” Cal said. “Lisa, this is Sierra, my fourteen-year-old daughter who forgot to mention she’d broken up with her sixteen-year-old boyfriend and had found another one.”
Lisa nodded at the girl. “So nice to meet you, Sierra. Your father has said so many good things about you.”
Sierra scanned Lisa, and she felt very much like the fourteen-year-old was sizing her up. She said nothing, and the awkwardness doubled.
“How about they sit near us?” Lisa asked Cal. “So you can see them, but they can still talk, and we can still talk….” She turned and waved to Jonathan, who came over. “Is there a table for these two near us?” she asked.
“Let me check with our seating team.” He smiled around at everyone and walked away.
“Cal,” Lisa said very quietly, tugging on his arm. “Let’s go sit down. Our food is getting cold.”
He looked at her with a measure of helplessness in his eyes. She’d seen a look like this before, as she worked with a lot of grooms that were completely overwhelmed with the immensity of planning a wedding.
“Come on,” she said with a smile. “They’ll sit right by us.”
“All right,” Cal said, giving one more glare to his daughter. Lisa didn’t like that his attention would be divided, but she couldn’t very well demand he move past this situation right this second.
Jonathan approached. “I can get them at table eighty-six,” he said. “It’s a few over and one row behind you.” He pointed to it, and Lisa looked at Cal.
“That’s fine,” he said. “Thank you.”
Jonathan nodded, and glanced at Sierra and Justin. “Eighty-six. Did you guys have the buffet or the menu dinner?”
“Buffet,” Justin said, and Cal growled low in his throat.
“What?” Lisa asked as everyone moved back to their assigned tables.
“She texted me the menu,” he said, shaking his head. They got back to their table, and he picked up his plate. “Would you mind switching sides with me? Then I can glare at them and still face you.”
Lisa chuckled, but she knew he wasn’t kidding. They switched sides, and Cal stared for a long minute at Sierra and Justin. He finally sighed and picked up his fork. “Sorry. When I saw her with a different boy—holding his hand and flirting—I sort of floated out of my head.”
“It’s fine,” Lisa said. “She’s your daughter.”
“Yeah.” Cal looked down at his steak. “This looks great.”
Lisa focused on her food too. “Yeah, mine is like a fish cupcake.” She loved the orange swirl of the salmon, the lentils and kale it sat on which made up the paper on the cupcake, the baby greens on top. And the sauce surrounding the fish? The best thing Lisa had ever put in her mouth.
“It sure does,” Cal said, finally smiling at her. He cut into his steak, and it looked like a perfect medium rare to Lisa. He put the meat in his mouth, and he moaned. “Oh, this is good.”
“You don’t come here very often, do you?” she asked.
“No,” he admitted. “Big crowd. Expensive food. Single.” He cut another bite of steak and swiped it through his mashed potatoes and gravy. “Doesn’t really add up to a Friday night at the outdoor cinema, you know?”
“Oh, I know.” Lisa didn’t want to tell him how many dates she’d been on here, so she just flaked off another bite of her fish and lentils, swirled it in the sauce, and put it in her mouth. Cal did a good job of staying focused on Lisa and the conversation at their own table, and she appreciated that.
The lights dimmed, and the enormous screen lit up behind her, blue lights flashing on Cal’s face. “Are they moving?” she asked. “Do you want to go down to the viewing seats?”
“They are moving,” Cal said. “But I’d rather stay here.” He met her eye and motioned for her to come over to his side of the table. “Come sit by me.”
Lisa was more than happy to cuddle into Cal while they watched a movie, and she got up and pulled her chair over to his side. He took her hand, and she leaned against his shoulder, the arms of the chair a little bit in the way.
She didn’t mind though, because Cal had finally relaxed. His hand in hers felt warm and strong, and Lisa wasn’t even sure what the movie was or what was happening. Because she was holding Cal’s ha
nd, and she could only hope there would be some kissing in their future.
She couldn’t even imagine what a kiss shared with him would feel like, but her heartbeat was very excited about it.
Chapter Ten
Cal got home several minutes after Sierra, who was already barricaded behind her locked bedroom door. “I know you’re in here,” he said, knocking on her door. “We have to talk.”
He heard something behind the door, and a moment later, Sierra opened it. She wore the same tank top, but instead of the shorts she’d had on earlier, she now wore a pair of pajama shorts. “Look, Dad, I’m sorry.”
Yeah, sure sounded like she was. Cal didn’t say that, though. He shouldn’t have been sarcastic at the outdoor cinema either. Jo would’ve hated that, and Cal had regretted his angry actions and words with his daughter in public.
“I’m sorry too,” he said. “I shouldn’t have made a scene at the cinema.”
Sierra folded her arms. “I suppose I’m grounded.”
“Big time,” he said. “I don’t understand why you couldn’t have just told me you broke up with Travis.”
Sierra heaved a great big sigh. “I don’t know, Dad. I was…embarrassed.” She mumbled the last word, and Cal’s heart started cracking.
“Honey,” he said. “It’s just you and me. You have to tell me stuff.”
She nodded, her eyes turning a little glassy. “I know.” Her voice broke, and Cal gathered her into his arms. “And Justin seemed so nice, too.”
“He wasn’t nice?”
“He said he didn’t know I was so young, and he just went out with me because I was hot.” She cried into his shoulder, and Cal wanted to drape her in a bedsheet every time she left the house, starting tomorrow.
“I’m sorry, bug,” he said.
Sierra composed herself quickly, and Cal kept his arm around her. “Let’s go see what we have in the freezer.”
“There’s no coffee,” she said.
“I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway,” he said. “And I finally have a day off tomorrow, and I want to sleep in.” He grinned at her, taking her down the hall to the kitchen. “Then Lisa and I are meeting for lunch. If you want to come, you can.”
“Yeah, pass,” Sierra said dryly.
“Oh, ho,” he said. “What? Are we too old for you? We can go to one of your trendy places.”
“It’s not that.” Sierra opened the freezer, reached in, and handed him a carton of ice cream.
“What is it, then?” he asked.
“She’s…do you really like her?” Sierra looked at him, and Cal found seriousness on her face.
“Yeah,” Cal said. “I really like her.”
“She seems a bit…fake.”
“Fake?” Cal could use a lot of words to describe Lisa, but fake wasn’t one of them. Never had he thought that.
“Yeah, no one has hair that blonde. And all that jewelry? Who dresses like that?”
“Just because you won’t even wear a ring your mom left you, doesn’t mean that everyone hates jewelry.” He made his voice light, so his daughter would know he was teasing.
“And the clothes. I mean, that dress probably cost a thousand dollars.”
“Okay,” Cal said. He had enough money, and obviously Lisa did too.
“She, I don’t know.” Sierra opened a drawer and pulled out an ice cream scoop. “She probably goes to the nail salon weekly. She gets manicures and probably those makeup tests to see which color of lip gloss works with her skin tone. She’s shallow.”
Cal felt like he’d been hit with a bucket of ice water. He didn’t know how to answer. Fake. Shallow.
He’d never gotten those vibes from her. They’d had meaningful conversations, and the chemistry between them felt off the charts.
“I mean, if you like her, it’s fine,” Sierra said, but it clearly wasn’t fine. “But I don’t see how I’ll have anything in common with her.” She handed him the scoop, and Cal busied himself by dishing up their late-night treat.
They sat at the table together, and Cal still had no idea what to say. If he brought a new woman into his life, he brought her into Sierra’s life too. He’d want them to get along. No one could replace Jo as Sierra’s mother, but Cal couldn’t mediate problems between his new wife and his daughter for the rest of his life. That didn’t sound fun at all.
“How long am I grounded?” Sierra asked.
“Let’s start with two weeks,” he said. “And I want your phone plugged in out here during that time.”
“I hate that,” Sierra complained. “I need it for my alarm clock.”
“And I need to know you’re not sending pictures of yourself in that lingerie to seventeen-year-old boys who think you’re hot.” He pinned her with a look that said not to test him on this, and wisely, she didn’t argue.
“In fact,” Cal said. “I’d like to see the phone right now.” He held out his hand and took a bite of the peanut butter ice cream. “You didn’t erase the texts, did you?”
Sierra heaved a sigh and got up. “No, Dad. I didn’t erase the texts.”
“Good, because if you had, you wouldn’t have a phone until you’re eighteen.”
“I know, I know.” Sierra semi-stomped down the hall and returned with her phone, pure distaste on her face. Cal cared, but not enough to do anything different. He navigated to her texts and found the string with Justin’s name on it. He ignored the fact that it had a little heart next to the name.
“No last name?”
“Briggs,” Sierra said in a bored voice.
Cal went to the top of the string, and he saw that his daughter had initiated the conversation with this boy. They were flirtatious, but he didn’t see any foul language, no naked pictures, and nothing to suggest that he needed to take this phone from her for four years.
Heck, his texts with Lisa were probably more scandalous. She’d sent him a selfie of her at her desk earlier this week, and one of her in a bathing suit as she searched for a new one.
“Okay.” He handed the phone back. “You can use it as an alarm clock. No texting after nine. If I see one text after nine….”
“I know, Dad.” She took the phone, and he sensed her patience with him was almost gone.
They ate the rest of their ice cream in silence, and Cal wished he was better at coming up with something to talk about. As it was, his mind started circling around Lisa and if she was really fake and shallow. And if she wasn’t, why had Sierra thought that?
Cal felt completely out of his element on the beach. Sure, he’d grown up on this island, and he loved the beach as much as the next Hawaiian. But he’d always come with a woman—his mother or his wife—and they carried bags with all the necessities for spending time in the sun. Sunscreen, towels, a hat, cold water.
He carried his towel over his arm, feeling foolish because Lisa hadn’t shown up yet. He glanced down the beach, noting how busy this stretch had gotten since the food trucks had started gathering here on weekends. He could picture it from the perspective of a child, of his boyhood afternoons on this beach.
No paved parking lot. No restrooms. Just half a block from the house where he’d lived for six years, his brothers yelling at him to slow down as he ran down the path ahead of them. They carried nothing then, and he’d pull his shirt over his head as soon as he came out from under the trees and saw the whole world in front of him.
His mother would gather all the T-shirts for him and his brothers, and spread out their blankets, and have spam and egg sandwiches waiting for them when they finally dragged themselves out of the ocean.
Cal had loved beach afternoons with his younger brothers. He missed them powerfully in that moment, and he pulled out his phone to send them a quick text about this beach on their family string.
He smiled at the responses from Collin, then Cole, then Carter, and he laughed at the emojis his youngest brother used. He toyed with the idea of telling them that he’d started seeing Lisa, but his daughter’s words about Lisa being sha
llow kept him from saying anything.
“Hey.”
Cal jumped at the sound of Lisa’s voice, as if she could see inside his head and know what troubled him.
“Hey.” He laughed with her and threw his arm around her. She wore a gauzy, white coverup that her body heat easily came through.
“I hope you’re hungry,” she said. “Because I’ve eaten at all of these food trucks before, and they’re fantastic.”
Cal stepped back and looked at her, trying to see what his daughter had. Fake smile? Shallow because she wore diamond studs in her earlobes? Nice clothes? Cute sandals?
Cal didn’t get any of those vibes from her, and he said, “I’m really hungry.”
“Coconut shrimp?” she asked. “Fish tacos? Shaved ice?”
“Tacos first,” he said. “Shaved ice with the fruit second.”
“Oh, you like the fruit.”
“I mean, it’s not coffee and ice cream, but I do love the fresh fruit shaved ice.”
“Me too.” Lisa linked her arm through his. “Let’s go find a spot first, okay? Then we can eat.”
“I used to come to this beach as a kid,” he said. “My family owned a house in the neighborhood right on the other side of the trees there, and we’d walk down all the time.”
“Wow, nice. Must’ve been great for a boat maker, to be so close to the water.”
“We did always grow up near water,” Cal said. “When we left that house, we moved over by the cove on Lightning Point.”
“I love that cove,” Lisa said, dancing ahead of him. “It’s the best snorkeling on the island.”
“So they say.”
“You don’t like snorkeling?”
“I like it fine,” he said.
“It’s in my top five outdoor activities,” Lisa said. “How’s here?” She’d found a spot big enough for the two of them, and maybe one other person on each side, which meant no one would take that sand.
“Here’s great.” He spread his towel out, so glad to be rid of it finally. She set her bag on the towel and lay hers next to his, moving her bag to the middle of the space.
After digging out her wallet, she said, “Let’s go.”
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