Unexpected Hero

by Barbara Ankrum

  First area, a term she’d come to despise, was like a carrot that had been dangling over his head for nearly three years now, and gathering enough days to achieve it meant he could finally work on any project in L.A. and start moving up the director ladder. But she was still stuck, not on only his choice of pronouns, but by his defensive tone. “When you say I’m moving…”

  “Well, obviously, I can’t do the job from here,” he answered, as if her question was dumb. Something he’d gotten in the habit of doing a lot lately. Then: “Sorry, I didn’t mean it to come out that way.”

  “But…for how long?” She was no rank beginner when it came to separations. When he was working on a show, which was often, he crashed with a friend in Hollywood. The Directors Guild had all kinds of stumbling blocks for assistant directors becoming full-fledged union members, allowed to work in Los Angeles proper, including eighteen-hour days on low-budget features and near slave wages like he’d been getting as a sometimes A.D. on an ultra-low-budget show this season. Just getting this far in the DGA process had taken him eight years, and for two and a half of those they’d been together. Now, after years of poverty and going without, he was about to make a real living and realize his dream; his dream, which had become hers by default.

  “For as long as they’re filming, I guess.” Steven toyed with his knife, spinning it in place on their dining table, unable to meet her eye. “Six months at least. But there’s a lot of work there. I might…stay.”

  Stay? “And what about us?”

  “Yeah. We need to talk about that.”

  Doom thudded in her ears. “Apparently so.”

  He flashed that same hazel-eyed look at her that always made her wonder what secret he’d been keeping. “Listen, I…thought I was ready to get married, but it turns out I’m not,” he told her without softening the blow.

  Like a fist to the solar plexus, his words left her breathless and clutching the counter behind her. The small, sparkly diamond on her left hand suddenly felt like a lead weight.

  After getting to his feet, he paced over to their cold fireplace. “And I…to be completely honest, I’ve…well, I’ve met someone else.”

  Ooohhh! The rat bastard.

  Jamming her tripod into the sand, she fixed her camera on top, remembering every second of the hour she’d given him to pack his things and get out.

  In the emptiness of her apartment afterward, as she stuffed her feelings with the chocolate cake she’d made them for dessert, she told herself it didn’t matter. That she’d survived worse. And she had. But for the third time in the last decade of her life, she’d been blindsided by a man. What did Oprah say about the universe trying to tell you something? First the universe whispers, but if you don’t listen to the whisper, at some point, you’ll get a scream?

  She stared out at the ocean, so stormy and wild from some hurricane down in Baja. The surf beat the shore in a steady roar. Oh, she’d heard the whispers: his weekends in L.A., the excuses, his reluctance to talk about wedding plans. But she’d ignored them. Rather, she’d needed not to believe them.

  Maybe because with a fiancé she belonged again. To someone. Now, she just felt…lost. Because she’d loved him? Had she? Now she questioned even that. Was it love? Or the idea of love?

  She wasn’t sure which felt worse—her anger at his betrayal, or the possibility that he was right and they didn’t belong together. And she’d been willing to settle for a man who didn’t really love her.

  Out on the second break offshore, a surfer caught a decent wave, hopping upright on his board. Becca lifted her camera again and tightened the focus, waiting for the shot. She’d noticed him earlier, but he was still too far away to recognize. He wasn’t one of the regulars here, of that much she was sure. He was surfing with one other guy, but not hanging with the locals, and he’d already caught a few decent waves. It was clear he was no gremmie. No blond surfer boy, either. This guy was all man, with pitch-dark hair and the body of a sea-god—an observation that blindsided her by tightening something low in her belly.

  Take that, Rat Bastard.

  Her camera whirred as he slid down the edge of the wave expertly then rode it past the other surfers who whooped as it curled perfectly behind him. He ducked out of the tunnel of water and pumped the board up the face and back down again with an agility born of years of practice. Still a few hundred feet away, as he slid closer to her spot on the beach, she narrowed her focus to his footwork, snapping off a few shots of his long, honed legs; the sexy indentation in his glutes when he dipped and curved down a wave; the way his swimmer’s chest tapered down to his slim waist.

  Steven’s physique paled in comparison.

  But the same questions she’d been asking herself all night surfaced in her mind: Who was the other woman? What did she have that she, Becca, didn’t have? And more importantly, how had she not seen this coming? Again?

  She’d even met him after her father’s fall. After the accusations, the indictments, the attorney fees that broke them. He’d been beside her for the trial. Maybe he’d found all that attention interesting. Or…a curiosity. Maybe once all that was over this last spring when the shame of it all put an end to her father’s life, maybe he was just done with her. Maybe the drama was all too much.

  Now, all she could think about was how they were going to get through Lilah and Graham’s wedding this weekend. The one for which she and the rat bastard were both standing up for the bride and groom.

  Could there be anything worse than attending a wedding together on your breakup weekend?

  She raised her camera focus on the surfer’s face as he drew closer, but he eluded her, turning back to look at the wave as he expertly conquered it. But now she was curious.

  She stopped shooting and simply watched through the telephoto lens, waiting for him to turn back to her. When he did, shoving the hair from his eyes, she nearly dropped the camera.

  Oh. No. No, no, no!

  The wave flattened and Nio Reyes sank into the foamy water near the beach not fifty feet from her. Moments later, he was picking up his board and wading through the breaking surf onto the beach like some kind of calendar god. As he walked, he slicked his longish, dark hair back away from his face one-handed, then tugged down the zipper leash on the back of his short wet suit.

  She’d recognize that loose-hipped, athletic walk anywhere. Ten years hadn’t changed that. They’d simply and unfairly refined the vessel.

  She did not need to see Nio today to remind her of her many failures as a girlfriend. And she certainly didn’t need him to see her after the long, sleepless night she’d just had. What, in the name of all that was holy, was he doing here on her beach after all these years?

  Then, he looked up. Right at her.

  Desperately, Becca tried to pull herself together, jamming her camera back into the camera bag and unlocking the tripod’s legs as she searched for her suddenly missing flip-flop.

  No time to look. She left it and pushed through the sand with only one, determined to avoid him. She tugged Milo with her. “C’mon, Milo. Let’s get outta here.”

  Why, oh why was the parking lot so far away?

  “Becca?” Nio called from behind her.

  Ignore him.

  “Hey!”

  Oh, God. That voice. It had gotten deeper. Sexier. I will not look. I will not…

  She heard him running. Suddenly he was right behind her. “Becca, wait. I know you can hear me.”

  She stopped dead, turned and looked at him. Milo did, too, wagging his tail in greeting of this new potential friend. Nio bent down and let the dog sniff his hand, which Milo promptly licked.

  Traitor.

  This close, Nio Reyes looked even better than he had from a distance. If that was even possible. His jaw was shadowed by a day or two’s growth of dark scruff that looked ridiculously sexy on him. For a decade of her life, she’d wondered about this moment. What it would feel like if she ever saw him again. What she would say.

  Now, sh
e cocked her mouth, words failing her completely.

  Breathless from his swim and from chasing her, he stood a few feet away, his wet suit halfway off one muscular shoulder. He yanked off the other to his waist as he stood there, his gaze taking in every piece of her. In his left hand was her other flip-flop. He held it out to her. “This yours, mija?”

  “Thanks,” she said, snatching up the miscreant flip-flop, and trying to slip it on her foot. “And don’t call me mija.”

  He held up his hands with a grin as she hopped in the sand. “All right. Can we just talk?”

  “Talk?” She shifted her feet in the sand. “Oh, yeah. Talking’s the thing you didn’t do before you left ten years ago.” She shrugged. “Details.”

  “Becca—”

  “I’m really busy, Nio. I’m late, actually. I’m meeting a friend. But it was great to see you. You look…good.”

  “So do you.” His eyes sought hers in the early morning light. She’d never forgotten how morning seemed to shoot his brown eyes through with gold. Today was no different. His dark, wet hair tousled across his forehead, making him look boyish, though there was nothing boyish about his physique, or, for that matter, his expression right now. He was looking through her, just like he always had, seeing right into her shadowy places.

  Before she could contemplate that any more, she said goodbye and started to turn away.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he said, stopping her.

  Had he? Laguna was a small town. If he’d been looking, she’d have heard. “Oh? I’m not that hard to find.”

  “Your parents’ house—” he began.

  “Belongs to someone else now. All of it, gone. You must have heard. You’d have to live in a cave not to have heard about Judge Howard’s dramatic fall from grace.”

  “I’m sorry, Bec.”

  “Are you? Really?”

  He flinched. “That requires a longer conversation.”

  “I have to go.”

  “Tonight then?” he called after her.

  She blanched and turned back to him. “Tonight?” Oh, no. He couldn’t mean—

  “At Graham and Lilah’s rehearsal dinner. I’m…an out-of-towner, so I’m invited.”

  Of course, the rehearsal dinner. He’d come for the wedding. She clenched her jaw. If she didn’t miss her guess, he’d show up with some pretty young thing on his arm. Men who looked like him didn’t go stag to parties. Ever. But what did that matter to her?

  By tonight she’d have her head straight about seeing him again and she wouldn’t feel so…so—oh, who the hell was she kidding? Where Nio Reyes was concerned, there would never be enough hours in a lifetime to straighten out her feelings about him. “I have to go. Really. See you, Nio.”

  With Milo at her heels, she hurried up the long flight of concrete steps to the parking lot above without once turning. Clicking the remote on her Honda Civic, she reached the car and tossed her stuff inside. But as the dog hopped in, she looked back. Nio was staring up after her, as if he’d seen a ghost. And he had, really. That’s me. Ghost of girlfriends past.

  Well, no more. She’d had quite enough of being abandoned, double-crossed and two-timed by men she’d actually trusted. Ergo, men, all men—including Nio Reyes—were off her to-do list for the foreseeable future. She’d stepped in one too many cow pies in that pasture.

  Or some dumb metaphor like that.

  She slammed her door shut, started the car and headed for The Beach Shack, where she was already late to meet her best friend for breakfast before getting ready for work. As she climbed the hill, she risked a glimpse of him in her rearview mirror, still looking like a sea-god, his gaze still fixed on her car as if he could somehow call her back.

  Milo turned a brown-eyed, quizzical look on her.

  “What?” she asked.

  Panting, the dog turned back to watch the beach disappear behind them.

  “Fine. So maybe I could have handled that better. In my defense, Milo, I’m only human.”

  The dog apparently agreed with that assessment with a long, wet kiss on her cheek.

  Becca sighed and silently gave thanks for this little warm body beside her. “So, that’s your advice? Let go? Live in the moment?”

  With a whine-yawn, the dog settled down on his wingman seat beside her and laid his head on his paws.

  “That’s so canine of you.” She scratched him behind the ears. “Good boy.”

  *

  “That went well.” Trey stood beside Nio on the beach, toweling off the salty aftermath of his last ride.

  “Yeah. If you call her running off like her hair was on fire after she recognized me well,” Nio said. It had taken him a minute to get over the shock of seeing her again, too. God, she was still such a beauty. Maybe even more beautiful than the last time he’d laid eyes on her. This time, the sight of her had hit him like a shore break, punching the breath from him as only Becca Howard could. Her windblown hair was a little shorter now, but still that same, thick chestnut brown he used to dream about losing himself in. Her jean cutoffs showed off her still-lithe long legs, and her thin T-shirt did nothing to hide curves that hadn’t been there ten years ago.

  “Better than no reaction. Then you know you’re dead in the water.”

  “She still hates me. But I can deal with that.” He hoped.

  Of course, he’d heard about the judge’s fall from grace. The original rumblings had coincided with Trey’s return from the war and the journey back for the boys to his home up north. The implosion of Judge Howard’s career hadn’t happened in a week or even a month, but over a long court battle that had ended in a conviction and a stripping away of everything he’d ever touched. Nio had read between the lines of her father’s obituary. So unlike the old bastard to take himself out that way. Then again, political and financial ruin tested the strongest of men. But he’d left his wife and daughter to face the aftermath alone.

  Funny, after all these years that he’d think of her old man as a coward, when the judge’s simple pivot in his direction had once nearly been Nio’s undoing. Not to mention his brother’s. Having spent years working to prove himself worthy of Howard’s daughter, Nio wondered if it was too late to make good on the promise he’d made to himself to get her back one day. But one way or the other, this weekend he meant to resolve that question.

  “So…what now?” his brother asked.

  Nio picked up his board and headed to the parking lot. “Now, I change her mind.”

  *

  “He said you needed a longer conversation? What does that mean?” Lana Larson asked between bites of a currant and lemon scone as Becca broke off a piece of bacon and fed it to Milo under the table at the outdoor café. “He hasn’t been back here for years. In fact, I haven’t seen his brother, Trey, or his father for a long time either. Not since he stopped working as your father’s gardener. Not long after Nio left, as a matter of fact.”

  Even now, Becca could picture Nio’s father, Juan Luis, trimming their once-upon-a-time garden hedges, making sure every branch and shrub was perfectly shaped, every flower fed and trimmed. He’d been a fixture in their lives for years. Just as Nio had once been.

  She gulped her coffee. “I have no idea what he meant. I’m not sure I really want to know.” That was as far from the truth as things got. “And of course, he has to catch me looking like…like the morning after what happened.”

  “Now you’re just being silly. You always look beautiful, despite what Gollum the Betrayer threw at you. Are you going to eat that last piece of cantaloupe?”

  “No, go ahead. You know what I mean. Even if you hate old boyfriends, you don’t want to look like a hag when they see you again. Better to dazzle than assure them they were right in the first place for ditching you.”

  Lana, a graphic artist, liked to play down her own good looks, but with her beachy silver-blonde hair, lanky figure and Orange County complexion, men followed her around like puppies. Becca’s dark chestnut hair and green eyes were som
ething of an anomaly here in a town where towhead was the color of choice.

  “Considering he chased you up the beach, I don’t think that was an issue.” Lana forked the fruit. “I’m telling you, it’s no accident Nio’s here. I’d wager a hundred bucks he’s come for something other than Lilah and Graham’s wedding. Like you, maybe.”

  Becca gasped. “Bite your tongue! And it was sheer coincidence we ran into each other this morning. Anyway,” she grumbled, “I don’t have a hundred bucks.”

  “Okay, ten bucks,” she replied with a chuckle. “But let’s look at the facts. He hasn’t been back in ten years, no one’s even heard from him—”

  “Make that I haven’t heard from him. Apparently Graham and Lilah have.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that. But maybe that was a recent thing. He shows up surfing, two days before the wedding of his former best friend and he says he’s been looking for you. Just sayin’.”

  An eternal optimist, Lana had been by her side through thick and thin, through their last years of high school and the loss of Nio, to Art Center, where they’d both gone to college. Even after Becca’s family’s meltdown, she’d been there, reassuring her it would all work out somehow. Becca loved her like a sister. Better than a sister, actually. Not that she’d ever had one. That was merely theoretical.

  “He didn’t say he’s come looking for me.” She shook her head at Lana. “He just peripherally…mentioned it.”

  Lana smiled, drumming her fingers on the table. “I say, kismet. One door hits Gollum in the ass on the way out…and…” She slapped her hand down on the table. “Bam! Fate smiles.”

  The waitress who’d swung by with a coffeepot in her hand jumped, then with a look, refilled their cups. “Anything else, ladies?” They both shook their heads and she slid the check under the sugar stacker before hurrying off to another table.

  “Don’t say it, okay?” Becca told Lana.

  “Say what?”