"Right now? I'd be scared to death and probably wipe out and drown," Austin replied without thinking. She turned to face the woman sitting closer to her. "I'm…so"
Rory smiled. "It takes time. No one is perfect when they first go pro."
"You were," Austin said softly, wishing she could see the pale blue eyes hidden behind Rory's dark sunglasses.
Rory laughed. "Yeah, well, I was a horse of a different color I guess," she replied, drawing in the sand with her finger.
"With consistent practice, I know I could do it, Rory. I really wish I lived somewhere like this, with real waves to surf. We have bathtub ripples at home."
"No kidding."
~ ~ ~
After the competition finals, Rory met with her riders to take pictures and congratulate them all for placing in the top three of their divisions. Austin accompanied her. She mingled with them, asking a hundred questions about the tour and riding so many different styles of waves. She was as thrilled as a child in a room full of Disney characters.
Rory saw the fire burning in her gray eyes. She has the drive and the skill, but the heart…does she have the heart to give up everything in one ride? Rory walked away from the crowd, sitting on a large rock, alone. She rubbed the pendant hanging just below her collarbone, while watching the waves rise and fall, one after the other, lower and lower as the tide washed away. "What the hell am I doing?" she said to herself as she wiped away a single tear.
Mick found her a few minutes later, silently sitting down next to her. Rory mustered a tiny smile.
"It's great to see you back at a pro comp, but not if it hurts you this badly," he said. "I know why you did it." He paused, watching the waves roll in. "Rory, is she worth it?"
Rory sighed. "I haven't been near the ocean for anything in over four years, except to run the beach behind my house. I stopped feeling the allure of the ocean when my ears became deaf to the call of the crashing waves. I accepted that it was over and moved on with my life." She wiped another tear from her cheek. "After all of these years, it's come back to me. That girl makes me feel again and it scares me to death. I tried so hard to ignore the magnetism pulling me towards her, but I have no control. I'm helpless against it. The walls that I carefully built around me are crashing down. She's turned my life upside down and she has no idea what she's done."
Mick wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "You either have to let her go or accept that she's freed you to live again. It's your choice." He pulled her against him. "I hate seeing you so distraught, but I also haven't seen you as happy in years as I have in the past couple of days."
Rory sighed. "I'm afraid…I feel like the closer I get to her, the closer I get to the water. If I open myself completely to her…I don't know what will happen. I swore I'd never surf again, but I'm scared to death that I may have no control over that either."
"You're only going to do what Rory wants to do deep down. Nothing and no one can make you do otherwise. Never forget that. If she's made you hear the waves again and feel the power of that call, then I think she's an angel sent from above," he said, wiping tears of his own. He'd waited so long for Rory to find her way back to the ocean and if it took the innocence of a young woman to do it, then so be it. His niece had simply become a shell of her former self and he'd give anything to have the Rory from before the accident, return.
"I definitely feel like she's something from out of this world," Rory said, taking a deep breath as she removed her sunglasses, rubbing her eyes and drying her face. She smiled at him before putting the dark glasses back on.
"Let's get out of here. We look like a pair fruitcakes," He grinned, standing up.
Rory laughed. "You're a mess, Uncle Mick."
~ ~ ~
After dinner, Rory announced that she was going for a walk. Austin decided to go with her to stretch her legs and work off the large meal she'd eaten. Mick went home for the night and Angel retired to her study to work from home, which was something she was used to doing nightly.
"Want to talk?" Austin finally asked as they followed along the path towards the cliff overlooking the ocean. She'd stayed quiet, walking casually next to Rory as the road wound through the hills.
"What's there to talk about?" Rory kicked a rock with her flip flop.
"I don't know. You looked kind of sad when we left the beach today."
"It's hard on me…the competitions and everything….I still have a really hard time going to them."
"It's been four years now, hasn't it?" Austin asked.
"Yeah, something like that," Rory replied, picking up the pace slightly.
Sensing she wasn't ready to talk about her accident, Austin changed the subject. "Tell me about your family."
"Okay, what's there to tell? They're Australian nutcases!" Rory grinned.
"Come on, Rory. How about your father?"
Rory gazed up at the orange sky. Where to start. Should I even tell her? "My dad was the apple of his family's eye. Randall Eden was one hundred percent Irish, born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, despite having blond hair and blue eyes. I actually look a lot like him. Anyway, he'd gone on vacation in California in the summer before his senior year of college. He'd been studying to be a businessman like his father. They owned a few bed and breakfasts in the countryside." She paused, touching the gold pendant and smiling as she thought about her father.
"Angel grew up here at the Zane Estate. Her grandparents were rich in mineral mining, but her father left the family business after only a few years, choosing to spend his early life as an attorney with his own law practice before moving into politics, having become the attorney-general and minister for justice of Queensland at one point. Her mother was a philanthropist, serving on multiple committees. Angel wanted to follow in her father's footsteps and had been about to start her third year of uni after being accepted to law school early. She flew to California to celebrate and met my father one afternoon on the beach."
Rory looked out at the miles of ocean as they neared the end of the path.
"They fell madly in love, spending every minute together. My mother found out she was pregnant a week before she had been scheduled to fly home. When she told my father, he asked her to marry him. He didn't want to go to Australia and she didn't want go to Ireland, so they were married at the justice of the peace and settled down outside of Long Beach. They'd gone against the wishes of both of their families and in doing so, were disowned. I was born the following March and—"
Austin grabbed Rory's arm. "You mean to tell me you had a birthday this month and you didn't say anything? That's rude."
"How is it rude?" Rory grinned.
"Well, what if I wanted to get you something?"
"You're too late…it was….last Sunday."
"Happy Birthday. I can't believe you didn't tell me. So how old…wait you'd be about twenty nine, am I right?"
"Thirty."
"Wow."
"I know. I told you I'm a washed up old sock." Rory smiled.
"No you're not."
"Well, I'm definitely a lot older than you are."
"It's only a number. Age doesn't define someone," Austin said.
"True, you're still so damn young though. When I was your age I didn't have a care in the world."
"Enough about me and my age, get back to your story," Austin growled.
"Well, as I said, I was born in March, but before that, my father had decided to change his major and become an architect because he loved to design things. He received an engineering degree a year later. My mother finished her degree and started taking law classes on the side and working for a small law firm. They barely had anything after being dumped by their families, but they'd had each other and to them, that was all that they'd needed.
Anyway, my father is the one who taught me how to surf. He had learned the summer that he and my mother met. He started taking me surfing when I was three and continued on until…" Rory stopped next to the railing. She looked down at the waves crashing again
st the jagged rocks below.
Austin felt the change in the woman next to her and looked up to see tears in her eyes.
"My father became very ill all of a sudden when I was seven. He died of cancer three months later, he was only thirty." She took a deep breath, wiping the tears from her eyes.
"Angel packed everything up and pulled me out of school. Three weeks after his funeral, we moved back here to the family estate on the Gold Coast. She went back to her maiden name and pushed my father completely out of her life. Her family accepted me with open arms, but it took a lot for her to work her way back in. She went to law school full time. Uncle Mick had already finished law school and had his own firm. He and his wife Lucy practically raised me because Angel was too caught up in school for anything else and honestly, I was a daily reminder of the best time of her life and the biggest mistake she'd ever made," Rory tossed a small rock over the cliff, losing sight of it as it descended.
"She graduated and became my uncle's law partner, until my grandfather helped her move into politics. After I graduated high school, I moved to La Jolla and never looked back. From the time I was seven until I turned eighteen my mother never spoke of my father. My father's family went nuts when she informed them that he'd been cremated. That had been his last wish. He wanted to be spread in the ocean and my mother did what he wanted. They tried to come after her, but had no legal leg to stand on. It was a huge mess and because of that, she forbade me to ever have anything to do with them."
"Oh my God, that's terrible." Austin grabbed Rory's hand.
"Yeah, the only thing I had to keep me going through my childhood was surfing, and of course, Uncle Mick. He wasn't very good at it, but he went surfing with me every single day. His wife left him for some bloke in Melbourne when I was a teenager. He was pretty heartbroken, but it just brought him and me closer. The older I got, the worse things became between my mother and me. She found out I had contacted my paternal grandparents right before I graduated high school and literally flipped out on me. That was the icing on the cake. I never felt at home here. It sounds stupid I guess, but California will always be my home. To me, that's where my dad is."
"That makes sense," Austin said.
"After my first year, she tried to come see me, but I was busy with school and I had been picked up by a few sponsors, so I began surfing the pro tour. I managed to graduate with a double major before winning my second championship. I also worked part time as a design engineer for the board company that sponsored me. I guess you know as well as the rest of the world, I was on my way to winning my fourth championship…that's when…" Rory drew in a deep breath and whispered. "That's when my world ended."
"I'm so sorry, Rory." Austin let go of her hand to wipe away her own tears. She couldn't imagine going through the life Rory had just described. It made her want to go see her mother now more than ever. She hated living on the opposite side of the country, but her mother understood she was following her dreams.
"Angel was running for Queensland State Senator when I had the accident. She came to the hospital, but then she tried to bring me back here to recover and do my physical therapy. I refused. She left and ironically six months later she was elected. I saw her once after that a couple of years ago when she showed up at one of the pro surfing events here because she read in a magazine that I'd be there. We had a huge argument and I haven't seen her since."
"Wow. Did she use your accident to get voted into office?"
"I'm pretty sure she won the sympathy vote whether she wanted to or not. It was national news, but I really don't care. She's always done what she wanted to do and the hell with everyone else. I learned a long a time ago that it's Angel Zane's way, or no way."
"Do you at least talk on the phone with her?" Austin questioned.
"She calls me, or tries to anyway. I never talk to her. She relies on Martie to keep her updated on my life."
"Oh…that must be the hot-tempered woman I've seen you with."
Rory laughed. "Yeah, that's Martie, uh…Martina Cruz, she's the Vice President of my company, along with many, many other titles."
"I see." I hope lover isn't one of them."You're mom asked me about her or rather wanted to know why I was here with you and she wasn't."
"I'm not surprised. Uncle Mick and I had an interesting conversation about my mum earlier."
"Was he asking the same thing?"
"No, he knows why you're here."
"Why is that? I mean I know you wanted me to surf bigger sets and see the competition, but why am I really here, Rory?"
Rory chucked another rock over the rail. "Crashing waves," she murmured.
"Huh?"
Rory sighed. "I…I uh…I lost everything in that accident. During my recovery I realized my ears were deaf to the call of the ocean and I'd lost my passion for surfing. I had no desire to go near the water ever again. Everything inside of me died that day." Rory wiped away a tear as she turned to face the woman next to her. "I can't explain it and I don't know how you did it, but Austin, you made me hear the waves and feel the power of the ocean's magnetism again." Rory stepped closer. "This connection between us scares the hell out of me," she whispered just before her lips touched Austin's, ending the internal tango that her heart and mind had been dancing together for the past three months.
The kiss was gentle and slightly hesitant as Rory's heart beat wildly in her chest. She felt Austin's lips part, beckoning her inside. Rory wrapped her arms around Austin's waist, pulling her closer as she deepened the kiss, tasting the woman that had brought her back to life. Austin threaded her arms around Rory's neck, pressing her body fully against Rory's as she returned the kiss intensely, feeding the craving that had been eating away at her since the night they'd shared the tentative, New Year's kiss on the beach.
Rory pulled away breathlessly, staring at the unmasked gray eyes gazing back at her. The desire she saw in them frightened her and fueled the fire burning in her belly at the same time. The cool breeze swirling between them felt like needles on her skin in every place that her body had been heated by Austin's. Rory reached up, running her fingers softly over Austin's cheek. Austin turned into the touch, closing her eyes as Rory's fingers grazed her heated lips. Rory bit her bottom lip, sighing as the last of the breath that she'd been holding, escaped her lungs.
Austin turned ravenous eyes on her once more. Rory had never felt anything like the raw hunger that was driving her. She struggled to breathe, swallowing the lump in her throat. She no longer had control of her body or her mind. The unbridled lust burning deep inside her was like drowning all over again. It scared her to death.
"We can't do this," Rory finally whispered.
Austin put her hand on Rory's chest slightly below her collarbone to steady herself. She was lightheaded from the arousal racing through her veins. Their heated kiss had only scratched the surface and her body yearned for more.
"What?" Austin gasped.
Rory put her hands on Austin's waist to steady her. "Whatever this is between us…it's…it's too much. I can't do this." Rory stepped away and began walking back down the moonlit path.
It took Austin a second to digest what she'd said.
"That's insane," Austin huffed, catching up to her. "You want me just as badly as I want you. Damn it, you can't deny it!" she grabbed Rory's arm as she slowed to a stop. "I felt it. Rory, I felt you."
Rory spun around into her, pushing Austin back against a large gum tree near the side of the gravel path. She pressed her body against Austin's, holding her in place and kissing her hard. Austin put her hands in Rory's hair, tugging and returning the kiss as if Rory was the air her body needed to survive. Rory rocked into her, biting Austin's bottom lip as the flames of desire smoldered inside of her, taking over. She moved her hand from Austin's side to the waistband of her shorts, slipping easily under it.
Austin's breath hitched and her heart raced as she felt Rory's fingers skim across the flesh between her legs. All rational thought had left her e
rotically intoxicated brain long ago. She was nearly in agony, aching deep inside with anticipation.
Rory pulled Austin's soaked panties to the side, sliding her fingers through the wetness and easily inside of her, pushing her fingers deeper as she kissed her harder. The hunger coursing through Rory veins was driving her wild. She felt alive.
Austin pulled out of the kiss, gasping for air and grinding herself between the tree and Rory's body as Rory's fingers drove in and out of her. Hot wetness covered the palm of Rory's hand as she pressed it against Austin's throbbing center. Austin tugged hard on the short hair at the back of Rory's head as Rory kissed her hard once more, nearly drawing blood as she bit her lower lip.
A guttural moan escaped Austin's mouth as she panted heavily, breathing like a caged bull. Beads of sweat ran from her forehead down the sides of her face. The boiling blood surging through her body roared loudly in her ears. Rory pushed another finger inside of her and Austin screamed out, thrusting down as hard as she could as the orgasm tore through her body, rendering her senseless. She collapsed against the woman holding her up.
The feral appetite driving Rory's wild nature dissipated as she slowly caught her breath. She pulled her hand free, backing away from Austin. Her nerves stung as the air cooled her heated body. It had been so long since she'd last touched another woman and the feverish magnetism between them had nearly driven her mad with urgency.
"I'm so sorry," Rory whispered.
Austin wiped her face on the sleeve of her t-shirt as the blood moved slowly back down to her wobbly legs. Her ragged breathing was starting to calm. "Sorry for what?" she replied.
"That was completely barbaric of me. I…I don't know what came over me." Oh my God, what have I done? Rory ran her hand through her hair. "Did I hurt you?"
"Hey," Austin stepped closer, running her hand over Rory's cheek and meeting her eyes. "You definitely did not hurt me, Rory. You took me by surprise, but I never wanted you to stop."
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