by Teagan Kade
I cannot help but smile back, easing off the door and lifting him to his feet. I push the ring away and cup his face in my hand, looking up into those russet eyes that have been mine ever since we met.
Oprah-Walters sits on my shoulder, but she’s quiet. Is it ideal? Probably not. Too soon? Definitely, but who fucking cares?
I breathe in, brace myself for the fallout. “Yes.”
He picks me up and spins me around the room, Won Ton barking away like mad. We kiss, deep and tender, his arms strong around my back and I’m weightless, free and light.
He places me down, thumbing the bottom of his chin. “You kind of had me nervous there.”
I reach up and lock my hands around the back of his neck, standing on tippy toes to look into his eyes. “I thought Jetstream Jensen never got nervous?”
“You make me feel a lot of new things.”
“Ditto.”
I drop and pick up the paper. “What about this? I take it you know someone at the paper?”
“I do. Our good friend Angela Barnet.”
I look at the paper again, Angela’s name in the byline. I’m suddenly worried. “Should I read through for the hating?”
Jensen shakes his head. “No hating. We came to an arrangement.”
“An arrangement?”
“I agreed to give her the exclusive of a lifetime if she and her press pals backed off on the smear campaign.”
“And she actually said yes?”
“She did. Seems it’s the in thing with women in my life at the moment.”
I place my hand on his chest. “How could anyone say no?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
SCARLET
I hope this makeup is holding. I’m positive I’m glowing like a hot coal under it. The A-line I’m wearing is cutting me in half, my Jimmy Choos far from comfortable but allowing me the necessary height to match my husband-to-be.
The music starts and he’s there at the end of the aisle. I let out a small sigh of relief he didn’t come good with his threat of wearing his jersey to the wedding… or nothing at all. Now that would have been a first for the photographer.
He stands at the end of a carpet of pink roses in navy blue. I’ve never seen him in a suit before. To say he looks good is an understatement. He’s Harvey Specter and Don Draper rolled into one, a tailored manwich I want to hold and grope and make love to all night, but first we’ve got a wedding to get through.
Mrs. Collins takes his arm, already crying, my own mother no better, sobbing from the front row. Our fathers never showed, but we expected as much. Josh remains MIA. Jensen brushed it off initially, but they’re twins. I know it pains him the way they ended things, but like I told him, not everything can be controlled. Josh has his own life to live, even if it doesn’t involve us.
I’ve barely blinked and Jensen is standing before me smiling precisely like he did when Victory took the Cup. I was there, in the stands as always, cheering and wailing until I lost my voice. The Golden Boot for the Championship’s highest-scoring player remains in Won Ton’s bed. He’s taken a real liking to it. Expensive taste, it seems.
Even Angela’s here. I think I spy the slightest hint of jealousy on her face—and who wouldn’t be?
Won Ton gives a solid yelp from Mom’s lap, everyone laughing. I relax and focus on Jensen, on the man who I’m committed to spending my life with.
The officiant gives me a wink. “Dearly beloved, players and pimps alike…”
TWO YEARS LATER
It’s the wedding all over again. Everyone is here. Jensen’s new coach is standing by the door. He looks especially happy to be here, or maybe it’s the fact Angela Barnet is standing next to him looking rather keen. She’s barely left his side the whole party. She’s certainly redeemed herself. It was an easy decision to make her Jensen’s PR manager this season.
On the other side of the room is a motley collection of Jensen’s teammates from LA Galaxy. It’s been almost three months since we made the move out here to the coast of California, but it’s working out. Jensen’s got a great team, a coach who actually listens to him and doesn’t walk around with a constant scowl on his face. They’re going up against Victory next week, which should result in fireworks, but I’ve never known Jensen to back down from a fight. Once he wants something, he’ll stop at nothing to get it, even if it does take him ten years.
I watch him, my husband, crouching beside our child, now one. I can’t believe how fast time has gone. It seems like only yesterday I was giving birth, the nurses trying to bring Jensen to before the main event. One look between my legs and he hit the deck so hard he almost went through the floor. Naturally, I’ve never let him live it down. Every time he complains of a sore ankle or back I simply point down to my vagina and tilt my head. “Until you push a peach through a pinhole you’ve got nothing to complain about, mister.”
Someone hits the lights, a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ as the cake is brought out—a soccer ball in white and blue, Galaxy’s team colors. Little Arny claps his hands together in glee, his chubby cheeks lit up from the glow of the candles.
I wasn’t exactly for Arnet at first, but it’s grown on me. Now I couldn’t imagine him being anything else. “It means ‘little eagle’,” Jensen enthused to me, as we sat poring through baby name websites. At that stage I was so pregnant I couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted a cheeseburger.
Arny blows, the first candle flickering until Daddy comes to his aid and together they huff them out. I see him in Arny. I see myself too, in his golden hair and almond eyes. The first thing Jensen did when he picked him up in the hospital was inspect his package, much to my horror. “Yep, he’s mine,” he grinned to the nurses, all of whom were suitably star struck. I had to wait for him to sign autographs for over an hour before they started to stitch me up.
I thought sex would suffer after a natural birth, but if anything motherhood has made me hornier than ever, even now.
“You’re an amazing mother,” he told me one night when I was bawling my eyes out by Arny’s door, unable to get him to calm down. There have been tough times, I won’t lie, but he’s been there through it all and we’re stronger for it, stronger and happier having Arny in our lives.
Jensen looks to me, smiles, and then looks blankly into the center of the gathered faces. I know he’s looking for Josh, as silly as that is. We only found out yesterday Josh and Carolina fled New Jersey after a string of drug charges were filed against them. It’s been years since Jensen’s seen him, not a single shred of contact. Sometimes I find Jensen sitting up at night and I know no matter how much he denies it he’s thinking about him, about what he could have done differently.
But the past is the past. We have our own family now.
“Wave to Mommy!”
Jensen shakes Arny’s pincushion hand at me.
Polly lifts her camera up beside me. “Holy shit that is cutest thing I have ever seen.”
When we told her we were moving to LA, she replied, “I’ll come with, find myself a surfer boy,” easy as that. And she has, an ISA World Champion who treats her like a queen and even has Jensen on his toes whenever he’s around… like I’d ever need anything more.
“Go on,” says Polly, pushing at my back. “Get in there.”
“Go!” Mom shouts from the back.
“Fine,” I concede, weaving my way to Jensen and Arny.
A flash goes, a moment frozen in time.
Jensen picks Arny up in one hand and places the other on my belly. He takes it off, looking around. “Whoa, you feel that?” he announces. “Looks like my little girl’s going to be a superstar, too.”
###
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About Teagan Kade:
Teagan Kade thinks talking about yourself in the third person is silly, just like her collection of snow globes and rare manga. When she’s not being silly, she’s hanging out with her own Brock and two children in the south of Australia, dreaming of new characters and torturous ways they can get themselves into trouble. Teagan loves hearing from her readers, all of whom are as dear to her heart as salted caramel cookies. Shoot her an email at: [email protected]. She doesn’t bite.
Read on for an exclusive preview of Wrecked: A Bad Boy Outlaw Romance
WRECKED
A Bad Boy Outlaw Romance: Exclusive Preview
CHAPTER ONE
LUX
“Ever been down-under?”
Sounds like a pick-up line.
The plane dips. I’m gripping the sides of my seat so hard my knuckles are paper white. I flinch when a peanut packet pops behind me.
I’m not a great flyer. I much prefer to be on the ground, in the water. Planes are so… unstable. Quite a statement from someone whose life has been plunged into instability, I know.
“Australia,” the man beside me continues, “you been before?’.
The guy must be forty-plus wearing an Akubra that would make Crocodile Dundee proud. If there was a Aussie cliché convention, he’d be front and center.
I glance at him. “No. Never.”
“Big low coming up to the island, probably accounts for all the turbulence.”
You’re not helping.
I love it how all Australians call Tasmania ‘the island’ as if it’s a completely separate entity.
He squirms in his seat. Probably smuggling a python over. “Say, why you coming over again?”
It’s a good question. Why did I suddenly pack in my job, tell my boss to go ‘fuck himself with his inflated ego’ and sell up everything I have to, what? Go surfing?
Imposter Dundee claps his hands together. “That’s right. You’re a surfer girl.” He waves his hand. “Hang ten and all that.”
Jesus. “Yeah, something like that.”
Normally, I’d think this was a come-on, but I saw the ring. Imposter Dundee’s happily married. With my ski-slope hair and tanned features I’m a walking, talking Californian postcard—a target for every hot-blooded male on the planet looking for their very own beach babe.
Imposter Dundee’s question continues to peck at my head. Why have I come? To take up Dad’s words of wisdom and ‘live my life, seize the day’, Dead Poets Society and all that crap? If so, why do I feel so damn nervous, like I’m diving from a plane without a parachute.
Not a good analogy, Lux.
“You’re not travelling with anyone else?” he asks.
“No,” I smile, “just little ol’ me”.
Beside him, Dundee’s wife is drooling over her ‘Dance Moms!’ T-shirt. “Well,” he says, adjusting his belt, “I respect that. Best way to see the world is by yourself, no anchors to tie you down. I wish I did it when I was a more of a spring chicken. Where did you say you’re surfing again?”
Imposter Dundee has the attention span of a goldfish. I’ve already told him twice.
“Shipstern Bluff,” I tell him, not that he’ll have any idea what I’m talking about.
“Oh?” he replies, looking surprised. “Sounds kind of sketchy. What’s so special about it?”
I swallow hard, fingers pressing even tight into the pleather of the armrests. “Someone once told me it’s the gnarliest wave in the world.”
*
Shipstern Bluff—a multi-stepped break about as predictable as a two-year-old with a tommy gun. “The heaviest wave I ever surfed,” my father told me, and he would know. He’d been around the world before he was twenty-two, the same age as me. He used to surf the all the A-frame haunts in California, was a celebrity at the Wedge. He’d been to Teahupo’o, Tahiti, the ‘place of skulls’ when he was in his late teens and surfed a monster swell, but he never shut up about Shipstern. I have a picture of him deep in a giant barrel from the nineties. The waves must have been thirty, maybe fifty foot that day, and this was back before tow-ins and jet skis and big corporate. We said one day we’d ride Shipstern together, but he died last year at Mavericks. A fitting way to go, really.
So, here I am.
The shower-like humidity hits me as soon as I step off the plane. It’s insane. Storms are predicted later in the week, but from where I’m standing on the tarmac the skies are crystal and cerulean—‘island’ perfection.
I find a ride down to the south-west coast. I’m staying at a motel about a half mile from the break, not that you’ll find it on any map. When I arrive at the motel with single board and backpack I’m surprised to find the place is more or less deserted.
I pay the skinny girl at the front desk, the last of my savings gone, and make my way up to my room on the second floor of the motel. Even from here I can see the swell is around ten foot, so nothing insane but still plenty big enough. Thing is, although Shipstern is, incredibly, still a secret spot, so to speak, it’s known for its scalloped, sucking waves that seem to defy physics. They bend out over a razor-sharp reef just twenty inches below the surface. The volume of water behind you, over your head, is incredible. Wiping out is like being hit by a semi… or so Dad said.
Dad talked about the bush trail to Shipstern so much I feel like I’ve been here before.
The skies lose a little of their luster as I walk.
After half an hour of walking, I finally come to the ocean and the Bluff itself, a great headland jutting out into the ocean.
I’m not alone.
There are three guys on the rocks waxing their boards. They’re golden-skinned—short, dark hair as opposed to the beach-boy stereotype. They all share similar features, tattoos, bodies straight out of a Sons of Anarchy episode.
One of them sees me, elbowing the others. He stands, eyes falling to my bikini. “You lost, little girl?”
The condescending tone immediately has me on edge. I knew I’d cop some flack, but Jesus, I only just got off the plane.
I recognize the accent. “You’re American?”
They walk over side by side, boards in hand, every muscle sculpted out and glistening under the Tasmanian sun, wetsuits peeled around their waists like my own.
The tallest one extends his hand. “Once upon a time. Deacon.”
“Lux.”
His eyes run from my chest to my stomach. “Let there be like.”
Someone get this guy a new playbook.
He straightens up. “Where you from, Lux?”
“Cali.”
“Hollywood, hey? That’s nice, but it doesn’t mean shit out here.”
Asshole.
The others step in to introduce themselves, Bo and Razor in turn.
“Razor?” I question.
He gives me a wink. “Because I’m sharp out there. Wait and see.”
“You’re related?”
“Triplets.”
Bo looks to my board. “You are heading out, aren’t you?”
I nod.
He looks down at the crotch of my bottoms. “Can’t see ’em, but you’ve got balls. Never seen a girl out there before.”
Razor punches him in the shoulder. “Or a man.”
Bo punches him back. “Fuck you.”
But Deacon simply stands there watching me. “You’d be better off sitting it out. It ain’t Waikiki out there.”
Asshole, take two.
I tuck my board higher under my arm. “I’m not a grommet. I can handle myself.”
Bo smirks. “I bet. Come on. You’ll be right.”
Deacon’s shaking his head as I run behind the others heading down to the ocean. I cop a nice look at those tight boardie butts as I do so and can’t help but smile.
Maybe things are looking up after all.
Paddling out to the break is torturous. We’re barely halfway and I’m already out of breath. I try to get to the co
ast as much as possible back home, but I’m out of practice. I’ve gotten sloppy and yet here I am at one of the most dangerous breaks in the world, miles away from civilization.
What the hell were you thinking?
It’s the sound that hits me first.
We sit on our boards at the corner of the break and watch. There’s a mild offshore breeze, a thunderous crash as the waves curl and pound into the rock and coral below. The water’s completely see-through, the reef watching on ominously.
It’s hot, humid, but I’m so nervous my nipples have hardened into arrowheads. Deacon’s eyes fall to them through my wetsuit. He knows.
The sun shifts behind clouds, everything suddenly a little colder and dark.
I watch the waves again, the hollow way they’re breaking. This is serious, Lux. You could really get fucked up out here.
Even Bo doesn’t look so convinced now we’re out here. “You really sure about this, Hollywood?”
I nod.
“Okay,” he says. “I’m charging. Watch and learn.”
Bo paddles into the back of the break effortlessly. He just glides through the water, diamond pinpricks of light in his hair.
He paddles in and waits. I can actually feel the water surging below us, shifting and growing with instability. There’s a reason they call this the ‘graveyard’. It’s also a great white shark breeding ground.
Bo sets it up perfectly, placing himself before paddling hard and fast, dropping down the face of the wave swiftly and drawing himself up tight into the barrel. He tucks in as the brothers whoop and cheer behind me.
It’s a great ride. The lip bucks over his head thick as a concrete slab. He disappears and smashes out of the spray, fist-pumping the air.
I watch the other two follow. Razor lives up to his name, carving the water like a surgeon. Deacon almost comes unstuck on the drop-in but manages to pull it together and ride over the back before the close-out. He’s launched a solid six feet into the air.
The trio paddle back. “Your turn, blondie,” smiles Bo.
