The Red Bikini

by Lauren Christopher

  “Fin, what . . . what are you doing here?” she breathed out.

  “I came to get you.”

  “Get me?”

  “To bring you home.”

  There didn’t seem to be enough air. Giselle glanced around, as if other images from this mirage might appear. A surfboard, maybe. Rabbit, even.

  The mirage moved. The corded bracelet moved down his wrist as he shoved his right hand into his pocket.

  “Home,” he repeated.

  The mirage shifted again, glancing down once at his shoes.

  “Giselle, I think we’ve both been searching for home for a long time. I didn’t even know that’s what I was looking for. But meeting you . . . being with you . . . That’s the closest thing I ever felt to home. I’ve never been as happy as I was in those days I spent with you. You asked me that night while we were watching the water if I’d been in love before, and I hadn’t, but I couldn’t help but stare at you and wonder if it was like what I was feeling right then for you. From now on, I’d have to say yes. I’ve been in love. With you.”

  Giselle’s breath was coming faster, not sure she was hearing this correctly, not sure it was really happening, not sure this tanned, handsome man with the powerful forearms and golden hair was even real at all.

  “I know you probably never saw yourself with a beach bum, a guy who barely got his GED, and you’re way out of my league. I know you deserve to be with doctors and rich real estate gurus. But if you give me a chance, I want to do my best for you and Coco. I need you, Giselle. I need you with me. Will you come back to Sandy Cove? Live with me? You and Coco?”

  As she opened her mouth, Fin held his hand up.

  “I know you’re going to say your ex won’t allow it,” he went on. “But I have a feeling I can convince him. I need a few words with him anyway.”

  Giselle thought again of Roy and his part in Fin’s misery. She knew she needed to tell him.

  “Before you say no, let me throw in a few more things: I won’t travel. I know your ex was always gone. And I don’t want that for you. Or Coco. I’ve already talked to Fox. I made it to the semifinals in Ballito, but I threw the last heat because I don’t want to compete anymore. I love surfing because it’s surfing, but I don’t want to compete. I told Fox, and he agreed. He said they can use me in Sandy Cove—I’m going to help them design boards and fins with my name on them. They’ll name them after the competitions I’ve won, and I’ll just travel a bit for exhibitions, but it’s up to me. We can travel when it suits us, and when I can bring you and Coco. In fact, Fox wants to come along, with Tamara and Toni. I think we’ve got traveling companions.” He grinned. “I just want to surf in peace. And pursue the things that are missing in my life.”

  Giselle frowned and shook her head. “What’s missing?”

  “You.”

  He paused for what seemed like a lifetime, then pulled her toward him—as if uncertain whether she wanted to come. But his body was looking like a shelter to her now, his arms a circle of strength, his chest a rock-solid wall. She wanted nothing more than to be wrapped with him, absorbed in him. She stepped into his chest, pressing against him, wishing she could somehow be even closer, and looped her arms around his neck.

  “There’s one thing that’s keeping us from giving this a whirl,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know if you feel the same way.”

  Giselle threw herself forward, kissing him until he staggered against the porch and caught himself against the bricks. She ran her fingers through his hair and tugged, meeting the insistence of his lips with her own promises, promising more of this, more of her. . . .

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes!”

  “I’m not too uneducated for you?”

  “You’re world-wise.”

  “I’m not too much of a loner?”

  “I like iguanas.”

  “What?”

  She shook her head and kissed him harder.

  “God, Giselle, have I mentioned you’re the hottest kisser?” He tugged on her bottom lip, shooting a longing straight through her that she felt pull throughout her body. . . .

  “Coco here?” he mumbled against her mouth.

  “I have to pick her up in about fifteen minutes.”

  He ran his hands up her body, pushing her back through the doorway on a kiss and closing the door behind them.

  As Giselle felt his hand slip under the lace of her bra band, she pushed him against the couch, and her hand drifted to his waistband. “This is what I’ve been missing,” she whispered to him.

  Passion wasn’t just something in Humphrey Bogart movies. It was real. And possible between two people who loved each other, and respected each other, and maybe thought they weren’t quite good enough for each other. And two people who only wanted the best for each other.

  “We . . .” He snapped his hand around her wrist as she got his zipper down. “We have to get Coco, Giselle.”

  “Fast, maybe . . .” Her words came out in a rush.

  He laughed. “We have all the time in the world. Every day. For the rest of your life. If you’ll have me . . .”

  Giselle stared at him. This was real. This was what she wanted.

  Unable to adequately respond to every one of her dreams coming true, she simply nodded.

  “You’ll come to Sandy Cove?”

  She nodded again.

  “Let’s get Coco. Then we’re continuing this. Tonight.”

  • • •

  After Coco was in bed, Giselle removed the cookie plates from the coffee table, sauntered back to where Fin sat on the couch, and drew him into the bedroom.

  “Sex always has to take place behind locked doors when you have kids, you know,” she whispered over her shoulder.

  He turned when they got inside the room and locked hers. Then he whipped his T-shirt over his head in one deft movement. “I can live with that.” He paced toward her.

  “And you have to be kind of quiet.”

  “Duly noted,” he whispered.

  “And it might start to feel ‘routine.’”

  He wrapped his arms around her. “I doubt that.”

  “And it can be kind of predictable.”

  “I’ll look forward to it predictably, then.” He nibbled on her neck, moving her back toward the bed.

  “And it might—”

  “Giselle.” He silenced her gently. “I don’t care. We’re going to have great sex. Being the passionate woman you are, and all.” He followed that comment with a grin and a fingertip down her front. “And I’m going to thank my lucky stars every day that I found you.” He kissed her collarbone. “Every single star.” He unbuttoned the top of her blouse and landed another kiss to the top of her breast. “Every single night.” Another button . . .

  And Giselle moaned with pleasure as all her buttons came undone.

  Her new life had truly begun.

  • • •

  On the flight home, Fin sat between his two new women. Giselle fell asleep on the aisle seat. She’d had a hectic few weeks, packing up most of what they owned and handing it to him to box up in the garage. They planned to get the last of it later, after she’d wrapped things up with Roy and decided on a sale date. Roy was happy to oblige. Fin had had a private phone conversation with him, in tones he hadn’t wanted to move into threats.

  Fin glanced over at Coco. “Are you happy?”

  She grinned and nodded.

  He smiled back. He’d never been happier. “You gonna surf with me every morning?”

  She nodded again, emphasizing her point by bouncing in her airline seat.

  “Hey, little grommet, I’ve got to thank you, you know.”

  “For what?”

  “It worked.”

  “What worked?”

 
Fin wriggled to the side to access his pocket. When he felt the smooth surface, he pulled the shell out of his pocket and held the abalone out in his flat palm. “It made me a prince, just like you said.”

  Coco touched her fingertips to her lips and giggled. “You carried it with you?”

  “I needed to.”

  “You’re a good prince.”

  “Thanks, Coco.”

  “Mommy needed one.”

  “She deserved one.”

  “You’ll be just right.”

  Fin nodded around the lump in the back of his throat. “I plan to spend the rest of my life making sure of that.”

  He laid his head back, feeling content on a plane for the first time in his life, not chasing anything, not searching for the perfect wave.

  He’d found it.

  And he was ready to make it last a lifetime.

  Read on for a preview of Lauren Christopher’s next

  Sandy Cove Romance

  Coming Spring 2015 from Berkley Sensation

  Lia’s rolling briefcase bumped over the wooden dock slats as she rushed down the ramp in her high heels toward Drew’s boat. The rhythmic thumping of the slightly broken left wheel echoed the relentless thump in her chest, especially when she saw the empty wheelchair parked at the end of the dock, a seagull perched haughtily on the handle in the late-winter sun.

  “Drew?” She pulled her case toward her and peered up and down Drew’s enormous white catamaran deck. Long shadows darkened the entire back end.

  When she was met with only the quiet laps of the harbor water splashing against the hull, she mentally measured the leap from the dock to the three small steps at the back of the boat, then eyed the deep Pacific below. She took a tentative step with her toe, but the catamaran pitched a little too wide for her pencil skirt.

  “Lia!” Douglas’s gruff voice, rasped from at least five decades of smoking, preceded him as he hoisted his bearlike body through the narrow cabin door.

  “Douglas! Glad to see you. How is he?”

  “Churlish.”

  Douglas wiped some kind of potato chip grease from his fingers onto the belly portion of his T-shirt, took the steps down to the catamaran’s low stern, and hauled Lia’s briefcase into the boat. He reached out his weathered hand to help her make the leap, but his eyes slid to her shoes.

  “Where are your boat shoes, sunshine?”

  “I came straight from my last client when you called.”

  “On a Saturday?”

  “No rest for the promotion-bound.” She threw him a tired smile for proof. Her boss, whom she not-so-affectionately thought of as The Vampiress, and who regularly used phrases like “I’ll hold your feet to the fire,” had been running her ragged.

  “Here.” Lia undid the dainty straps of her shoes and handed them, one at a time, to Douglas, who stared at them curiously before chucking them onto the bench seat that ran along the edge of the boat.

  He jutted his chin toward the main hull. “Enter at your own risk.”

  Drew’s galley was clean and sparse, mostly bright white with splashes of nautical blue and meticulously shined stainless steel. Lia was always surprised at how spacious it seemed, even when the catamaran was filled with the forty-five guests he usually had on a whale-watching trip. But today it was eerily empty, with just Drew sitting at the small galley table, twisted so he could unload a tiny cupboard that was part of the curved bench seat. He slammed paperwork and small canisters onto the tabletop, then hauled out three or four folded plastic tablecloth items that looked like some type of covers. Beneath the table, two bright white, slightly bent casts covered both his legs, toes poking helplessly toward the narrow walkway.

  She stifled a gasp. “Drew, I’m so—”

  “Save it, Lia.” Without a glance back at her, he continued slamming things onto the table. “I know you’re sorry. Everyone’s sorry. I’m sorry. But I just don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  She pressed her lips together and tore her eyes away from the casts, then sidled in toward the table, lugging her briefcase behind her. The case was filled with two hundred new color brochures, plus two hundred colored tickets and passes she’d had made up for his new whale-watching business. She really wasn’t supposed to be doing free marketing work on the side for her friends—The Vampiress would screech into her twenty-third-floor ceiling tiles if she found out—but Lia’s friends had terrific businesses, and Lia always had marketing ideas for them.

  “Drew, I think we need to talk about this and come up with a plan for what you’re going to—”

  “I don’t know, Lia.” A small vinyl bag landed on the table next to the canisters. It seemed to be the main thing he was looking for. He turned slightly in the dinette seat. “I guess you didn’t understand the part about ‘don’t want to talk about this right now.’”

  She tugged her briefcase closer to the table and edged around his casted feet to take a seat. “Drew, as your friend, I would honor that one-hundred percent. And I would come here and make you soup in your lucky bowl from college and pour you a nice, neat scotch and we’d sit here and get plastered. But, buddy—” She put her hand on his wrist. “I have to come to you today as a marketing manager. Because I just booked The Vampiress’s most important client on your boat. Because you needed the business. You need to come through for me on this, Drew. Please.”

  Drew stared at the table. “I don’t see how I can make that happen.”

  Images of The Vampiress and her rage floated through Lia’s head. Lia was not much more than a glorified administrative assistant right now, and had been for the last four years. But she was on the cusp of a promotion—a huge promotion—if she could pull this off. She could feel it. It had been a dangling carrot for the last three years, but now, finally, it looked like it could happen. And just in time, too. Turning twenty-nine and still hoping she got the coffee right for her boss was not exactly what she’d had in mind for herself when she’d stepped into the hallowed glass walls of the most famous ad agency in Southern California.

  “Drew,” she started again. She kept her voice calm. “I just spent two whole vacation days helping you sell a hundred freaking tickets for excursions over the next six weeks, and you launch Monday. I know you’re feeling frustrated. And I know you’re feeling desperate. But you need a plan. Quickly. And I need that client charter next weekend. So let me be your free PR person and help you come up with something. And then let me be the friend who’s going to help you through all this.” She stole another glance at the casts.

  “I need the friend who will sit quietly and let me brood.”

  “Then you should have called Xavier.”

  Drew smirked and stared at the table. They both stilled, listening to the gentle marina waters lapping the sides of the boat and Douglas’s distant whistling of “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.”

  “I wanted you to come,” he said quietly. “I knew you’d know what to do. I just don’t want to keep rehashing the accident.”

  Lia nodded. She knew her friendship with Drew was strong. And she knew he’d come through for her. Their friendship had undergone a subtle shift in the last six months, when she’d become his free public relations manager in addition to his friend. He was about the fourth friend she’d started helping with marketing. She knew it probably wasn’t smart to give up her measly leftover time off to help friends on the weekends, but she enjoyed it. She helped Drew and their friend Vivi, who ran the cute little vintage clothing store on Main Street, plus her landlord, plus Mr. Brimmer, who’d just opened his own wine-and-cheese shop on Main. She was really proud of the campaigns she’d launched for them, and proud of all her friends for starting such brilliant businesses. Until today anyway.

  Drew was flexing his hands, staring at them on the table. “We need to find someone for at least the first week,” he finally said.

  “Yes.�
� A breath of relief escaped Lia’s throat. “Do you know any other captains we can call?”

  “No one I can trust.”

  Lia listened to the waves lapping. “What about Douglas?” she finally asked.

  “He doesn’t have a commercial captain’s license.”

  She figured as much. Otherwise he’d have been the clear choice. Her mind raced. “Kelly from the marina?”

  “He’s fishing boat only.”

  “What about want ads?”

  Drew scowled further. “This is an expensive boat, Lia.”

  She nodded and touched his arm again. Drew was more of a control freak than she was, with touches of OCD to boot. She couldn’t imagine him giving up his boat to anyone. It cost more than his house.

  He gingerly began putting the items from the table into a box that was wedged onto the seat next to him.

  She wanted to stay focused on business, but her mind kept drifting to the motorcycle accident, imagining it again and again. This morning she’d flown in from a trade show in New York that The Vampiress had sent her to, gotten dressed for work, thrown everything into her car to start visiting the San Clemente clients she’d missed this week, then received the call from Douglas. The horror of the accident—Drew sliding across the freeway off his motorcycle—and the fact that they could have lost him, played over and over in her mind all the way here.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  “I’ll be okay. Painkillers help. No talking about it right now.”

  Lia nodded again and eyed the neat stacks in the box. “Need help?”

  “I got it.”

  They sat in silence again, Drew organizing the items in the box in his fastidious way, his movements slowing as he thought.

  “I considered calling my dad out here from Virginia,” he said. “But his heart’s been bad. My mom thought it best we not tell him just yet.”

  Lia nodded, her mind racing back through everything she knew about Drew. They’d been friends for six years, part of a small circle of really cool people she rallied with once a week at The Shore Thing bar, and they’d all become like family, really. Until recently, anyway, when she’d started working eighty-hour weeks. She and Drew had even tried to date once, eons ago—he’d picked her up to take her to a nice restaurant near the pier, but when he’d leaned over to try to kiss her, they’d both burst out laughing.