The Almost Wives Club: Kate (6 page)

Her lips thinned and she shook her head. “I don’t have time for games. Tell Mike to give you your money back.” She turned away and began to stride through the surf to the beach.

“Wait! I’m a snowboarder. Also, I practically lived on my skateboard when I was a kid. The feel is similar and I already have the balance.”

When she still looked skeptical, he waded closer to her. “Trust me, no man is going to try to impress a woman by showing her how he
can’t
do something.”

She crossed her arms across her chest. “Then what are you doing?”

He went with the simple truth. “Trying to get close to you.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

Water swirled around them, whispering endless secrets. He stepped closer, water drops hung from her eyelashes and the ends of her hair. Her eyes were doubtful, a little sad, wary and also, he thought, or maybe hoped, interested. She felt the connection, they both did.

His gaze dropped to her mouth. That luscious mouth that was so careful about what words slipped out, the mouth he’d wanted to kiss since the first second he’d laid eyes on her.

He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders. “Because of this.” And he pulled her to him and kissed her.

The second her cool, salt-tinged lips touched his he was a lost man. She was stiff against him at first, so he did nothing more than brush her lips with his, coax, offer, give. After a second he felt a tremble go right through her and then with a tiny sound, she gave in to him, to the strong attraction between them.

After she’d seen Nick at the beach yesterday, she’d almost packed the car and headed out in the wee hours, certain Nick had called Ted and that her former fiancé, his family and probably her mother would soon arrive and attempt to bully her into marrying Ted.

She’d climbed out of bed and started packing, when she suddenly stopped as two thoughts struck her simultaneously.

One: she wasn’t some princess in feudal times. No one could force her to marry anybody.

Two: The rust bucket currently in her parking space had barely coughed and choked its way to Carlsbad from Long Beach. There was no way it was going to take her very far.

She sat down on the bed as the truth hit her.

It was time to stop trying so hard to please everyone in her life. Maybe it was time she started trying to please herself.

So, she’d waited for the Carnarvons to make their move. All morning, she’d rehearsed what she’d say. Annihilating speeches warred with reasonable attempts to explain that she had been mistaken in thinking she loved Ted. She did not.

She did not love the man she’d planned to marry. She loved the man she’d believed he was. The man she’d wanted him to be.

But he wasn’t that man.

She was beginning to suspect that she wasn’t the woman Ted had believed her to be, either.

Through the waves of hurt and betrayal another emotion rolled in, a sense of relief that caught her by surprise.

When had she realized that she didn’t want to marry Ted?

Was it when she discovered he’d hired a private detective to prove she was loyal?

No. She believed the realization had come when Nick had challenged her until she’d voiced opinions she’d been suppressing.

The moment she realized she wanted to kiss a man who was a complete stranger.

She’d waited at home with her phone beside her all this morning, fairly confident that detective Nick knew perfectly well where she was staying and had passed that information to the Carnarvons. Not only that, but her cell number was on the lesson sign-up form. She was only a hundred miles from LA. She wondered who the family would send. Ted himself? Her mother? Ted’s formidable father who would demand she return to marry his son? She didn’t know or care who showed up. She was ready. She was keyed up, rehearsed, so caffeinated that she felt like a live wire.

No one knocked on the door.

The only call to her cell number was Mike telling her he’d scheduled her for two lessons today.

As noon approached, she wondered. Was it possible Nick was telling the truth?

Could it be possible that he wasn’t working for the Carnarvons? He was here because of the attraction, the connection that had sparked at dinner.

She’d arrived at one for their lesson, half-surprised to find him there with his beginner board and a smile of appreciation.

Now here he stood, gazing at her in that intense way so she felt the sizzle heat her blood. She wasn’t an engaged woman now. She was single.

Free.

Available.

Their gazes locked and held as he stepped closer, pushing his way through the surf. She didn’t move, or step back or attempt to stop him.

What she did was drop her gaze to that beautiful mouth that was coming closer and slowly closer.

Her eyes drifted shut as he finally closed the distance between them, pulling her into his arms and kissing her.

She tasted salt, felt the slight roughness of stubble, wrapped her arms around him and gave herself over to the moment.

He felt so solid. Through the black wetsuit she felt the strength in his body. He kissed her deeply, thoroughly, making her wonder how she could have contemplated living her whole life without ever kissing this man.

As he deepened the kiss she felt herself opening to him.

Neither of them noticed the wave. The perfect surfing wave that had been building for hundreds of miles out at sea, stealthily sliding below the surface ready to rise up and crest, offering the sweetest ride to a surfer who was in the right spot, waiting.

And if the surfer wasn’t on their board, ready to jump to their feet and ride the wave, if they were instead standing thigh deep in the surf kissing, then that wave was going to crash into them, swamping over their heads and knocking the pair of them off their feet.

Kate came up coughing and spluttering wondering how she could have been so crazy as to stand in the surf kissing her student, the man who had caused her to break her engagement.

He came up a moment later, coughing and laughing, his eyes alight.

“I’d say you knocked me off my feet.”

“We should get back,” she said, feeling suddenly out of her depth on every level.

“Okay,” he said, grabbing his board and lifting it so he could carry it more easily. “Have dinner with me tonight.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You have other plans?”

“No. But the last time I had dinner with you things didn’t turn out so well.”

“I’d say they worked out really well. You don’t want to marry Ted.”

“I don’t—”

“It’s only dinner. You have to eat.”

She shook her head.

“Tell you what. I’ll be eating at Mancini’s.” Mancini’s was an Italian restaurant with an ocean view and great food. “I’ll make a reservation for seven tonight. If you get hungry you’ll know where to find me.”

Then he turned back. “That was a good lesson. Same time tomorrow?”

She hesitated, then, still tasting him on her lips, nodded.

 ***

Kate taught another surf lesson at four. This time, her students were two women who’d decided it would be fun to try surfing. They were both somewhere in their forties and seemed to take as much delight in laughing at themselves and at each other as they did in the lesson.

They weren’t particularly athletic or competitive, unlike her last student.

One made it to her feet for a short run, the other spent more time falling off her board than staying on it, but Kate could see they were having fun, so she tried to help them a little bit and make sure nobody drowned.

They gave her a generous tip at the end of the lesson and thanked her for a fantastic day.

With the surf falling fast and the day ending, she knew there’d be no more lessons today.

She wished suddenly that she had some friends here. The pair of laughing women had made her realize how alone she was.

She could drop by the surfers’ bar and hang out with a group who lived to ride the waves and talked of nothing else. But she had no one to call on the spur of the moment and say, “let’s go grab dinner, or see a movie,” or any one of a hundred other things.

Her isolation pretty much assured that she’d be eating one of her dinners for one and trying not to think about Nick sitting in a nice restaurant alone. Waiting for her.

She changed into active wear since teaching surfing wasn’t exactly a heavy workout, and took herself for a long run on the beach. The sun was setting as she pounded her way along the packed sand, dodging the odd family building a sand castle, a puddle here and there. She loved the sunsets, the slow build as dusk smudged the horizon pink and purple and then the sun began to drop, glowing redder, color expanding until the whole sky blushed.

Her run didn’t bring the peace that it usually did but at least the exercise burned off some of her nervous energy.

She walked the final half a mile home, letting her breathing settle back to normal. On the deck off her living room, she stretched, enjoying the last of the sunset. Then she went inside.

Her apartment was fine for a vacation rental but it lacked a certain hominess.

She contemplated her dinner options and didn’t feel like any of them.

Instead, she poured and drank a large glass of water, then a second. She stripped, turned on the shower and indulged in a long, hot shower. She washed her hair, then she shaved. While she had one foot resting on the edge of the tub and the razor scraping the light stubble from her lower legs, she noticed that her pedicure was in sad shape.

Of course, she’d been booked for the works, but had cancelled. Now she thought she should not let herself go simply because she’d discovered her fiancé wasn’t the man she’d believed he was.

A woman didn’t groom herself for a man, as any woman who’d read a single self-help book knew. She kept herself looking nice for herself.

“Tomorrow,” she promised her feet. Tomorrow she’d find a salon that offered manicures and pedicures.

By the time she’d blown her hair dry, moisturized every inch of her skin with the organic body lotion that smelled like coconuts, she felt better. Good, actually.

She slipped into a jean skirt—because she was getting bored of wearing jeans all the time—and a sleeveless cotton top. A glance at the wall clock showed it was seven o’clock.

Seven o’clock and Nick would be entering Mancini’s around now.

Would he glance around, hoping to see her? Maybe walk back outside and check up and down the street for her?

“Oh, as if,” she snapped aloud. And then she picked up the TV remote and flipped on the TV.

She flicked over a few channels and saw nothing but commercials and one of those awful fight channels. She flipped the TV off again.

She had books to read.

She had her laptop. She could spend some time looking for jobs. And, now she wasn’t marrying Ted, she didn’t even have to stay in the LA area. In fact, maybe it would be good for her to take a job in a different part of the country. She nibbled her bottom lip. She’d rediscovered her passion for surfing. That narrowed down the places where she was willing to relocate.

The clock mounted on an old surfboard told her it was twelve minutes past seven. The sight of the surfboard swept her back into the moment when Nick had kissed her. She licked her lips as though she could still taste him.

He’d be sipping a beer now, or a cocktail. Maybe he was sampling a glass of wine. He was probably perusing the menu, getting a fairly good idea at this point that his meal was going to be a solo one.

Unless he tried to pick up some poor woman at the restaurant.

She wandered back into the bathroom, pulled out her makeup bag. She didn’t consciously realize she was getting ready to go out until she’d finished her eye makeup and was slicking her lips with a rich plum lipstick that the tube informed her was called Courtesan.

What Nick needed, she realized, as she threw on a sweater and pushed her feet into sandals, was a good talking to.

She was only five minutes’ walk from the restaurant and so was there before seven-thirty.

She hovered outside for a moment, since the big garage door things were open to the street and she could see inside perfectly clearly. If he was at the bar yucking it up with a stranger—no doubt a female one—then she’d keep walking and find another restaurant where she’d treat herself to dinner.

However, when she spotted Nick, he wasn’t at the bar. He was at a table for two, sitting alone. As she’d guessed, he was sipping a cocktail.

What surprised her was that a second menu sat at the place across from him and he hadn’t let the server remove the place setting.

Did he believe she was a sure thing?

He raised his head and glanced around and for a moment she felt a kind of wanting coming off him. Not the cocky lady-killing attitude she usually felt, but almost a genuine sense of hope fading. She saw him glance at his watch and believed his shoulders slumped the tiniest bit.

She strode into the restaurant through the main door, walked to his table and sat down.

If he’d believed she wouldn’t show, he now hid it pretty well.

“You look fantastic,” he said to her as though her actually being here didn’t require comment. He also didn’t mention that she was half an hour late.

“Thank you.”

A waiter materialized at that moment and she ordered a glass of wine.

“Are you hungry?” Nick asked as they both considered the dinner options.

“Starving,” she said. And to her surprise, it was true. She ordered a salad to start and then a pasta dish with fresh seafood. Amazingly, in spite of the trauma of a broken engagement, a mother’s betrayal, and the fact that no one had officially canceled her wedding yet, she was starting to get her appetite back. The burning in her stomach hit a few times when anger surprised her, boiling up out of her depths, fiery and painful. But it wasn’t a constant irritation such as she’d experienced in the past couple of months.

She was out having dinner with a very attractive man. It occurred to her in that moment that if she wanted to ruin her chances of ever marrying Ted then sleeping with Nick would be the fastest, most efficient way to do that.

She had no need to go to elaborate lengths to remove her from the suitable bride for a Carnarvon list.

One simple act would take care of it.

She glanced over at Nick. He was watching her and the expression in his eyes pulled at her, made her want things

She dropped her gaze to her menu.

Once they’d ordered she leaned forward. “Tell me your story. The real one this time.”

“I’m more interested in yours.”

She snorted. “You are a private eye, and if the Carnarvons hired you then you are good. So good you already know everything there is to know about me. Because they always make sure they get their money’s worth.”

“Does that include you?” He challenged her, holding her gaze deliberately.

“You bet it does. I was an asset.” She hadn’t realized it until after the awful night when she’d thrown her ring back in Ted’s face, but she’d been as much a part of the big picture for their family firm as the latest brewery deal. She was from a good family, she had no skeletons in her personal closet. She’d always been a good girl. And she supposed she’d have matured into a good woman. She’d look good on Ted’s arm, never embarrass him or his family, bear his children and, she supposed, they’d have found a way to ease her out of her job into a fundraising opportunity at a more prestigious charity. She wanted to believe they’d never have succeeded, but she wasn’t so sure.

Her lip curled at the notion.

“You didn’t seem so cynical last time we met.”

“Recent events have made me cynical about a lot of things. Like every word you told me at dinner the other night.”