“Don’t do that,” he said, but I shook my head. A moment later, we were toe to toe, with his palms pressed gently to either side of my face as he forced me to meet his gaze. When he looked at me like that, I forgot that there were other people on this damn beach with us. And when he touched me, I almost forgot that I didn’t plan to get involved—emotionally or physically—with this guy.
“I’m not angry at you for mentioning my mum. It was an innocent question—no harm, you know,” he said.
My shoulders deflated. “I’m really—”
“Drop it,” he said, this time his voice hard. I flinched but said nothing.
Our lesson ended a few minutes later. Paige met us out on the deck again, as I was putting my clothes back on, and this time when she asked me to eat with her—correction: told me I was going to—I accepted. She clapped her hands happily.
“I’ve got to give a lesson in half an hour but we’ve got a little time. Holy crap, I’m going to eat lunch with a celebrity,” she said. Cooper wiggled his fingers in mock enthusiasm and she rolled her eyes at him. “If you want to fire this dumbass and hire me, I could use the cash. My shitty Grand Caravan is dying!”
I didn’t know anything about this woman other than the fact she was a surfer, dated a horn-dog and that her parents owned the place I was staying in, but for the first time in what seemed like years, I felt a pull toward another female that had nothing to do with getting f**ked up or blowing money. I cleared my throat. “I should call my bodyguard and let him know.”
She opened the door for me, ushering me inside, and then lifted her eyebrow to Cooper. “Are you coming?”
He shook his head. “No, you guys go ahead . . . I’m going to go back out for a few minutes. I’ll be back to put up your board and take you home in a little,” he said. When he saw me hesitate, he gave me a strained smile. “Don’t worry, she won’t bite.”
“Not too hard,” Paige added, coming in behind me. I walked forward, dragging the soles of my rubber flip flops across the tile floor. There was a part of me that wanted to turn back around and cast another glance at Cooper, to see if what we’d talked about was still bothering him, but he was probably already in the sea. De-stressing.
We walked through the hall into a small laundry room. Paige moved past me and motioned me through the door, into an open kitchen that looked like it belonged on an HGTV show. “You go ahead and sit down over there.” She pointed to a counter with a row of stools in front of it. As I crossed the room, sending Miller a text message as I walked, I heard the refrigerator open. “So how are you liking it?” she asked.
I glanced over my shoulder. “What? Surfing?”
She laughed, probably because my irritation was obvious. “It’ll get better. I sucked when Cooper started teaching me.”
I slid on the first stool and leaned forward, supporting my elbows on the granite countertop. “How long have you been doing it?”
“Six years.”
Cooper had been a surf instructor since he was sixteen—practically a kid. I wanted to be surprised by that, but for some reason, I wasn’t. Suddenly, though, I wanted to know if he’d made Paige work on form and popping up on a surfboard for two days straight. When I came right out and asked her, she threw her head back, so that her short black hair brushed her shoulder blades, and laughed.
“He made you do that both days?” she asked. She brought two plates with subs over to the counter, placing one in front of me. Then she bent down and fished two bottles of water out of a cabinet. She handed me one. “Does he not want you to walk tomorrow or something?”
I opened the warm water and chugged quickly to flush down the string of curses I wanted to direct at Cooper. When I was finished, I glared at the window. I could see him—or at least what I thought was him—a tiny dot riding a wave somewhere in the distance. Maybe if he’d shown me more than standing up on a surfboard in the sand I could’ve floated out there to push him down.
“You’re going to be good for him,” Paige said, tilting her head to one side.
“What? The paycheck for him training me? Right about now I’m tempted to ask Dickson to hire you.”
She gave me one of those pointed are-you-fucking-kidding-me-looks and then a half-smile. “Sure. The paycheck. But if you want to hire me I’d be cool with that.”
We ate and talked about surfing for a few more minutes before Eric popped his head in to say her client had arrived. She hopped off the counter, keeping her eyes on mine. “Gotta go give this group surf lesson, so make yourself at home until he’s done. Good luck with studying your script!”
I waited until she and Eric disappeared to pull out my phone. If I waited around for Cooper, I was bound to say something screwed up that would only make working with him even more difficult. I sent Miller a text asking him to come pick me up.
But before I went to the front of the house, to the shop area, to wait for Miller, I left Cooper a note using the blue Post-It pad on the counter.
Hypothetically . . . it’s kind of hard to get me into your bed if I’m too sore to make it there in the first place. Thanks for spending two days torturing me for nothing.
-W
Then I folded it, scribbled his name on the front, and tucked it under the purple and white surfboard, which was still out on the deck. Later that night, as I watched the DVD Dickson had sent me for the second time, studying the way Hilary Norton made the role of Alyssa look as natural as breathing, and waited for a call from Jessica who’d texted she wanted to talk, I received a message from Cooper.