Ahead in the Heat (13 page)

“I
f I asked you to take care of things around here for about a week, would you ask me a hundred questions about why, or would you just do it?” Annie blurted out the question in one breath. Her stomach was taking flips an X-Gamer would be proud of.

Her mom paused while plaiting a length of safety rope. She tilted her head to the side. Her hair was long enough that it slipped off her shoulder in a dark stream and onto the tabletop where she was working. “Hmm. Let me think about that.” She tapped a finger across her lips, but then rolled her eyes at Annie. “Ask a hundred questions, of course. What kind of mother do you think I am?”

“A loving, sweet mother who wants the best for her child, but who understands that sometimes an adult woman needs to be autonomous and trusted in her choices?”

Denise opened her mouth as if she’d respond, but then slumped. Her hands fell into her lap. “Well, fuck.”

“Great!” Annie chirruped. “I’ll give you all the keys and we’ll go over the basics tomorrow.”

With that, she tried her best to slip right back out
the kitchen door, but Denise was having none of it. “Wait just a minute, young lady.”

She paused with one hand on the doorjamb. “Yes, my loving and supportive mother?”

“Get your ass back in here.” She pushed aside the safety rope from the tabletop. “And bring us tea.”

“I don’t drink tea.”

Denise grinned. “Fine. Bring me tea and you can have some of that awful-for-you diet soda. When you get cancer long before your time, I’ll cry at your grave.”

“No one has definitively tied aspartame to cancer deaths.” Still, she felt a little twinge as she cracked open the cap of her soda. Her mom was certainly good at putting the maternal guilt trip on a girl.

Lucky for Annie, Denise had been a fairly balanced mother. She’d given support the best she could, and her best was often amazing. So when she finally had a cup of tea curled in her hands and looked at Annie in that particular way, Annie melted. She didn’t really have a choice.

“It’s that Sean Westin, isn’t it?” Denise didn’t accuse, didn’t say it any way that felt negative. Just words. Just a question.

So why did Annie cringe inside? Her stomach twisted. “Yeah, Mom.”

“Do I get to know if you’ll be in town or farther afield?”

Annie folded her hands in her lap. Her index finger found a soft spot in the jeans material stretched across her knees. She picked, worrying at the worn
spot until she could feel the sharp edge of her nail on her own skin. “I’ll be in Fiji.”

“Jesus, Annie.” Her mom said it softly. “You weren’t going to tell me that you were going to another country? That’s not like you. I’d expected you to say something like San Diego.”

“San Diego’s nice,” she said weakly.

Her mother made a show of dipping her head and angling her ear toward Annie. “It’s nice, but . . .”

She sighed. “But Fiji is where the next ASP World Championship Tour event is being held.”

“You’re following that man to an island in the middle of the ocean.”

She felt her mouth turn mulish. Practically sullen. “You say that as if I’m planning to stay there. It’s just a vacation, Mom. When was the last time I took one of those?”

“Don’t look at me, missy. I’ve been telling you to take some time off for about four years now.” She curled her hands around the white-and-blue tea mug and leaned forward. “But I meant San Diego!”

“What’s with you and San Diego, anyway?”

“Your dad won’t go with me to this little bungalow that we could rent, and it’s perfect. I’ve even been planning to sign him up for a sailing lesson, and you know he’s always wanted that. But he won’t agree.” Denise’s mouth twisted into a little pout that looked about as familiar as it felt.

At least Annie always knew she came by her stubbornness honestly. She was just like her mom. Besides, Dad wouldn’t agree to Denise’s newest trip idea because he’d already planned, picked, and paid for a really freaking similar vacation to Santa
Barbara for their thirtieth anniversary. He and Denise were bound together for life, in that way little girls dreamed of. Annie had had those same sorts of dreams when she’d been young. She’d played with a piece of lace over her hair as a veil.

She wasn’t sure when those dreams had faded away. The first chunk had disappeared when she faced the world of pro surfing. There was no way to be with someone who meant something to you when you were on the ’CT. But then another chunk had faded when she’d dealt with Terry and the aftermath of that night.

“I like him. I like Sean.” Even as she said the words, she was qualifying them in her mind. She liked him, but they weren’t going to last. She liked him, but he had issues. She liked him, but
she
had issues.

There was no
forever
for them.

“Are you considering surfing Cloudbreak?”

“Oh God, no,” Annie exclaimed, jerking backward. “What in the name of God? Why would you think that?”

Cloudbreak was a beautiful wave a mile away from Tavarua, Fiji. Surfers had to take a boat ride to get out there, but they were rewarded with heavy barrels and clean swells if they made it. Except there was a stretch known as the shish kebabs because it was that easy to get skewered on the reefs. The ASP competition would be at that wave and at another break off the mainland of Fiji. It was going to be difficult enough to watch Sean surf it with the full extent of his injury and recovery as plain as his MRI
reports. Cloudbreak could kill men, much less reinjure their shoulders.

Not only would it be incredibly packed, and most likely officially roped off for pro surfers only, but there was the overwhelming fact that Annie wasn’t ready. Even though she’d once been an excellent surfer who could have handled it ten years ago. That was then. This was now. She wasn’t dumb enough to think otherwise. “Jeez, Mom. No way. I’ll surf something on my terms, probably a beach break. Not
Cloudbreak
. Sheesh.”

Denise put both hands up. “I worry. I’m sorry if that was a dumb question. It’s bad enough to think of you breaking an arm on your backyard ramps. Throw in a thirty-foot wave on the other side of the globe and I get a little irrational.”

As if speaking of the ramps made them awaken, a familiar sound came from the backyard. The swooping, steady whirr of wheels on wood. Annie and her mother exchanged a look, then glanced at the door in tandem.

Denise stood, her hands flat on the kitchen table. “Were you . . . ?”

“Waiting on anyone?” Annie shook her head and took half a second to scoop her hair into a ponytail. She had the sudden impulse to have it out of her eyes.

She thought about grabbing the Taser she had
locked in a cabinet next to the stove, but she realized that would be ridiculous. Someone who was out to cause trouble would be either pounding on doors or sneaking around, not stopping for a late-evening skating session.

She didn’t tell her mom to put down the cell phone she clutched, however. Annie only unbolted the back door and stepped onto her tiny patio. She folded her arms and leaned on the fence that blocked off the pool. “Hey, Tim.”

He paused at the table, his wheels balanced in the air over the vert. “Hey, Miss Annie.”

“Dude, haven’t I talked to you about calling before you come by so late?”

He shrugged and squinted across the street. Unless he was examining the cars lining the street, he was avoiding her gaze. They’d had this conversation a hundred times.

It wasn’t as if she’d ever put consequences on breaking the rule. Tim came only when he needed somewhere safe to go. The red hoodie he wore was too thin for the night air, but no one had told him to put on something thicker. No one had stopped him from going out at ten p.m. on a Tuesday either.

Annie wasn’t stupid about her kids. She knew some of them were confrontational, and even if a parent had told them to keep their ass in the house, they’d have stormed out to do exactly what they wanted. Not Tim. He was a different kind of kid.

He was bruised at the edges. Sometimes literally, sometimes not. “Me and the stepasshole got in a fight.”

Annie’s hands clenched on the wood fence. “Physical fight? Because he’s got seventy pounds on you. I really think we could make assault charges stick.”

“And have Mom kick me out?” Tim shook his head. He had shockingly red hair in the daylight, but under the orange-tinted floodlights, it looked almost blond. “It’s cool. Just a lotta shouting this time, anyway.”

“What set it off?”

He shrugged. “The cable went out. He said I was fucking around with it—but I wasn’t, Miss Annie. I swear it.” He scrubbed his fingers through his hair and tugged. “And that made him throw my backpack across the room. Which was fine, except my report card fell out and I have a C minus in English comp.”

“Aw, Tim,” she said. “You know I’ll help you with that. Bring in any assignments you’ve got uncompleted this weekend—” Except she had to cut herself off. She’d be in Fiji by this weekend. Living a life of luxury and doing really inappropriate and naughty things with Sean. Hopefully. “When’s the quarter end?”

“Not for three more weeks.”

“So bring some work by tomorrow and we’ll do what we can. The rest of it’ll be when I get back from a trip.”

Tim gave her a smile she recognized. From him, it meant thank you—and a pretty hefty shot of resentment too. He didn’t like how much help he needed in writing, which was probably why he’d willingly
fallen behind rather than come to her for help. She’d had a mental note to ask about his English courses, but she’d forgotten.

She’d forgotten because of Sean. Because of the obsession she was developing for him. This couldn’t go on. She wasn’t going to be able to balance her life between the regular stuff and the places where she took off an afternoon to surf. Where she disappeared to foreign countries because a handsome man with blue eyes asked her to.

It had been four years since she’d gone to sleep without wondering if a teenager would turn up in her backyard. There was that factor. She loved being there for them, being a safe place, but there had to be a limit. That was why she was seeking funding for the new center. Funding for a director who could take care of the two a.m. phone calls too.

She drummed her fingers on the fence. “How long you gonna skate?”

“I dunno. I’m trying to nail a hardflip.” He bit his upper lip, since he was asking a lot of her, considering how late it was.

“Lemme go change. I’ll be back out in a minute.” She was wearing lightweight pajama pants with a drawstring waist. They were inappropriate and too thin for skating, since they’d give her no protection.

Her mom stopped her just inside the back door. “Is he okay?”

“Okay enough for tonight.”

“His mom ought to be strung up.” Denise’s mouth tightened into something flatter than displeasure but
not quite as down-turned as when she was about to cry. “She tossed over a good kid for that butthead!”

“She’s doing the best that she can. You should hear Tim talk about his grandfather. He’s lucky his mom isn’t a total heroin addict, really.” Impulsively, she squeezed her mom in a giant hug. “Thanks for worrying about me, Mom. But I’m going to be fine. I’m going to Fiji with Sean, but then I’ll be back and everything will be back to normal. This is . . . just mess-around time. Understand?”

Denise leveled a steady stare at Annie. “I understand. But I’m not sure you mean it.”

“T
his is a ten-hour flight?” Annie was folded in the seat of an airline waiting area, her feet tucked under her butt.

“Ten and a half,” Sean said with intentionally lazy inflection. He turned the page in his magazine. Keeping his gaze trained on the glossy pages was difficult.

Annie looked absurdly cute. Sean wasn’t even sure what it was about the outfit that was doing it for him, because it was more than obvious she had dressed for comfort. Her striped pajama pants had a natural cotton drawstring. She’d layered two tank tops that had a stylized spaceship that Sean couldn’t identify with an open zip-up hoodie.

Her tablet was stacked with movies for the flight, but even though she had it balanced across her knees, the headphones dangled to the side. She had the side of her thumb between her teeth. “I’m surprised you don’t charter a jet or something.”

“It’s Fiji. I’m rich, not made of gold.” He coiled his hand around the back of her neck. Soft tendrils fell loose from her ponytail and trailed over his knuckles. “Stuff it and enjoy the first-class lounge.”

She wrinkled her nose at him, which was really
fucking cute, so he kissed her briefly. She tasted like sugar and coffee from the iced drink at her side.

When she ended the kiss, she left her fingers framing his cheek as she gave him a teasing smile. “It’s kinda swank.”

“Good.” He liked being able to give her good things. He didn’t know what had prompted him to ask her along on this trip to Fiji, but he felt better with her at his side. The results of his drug testing would come in before the event started, but since he knew he was going to pass it, he might as well get there early.

Having time to assess the waves and the conditions before a competition was vital. Even though there’d been an event in Fiji for the past several years, that didn’t mean the waves would automatically be the same. The ocean was a living, breathing beast. Storms and earthquakes and even the tides themselves could affect the caliber of a break. If a chunk of reef broke away, there could be an entire shift in quality.

He’d been following reports out of Fiji pretty closely, so he didn’t expect any big changes, but that didn’t mean he would go in unprepared. He wanted his toes in the water and his boards wet. As soon as possible. He also needed to spend time working his shoulder out. Annie wasn’t his therapist anymore, but that didn’t mean he was off scott free. His new team had given him a list of daily stretches and parameters he had to work within.

It could be the difference between placing well and winning. And a win would do enormous good for Sean’s ranking.

Having Annie at his side was a distraction. Something to keep the edge off so that he didn’t wind too damn tight. He liked having her under his hand, having her at his side. She’d worn flip-flops, but they were on the floor and she had her bare feet folded into the cushioned chair. She was . . . different. He liked that about her.

“Hi, Sean,” said a soft voice. Gloria stood in front of their seats, a bright yellow tote bag over her shoulder. “You headed out tonight?”

Gloria was a beautiful woman in the classic surfer-girl mold. She had long, tousled blond hair pulled into a low ponytail behind her left ear. Her snug leggings showed off a body that most women would envy, and she had on an oversized T-shirt that hung off one bare shoulder.

Sean and Gloria’s breakup had gone fairly easily, especially since she immediately replaced him with Nate Coker. She was a constant fixture on Nate’s Instagram account. So long as Nate wasn’t on a surfboard, the two were always seen together.

“Yup,” Sean agreed. “This is Annie Baxter.”

Annie slid him a sideways glance, one that obviously noted his lack of descriptor for her. But then again, he wasn’t exactly about to call her
the best lay I’ve ever had
or
coolest chick I know
. Both seemed unbearably tacky. She stuck her hand out to Gloria, who took it briefly. “We met at a party a couple weeks ago. Nice to see you again.”

“Same,” Gloria said with the briefest display of a smile that Sean would have thought possible.

“Where’s Nate?” he asked.

She answered Sean, but her gaze was stuck on
Annie. “He went yesterday. But I had some business to take care of.”

Sean hoped his surprise didn’t show on his face. Gloria hadn’t had any ambition for her own career when they’d been dating. Now she lived off Nate, pretty much. Not that there was anything wrong with that. She kept Nate energized and focused. Without Gloria encouraging him, Nate would be staked out in a hammock, ready to blow his prize money on mai tais. Then there wouldn’t be much more prize money. Ambitious, the man was not. “What are you into lately?”

She flashed a slightly vacant smile. “Stuff. Some producing, and I had a casting call for a commercial.”

“I didn’t know you wanted into acting.”

“I don’t, really. But it was for a gear company I was kind of hoping Nate could get in with. So I went, because maybe I’d get a chance to talk to marketing or PR about Nate.”

Sean blinked slowly. He hadn’t exactly heard of the industry working like that before, though it was true that it was more about who you knew than how you knew them. “Hope it worked for you, then.”

“Yeah.” She got a little shark-eating-a-salmon sort of smile going. “I think it may go somewhere. Ta-ta,” she said with a twiddle of her fingers over her shoulder. “I’ll catch you in Nadi.”

“She looks like the sort who’d be in commercials,” Annie said with a slightly wistful sigh as Gloria walked away. “What was the accent? It wasn’t quite Australian.”

“Kiwi. She’s from New Zealand.” Sean flipped his
magazine closed as first-class boarding was announced. “I was the one who introduced her to Nate, actually. He’s classic Californian. Knew him when I was growing up.”

Annie let that one go until they were tucked in their comfortable leather seats and the flight attendant had offered them complimentary drinks. Annie accepted a fuzzy blanket and tucked it over her lap. “Posh seats,” she said.

“They do all right. It’s the only nonstop from California to Fiji, so I’ve been on it a few times.”

“All right.” She scoffed a little, but then blew it by bouncing in her seat. She wedged up on her knees and clasped the back of the seat, peering down the aisle. “This is supercool.”

He laughed along with her. “Yeah, okay. You win. It’s pretty awesome.”

She twisted in her seat, wedging her back against the bulkhead, which was painted pale purple in keeping with a faintly tropical theme. “How can you be so blasé about this? Look at this seat! I fit in it sideways, for God’s sake.”

“You’d fit in a shoe box sideways.” He slipped his fingers behind her firm calf. “So I’m not sure that counts.”

“Did you grow up rich?”

“Fuck no, don’t be ridiculous,” he blurted. His grip on her leg tightened, but he forced himself to
release, finger by finger. He drew in a slow, deep breath. “No, not rich.”

The flight attendant interrupted with the safety briefing at the front of the cabin. Sean took the easy way out, facing her and pretending to listen with rapt attention to her lilting speech. Really, he’d heard a thousand variations of the same gig. Traveling the world for a living meant the downsides too. He could recite the emergency exit location for half a dozen different planes.

He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to tell Annie. Maybe now would be a good time, while the airline supplied her with free wine and he had a captive audience. Still, that didn’t mean she had to hear all of it. No one needed that kind of sob story, and he didn’t want her pity. He only wanted her to stop thinking of him as spoiled.

He liked the results of his hard work. He’d never thought of that as a bad thing. He’d put a metric fuckton of effort into his surfing, and taken on gigs that a few of his compatriots looked down on. He’d caught shit from Tanner Wright for years over pulling the occasional modeling gig for a nonsurf company. Sean had never understood that. It wasn’t as if Tanner hadn’t posed for magazine pictures. He’d just done it holding a surfboard and wearing something that was self-described as “for surfers.” Make it a fancy watch and supposedly it was all different.

Whatever. Sean had worked hard for what he had. Living to suit his means didn’t seem inappropriate.

They’d been in the air a half hour when he leaned over her shoulder. “What are you watching?”

She pulled her headphones out. “The
Dexter
finale. I’m so behind, I know.”

He twisted the end of her ponytail around his fingertip. “I hated it. You’ll have to tell me what you think.”

“Look, I’m sorry if I overstepped some boundary by asking if you’d grown up rich.” She pushed up the armrest between them and gently bumped his shoulder with hers. “It’s just I feel like an idiot, jumping around in my seat while you’re so cool.”

“It’s hard to explain how I grew up,” he found himself saying. But he pulled her closer. Shoulder to shoulder wasn’t enough for him.

She let him too. She unsnapped her seat belt and nestled closer so that he could put his arm around her. Between the comfortable size of the first-class seats and how small she was, she was able to comfortably lean on him with her feet on the armrest next to the bulkhead. “Start with where you were born.”

“I was a home birth.” He rubbed up and down Annie’s arm, but the sweatshirt numbed out their contact. His fingers delved through her zipper, finding bare skin at her waist where her tank tops twisted up. “Mom didn’t tell anyone in her family that she was pregnant, actually. Just moved out to a little place on her own. She had a little family money, mostly through my granddad, who was a tool and die maker.”

Annie twisted around in his arms, craning her neck to look at him. “How did she keep that secret?”

“Mom was . . .” He sighed, rolling through so many descriptors in his head.
Messed up
.
Strange
.
Unbalanced
. “Damaged. She had a whole series of little shitty things happen to her when she was growing up, and when her mom died, it was like she never came back. No one knew how to cope with her.”

“Sounds rough.”

“Fuck yeah,” he agreed. “It was worse than that. It was my whole life.”

Annie tried to twist again, but he didn’t let her. He kept his forearm across her upper chest, clasping her shoulder and holding her close. Not mean, or hard, but firmly enough that she settled again. The view out the window was a velvety canvas of stars on dark. He focused on it rather than letting the memories of his childhood rise up again.

“She was a hoarder.”

“Like . . .” She paused, and he could practically hear her measuring her words and deliberating exactly how to phrase her question. “Was she just a messy person, or are we talking clinically diagnosed here?”

“Clinical. Her thing was clothing. We had a three-bedroom house, but by the end we were both sleeping in the living room because all the rest of the space was . . . gone.” The words were easier to say than he’d expected, and a hell of a lot harder at the same time. Annie made a soft noise that he didn’t want to hear, so he squeezed her shoulder and kept talking so he wouldn’t get a chance to absorb her sympathy. Sympathy led to pity. “So there was family money, but we didn’t exactly live large or anything. Flying like this was new when I first started doing well on the circuit, but the shine wears off
when you fly every single month. Sometimes I’d rather be home.”

She didn’t answer for a long, long time. Her head dipped and one hand looped over the arm he had across her. She brushed a soft kiss over his skin, but then patted his wrist. “Well duh. I’ve seen your house. It’s like having first class permanently.”

He sucked in a cool, deep breath, though it was of stale airline air-conditioning. At least he’d said something. That was enough for now.

Maybe enough for forever.