Sleeping Beauty (17 page)

“Why is this side so different?”

“The firing range is on the east side of the slope by Pyramid Cove,” I say. “And also because of the goats.”

“The goats?” He turns in a circle. “What goats?”

“They aren’t here now. They were–”

“Detonated for food?”

“No, dummy. They were airlifted off the island when animal rights activists complained that their habitat was being–” The strange look on his face makes me stop mid-sentence. “What?”

“Nothing,” he says. “I was just trying to figure out what an airlifted goat looks like. I’m assuming they don’t just willingly jump onto the rescue helicopter.”

I shake my head and pick up my pack. “Last leg of the trail,” I say, looking across the plateau to the far side. “There’s no path here, so you definitely have to stay behind me.”

“Wait, I thought you said the firing range only hit the other side of the ridge?”

I start walking, more slowly now, looking carefully for the dots of orange paint on the rocks that mark the only safe route. “They call this a ‘practice range’ for a reason. If someone’s practicing, then they’re clearly not one hundred percent proficient, wouldn’t you agree?”

A brand new round of terror silences him up until we’re descending the far side of the ridge. I must appear visibly more relaxed to him, because he loosens up enough to ask more questions.

“Speaking of exploding goats, how did you ever get this far the first time without getting blown to bits?”

“I followed Davin. He already knew the way.”

“How did he find the way?”

“He has a friend on the base.”

“Fellow surfer?”

“Of course. The infamous Lieutenant Commander Grayson. The good ones are like their own little fraternity. Secret handshakes and everything.”

“Grayson…he’s that guy everyone calls ‘Number One?’”

“Grayson, Gray, Number One…that’s him.”

“You’ll have to fill me in on the numbering system later. How did
Grayson
find the way?”

I groan. “I don’t know, Brendan! I guess a goat showed him.” Now we’re far enough down the incline that I see it. “Finally! There it is.”

He stretches his neck, trying to see what I’m seeing that’s getting me so excited. “What am I looking at?” He tilts his head. “What’s that sound? Do you hear that? Is that the ocean?”

Not wanting to ruin The Big Reveal, I ignore him. “See that rock outcrop that looks like a rabbit? That’s Goat Rock.”

“Of course it is,” he mutters.

“C’mon, we’re almost there. Watch where you’re walking.”

“At this point, ‘watch where you’re walking’ is implied.”

I edge around to the other side of Goat Rock with care; the rocks conceal a precipitous drop-off, and it doesn’t take much to lose your footing here. Leaning forward as far as I dare, I peer over the edge.

Brendan comes around the bend, walking way too fast. “What
is
that?” he says. “I swear it sounds like there’s a–”

I throw out my arm, my hand striking him on the chest. He freezes at the sight of the deep, narrow gorge. On the far side, a torrent of water gushes from the sheer rock face, tumbling down to the aqua blue lagoon twenty stories below us. The sides of the chasm are dripping with foliage so green it hurts your eyes to look at it.

“It’s not the bombs that’ll kill you here, it’s the sudden stop after the two-hundred foot plunge to the bottom of Lost Gorge,” I say.

He pushes his sunglasses to the top of his head and says, “The surface tension would be lower by the waterfall. If you don’t drown or paralyze yourself on the rocks under the water, you’d probably survive. Want me to hold your stuff for you while you try? I’ll meet you at the bottom with a towel.”

I throw out a half-hearted rejoinder. “You’re becoming a tiresome traveling companion, you know that?”

I drop my pack into the tall grass, and start guzzling water from my bottle. He follows suit, leaving me free to discreetly peek at him as I chug. He seems in better spirits today after the uncomfortable couple of weeks we’ve had (well, as cheerful as he ever looks under non-bombing conditions).

It’s really hard to focus on hydrating with his body this close to me. His shirt is soaked with perspiration, enough to showcase the outline of his chest and stomach. As if guided through a funnel, the sweat on his forehead gathers in a little rivulet and trickles down to the end of his nose. It collects there, forming fat drops that finally grow heavy and fall away one after the other.

Why watching moisture drip at regular intervals from the end of his nose is making me so horny is an utter mystery; dripping faucets at home have never had this kind of effect on me. I fake a sudden interest in the far side of the lagoon just as he lifts up his t-shirt to wipe his face. Even a brief glimpse of his bare chest is risky; there’s a decent chance I’ll lose control–tying him up with a vine, and stripping the rest of his clothes off, say–before snapping back to sanity at some undetermined point in the future, smoking a cigarette and wearing his sweaty t-shirt like some kind of love-trophy.

I glance at my waterproof watch. “Uh-oh, we’re a little behind schedule,” I say, trying to sound casual. “C’mon.”

“Too bad we can’t get down there.” The look on his face is wistful as he watches the waterfall.

“We will. I position the strap of my water bottle over my shoulder so it sits just behind my hip. “That’s where we’re going to camp tonight, but right now we have to hurry.”

“Hurry? Why?”

I point at my watch. “Low tide’s at three eighteen. Fifteen minutes.”

He shrugs. “So? Does something go on sale around here at low tide?”

I snort. “You could say that. It goes from being sixty dollars a pound to
free
.”

Now he looks a little perkier. “What does?”

“Just come on. Bring your water shoes. We’re going to be too late if we don’t hurry.”

And I’m serious; all this time we’re wasting on jabbering is time we’ll need to find dinner. I hand him the water bottle, grab my worn aqua shoes, a waist-pack, and the two irons from my backpack and lead the way down to the rocky beach below.

The slope on this side is much, much less steep. I wouldn’t exactly call it a casual amble down to the sea, but it’s nothing like the Mount Everest-like climb we experienced this morning. The threat of dying in a fiery explosion on this side is pretty low too, so we can cover ground faster. In less than ten minutes we’re standing on the rocky shore.

While I’m kicking my feet out of my hiking shoes and jumping up and down on one foot to get my water shoes on, Brendan crouches down on the sand, hands clasped over his knees, looking mighty philosophical, like some modern-day Socrates reflecting on the size of the Pacific relative to Arizonian rivers.

That kind of thinking is unwelcome here. I tear off my t-shirt and point at his. “You’re going to have to take that off.”

“What about sunscreen?”

“Forget it. We won’t be down here long enough for you to get a burn.” My shorts follow my shirt onto the sand, leaving a few strips of fabric that make up my itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie yellow bikini.

I grab one of the irons off the sand and check the shallows. The receding tide has left the tops of the algae-covered rocks partially exposed to the sun a good ten feet out into the cove. Perfect conditions, but we’ll need to move fast.

When I turn to Brendan I see that I have his full attention, but definitely not in the way I want it at the moment. His gray-green eyes are hooded and hungry. He eyes the lemon-colored, Band-Aid-sized triangles covering everything north of my belly button. “What–no polka dots?” he says in this husky voice, an incredibly erotic expression on his face that I’ve never seen before.

Okay, well I probably
have
seen it, I just don’t remember. I also don’t remember what my general reaction has been to his sexy, seductive ways, although, judging how I react to his kissing marathons, I’m reasonably certain that I would have been on him like a fat kid on a cake. Memory problem or not, there’s no doubt what he has in mind now.

So there I am, standing on the sand in my bikini, holding the iron, and looking like I’m posing for one of those half-naked, Snap-On Tools calendars from the nineteen-nineties (the ones that West used to hang on his bedroom walls when he was still pretending to be straight). And my perfect plan starts going straight to hell.

“Look,” I say, my voice sort of whiny, like I’m begging for mercy. Which I kind of am. “This cove probably hasn’t been harvested in months and if we don’t get out there–”

Too late. Before I can escape he’s grabbed my hand and pulled me towards him. Then we’re deliciously lip-locked and I forget
about the cove, the harvesting, the lagoon…until I reach for his shirt.

Then I realize I’m holding an iron in my right hand, just not the one I hoped to be touching on this trip. My thought progression is illogical, considering the circumstances:
Iron—maximum catch—low tide.

Dinner.

In no other time, place, or circumstance in my Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs would potential sex with Brendan rank lower than food. Before my rampaging, carnal urges trip and tumble me right into the arms of nudity on the rough rocks of the cove, I push him away and point the iron at him like a Musketeer brandishing a sword.

“Abalone!” I shout.

Sure, it lacks the punch and panache of “
En garde!
” but the result is about the same. Startled, he holds up his hands in a defensive posture like he’s being mugged.

“Claire, I’m so sorry,” he stammers, like he’s done something incredibly offensive rather than the one thing I’ve been praying twenty times a day for.

“No, no, it’s fine. Don’t be–it’s just that…” I swing the business-end of the iron out towards the rocks, watching him all the time to make sure he doesn’t try to initiate foreplay. “We have to get them while the tide’s low,” I explain, my voice a fifty-fifty split between urgency and remorse.

He looks utterly bewildered. “Get
what
?”

“Abalone!” Even as I say this I’m wading into the water using a side-stepping motion so he can’t come at me with his soft, sexy, man-hands.

He focuses on the rod in my hand, like he’s seeing it for the first time. “Why do you look like you’re about to change a tire?”

“It’s an ab iron,” I say, feeling safe enough from his clutches to concentrate on the rocks so I don’t slip on the algae slime.

“A what?”

“Abalone iron.” I see a likely prospect at my feet. With one quick movement I plunge my hand in the water and feel along the dark edge of the rock. False alarm. “We only have a few minutes. Take off your clothes, and I’ll show you how to use your iron.”

I jerk upright, cringing, as soon as the last word leaves my mouth. Behind me, Brendan sputters with laughter.

“Oh,
okay
,” I say, too embarrassed to turn around. “Unintentional innuendo. Sue me.”

“Sure it was unintentional?”

“No.” I say, blushing even more. I pretend to search the rocks near my feet. When I look back over my shoulder, he’s still standing on the shore, arms crossed, his lips pursed in his trademark non-smile.

Chapter Fourteen

“I thought, uh, hunting abalone was illegal in California.”

I giggle, envisioning him tip-toeing across the rocks with a rifle, like Elmer Fudd hunting Bugs Bunny.
Sshh! We’re hunting aba-woney!

“What?” he says, sounding offended.

“We’re not
hunting
, Doc, we’re
shorepicking
.” I scan the bottom, looking for the tell-tale sign of the abalone: the black-colored edge of the foot. I pat my waist pack. “And I have a license and tags. Get out here!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

A few minutes later I hear splashing as he sloshes through the water towards me, and then, just as abruptly, the splashing stops. When I turn back, he’s inching along, slower and more gingerly than would be necessary to avoid slipping on the rocks.

“What are you doing?” I hate to be so impatient, but we really are in a race against time. I’ve been craving it for weeks, and if I don’t have an abalone steak sautéing over a campfire in a few hours, I’m going to drown him in the lagoon.

“Sorry,” he whispers, still creeping at a snail’s pace in my direction. “I thought it was better not to make noise.”

I close my eyes and shake my head. “Oh, my god, put that iron down before you hurt yourself. We’re harvesting a gastropod, not hunting a deer. I don’t think abalone even
have
ears.” I unzip my waist pouch and hand him a sheet of waterproof paper and an ink pen. “Here. When I get one you can fill this out.”

He studies the Fish & Wildlife-issued catch card and attached tags while I wade further into the water, pushing my way into the kelp beds. That’s when I see it. The brick red shell of this type of abalone is nearly always camouflaged by the algae growing on it, but the muscular, black foot it uses to cling to the rock stands out like a neon sign once you know what to look for.

My iron is seven inches long, the length of it doubling as a gauge to measure the width of the shell, but I’ve been doing this long enough that I can tell this guy’s regulation-sized just by eyeballing him. Moving quickly–you have about three seconds before an abalone reacts by sucking down hard enough on whatever surface it’s on that you couldn’t blow it off with dynamite–I push about two inches of the iron under the bottom edge of the shell and pop the shell off the rock. I whip a tightly-folded mesh bag from my waist pack and shake it out.

“Here,” I say, dropping the abalone in the bag and tossing the whole thing to Brendan. I check my watch. “Three thirty-two. Write that on the part of the bottom tag where it says ‘time.’ Fill in the date too.”

Ten minutes later I’ve relieved three rocks of their abalone, the daily maximum allowed. Once I get back to the shore, I confirm that one of them is nearly ten inches across.

Brendan holds up one of the tags. “There’s a line for ‘location’ on here too.”

“Lost Point, San Clemente Island. I’ll write in the location code when I get back home.”