The Almost Wives Club: Kate (5 page)

Her short hair was plastered to her head as she emerged from the waves and hauled the—now much heavier—surfboard back to Surf’s Up. She set the surfboard against the rack outside and walked inside. The same man was behind the counter and she asked him for the bag of clothes he’d stashed for her behind the counter.

He passed the bag to her and said, “Come talk to me when you’re dressed.”

She couldn’t imagine what he thought she’d done. But she rolled and squeezed the wet suit off and dressed swiftly in her jeans and T-shirt and flip-flops, and, blinking against the salt-sting in her eyes, returned to the front counter.

“Was watching you out there,” the guy said. “You’re good.”

Okay, so he wasn’t going to claim she’d somehow damaged his board or wet suit. That was a relief. “Thanks.”

“You ever teach anybody to surf?”

“My younger cousins. Years ago. Why?”

“I need a female instructor. It’s a casual position, I call you when someone requests a female.”

“Who requests a female?” she wondered aloud.

“Mostly girls who don’t want to make a fool of themselves in front of some hot guy, sometimes guys who want to make fools of themselves in front of some hot girl.” He shrugged. “I had a woman instructor but her boyfriend was stationed at Camp Pendleton. Got transferred to Fort Bragg and she went with him.”

“I’m not really looking for a job.”

“Up to you. Pay’s fifty an hour.”

She thought rapidly. If she didn’t have to use her credit card or draw on her bank account too much that was probably a good thing. “Cash?”

“Sure.”

“And the use of a board and wet suit whenever I want it?”

He sucked his teeth. “You haven’t even taught an hour yet.”

“Well, If I’m surfing and get talking to people I can spread the word that I’m around and available to teach.”

He glanced at the racks of boards. They both knew it was the slow season and he was not going to run out of surfboards. He rubbed his chin. “Tell you what, I’ll outfit you for a week. We’ll see how it goes.”

She grinned. “Perfect.”

Of course, a woman who was going to be an on-call surfing instructor needed to have some kind of device for getting calls. Like a phone. So, reluctantly, she headed for the local Wal-Mart and bought the cheapest phone she could find. It cost less than twenty dollars. For another twenty she had a couple of hundred minutes, many more than she figured she’d need since there was no one she currently wanted to talk to.

She liked the phone. She liked its simplicity and its very lack of connectivity. She was tethered to no plan, registered with no company. No way Ted could find her.

Assuming he was still looking.

The weird thing was that when she creeped his Facebook there was no mention of the wedding being canceled. She did a quick search of the big papers where their wedding announcement had appeared and again there was nothing. Surely they didn’t still think she’d show up for the wedding? Did they?

In Nick’s line of work he found people to be generally deceitful. They were out to cheat the system, their spouses, the IRS, and definitely insurance companies. He was accustomed to thinking the worst of people. But Kate was different. She’d reminded him that decent people still existed.

And he’d hurt her. He’d ended up being the deceitful one and the knowledge rankled. He’d salved his conscience with the knowledge that she’d never know he’d been hired to try and seduce her, but she had found out.

Now she’d disappeared.

He paced his small office and stopped to stare out at the gray drizzle licking the street below him. Women walked by, some holding umbrellas, others hunched against the wet. He caught sight of a blonde head and for a second thought it was Kate. Then he realized the height and build were wrong.

He stood for another minute staring out the window brooding then pushed the intercom on his phone and asked his assistant, Susan, to “Bring in the Kate Winton-Jones file, will you?”

Susan brought the file in a minute later.

“Thanks.”

He spent the next couple of hours reading the dossier he’d compiled on the future Mrs. Carnarvon. He’d interviewed her mother first, then talked to past employers by posing as a head hunter. He got to a few of her old school friends by posing as a journalist writing about the wedding. He’d found over the years that most people loved to talk about other people. There was a nearly universal urge to gossip. He’d expected some jealousy and he wasn’t mistaken, but most people had warm recollections of Kate and wished her well.

He reviewed the dossier. Flipped through photos. Part of his work as a PI was psychology. What drove a person? What made them tick? And, in trouble, where would they run?

“Where are you?” he asked aloud, staring at a photo of Kate before she’d met Ted. She was laughing with a group of friends as they sat around on the beach. He went through the photos of her again. He discovered something interesting. There were two Kates. There was the young, laughing woman before Ted and there was the post-Ted woman, the more restrained, more careful version.

So, what happened when you had turned into someone else and the new identity blew up in your face?

In his opinion, a person went back to where they’d been before it all went wrong.

If he could make one guess it was that she was by the ocean. Not a real genius assumption since the woman had been born and bred on the California coast, but it was a place to start.

He walked out of his office, dossier under his arm. “Okay,” he announced. “I’ll be out of the office for a week. Maybe two. I’ve got to track down a missing bride.”

“Any idea where to start?”

“Nope.”

Dwight Elgar, a junior investigator, said, “Follow the money.”

Susan glanced at him. “The French would say, cherchez la femme, follow the woman.”

He shook his head at both of them. “You’re both wrong. I’m going to follow the car.”

“He’s got no sense of romance,” Dwight complained.

He tracked Kate’s car to a garden apartment in Long Beach. It was parked outside and a glance inside the pricey convertible told him he wasn’t going to find Kate here. He didn’t need his extensive training and experience as a detective to tell him that the woman he’d researched would not keep her car like this. Crumpled fast food wrappers, several take out coffee cups and, even more telling, a pair of red high heels in a size much bigger than Kate’s suggested that Ted’s bride-to-be had anticipated somebody might try to track her down. She’d switched cars with a friend.

“Nice going,” he muttered as he co-referenced her friends and the area. None of her friends lived here. He closed his eyes and thought. Checked her co-workers. Bingo. And headed up the path and knocked on the door.

A harried looking Hispanic woman about Kate’s age answered, already talking as she did so. “I am about to give my notice. Seriously, this plumbing—” Then she spotted him and said, “Oh.”

“Lissa?” he asked.

An expression of wariness came over her face. “Who wants to know?”

“I’m looking for Kate.”

“Why?”

There were a dozen smooth lies he could spin right here on this woman’s doorstep but instinct told him she would see right through any or all of them. He did not relish telling her the truth. She had the kind of eyes that had seen it all and he imagined her view of human nature was even worse than his. But he knew the truth was his best shot at getting her help.

“I am going to guess that if Kate traded cars with you that she also told you her story.”

She neither confirmed nor denied, merely kept looking at him. But she didn’t slam the door, either.

“I’m Nick.”

“Thought you might be. You’re a real piece of work, aren’t you?”

“I was doing my job.”

“Well, your job sucks.”

He didn’t argue.

“So, that rat bastard broke her heart, now what? They pay you to go find her and drag her back?”

“Nobody’s paying me.”

She did not look as though she were buying it.

“Look, it’s obvious you care about Kate and that she trusts you. That’s why she came to you when she needed a favor. But nobody’s heard from her. I was part of the reason why she ran away and I need to make sure she’s okay.”

“So she can marry that dickhead?”

“No. Believe me, I think he’s a dickhead too and there is no way Kate should marry him. He doesn’t deserve her.”

“You sound pretty hot when you say that. Sounds to me like you got an interest there yourself.”

Damn, that woman was sharp eyed as well as sharp tongued. “I—I want to make things right.”

“Maybe I believe you. But I don’t know where she is. I truly don’t.”

“Okay, then tell me about your car.”

She hesitated and he could feel how torn she was between slamming the door in his face and trusting him. Finally, she said, “If you find her and you upset her in any way I will personally hunt you down and kick your ass. Got it?”

“Got it.”

So she told him about her ancient Rabbit.

“Any idea where she might go?”

“No, but I can tell you that car is not exactly reliable. I told Kate, only a fool would try and drive it more than a hundred miles.”

He got back into his own car and thought, a hundred miles in any direction was a lot of territory to cover. A hundred miles of coast, on the other hand, was a relative piece of cake.

He headed for the coast and, as he opened the windows of his rental car and threw off his jacket, he wondered why everybody didn’t live in California.

It took him two days to find her.

It wasn’t the car he spotted.

It was Kate.

Nick stopped at every beachside town plus a few inland places that were still near the coast, stopping to show her photo around, ask if anyone had seen her. There was one guy in San Clemente who thought he’d seen her on the pier, but he wasn’t sure.

He doubted she’d crossed the border into Mexico, but there was still a lot of waterfront real estate to check out.

When he reached Carlsbad it was lunchtime. He picked up fish tacos and an ice tea and took the food to the beach. He figured he’d take a short break then start showing her photo around town.

He settled back, idly watching the surfers. He spotted her almost immediately. He couldn’t have said why. The line of her body, the turn of her head, the way she held her arms. He had no idea but his gut lurched and he knew the woman in his line of sight was Kate.

He fished his binoculars out of his pack and confirmed that the woman skimming waves with the same confidence the pelicans skimmed the air currents was, in fact, Kate. And damn, she was good. She crouched and turned this way and that, staying with the wave when he thought it would dump her. He could see her feet moving up and down on the board like a gymnast’s on a balance beam.

He watched until the waves quieted and she called it a day.

He was far enough away that she wouldn’t recognize him, and sure enough, she headed straight across the sand to the stairway that led up to the road without even glancing in his direction. He gave her a couple of minutes, then followed.

She hefted the board into a surf shop. Spent ten minutes inside, then came out in a pair of jeans that hung low on her hips and a tight shirt. She had flip-flops on her feet. Her hair was short.

He ducked down to pat a dog. She headed away from the store on foot and he followed her, knowing that if she turned around, he was made. She didn’t turn. She headed into an older triplex not half a block from the beach.

Once he knew where she was staying, he jogged back to his car, drove to one of the vacation rental places he’d passed and booked himself a condo for a week. He chose the one that had the best view of the surfing beach and also provided a partial view of her street.

He’d found her. She was safe. More than safe, she appeared fit and happy.

So, he’d discovered she was fine. He could leave.

But he knew he wouldn’t leave.

Not before he’d seen her. A better man would leave her alone. She’d made it very clear she wanted some space.

As he unpacked his case he accepted that he wasn’t a better man.

 ***

Teaching surfing turned out to be not only a lot of fun, but also kept her too busy to brood. Sometimes she was even so tired from surfing and teaching that she got a few hours of sleep.

Of course, Kate knew that she couldn’t hide out forever, but for a few weeks no one expected anything of her. At some point, she needed to find a job, tell her friends she wasn’t getting married. Start doing whatever a bride did when the wedding was off. But not today. She could walk the beach, feel the sun on her skin, she could surf and she could cry and she could grieve.

She wasn’t overbooked with surfing lessons but there were usually one or two a day. Enough that Mike the surf shop owner let her keep the board and wet suit. Enough that she didn’t have to dip into her bank account or have too much time to wallow.

She’d developed a casual joking kinship with some of the other regular surfers and a guy named Manuel had invited her to join a bunch of them for a drink later. She knew the invitation meant they accepted her. She also thought that a bar and a crowd of young, hot surfers offered excellent opportunities for a woman who was planning to ruin her perfect reputation. She was wondering whether she’d go, and if so what she’d wear, when she headed up the beach after a few hours on the board.

She stopped dead.

Standing in her path was a man she would never, ever forget. A man she’d never, ever imagined she’d see again.

The man from the restaurant that fateful night stood blocking her path. He was a little sunburned, wearing casual shorts, a faded T-shirt, flip flops and dark sunglasses. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. He looked as at home here on the beach as he had in a trendy LA restaurant.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

Nick held out a familiar printed form. “I’m here for a surf lesson. I understand you’re a good teacher.”

“Are you out of your mind? Suffering from amnesia? I’m not teaching you how to surf.”

“Now that’s a shame. Because Mike at the surf shop assured me you were available.” He showed her the form. “I’ve paid in advance.”

“Here’s what you can do. Get on your phone and tell your boss, my former fiancé, that I am not coming home. I am not marrying him, and sending a private investigator after me will not encourage me to change my mind.”

“Are you sure you’re not going to marry him?”

She pulled herself up to her full five feet seven inches and then strained for an extra bit of height. “I. Am. Positive.”

His grin was both relieved and carefree. “Good. And I’m not here because Ted hired me.”

She was highly suspicious. “Really. You felt like a vacation and Carlsbad jumped to mind.”

“No. Look, have dinner with me tonight so I can explain.”

She sent him her most withering stare, though with the salt water stinging her eyes she wasn’t sure how successful it was. “The last time I had dinner with you, I ended up with a broken engagement. I don’t think so.”

“Come on, we both know I did you a favor. You needed out of that relationship. He’s not right for you.”

“So not your business.”

“Kate,” he stepped closer, “I came here for you.”

She closed the distance between them. Watched him watching her, expecting she would fall into his arms.

She snatched the receipt for the surf lessons out of his hand. “I’ll see you here tomorrow at 1 p.m.”

 ***

The surfers’ hangout had a few things going for it. First, it was close to the beach. Second, the beer was cheap. When she walked in, she saw Manuel and his buddies right away, crowded round a table in the corner. “Hey, Kate, you made it,” Manuel said, sliding over to make room for her. He poured her a glass of beer from a jug in the middle of the table and handed it to her.

“Thanks.”

There were a couple of female surfers there, a couple of women she assumed to be girlfriends, but most of the group was male. They talked surfing. And waves. What was coming up this week? An Australian invited them all to his home country to try out the waves. “Seriously, mate, a two hundred meter ride’s nothing. You want to walk the plank? Come to Oz.”

“And yet he’s here,” Manuel said. Manuel was from Argentina. He’d been in Hawaii for the last two years surfing. He competed internationally and was sponsored by two companies. She wasn’t surprised. She’d seen him surf.

“You should compete, Kate. I’ve been watching you. You’re good.”

She smiled at the compliment but shook her head. “I love surfing. It’s a fun sport, but I don’t want to spend all my life surfing.”

Everyone in hearing range stopped to stare at her like she was insane, then the conversations all picked up again.

There were a few of them who were older than she was; one guy, Ed, had to be in his forties, but they were all fit, and a couple of them were seriously hot. Manuel, for one, with his big brown eyes, white teeth, and the tiniest hint of an accent. He let her know by holding her gaze a second too long that he was available.

The Aussie guy was about as subtle as a jackhammer. “What’s a gorge girl like you doing single?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Just got out of a serious relationship.”

“Well, I’ve got the cure for that, sweetheart,” he said, with a grin that reminded her that the ten most poisonous snakes in the world were all in Australia. In case she misunderstood, he made humping motions with his hips.

“Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.”

She stayed for a couple of hours, but she knew she wouldn’t go home with any of them. Not the Aussie, not beautiful Manuel.

The truth was, she didn’t do casual sex.

She threw in some cash to cover her share of the beer and said goodnight. “See you tomorrow.”

“Night, Kate,” they chorused and she headed out.

As she walked home she realized there was only one hot man in Carlsbad that she was interested in.

And he was the last man she should trust.

***

Nick turned up a few minutes early for his lesson, wearing a wet suit and carrying the cumbersome surfboard. The guy in the store had told him to carry it on his head but it wobbled alarmingly. He watched guys jog down to the beach carrying their boards under their arms with the same ease they carried their thumbs.

He figured they’d been doing it all their lives. Because his board felt huge and unwieldy, he was glad he got to the meeting spot on the beach first so Kate couldn’t see him.

He got a chance to watch her, though, when she arrived. She jogged down with her board tucked under her arm as though it weighed no more than a schoolbook. She seemed younger and freer. Almost a different person than the serious bride-to-be he’d met less than a week earlier.

She spotted him and slowed to a walk, all business.

“I like your hair,” he said. Now that he saw it when it was dry, not plastered to her head with seawater, he liked it. Short and tousled her hair looked as though a man had been running his hands through it. Or ought to.

“Ted always liked my hair long,” she answered.

“Ah.” He decided not to mention that he liked her short cut again, in case she shaved her head or something. She might look lighter and freer but he was aware of a current beneath the surface, like a live wire, humming with angry energy.

“Have you ever surfed before?” she asked.

“A bunch of us rented surf boards in Hawaii one year but we didn’t know what we were doing.”

“A novice, then.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“All right. First thing I want you to do is turn and face away from me.”

He obligingly turned and stood looking down the beach at some kind of utility. A water treatment plant, he thought. Or maybe a—

His thoughts were interrupted when he received an almighty shove in the middle of his back.

“Ow,” he yelled losing his balance and putting a foot out to stop himself falling on his face.

“Don’t move,” she ordered. He wondered if there was a poisonous snake or a scorpion or some other deadly peril at his feet, but when he glanced down all he saw was sand.

“See how your right foot automatically went forward when I pushed you?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s your forward foot for surfing. When you lost your balance you immediately landed on your dominant foot.”

“A gentle nudge would have worked as well.”

“But it wouldn’t have been nearly as satisfying.”

“I think you bruised a kidney.”

“Come on surfer boy. Now that we know which foot you favor, we’re going to practice surfing.”

He bent to pick up the board, eager to get out on the waves. He’d taken the lesson as a way to see her, but now that he was here he was pretty pumped about learning to surf. “No.” she said. “Right here.”

“On the sand?”

“Yep.”

He glared at her. “Do you do this to all your students or are you out to humiliate me?”

Her lips quirked but she answered, “I do it with all my novices. Humiliating you is a side bonus.”

“You’ve only been teaching a few days. How many novices have you had?”

“You’re wasting time. Now, I want you to lie on your surfboard.” She set hers beside his and dropped onto her belly. He followed suit.

“You’ll paddle toward the beach.” She demonstrated paddling her arms in the sand. “Then, when the moment’s right, you jump to your feet in one motion. First put your forward foot in the center of the board and your back foot a stride behind. If you need to, you can start by jumping to your knees, then, when you feel ready, you stand up.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“You’ll get there.”

They practiced on the sand. He was a pretty athletic guy so he didn’t have any trouble jumping from push-up position to his feet, but he wasn’t as fast or as light as his teacher. He tried to ignore the few passersby and the kids who jogged past with their surfboards and ran right into the sea.

After about ten minutes of sand surfing she deemed him ready to try the real thing. He tethered his board to his non-dominant foot and she left her board behind, walking with him into the surf. They didn’t go very far, a little more than waist deep when she said, “Okay, we’ll start here. Now, you get on the board. When I tell you to, try to get up, exactly the way we practiced.”

It was a little humiliating having her hold onto the end of the board and then, when she judged the wave was right, to feel her push the board toward the beach and yell, “Go!”

But he liked not trying to figure out where the wave was, when the time was right, so all he had to concentrate on was getting the feel of the board and the wave and try to get himself upright.

It took him a few tries, a few tumbles into the surf, but each time he felt a little more confident.

Surfing was a little like skateboarding, a little like snowboarding, but also like neither.

On his fourth try, he got to his feet and with some wobbling, rode the baby wave almost to the beach.

Kate looked pleased, and clapped her hands, saying “Great job!” For a second he felt that she’d forgotten their previous association and was seeing him purely as a student. This was good, progress.

Once he’d found his rhythm, he consistently stood up and rode the baby waves.

“Can I try it this time without you pushing the board?” he asked.

“You said you’d never surfed before.” She sounded pissed. “Why would you lie about that? Do you ever tell the truth?”

He blinked at her, feeling the water ebb around them. The sand beneath his feet shifted. “I didn’t lie. I tried it once in Hawaii.”

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “You are catching on much too fast. I think you’re playing me.”

“Maybe you’re a great teacher.”