the meeting in his office now sparkled with life and laughter. He liked the transformation. He tried imagining her with a surfboard under one arm, water streaming down her back, her dark hair wet and tangled from riding in to shore. That was another transformation he’d like to see. And one he wasn’t likely to.
“I imagine they’re not.” He tried to turn the conversation around before he ended up showing the cards in his hand. Cards he had no business holding at all. “Anyway, about the appraisal. I’ll let the person in charge of the auction know about the necklace.”
“Good. I was hoping to drop it off without making a big production out of it.”
That wouldn’t have happened. “We would have put a notice in the staff newsletter asking for information, just in case the donor had no idea as to its value.”
Her eyes widened. “I’m glad that’s not how things went, then.”
“I can understand that. Now. Its presence at the auction isn’t going to complicate things for you, is it?”
“I doubt my ex will even attend, so no. It was a wedding gift from him to me, so it’s mine to give away. Just like our marriage was his to give away.” She wrinkled her nose. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
He waited for a nurse to go past, lowering his voice. “He cheated?”
A single nod. “How else do you throw a marriage away?”
He could think of lots of ways. One of which he’d done. Or maybe it had been inevitable, once they’d lost their daughter to a disease that was as relentless as it was deadly.
“Did you try counseling?” He often wondered if he could have saved his marriage if he’d suggested that earlier, before it had been too late. Instead, he’d become unreachable, staying away from home as much as possible.
“Counseling. Right. Would that have been before or after he slept with a mutual friend? Or moved in with her once I discovered what they were doing—had been doing for almost a year.”
“Ouch. Sorry.” The one thing he’d never done during the whole grieving process was turn to someone else. He’d been so destroyed, so emotionally empty that he’d had nothing to give to anyone else, not even his wife.
None of that had changed with time, and he wasn’t sure he wanted it to. The divorce had been his fault—he could acknowledge that now. Some people just didn’t deserve second chances.
“It’s okay. I knew on some level something was wrong. He was unexpectedly called into work a lot of nights—which now I see probably wasn’t the case. Even when he came home, he wasn’t really ‘there,’ if that makes sense. I was dealing with some issues of my own, but if I’d suspected he was that unhappy, I would have done something. Before it got to the point it did.”
Garret, on the other hand, had been able to see the slow slide of his marriage and had chosen to do nothing…except put in grueling hours at work. His wife had left him after the accident, while he’d still been in the hospital, saying she wasn’t going to watch him throw his life away. She was right. He had been. He’d gotten counseling afterward, had tried to convince her to go with him, but she’d refused. And that had been that. Papers had been waiting for him at the house where they’d raised their daughter. Within weeks he’d sold the place, resigned from his practice, and, after a year of surgery on his hand and physical therapy, the offer from Miami’s Grace Hospital had come up and he’d decided to make the move to Florida. But at least his divorce hadn’t been as a result of either of them cheating.
“I’m sorry he put you through that.”
“It’s over. I’m kind of relieved, actually. I’m my own person again.”
“A person who surfs in her spare time.”
She glanced at him. “You’ve really never tried it?”
“Nope. Not ever. Is it like snow skiing?”
“Um, no.” A quick laugh. Although the falling part might be similar. “Why don’t you come with me on Wednesday and see?”
“Excuse me?”
She blinked as if not quite sure what had just happened. “My bad. You’re probably not even interested in surfing. Forget I said anything.”
Addy was asking him to go to the beach with her? The previous image he’d had began tickling at the edges of his consciousness again. Wetsuit? Or bathing suit? He was a jerk for even letting those kinds of thoughts bounce around his head. “I’m interested in a lot of things.”
And that was better?
“So you want to go?”
Better that than admit it wasn’t surfing that was on his mind.
“Possibly. What time, so I can see if I can juggle my schedule?”
She pursed her lips and studied him, maybe sensing he wasn’t being entirely honest with her, then tucked the tablet under her arm and pulled out her phone. She scrolled for a second.
He wasn’t sure what she was doing. “Do you want to text me the time?”
“I’m looking right now. Okay, we want low tide, just as it’s coming in. Looks like the wind direction will be good as well.”
She could have been speaking a different language. “And can you find an actual time somewhere in there?”
“You don’t have a board, I take it.”
“Not of the surfing variety, no.” A flicker of enthusiasm colored her voice and it lit a matching one in him. How long had it been since he’d actually gone anywhere with a woman? It wasn’t a date. But it could be fun. He was allowed to have fun, wasn’t he?
“It’s okay. We can rent a board.”
“Whoa.” He held up a hand. “I’m not planning on climbing on a surfboard. I was just going to watch.”
Like a voyeur.
“You don’t even want to paddle out? You don’t have to stand up, if you don’t want to. You’ll be bored if you just sit on the beach.”
Doubtful. He turned his scarred hand so she could see it. “I’m not exactly able to use this the way most people can.”
“It’ll be fine. Believe me. There are surfers who are missing limbs and still get out there and catch plenty of waves.”
He was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be one of them, but he didn’t feel like arguing the point with hospital staff passing them in the hallway. “So what time would we need to leave?”
“Do you want to meet at the beach or here at the hospital?”
“Beach.” The word came out without hesitation. He had no idea if she’d be wearing a bathing suit under her clothes, but he certainly didn’t want to meet out front if she was only wearing some kind of cover-up. The gossip chain would have a field day with it. And there was no way he was showing up in board shorts.
“Okay.
