gear would be kept but up some steps to one side and onto an enclosed veranda where the view was even better than it had been downstairs.
The desire to question her further was almost overwhelming, but even on short acquaintance he was beginning to read her ‘keep off’ signs and there was definitely one in place right now.
A keep-off sign and a look of sadness on her face. Not unlike the look when she’d walked into the little flat.
Some connection?
He didn’t like her looking sad.
Not that he should care, but she was his boss.
The restaurant was all but empty, another couple sitting close to the windows on the western side, nodding to Jo who crossed to say hello.
Cam let the young man who’d met them at the door show him to a table on the opposite side of the room, a table that gave a spectacular view out to sea. Jo joined him, explaining the other couple were regular visitors to the Cove, coming for a couple of months each year and having their final dinner for this visit at the club.
‘Do you come here often?’
He trotted out the trite pick-up phrase with just enough amusement in his voice for her to hear it for what it was, and smile.
‘Excellent conversational opening—a little lacking in originality but full marks for sounding sincere.’
She filled their glasses with water from the carafe on the table before speaking again.
‘To answer truthfully, I wish I could but I never seem to have time, or when I do have a free evening, I’m usually too tired to be bothered going out,’ she said. ‘They do the best calamari if you’re a calamari eater. Other places manage to make it taste like stethoscope tube but here it’s melt-in-the-mouth-perfect.’
She turned to greet the waiter who’d approached their table, introducing Cam to the young man.
‘He won’t be here for long,’ she added, and just as Cam decided he’d had enough of being introduced as a temporary gap-filler he realised she was talking to him, not about him. The person who wouldn’t be here long was their waiter.
‘He’s one of the best surfers the Cove has ever produced,’ Jo was saying. ‘He’s off to join the pro tour at the start of next season.’
‘I’m not as good as Nat Williams,’ the young man said.
‘Nat Williams came from Crystal Cove?’ Cam demanded, surprised he didn’t know that the current legend of world surfing was a local boy.
‘Grew up with Jo here,’ the young waiter said. ‘Everyone said she could have been just as good, but of course … ‘
He stopped and blushed so the few adolescent spots on his face turned purple.
Had Jo trodden on his foot to stop his revelations?
What revelations?
‘And you’re having?’ the young man asked, startling Cam into the realisation that he hadn’t looked at what was on offer, and he wasn’t that fussed about calamari, tender or not.
‘Perhaps you could get us our drinks while he looks,’ Jo suggested in a patently false kindly voice. ‘Who knows how long he’ll take to choose now he’s actually opened the menu?’
Was she taking a swipe at him to divert him from the earlier revelations? He had no idea, and knew it shouldn’t matter but why anyone would stop surfing—short of losing a limb to a shark—he couldn’t imagine. In his head he’d still be riding the waves when he was eighty.
Ninety?
He had to ask.
‘You were as good a surfer as Nat Williams? Did you consider the pro circuit? Were you good enough for that?’
She frowned at him, toyed with her glass of water and finally sighed.
‘I might have been,’ she said, looking away from him, out to the ocean where at some time she must have been totally at home. ‘I won junior titles, a few intermediate ones.’
‘And you stopped?’
He couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice, but instead of responding—well, it wasn’t really a question—she diverted him by reminding him he was supposed to be studying the menu.
He ordered the fish of the day, feeling it wouldn’t be right to be eating steak in a restaurant right on the beach, and sipped the light beer he’d managed to order earlier. And before he could follow up on her surfing past, she diverted him again.
Intentionally?
He had no idea, but it was some diversion.
‘You do realise that now you’ve told those two little boys you’ll take them surfing that you’ll have to keep your word?’ she said.
‘I didn’t think you’d have heard that conversation,’ he replied, to cover his surprise. ‘You and Jackie were talking the whole time. But of course I’ll keep my word. Poor kids, stuck in a situation like that. It makes me realise just how lucky I was with my childhood. Are they likely to be at the refuge for long?’
Jo shrugged her shoulders, the little movement drawing his attention to her breasts, which lifted at the same time. His mind went haywire—sending him an image of her in a bikini, riding in on a wave, a slight figure but as shapely as a mermaid on the prow of an old sailing vessel.
‘It depends on so much,’ she was saying. ‘She has the option of staying a month, but usually if a woman is serious about not going back to her husband or partner, the organisation has found other accommodation for her before that.’
She studied him for a moment, then asked, ‘Would you like me to run through the process?’
Not particularly.
Not right now.
I’d rather know your surfing history …
Those were his answers of choice but his reasoning—he’d rather talk about her—seemed far too, well, invasive at this stage of their involvement, so he nodded.
He also pushed the new door, which was sliding open and revealing totally unnecessary but vividly imagined images of his bikini-clad boss, firmly closed yet again.
‘The first thing Lauren will do with Jackie—after they’ve settled the kids into bed—is sit down with her to make a list of her—Jackie’s—priorities. What does she want to do? After safety for herself and the children, what’s most important for her?’
Totally focussed now, Cam considered this, then asked, ‘Will she know?’
Jo smiled. He wasn’t stupid, this big hunk of manhood she’d employed—
Temporarily!
‘Not immediately but they work on a plan for now—what’s most important now. Whenever a woman talks to
