He laughed at my joke, but I believed it. The ocean would have been a beautiful woman if she was anything: one with power and depth and darkness that held secrets no one in the world could imagine. She took all the waste of the world and still came out looking stunning.
I pointed out at the sparkling horizon. “Did you know the Gulf of Mexico has 4,000 offshore oil and gas platforms and pipelines everywhere? So much drilling and pollution in that water. I think we’d all be better off without it. I want that. I mean, the whole town had to help clean up a spill a few years ago. It was hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil. How do you recover from something like that? The animals…it was just so bad.”
“I won’t argue that.” He stared out, and I glanced back at my food truck.
Bradley’s sign had already faded, the spray paint not holding up against the ocean air. “We have a love-hate relationship with the port and terminals. We make a living off it, but it ruins the beauty.”
“I think we can all work together to bring change to all that,” he murmured like he believed it.
I nodded. “Well, then, I guess I need to get the truck up and running again if this town is going to be thriving soon, right?”
He turned to me with a question in his stare, but something shifted in his gaze before he asked anything. “I’ll get a crew to clean it out and have security come when you want to work.”
“I don’t need security.”
“I think that’s the only way I’m going to let that happen, Morina.”
“Let it happen?” The statement rubbed me the wrong way, like someone stroking a cat from tail to head.
He watched a seagull flying by, white against the blue skies. “It’s a matter of safety, not control.”
With a sigh, I conceded, not sure I wanted to fight him on that front. I didn’t know how much it would cost him to have the food truck secured, but I wanted to make my small amount of money, and I missed my customers, the feel of the beach, and the smoothies too.
We walked to the edge of the water in silence, both probably unsure how to broach the subject of our marriage and the ridiculous measures we had to take so that these port shares could be easily transferred to Bastian.
Before our toes hit the water, I dropped the board near me and he followed suit. “So, Bradley might be a little bigger than you. The board will be fine though.”
Bastian’s eyes narrowed at my assessment. As I stared at him, his shadow engulfing me, I reassessed because Bastian was a whole head taller than me.
He slid off his T-shirt, the movement unhurried.
I didn’t look away. Instead, I sucked my bottom lip in between my teeth and stared like a hungry dog. He was muscles on top of muscles and abs over abs and that vein on his pelvic area that dipped under his swim trunks was much too distracting.
I’d had him before.
I knew how it all felt. How big he was and how well he maneuvered his size.
“Morina.” His voice was thick and full of gravel. He dragged a finger from my collarbone up to my chin, tipping it up so I could look at him. “You’re staring where you shouldn’t be, piccola ragazza. Don’t do that, love, unless you intend to do something about it.”
I stepped back and cleared my throat. The way I wanted to take him up on the offer wasn’t at all healthy. He and I both knew that. “Sorry. You’re normally in a suit and normally not so…” I waved at his abs. “So on display.”
“Only reason you’re looking?”
“Sure,” I said, moving on from the uncomfortable questioning. I’d been holed up in that penthouse for way too long. He was running around for work and probably still indulging in women. I couldn’t possibly bring a guy back.
It was a topic we’d have to discuss later.
The idea caused a fire in my stomach, hot and worthy of fury if I thought about it. Instead, I whipped my own shirt off, and when I looked back at him, he was staring exactly where he shouldn’t be too.
Good. I wasn’t the only one. I’d expected that and honestly hoped for it. I’d worn a smaller bikini and it was a bright coral instead of the normal black and white ones I wore.
I don’t know why I’d needed to get his attention that day, I just knew that I wanted him to look at me like I was attractive enough. Maybe it was the fact that I was all too aware of his beauty or that I wasn’t sure if I’d just been a girl in the right place at the right time that first night.
I wasn’t a diamond like most of the women I was sure he dated. I wore baggy clothes with the color fading. I didn’t do my nails, and I didn’t even try to act girly. I embraced astrology and the smell of damn oil in shakes for a living.
To most men, I was easy, not unique. I was there and willing, not rare and one of a kind. I was okay with that because they were the same for me. I didn’t want anything more or less from the men I’d hooked up with the past.
Now, I had five months left with a man I thought I actually enjoyed as a sort of friend. I know I enjoyed his crepes, that was for sure.
Standing at the edge of the water, I explained the basics of surfing. He didn’t seem to get it when I told him it was going to be difficult.
He smirked in my face like the cocky boss he thought he was here.
Oh, dear Bastian, your dick was big in other areas, but no one ruled the ocean.
So, I let him dive deeper and deeper into his cockiness until he tried his first wave.
He sputtered, coming up for air after being knocked off by the monster that was the sea.
Somehow, he still managed to look like Poseidon, all muscle and anger and ruthlessly glaring as water dripped from the strong lines on his face.
I can admit, I was a bit distracted by the six or eight pack of abs he was carrying and didn’t exactly give him a great lesson. Yet, he kept trying and trying. At one point, he popped up from the water with a scraped arm, his tattoos pouring blood.
“Jesus, you hit the floor?” I winced, realizing we were closer to a rock bed than I’d originally anticipated.
He shrugged. “It’s fine.”
“There are sharks,” I grumbled because the man didn’t seem to know when to quit.
“And you think out of all this water, a shark is going to pick me?”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Isn’t that a myth?” He floated, leaning his arms on his board.
“Probably.” I sighed. “I think we need to call it.”
“Because you think I can’t do it.”
“You can’t right now.” I swam languidly around my board, flipping onto my back and letting the sun hit my skin as the water made me rise and fall. “You’ll get it if you keep practicing.”
“So, when should we practice again?”
I turned and stared at him. Glaring at the board as he trailed his big hands up and down it, I saw the look of a man not used to failing.
“I’ll bring you when you want.” I tugged his board close to mine, dragging him with it. “You did good, Bastian. You’ve outperformed more than most. The first time Bradley came out here, he said he was quitting and that it was a dumb sport.”
“And you?” He squinted into the sun as though wanting to catch every movement of my face.
I glanced away. “My dad was a good surfer. He had a little bit of Samoan and Haitian in him. He didn’t talk about his parents much, but I know they practically lived in the water. I took after him.”