Lorelie Brown - Riding the Wave

Hell, maybe he even needed to think about settling down. Damned if he’d hook up with a chick as smart-mouthed as Avalon, though. He knew what was good for him, and it wasn’t listening to crap like that for the rest of his days.

Not once since she was fourteen had Avalon been nervous walking up the front path of the Wright residence. They’d been her second home, her saviors. The very first time she’d spent more than two nights in a row had been when she’d been sixteen and her mom took off for Bakersfield. No one in her right mind willingly went to shitty, landlocked Bakersfield, never mind to follow a boyfriend who had to be back in time to make a parole check-in. But Candy took off with barely more than four hours’ warning. The fact that Avalon had midterms the next week hadn’t meant anything to her.

So she’d crashed on Sage’s floor.

Eventually the “guest” bedroom had morphed into hers. First a spare toothbrush in the upstairs bathroom, then extra clothes for after surfing.

The whole time she kept expecting her mom to raise a fuss. Claim the life she’d made and was supposed to raise. But Candy hadn’t.

Avalon had become part of the Wrights in everything but name. When things had gone wrong with Matthew, her postcollege boyfriend, and Avalon had found herself without a place to live after she’d been dumped, she’d been welcomed back without even a question. She’d luckily been close enough to help when Hank died. Hell, she’d been there last night, left this morning. It was only that she was arriving in time for Tanner’s party that made anything odd.

Which meant that standing on the front stoop smoothing down her skirt with damp palms was ridiculous. Asinine.

Unavoidable.

Her heart seemed ready and willing to thump its way out of her damn chest, never mind her need for it. She really had to get her mind off Tanner’s body. The man had no shame at all.

God, she was fucked up, but she was beginning to like him for it.

He was completely and totally assured of his place in the world. She could do with a little of that. Though most of the time she was sure she hid it well, it felt like she was scrambling. Trying to grab at what she could get, not what she deserved. Like she’d snag scraps while no one else was looking.

Even she knew it was what was wrong with her photography. That missing spark had to do with her. She couldn’t get too mad at Tanner earlier today because—while she’d hoped he’d adore her photos—she hadn’t been surprised at all when he hadn’t.

That train of thought killed the frothing waves in her stomach easily enough. Walking into the house became nothing. So what if she saw Tanner? It was his welcome-home party; he was bound to be there eventually. Instead she found Eileen and Sage bustling around the kitchen, putting together trays of vegetables and pitchers of drinks.

Eileen dropped baby carrots and opened her arms to Avalon. “Baby! I heard, I’m so proud of you.”

Stepping into Eileen’s hug was one of the easiest things in Avalon’s world. She smelled faintly of patchouli from a holistic antiarthritis cream that she swore by but it wasn’t enough to be overpowering. A tiny reminder that Eileen wasn’t always the businesswoman she’d had to be to run a surf store for twenty years.

She closed her eyes and sucked up the comfort. Let her bones unclench for a moment. When she’d hugged Candy the other day, it hadn’t felt like this. They’d been all inflexible angles and stiff shoulders. That almost made her more sad.

Chasing Tanner all over Southern California meant she hadn’t had a chance to talk to Eileen about the assignment. “You don’t mind?”

“Mind you following my handsome son around for over three weeks? Not at all.” She leaned back, her smile lit with easy relaxation. Tiny wrinkles fanned out from the pale eyes both her children had inherited. “Slip me a few that I can put up on my walls and I’ll make that chocolate turtle pie you like so much.”

“Pinkie swear?”

“Of course.”

Sage poured blush wine into glasses, then pushed two across the counter. “Celebration time.”

She smiled past the prickle at the back of her eyes. This was home. These were the people she’d do anything for. Even if it meant coping with Tanner or, more specifically, not letting him get under her skin. Tanner would eventually leave for the circuit. She needed this family.

“I probably shouldn’t,” she protested but a glass of wine might relax the knot of nerves between her shoulder blades.

Eileen kept trying to teach her how to relax and let go. She wasn’t exactly the type. Three hours later, when the house was crowded with people and her cheeks were tired from holding a smile, she’d had enough.

She’d been following Tanner around—of course—and he’d been completely working the room. Chatting, laughing, talking surf conditions with old buddies. Some of the guests had been on the pro circuit with him for years, and some he hadn’t seen in almost a decade. He treated them all with the same strangely empty surface cheer.

Framing him between the targets of her lens, it was almost like she saw him differently from everyone else. She wondered if anyone could see the odd buzzing within him, the way the corners of his eyes tightened every time he looked away from whomever he was talking to.

When he walked by a cabinet filled with his father’s old surf trophies, it was like a low-level bomb went off under his skin. His shoulders went sharp and hard, the back of his neck flushed faintly red.

She snapped off a few shots.

Tanner was back to ignoring her again, but that was fine too. She liked it better that way. At least then she wasn’t picturing the heavy sweep of his muscles, the sleek tendons that dove down his ribs to his waist. A vein to the left of his hipbone. God, that had been a yummy view, one that had made her mouth water. Inappropriately. Her mouth watered inappropriately over a photography subject.

She had to keep that line up. Somehow.

People were used to her buzzing around parties with a camera in hand. Hardly anyone even asked about the fact that Tanner was her target. She didn’t mind that. There’d be enough fallout and behind-the-back whispering once her spread hit SURFING.

A satisfied smile tucked up the corners of her mouth. She flicked her bangs out of her eyes as she traded out cameras up in her room. This? Was going to be so damn sweet. Best job of her life.

The level of payoff was worth ten times the hassle from Tanner.

For example, by the time she made it back downstairs, the frustrating man was gone. Disappeared. Bodies of all shapes and sizes—though almost everyone dressed in shorts and slim T-shirts—filled the space almost wall to wall.

But nowhere among them was tousled blond hair over a harshly hewn smile. Nowhere was the scar she found so intriguing. A taste of rough danger in an otherwise beautiful man.

Muttering under her breath, she dashed back upstairs and searched the bedrooms. Nothing. Even the room that had once been his was empty. It didn’t even hold a trace of him anymore, all blue-walled guest room with white furniture. Eileen had kept most of Tanner’s high school and junior surf trophies, but Hank had insisted they be packed away. Said if the boy couldn’t be bothered to step foot in the family home, he shouldn’t be a part of it.

They were both about as bullheaded as possible.

It hadn’t been a surprise to anyone when they’d butted heads—you can’t have two alphas in the same household—and the shock hadn’t set in until they’d both failed to get over it.

Avalon had almost given up searching for Tanner and was in the process of pulling the door closed behind her, when a flash of white caught her gaze.

Except it was outside the window.

She stepped back into the room. “Tanner?”

There was no answer, but the white shifted again. The corner of a sleeve, she figured. The window was open to the evening’s breeze coming in off the ocean a block away, and it smelled of salt. More home.

As she got closer, she realized the screen had been popped out of the window and rested against the wall in the dim shadow of the bed. Tanner sat outside the window on the low, gently sloping roof of the garage. His knees were pulled into his chest, his wrists draped over them so his fingers dangled between. His shoulders made a thick curve of muscle under his gleaming white shirt.

He glanced at her out the corner of his eye. “Hello, Avalon.” The way he said her voice was half purr, half caress. All tease. In it she heard a reminder of this morning and the view she’d been privy to.

She wasn’t one to back down from challenges. Never had been. Especially not when they were so damn delicious looking. She ducked her shoulders under the window and hitched one hip on the roof so she was pretty much sitting next to him. “Mind if I join you?”

The camera was an almost unnoticeable weight in her hand. Practically an extension of the way she blinked. She ran off a couple shots, barely even pointing the lens. That angle of his jaw, the way his skin glowed with health and happiness wasn’t something she could pass up. Her camera whirred in quick succession with the snap-snap-snap of the button.

His chest lifted on a sigh. “First rule. If you’re coming out here, you’ve got to put the camera down. Or go down to the party. I’ll be back in ten, and you can get all the shots you want.”

She bit her bottom lip, then wiggled the tip of her tongue over the tender flesh. Putting the camera down was harder than she’d expected but she’d always been there for her friends. Even if he was difficult—even if she had dirty thoughts about what she’d like to do to his body if he were any other man—she wanted to consider him a friend.