Falling for Mr. Wrong(34)
“Look, lady, don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll figure it out.”
Between sobs she tried to speak. “But you made it. I can’t even go buy you another.”
“It’ll be fine,” he said, awkwardly rubbing her hair as if she was an excitable pooch that needed to be calmed down. “I was going to make a new one anyway.”
She stopped crying for a minute and gave him a hopeful smile, which contrasted mightily with her tear-stained cheeks. She suspected she looked like a kid who just shattered his mother’s family heirloom vase into a thousand pieces and the mom says not to worry, she can glue it back together. “You were?”
He furrowed his brow as he glanced at his murdered surfboard. “Yeah, in fact that was what I was planning to start working on this week,” he said. “This one was getting old. Worn out.”
She looked to see if maybe he’d crossed his fingers.
“Are you sure?”
“Um, yeah. Yeah. Of course.”
She gave another tear-swipe with her shoulders, realizing too late that she didn’t even have fabric from her tank top to catch the tears and snot, and they both streaked across her still-tanned shoulders in a most inelegant manner. Oooh, she must’ve been a sight for sore eyes.
“Well please, let me write a check so you can fix everything, okay?” Her fingers trembled as she scrawled out an amount on her check, not even bothering to ask his name, instead leaving it blank. “If you need anything more, my phone number’s there.” She pointed at her check.
His eyebrows were ski-sloped toward his nose. He did not look particularly happy.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, shoving the check into his pocket. He leaned over and looked at her face intensely, sort of making Georgie feel uncomfortable, like he thought maybe she was going to walk straight on into the ocean and keep on walking till she was completely submerged, never to be seen again. “You okay?”
Which wasn’t such a bad idea. If she were part mermaid, this would be the time to prove it. But that wasn’t her style. She was certainly not a quitter. Besides, Georgie really hated being the center of anyone’s attention, so she shrugged it off, waving her hand dismissively. “Hey, the good news is that,” she said, nodding toward the board, “didn’t happen out there.” She pointed toward the ocean. “And it’s not covered in your blood right? Way better my little fender-bender did this than a shark bite. Amiright?” She cracked a grin as she tried to make light of the situation.
The bummer on top of it everything else was that the yummy orzo lemon meatballs she had planned to make after she went to the grocery store were no longer going to be on the menu for dinner; she’d lost her appetite with all the drama. So much for that.
Instead she smoothed out the pout that threatened to freeze on her face, then cupped her hand in a tiny wave as she got back into her car, pulling away ever-so-carefully so as to not create any more disasters.
Chapter Two
Spencer Willoughby wasn’t sure exactly what had just hit him, figuratively-speaking. He knew for sure what had quite literally hit his board and his car—a beat-up, piece of shit vehicle driven by a whacked-out woman who somehow managed to make him feel badly that she’d trashed his Petie. Petie was his term of endearment for the beloved surfboard he crafted lovingly from his own two hands, the very board he’d ridden twice daily for the past three years.
For a second he tucked away his outrage to try to digest what had just transpired. Sheesh, that was the weirdest thing he’d experienced in a long while. Crazy lady surfboard killer cries and makes him feel bad. What the ever-loving hell?
He kept looking at Petie, his hands caressing the smooth edges, his eyes not wanting to make contact with the harshly-fractured scene of the crime that only drove home to him the board’s premature demise.
He felt like crying. His plans for the afternoon had been so simple: all he’d wanted to do was take in a couple of nice waves at sunset on a glorious Indian summer kind of day, have a couple of beers, and call it a night. But now, shit, now not only could he not surf today, he couldn’t surf on the very board it had taken him months to make. That sucked massively.
The good news is he was nearly finished with one he’d started working on a while ago, although it was originally intended to be a gift for his kid brother Nate for Christmas. He knew, deep down, it would be kind of dickish of him to keep it for himself. But then again, it’s not like his brother would use it in late December. Oh, hell, who was he kidding? Even Spencer would use it in late December. That’s why God invented wetsuits, right?
His mind kept going back to the crazy lady who was bawling in front of him just minutes ago. How weird was that? He was the one with the dead board yet there he was left comforting her as if in her hour of need. He scratched his head, wondering how that turn of events came about.
And also he wondered why he kept thinking about those aquamarine eyes of hers, which reminded him of tropical tide pools when they filled with tears like they had. Something about those eyes just pulled him in, despite his anger. Or maybe it was just that smoking rack she was sporting. She wasn’t a small girl by any stretch, and her luscious breasts complimented her size quite nicely, two perfectly-sized globes tucked into that hot pink tank so perfectly. Here he was so pissed at that strange woman yet all he could think about was how much he’d love to get his hands on those things.