we’ll try it in the water, and for this first lesson you probably won’t be standing up. We’ll be in the shallows, showing you how to catch the wave.’
Jared began to argue, silenced only when Jo pointed out that there was no point learning to stand up on a board if you couldn’t paddle to catch the wave in the first place.
She bent to lift Aaron’s board, but Cam stopped her.
‘Nothing doing,’ he said. ‘Surfers always carry their own boards, don’t they, boys?’
He showed them how to tuck the boards under their arms, holding them about midway to balance them, then, a little boy on either side of him, the tall man headed for the water.
Thankfully still with his broad chest decently covered.
Jo slipped off the long T-shirt she’d pulled on over her bikini, hoping she wasn’t wiping off all the sunscreen she’d slathered on her pale body.
She was feeling a squirmy kind of embarrassment at appearing so skimpily dressed in front of a virtual stranger, and an employee at that, but it was far too hot to wear a wetsuit, so her bikini had been her only option.
Exactly as he’d pictured her—the curvy body, and pale, pale skin—Cam’s heart skipped a beat then Jared butted him with his surfboard, probably accidentally but definitely bringing Cam’s attention back to the surfing lesson.
‘I’ll hold your board, and Dr Jo will hold Aaron’s,’ he said. ‘When you’re actually surfing, you don’t stand around on your board, you sit on it, waiting for a wave, legs dangling over the side, then you lie on it to paddle onto the wave, so we’ll start sitting then lying down paddling to catch a wave. Once you’ve done that a few times, you can try standing up, but usually that’s in your second lesson.’
Jared, of course, wanted to stand immediately and fell off innumerable times before he agreed that maybe paddling to catch waves was fun as well. Jo’s pupil was more wary, perhaps a little scared, but he had plenty of determination, working his little arms furiously through the water as he paddled to put his board into the white wash of the waves.
‘Enough lessons for one day,’ Jo eventually said to the boys as the sun dipped low enough to throw shadows from the dunes across the beach. She turned to Cam. ‘Why don’t you catch a few waves while I run the boys back to their mother and have a chat to Lauren about the meeting? I’ll drive back and collect you in an hour.’
‘You don’t have to do that. I can go home and get the van.’
‘But you can’t drive down the beach without a permit,’ she reminded him.
Beyond the lagoon, the surf was so tempting Cam gave in, paddling out through the breakers to the calm beyond them, aware that at this time in his life he was more at peace out here on the ocean than anywhere else in the world. Out here the world was forgotten, his only thought which of the set of waves coming towards him would provide the best ride.
Except that today peace, as he’d come to know it, eluded him. He was studying the sets, as usual, picking out the likely waves, but images of Jo kept intruding so he missed the first wave he’d picked out, no amount of paddling enabling him to catch it.
He caught the next one, paddled back out, but after missing another curling green beauty he gave up, sat on his board, legs dangling, and thought about distractions. His psychology studies had taught him that humans are programmed for flight or fight. Adrenalin would pump into the body to help either option. Instinct told us to look out for danger, to predict it and in so doing work out how to avoid it.
Wouldn’t that work with emotions as well as physical situations? He knew the attraction he felt towards Jo represented danger—not physical danger but it put at risk his immediate plan, which was to get his head sorted. And having predicted the danger, shouldn’t he avoid it—get away from the woman who was distracting him so much?
For her sake more than his!
Yes, he should flee.
And leave her without a second doctor at the busiest time of her year? Very valiant that would be!
WITH an effort, Cam pushed these thoughts behind the new door, the one now labelled ‘Jo’, and concentrated on the surf, although his concentration was lost again when she returned, pulling up on the beach. She reached into the back of her vehicle, and took out the classic old surfboard he’d admired earlier.
She was buffeted by the waves as she paddled her way out beyond the breakers, and it was obvious that it had been a while since she’d surfed, but when she came alongside him and he saw the sheer joy lighting her face, he stopped worrying about her. Even if the lad at the surf-club restaurant hadn’t mentioned she’d been good, he’d have guessed. It was evident in the way she lay on the board, the effortless way she paddled, and now, as she sat, the long-distance focus in her eyes as she stared out to sea made her experience obvious.
‘I’m taking the fifth wave in this set and if you drop in on me I’ll probably kill you. It’s been thirteen years since I’ve been on a board, and that’s my wave!’
She paddled sideways towards it, rising into a crouch as the wave caught the board then standing up but still tilted forward so her body mimicked the curve of the wave as she slashed across its face. She bent into the barrel, flying out the other end, her cry one of delight but of triumph as well.
She rode the board towards the beach, standing upright now, as if she owned the ocean, sliding right onto the sandbank. Then, to Cam’s surprise, and just a little dismay, she pushed her board into the lagoon, paddled across it, then picked it up and returned it to her vehicle.
He caught the next wave and rode it well enough, but without a thousandth of the grace and skill he’d just witnessed. Assuming she wanted to go home, he, too, paddled across the lagoon, then tucked his board under his arm and strode up the beach to where she waited, wrapped in a towel, still flushed with the excitement she must have felt as she’d ridden a perfect ten.
‘Thirteen years?’ he queried as he fastened his board next to the small ones on the racks on top of the car.
He regretted the words almost immediately as the excitement died from her eyes and the flush faded from her cheeks.
‘Let’s go home,’ she said, not the words but the way she said them telling him to keep his questions to himself.
And hadn’t he just decided that’s what he should do?
Predict and avoid emotional danger, remember. In all fairness he had to stay but he had to build a wall between himself and his boss—invisible but no less strong for that—a wall that would keep his emotions at bay, and if it didn’t stop the attraction he felt towards her, well, that was too bad.
He climbed into the car beside her.
She shouldn’t have done it! The words hammered in Jo’s head.
But for those few minutes she’d felt truly alive again. Was that so wrong?
Of course it was, when Jill was dead.
She closed her eyes against the tears welling in them.
Surely she’d shed enough by now. Bad enough it had taken a year to draw a pain-free breath, but to still be crying for Jilly?
‘You okay?’
Cam’s voice reminded her that this was the last person to whom she should be showing weakness. He’d probably had natural empathy before he’d studied psychology, so he’d suss out her misery far more quickly than the average person.
She nodded.
‘Always drive the beach with your eyes shut, then?’ he asked, and the provoking question angered her enough to chase away her