Okay. She smiled. The beach.
Izzy was down at the car in the prescribed ten minutes, after scrambling into a sundress, throwing her braids up into a big topknot, and grabbing the flip-flops she’d bought this week—she couldn’t keep going everywhere in her ballet flats.
Beau shook his head at her as he unlocked the car. “I still can’t believe you haven’t been to the beach since you’ve been here,” he said. “You’ve taken the car a few times, where have you gone?”
Izzy put her seat belt on. She hadn’t realized Beau had paid such close attention to her comings and goings.
“Oh, just shopping. To the stationery store, to buy the notebooks and pens. And then also…when I packed to come to California a few weeks ago, I thought I was going to be here for four days for a work conference, not…”
“Not move in with a recluse for weeks on end and teach him how to write a book?” Beau grinned at her as he pulled out into the street.
Izzy laughed. “That’s not exactly how I would have put it, but yes, as you can imagine, I needed to buy a few things.” She couldn’t believe she’d been here for so long already. She couldn’t believe she only had two weeks left.
Once they were on the way down the hill, she turned to Beau. She’d been holding this in since they left the library.
“That thing you started writing was actually fun to write, huh?”
He sighed, but she could see the smile in his eyes. “I was hoping you hadn’t heard me say that. Now you’ll never let me hear the end of it.”
She elbowed him. “That’s not true! I’m just…glad. That’s all.”
He looked over at her for a second and then back to the road in front of him. “I’m glad, too,” he said.
They got to the beach less than ten minutes later. She hadn’t realized how close it was; a beach seemed like something you had to travel to get to, not like a trip to the grocery store.
They pulled into a parking space, and she started to follow Beau. But instead of walking down toward the beach, he turned and went in the other direction.
“Where are we going?”
He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “You’ll see.”
Beau walked into one of the shops, just off the beach.
“Hi, guys,” he said to the people working there. “I need to rent a wet suit that will work for her.” He pointed at Izzy. “And a surfboard for her, too.”
Izzy took a step back and stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
He suddenly had a very wide grin on his face. “Now it’s my turn to teach you something. Surprise: You’re getting surfing lessons today, Izzy.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Surfing lessons? But I don’t…That sounds…”
He ignored her and turned back to the woman with a long blond ponytail working at the shop. “Oh, and she needs a swimsuit. She can change in the back, right?”
The blond woman was already beckoning to Izzy. “Oh totally, yeah. Come on back and try stuff on.”
Izzy looked up at Beau. He was still smiling, but that challenging look from the first day was back in his eyes. And she reacted the same way she had then.
“Fine, I’ll do this. But if I fall off the surfboard and drown, Marta is going to kill you, you realize that, right? It’ll make so much extra work for her if she has to hire a new assistant.”
He just laughed at her. “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Izzy walked into the back, wondering why she’d agreed to do this. She didn’t even know if they had her size in this place, despite how certain the blond surfer had looked. This looked like the kind of place with lots of bikinis for people who were size 0, 2, maybe 4, not any kind of swimsuit for someone who was size 12. But no, she found a one-piece in the back that fit her, and it was bright pink, not boring black.
She pulled the wet suit on over the swimsuit and went out to meet Beau. She felt ridiculous, but she’d told Beau she’d do this, so now she had to.
He was also in a wet suit. Unfortunately, he did not look at all ridiculous in it. He looked strong, and powerful, and…She had to look away.
“Did you rent a wet suit for yourself, too?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “I brought mine along.” He gestured at the bag at his feet. “My surfboard is a little big for you, though. I thought you should learn on something easier.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You planned this from the beginning?” She’d thought he’d just had the idea when they got to the beach.