Page 8 of California Sunsets

Pat shook her head. “Erin, I assigned the story to you and I expect a full profile for the next issue.” She glanced down at her papers. “Now, what’s the story with the school funding crisis?” she asked Carrie, and Erin knew she’d better get an interview with Jay. Or else.

Her mind turned to the tricky task ahead. How to even approach Jay for what ultimately amounted to a favor? What could she say?Hey Jay, can I please invade your privacy because we have a personal connection and my editor wants your profile in our weekly community newspaper?Jay’s previous profiles had been inRolling StoneandVanity Fair. And once, memorably, inGQ, where he and Archer had done a joint interview.

She doubted he would be very impressed by the likes of theSea Shell.

* * *

By the next evening, Erin was still processing Pat’s request while balanced on a wave. Like a lot of her family, Erin tended to work out her problems on the surfboard. There was something about being out on the waves, sometimes near people, sometimes alone, but always separated from others so that her board felt like her own tiny island. She had to focus on her footwork, on wave patterns, on what other surfers around her were doing, but behind all that busy work, her brain could mull over whatever was bothering her.

She wasn’t sure why it felt like such a big deal to interview Jay. She perfectly understood Pat’s position—that Erin had withheld the scoop of the century from theSea Shell. While Pat would probably have done the same thing in her place, and protected the privacy of her beloved brother, she still had to make an example of Erin.

Erin totally got that. But of all the punishments Pat could have come up with, did it have to be an interview with Jay Malone?

She’d thought about calling Mila to see if she wanted to surf with her, but somehow she knew she needed to work these problems out herself. Mila was already too invested in Jay—to the point of suggesting he might be a possible suitor. She didn’t want to give her big sister any more ideas.

The best surf was not far from Jay’s house. She could still recall that day not so very many months ago when Jay had been out surfing with them, and had said to her so confidently that one day he’d own one of those waterfront properties they could see from the waves. She remembered mocking him at the time. Those properties hardly ever came up for sale, and when they did, they tended to go so fast that Erin, who kept her ears pretty close to the ground in Carmel-by-the-Sea, often didn’t even hear about them. So to discover that he’d made good on that promise, and in such a short time, was quite astonishing.

She shook her head as she rode in, gazing toward Jay’s beautiful house. She might be astonished, but she wasn’t surprised. Put her very determined sister together with the most single-minded man she’d ever met, and it was inevitable they were going to get what they wanted.

She paddled out and rode back in again, and out and in again, and then she just sat out for a while, watching the sun go down. It was so beautiful she didn’t mind that she was getting cold, even in a wetsuit over her old black bikini. She hadn’treached for her surfing gloves or booties, though, which she now regretted. It was time she headed back.

She was still riding the waves when the lights came on in Jay’s house. He was home.

Okay, she couldn’t call herself a journalist and be such a weenie she couldn’t ask a celebrity for an interview. She had to get a grip. She’d just catch another couple of waves, and then she’d text him. She’d keep it professional, making it clear she wasn’t asking for a personal favor—even though obviously she was—and if he said no, at least she’d have tried.

Pat could not ask more of her than that.

* * *

Jay had once been the kind of workaholic who put other workaholics to shame. He’d learned to manage on four hours of sleep a night, five if he was sleeping in, and when he wasn’t having to comply with his body’s irritating need for rest, he was either working, working out, promoting the list of clients he had, or doing his damnedest to increase his list. When he looked back on those years, they were a blur. And then one day, he’d ended up in the ER thinking he was having a heart attack. He was only thirty-one, and after ruling out a heart attack, to his great relief, the ER doc had sat him down and read him the riot act.

It turned out his diagnosis wasn’t that unusual: He was suffering from stress and burnout. Humiliatingly, what he’d thought had been cardiac arrest was in fact a panic attack. Naturally, no one, but no one, knew the truth. When he’d emerged from the hospital hours later, embarrassed and chastened, the doc’s words rang in his ears.

“It was a panic attackthistime. Consider it a warning. You keep going at the pace you are, and the next time you’re in here itwill be a heart attack for sure. You want to be dead at forty? Keep on doing what you’re doing.”

It was the kind of dialogue his actors said in movies, not something Jay Malone had ever expected to hear in real life.

However, he’d listened. It hadn’t been easy, but slowly he’d begun to change. He started eating better. He kept up his weightlifting routine, but dialed it back from seven days a week to three, and instead added in swimming, surfing, and wilderness hikes. He would make the effort to take in the beautiful vistas while he walked, listen to the birds sing. Sometimes he even stopped to smell a rose, or pat a dog. He had learned to reconnect with life.

It wasn’t just his body that needed a change, it was his mind too. He’d always been a reader—it was how he’d educated himself. But instead of racing through Plato and Aurelius and Dickens in one sitting, as though he were taking a university of life crash course, he made the effort to slow down and absorb more of what he read. He expanded his choices, reading for pure pleasure rather than self-improvement. Sometimes poetry, sometimes a novel, sometimes a book on history or biology or astronomy, especially now that he was working with Herschel Greenfield.

To his surprise, he’d found he enjoyed old English detective novels written by people like Wilkie Collins and Agatha Christie, and passed whole evenings turning the pages with a small Scotch in hand (well, he couldn’t be a complete angel). He let his staff take on more responsibility. He also changed his relationship to his phone. From being always on, he selectively switched it to Do Not Disturb. There were a few exceptions, of course. Archer Davenport and Smith Sullivan could phone him day or night and he’d always pick up, but there weren’t many other people who made that list. Not many at all.

By that time, he was already successful enough and rich enough that he didn’t have to keep working if he didn’t want to. But he did want to. He loved his work and the thought of giving it up never crossed his mind. Now, a few years later, he still worked hard, still enjoyed the finer things in life, but he made darned sure to take time for himself. Life was precious.

This evening was one of those prized quiet ones when he didn’t have an event to attend or an important meeting and since his day was packed tomorrow, he was relaxing in the new leather chair in his library and re-reading Stephen Hawking’sA Brief History of Time.Herschel had offered to clarify some points he hadn’t understood the first time around.

That was another thing that had changed since his time in hospital. Before the panic attack, he’d exerted so much effort in trying to pretend he always knew everything. Now he’d learned that no one knew everything, and to his mind, a mark of wisdom was not being afraid to ask questions.

He settled his new silver-rimmed reading glasses on his nose, glanced with pleasure around his library, now stocked with books he loved or books he intended to read. His gaze moved to the window, where he noticed a lone surfer out on the water. He loved this view so much, he was always keeping track of who was out there and what they were doing. There’d been a group of them earlier, but now there was only one.

He could tell she was female, and as he watched, he suddenly, instinctively knew it was Erin Davenport.

Something about the way she moved, the way she stood, was as unique as a fingerprint. As she rode closer, her wet hair streamed out behind her, and even though he couldn’t make out her face, he could picture the concentration etched across her usually smooth and unruffled brow.

He smiled. It was strangely comforting to know she was out there, enjoying herself. She was a superb surfer. Technicallyadept and elegant with it, too. As he watched, he came to realize how much Mila, who had been a world-famous champion surfer, had overshadowed her sister’s abilities. Erin wasn’t a pro-level surfer, but she was a darned good amateur.

How had he never noticed that before? And how much more had he never noticed?

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