Page 102 of Guys Can't Write Romance
“I cried.”
“So, it worked?”
She nodded. “It was perfect.”
“Thanks. I had a good teacher.”
He could have melted under the warm smile she gave him. For a moment, everything around them seemed to fade into the background, and they felt like the only two people in the room.
The spell was broken as Mags cleared her throat to get their attention. They slowly turned to look at the other group members, and to their horror, found the entire group watching them. They were so busted.
“Uhm, yeah. That’s a great idea.” Chad quickly scrambled to recover his composure. “I’ll make that change as soon as I get home.”
“Glad I could help,” Daisy quickly said, attempting to regain her own composure.
None of the group was buying it.
“You two might consider getting a room next time,” Bernie suggested, not-so-helpfully.
Daisy could have died of embarrassment. Fortunately, the meeting concluded before she figured out a way to disappear beneath the carpet. As everyone gathered their things, Chad hung back to help Daisy collect her array of markers, pens, and notebooks.
“Thanks,” she said as he fetched her pen from the floor and handed it to her.
“Sure,” he said, slipping on his backpack as they headed for the door. “We still on for surfing lessons tomorrow morning?”
“I’ll be there,” she said as he held the door for her and they walked out. “Just look for the pasty white girl flopping around like a beached fish.”
He laughed, closing the door behind them.
What neither of them noticed were the other members of the writers’ group, who had stopped packing their things to watch this sure sign that hell had frozen over.
“Well, I’ll be…” Phil muttered.
“I told you,” Liv said, removing a small notepad from her purse. “So, who all wants in on the pool?”
“Put me down for one week,” Bernie said, pulling out his wallet. “The sexual tension’s thick enough to cut with a knife.”
“Three weeks,” Phil said, doing the calculations in his head. “I still think we need to factor in their mutual stubbornness.”
Helen shook her head. “I give it one week. They’re already halfway there. They just don’t know it yet.”
“Oh, they know it,” Mags said, with the confidence of someone who’d plotted countless love stories. “They’re just terrified of it.”
Chapter twenty-six
Someone to Catch Me
Daisy awoke that morning with the same ache in her heart that she’d felt on this day for the past three years. It was the anniversary of her dad’s passing, and for a brief moment, she considered texting Chad with some lame excuse to cancel her surf lesson for that morning. She finally decided to just go through with it. With the way he had described surfing to her on that morning at the beach, it sounded like it might be fun. Besides, if anyone could make her smile and snap her out of her morose, it would be Chad.
After grabbing a piece of toast, she slid into a sensible one-piece swimsuit. Before pulling a pair of shorts on over it, she looked at herself in the full-length mirror on her closet door, surprising herself at how exposed and self-conscious she suddenly felt. It wasn’t that she thought she looked bad — she was slim, with nice tone in her legs from her workouts with Chloe — but she was definitely lacking in the tan department.She caught herself wondering what Chad’s reaction was going to be when he saw this much of her.
She packed her beach survival kit of sunscreen, shades, and a towel in her bag and headed from her room. As she passed the photos on the hallway wall, she stopped in front of the one of her dad. He looked so strong and handsome in his Army uniform, and yet had been so kind and protective of her and her mom. Always there to catch her when she fell, and put her back on her feet. He had been orderly like her, and probably would have thrown a grenade into Chad’s messy apartment to put it out of its misery; but she had no doubt that he was smiling down from Heaven at how protective Chad was of his little girl.
She kissed her fingers and touched them to the picture.
“I miss you, Dad.”
The morning mist hung low over Venice Beach, painting everything in soft grays and silvers. At 7 AM, the usual crowd of tourists and bodybuilders was still hours away, leaving only a handful of dedicated surfers, early joggers, and one very nervous first-grade teacher standing at the water’s edge.
