Page 66 of Damaged Billionaire Daddy
Mrs. Hubbard waves to me, to show that she has the kids, and I turn and start to jog down to the edge of the water. At this early hour, the lifeguard stand is empty.
Time to get a nice run in.
I’m about ten feet down the beach when I notice a lump in the water.
Ahead of me, and right on cue, Ark begins his trademark barking — the activity that had given him his name and flunked him out of K-9 training.
“Ark! Ark! Ark!” he barks.
As I draw nearer, I can see he is dancing around something on the edge of the surf, down where the sand is wet, and where strands of seaweed and driftwood wash up with the incoming tide.
Only what Ark has found this time isn’t a bunch of seaweed or even a sea creature. It is a woman wearing the remnants of some kind of fancy dress.
She is curled up in a knot, her knees drawn up to her chest, and she is trying to bury her head in between them. For a surreal moment, I look for a mermaid tail or fairy wings, because her long hair is a bright, impossible pink.
At first, I think she might be dead. Then she sits up, stretches her arms out to the ocean and wails, “Bad Sea! Oh, bad, bad sea! You didn’t take me with you.”
Uhhh.
Okay.
Little wavelets curl and splash about her, pulling grains of sand from under her. But the tide here in the cove is gentle. Unless we have a big storm, it isn’t likely to move anything as heavy as a human.
Ark continues to bounce around the woman, making sharp puppy barks, and doing “come play with me” bow downs.
Belatedly, I realize that I should probably interfere, in case she doesn’t like dogs. I’m not sure what she’s been through, exactly, but I know it can’t be good.
Women don’t exactly appear in the surf for fun.
“Ark! Sit!” I say, crouching down beside the woman so I don’t loom over her. Just because I don’t like face-to-face interaction with adult humans doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do it. “Hey, there,” I say slowly, hopeful that I won’t scare her. “What happened? Why are you out here?”
“Because I couldn’t,” she says with a very soft sigh. “I just couldn’t. I came out here and lay down on the sand. I thought the ocean would sweep me away, and I’d be done with everything.”
Her voice is musical. It’s nice. Sad, definitely, but nice.
“Fortunately,” I say, “You are just at the edge of the high tide mark. So, you probably aren’t going anywhere.”
“I’m not?” She looks up at me with huge blue eyes the color of the sky above the ocean on a clear, sunny day. Her makeup has run, giving a clown-like appearance to her little round face.
She has a sweet rosebud of a mouth, an up-tilted nose, and a cute little chin, kind of like a cherub painted by one of the old masters, or one of those big-eyed religious dolls from that place out in the Midwest.
It’s unconventional, but on her, it works.
“Not under waterpower,” I say with a smile. “And if you stay out here in that get-up, you are going to get one heck of a sunburn.”
“I am?” the words come out of her mouth, as if she’s never heard of sunburn. Then, “Oh, I guess I might. But I don’t know what to do now.”
I stand up and hold my hand out. “Come on,” I say. “You can shower at my place and borrow some clothes. I’ll make breakfast for you, and then we can figure out what comes next
Cautiously, she takes my hand.
“Okay,” she says in that same tone.
I pull her up, and take her back.
My day, which had started so normally, has taken a hell of a turn.
However, I can’t deny that it’s exciting.
