Page 11 of By The Book
Marsali gave him the sweetest smile and cocked her head to one side.
“Hmm. Are you sure about that?”
Chapter 6
Claire left the house after her statement to her father about Tommy and hurried down the streets toward the ocean.
She reveled in the sand between her toes and the sound of the seagulls squawking overhead. Claire walked for quite a while, every step and breath an attempt to free herself of the anxiety and upset she carried.
She spotted shells and sea glass and shark teeth along her path but left them for someone else to find. They weren’t the treasures she searched for. No, what she desired was peace, guidance, and the discernment needed to know what to do next. Especially when it was abundantly clear her father still harbored more than his share of animosity and upset with her and her decisions.
After a while, she moved closer to the surf, drawn to it as she’d always been. There was just something about the ebb and flow of the water over her feet, the way her weight sank as the wave rolled back yet she stayed firmly in place.
She liked that feeling and let it happen a few more times until the sand anchored her. It wasn’t until then that she let go of the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, the kind that came from deep within and shuddered on the way out.
If she focused on the fear building inside of her, panic followed shortly thereafter. So she focused on the moment, on breathing, counting as she inhaled, held, and released several breaths.
It would be okay. Things would work out exactly as they were meant to. Everything would be fine.
It had been quite a while since her last trip to the beach. Funny how those who lived so close wound up too busy to enjoy the very location they worked so hard to live by.
Since she’d grown up here, then lived all over the US before being sent to Virginia Beach, one would think it would be a given that the beach was a daily occurrence, but life seemed to always interfere.
First it was military life as a very young, very new wife with a baby on the way. Then an infant during a first deployment and the adjustments that had to be made as a single parent. Time passed quickly with that kind of busyness, and over the years and three tours, a lot of it was a blur.
A bigger wave headed her way, drawing her out of her pensiveness, and Claire braced herself, smiling when it made her lose her balance, and she wobbled with her feet entrenched in the sand. She tried pulling one foot out, but she was deep enough now that it was like wearing concrete shoes.
A broad hand appeared and gently latched on to her elbow. Claire gasped, lifting her head to find Denz staring down at her, looking every bit as handsome as he had earlier when he’d left for his dinner.
This time, however, he was dressed in running shorts, shoes, and a sleeveless shirt. Probably to cover the scars and bruising and not draw attention.
Staring up at him now, she realized his hair was a dark brown, not the black she’d thought it was when standing in the doorway wet, and his brown eyes were mahogany streaked with gold, rather than plain, boring brown.
“Still stuck?”
What? Oh.
She hurried to pull her feet from their sandy prison and stepped up out of the hole where she’d sunk. “Thanks.”
“No problem. How far did you plan on sinking?”
She shrugged. “If I’d had shorts on instead of capris, maybe a little more. How was your, um, dinner?”
Was it weird to ask a total stranger about his plans? It wasn’t like they had a connection other than two brief meetings earlier today.
“It was nice.”
“Oh?” Marcus Denz didn’t seem to be much of a talker, but then men in his line of work typically weren’t. Discretion was everything, and they tended to be guys who kept their emotions to themselves and suffered whatever the consequences of doing so.
Scott was the same, never sharing much of what he’d experienced during combat. Still, the nightmares and almost desperate spending to have nice things because, according to him, you only lived once, told her a lot in hindsight.
She wondered sometimes if Scott felt he had to live for the buddies he’d lost, the spending an outlet to get whatever he could while he was there to enjoy it. “Did it have anything to do with you being a bodyguard?” she asked, forcing herself to focus on something else.
“Yeah, actually, it did. Off and on over the last year and a half I’ve guarded a Hollywood celebrity. He’s a good guy and he’s settled in the area with his wife.”
“Oh, my word, you knowOliver Beck?” she cried, gaping up at him because she just couldn’t help it. “That’s who you mean, isn’t it? He married a girl I went to school with, and they live here and…That’swho you had dinner with tonight?”
He chuckled at her excitement but she couldn’t help it. She was a total fangirl. Always had been. Every girl in school had crushed on Marsali’s brother, Mac, and his college roommate, Oliver.
