Someone Like You(46)

'First one of the day. An absolute ripper,' she puffed, still trying to  catch her breath. She took a good look at Mr Nine Kinds of Handsome. He  was styled for bodyboarding, with a huge yellow board under one arm, a  nose covered with sunscreen and a full ankle to wrist wetsuit clinging  to him in all the places Lizzie was trying not to look at. She realised  nine had just become ten.

'I was just heading in myself,' he said, and without trying to hide it,  took a good long look over the curves of her wetsuit. The hot intensity  of his gaze should have melted it right off her body.

A fleeting thought crossed her mind but she batted it away. Physically,  no one would know he'd broken his leg nearly six months before. Only he  could be the judge of what he was capable of. It wasn't her place to  worry about it. Or ask him about it.

'You done this before?' Lizzie asked, cocking her head to the waves. His  smile told her everything she needed to know and for the next hour,  they bobbed around in the water like seals, flinging themselves on wave  after wave, happy. Untroubled.

Dan figured this was almost the perfect day. Yeah, the waves were good,  some of the best he'd ever ridden. The sun was warm and the sky was  clear as a bell. But that wasn't what was making the day so good. It was  the sheer joy he saw on Lizzie's face, the yell of schoolgirl delight  he could hear above the roar of the water and the wind in his ears. It  was seeing her have so much fun. And it did him in.

They turned back from the shoreline to wade out to the deeper water. The  water was shallow for a long way, so the walk took a minute or two,  until they hit the spot where the waves lapped at Dan's waist and at the  pink logo across Lizzie's breasts. He felt the undertow of a receding  wave ripple against his legs, trying to pull him out, but he planted his  feet and stood firm. He looked at Lizzie. She'd felt it too.

'One more for the road?'

'Hell, yeah,' she called back and they jagged the best wave so far. It  threw them up, shot them forward and they rode in, skimming on the top  of the swell, just a metre apart. Dan reached out to his right, and when  Lizzie saw his outstretched fingers, she grabbed them. The foaming  power of the wave carried them all the way to the sand, hand in hand,  fingers gripping fingers, still holding on tight as they drifted to a  stop in the shallows.

They stood, picked up their boards and made their way back up the beach.  When Lizzie dropped hers and reached over her shoulder to pull the long  strap attached to the zip of her wetsuit, Dan stopped. He heard the  crunching of her zip as it splayed open at her back, and as she yanked  her arms out of the black skin-tight material and rolled it down to her  hips, he was faced with the sight of her body. Tanned, glistening with  droplets of water, a hot-pink bikini barely covering her round and  perfect breasts. Jesus H. Christ. Everything about her was damn near  perfect.

He turned his face away and dropped to the sand, pulling one knee up in  front of him, before turning his attention back out to the ocean. One  more look at that bikini and he figured he'd be trying to pull it off  with his teeth.

'It sure is a million-dollar day today,' she said to the wind as she sat  next to him. She leaned back on the sand, her legs kicked out in front  of her, her arms straight behind her, turning her face up to the sun.  Her hair stood up in wet spikes all over her head, catching the sun at  the edges. Her eyes had fluttered closed.

'A what?' he asked, distracted.

'Some friends of mine mentioned it once and it's stuck in my head. A  million-dollar day is a day like this, when it's warm and the sky  doesn't even have a cloud in it. The wind is gentle on your back but the  waves are killers. When you look around and the water is sparkling like  diamonds and you breathe it all in and it fills up your lungs and calms  you from the inside. That's a million-dollar day.'

Dan considered her description. 'You forgot something.'

Lizzie popped her sunglasses on. 'What did I forget?'

'A million-dollar day must surely include something about sitting next  to a pretty good-looking guy while looking like that in a pink bikini.'         

     



 

Lizzie shot him a smile that lit up the sky.

'Pretty good-looking, huh?' Lizzie looked at him over the top of her  sunnies. Her eyes took their shine from the clear sky and the blue, blue  water.

'And by that you mean … you?' she said, teasing the words out.

Dan shrugged his shoulders. 'I was being humble.'

Lizzie's laugh cut straight through him. 'As I said, a million-dollar day.'

A little way down the beach a scratch cricket match had appeared out of  nowhere. Skinny-limbed boys and gangly girls, still young enough to obey  their parents by wearing hats and sunscreen, had marked out a crease in  the sand with a stick of driftwood, and were now batting and bowling  for Australia. Middle Point was perfect for it, with a flat, wide beach  making for a perfect pitch. The children's cheers drifted down the  beach, their happiness catching on the breeze and swirling around Dan  and Lizzie.

'So,' Dan said, finally. He watched as a seagull floated in the air  above them, then glided over the waterline, landing with a flutter of  its wings right in front of them.

'Your brother.'





CHAPTER


24


Lizzie stopped watching the cricket match. 'What about Joe?'

'I had a beer with him, last night. At Ry's.'

'You did, huh.'

Dan couldn't tell from the tone of her voice if she was pleased about it or pissed about it. 'Turns out he's all right.'

Lizzie huffed, shook her head ruefully. 'God, you would say that.'

'What do you mean?' Dan tried not to sound as confused as he felt. Didn't she want him to like her brother?

'You guys. You all stick together.'

Dan hadn't been expecting to see Joe when he'd dropped in to Ry's place  the night before. Dan had been up to Adelaide for a few days to work  from the head office of Blackburn and Son Developments. He'd managed to  catch up with Anna over a coffee while he was there, and let her know  how he was getting on. He'd passed on an invitation from Ry and Julia to  attend the wedding, which she'd accepted with an embarrassed moan. She  still hadn't forgiven herself for her drunken behaviour at their house.  And while he was enjoying being smack bang right back in his old role as  Director of Special Projects, he hadn't enjoyed being back in the city.  The summer holiday thing seemed to have passed most people by. The  city's business district was still filled with its army of suits and  stilettos, iPads and briefcases. Dan had found it totally fucking  ridiculous to have to slip back into a suit and a tie in the middle of a  blinding Adelaide heatwave, after spending so many months in shorts and  thongs at the beach.

After squeezing in as many meetings and as much other business as he  could into a few days, he'd packed up his laptop and some hard copy  files and driven back down to the south coast. That's the deal he'd  struck with Ry. Dan was going to base himself in Middle Point for the  duration of the Windswept project and beyond.

With all that in his head, he'd felt at a loose end when he'd arrived  home the night before, and figured his best friend might be up for a  quick ale. To his surprise, Joe had been there, eating dinner with Ry  and Julia. There was something about the guy, when he stood and shook  hands with Dan over the table, that was different. He wasn't the same  bloke from Christmas. Maybe it was contrition. Maybe being  sucker-punched by a woman had something to do with it.

He knew how that felt.

The tennis ball from the nearby cricket match skittered past them on the sand, followed by a gangly kid running full pelt.

'Elizabeth, I actually think your brother's all right. Funny as hell. Smart.'

'I'd go with smartarse, rather than smart.' She let out a huge sigh. 'He's driving me crazy.'

'What's he done?'

'Try living with him for the first time in seventeen years. I know he's  heartbroken and everything, but … ' Lizzie started counting off on her  fingers. 'He leaves his wet towels all over the bathroom floor. Never  does a dish without being nagged. Leaves newspapers everywhere. And I  can never find the TV remote control.'

'Ah, the sibling stuff. Never had to deal with that myself.'

Lizzie turned to him with curious eyes. 'No?'

'Mum and Dad tried for years and years to have a baby. They lost one  five years before me. He only lived for a few hours. They'd just about  given up when I was born.'

A lightbulb went off in Lizzie's head. Dan and Ry. Brothers in every way  that counted. Now she understood why. 'Your parents probably thought  they'd hit the jackpot when you came along.'         

     



 

'You saying something nice about me, Elizabeth?'

'Aren't you the perfect son as well as the perfect best friend?'

'No one's perfect.' His voice was rough, suddenly unsure. Lizzie propped  her sunnies on top of her head, needing to see clearly into his face.  His smile had gone; a cloud had descended over him. What was meant as a  teasing remark had obviously cut close to the bone. She didn't respond,  waiting for what would happen next. The change in his mood, from  flirtatious to forbidding, had spooked her.