Give & Take (Redbeard Cove #2)

9. Lana

Chapter 9

Lana

“ R uh roh!” Chris says as I stroll through the open garage-style door onto the patio of the Rusty Dinghy. She pushes a chair out for me.

I flop down across from my friend, who’s eating a pre-shift lunch.

“It’s been a long day,” I say wearily. Out on the beach a seagull screeches, making me wince. I don’t have a headache, but I feel like there’s been one lingering in the shadows.

Chris’s bangles jingle as she stabs a forkful of salad into her mouth. “It’s only noon.”

I look down at my hands on the table. They’re shaking. Just the tiniest bit, but it’s there. I stuff them under my legs, feigning a smile.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

I study my friend for a moment. There’s something off about her. She glances at me, then to the side of the table, where she’s got a shoebox tucked next to the condiment caddy.

“What’s going on with you?” I toss back.

“You first! You seem nervous.”

Damn it, she saw my hands before I hid them. “Not nervous,” I say. Even though I am. I have been all day. There’s this anxious, anticipatory feeling that’s been pricking at me, making me clumsy. I’m on edge, like my body is primed for some kind of extreme sport. I’m a mess of adrenaline and nerves.

And plucking at the edges, something exquisitely exciting. I know I’ve kept myself closed for years, shuttered my heart to feelings that felt too sharp, or too hard to contemplate. And it worked. Or at least, that’s what I told myself. But Raphael’s presence in our lives has completely upended me. It’s made plainly obvious that in keeping out the bad, I’ve also kept myself from the kinds of good I thought were out of my reach.

I’ve felt more in the past week than I have in years. Maybe ever. And it scares the fuck out of me.

“I already had a pack full of underage kids try to order martinis with fake IDs,” I offer instead. “They were my first table when we opened.”

Chris snorts, then chokes on a piece of lettuce. I get up, leaning forward and clapping her on the back, deeply grateful for the sharp veer away from me and my feelings.

“I’m sorry, what?” Chris says when she’s gotten ahold of herself.

“They asked for olives!” I say, loosening up a bit to laugh just a little. I’d been so distracted I couldn’t laugh about it until now. “They couldn’t have been more than fourteen. I asked them if they wanted their olives puréed and one actually said yes. So I said I’d call their moms to do it and they all bolted.”

While Chris laughs at this, I pluck one of her croutons from her salad.

Maybe I’ll be okay today. Maybe, for the first time in a week, I’ll be able to regain control over my runaway brain and absolutely off-the-rails hormones.

Then I picture Raphael as I saw him this morning, the way he met my eyes as he handed me my thermos of coffee, the big cup nearly disappearing in his grip. The way I massaged my hand as I ran to work, trying to quell the echo of the way our fingers touched.

I’m out of control. This…lust—it isn’t natural.

Chris is sitting there, looking at me curiously. I scramble for something to say that isn’t ‘I’ve turned into a middle-aged, intimate-touch-starved pervert lusting after the man I absolutely shouldn’t keep on now that his trial period’s over, which it is—today—even though he’s doing amazing and my kids adore him.’

“Also,” I say quickly, “Mac went into a panic because Shelby wouldn’t pick up the phone when he checked in.”

I tell Chris how our boss actually drove to the hospital, convinced Shelby was having the baby early. I unwind, telling the story, that tension loosening enough to remember myself.

“Then,” I say, “Shelby came here!”

“What?” Chris laughs.

“When Mac wouldn’t return her calls because he ran out without his phone. ”

Chris presses her hands to her forehead. “Oh my God.”

“When I told her what happened,” I continue, “she said ‘Can’t a pregnant woman sit on the goddamned toilet without her phone without her husband running to the hospital to find her?’ Verbatim. Full volume. There were stares.”

Now Chris is snort-laughing.

“I tried to physically restrain Mac but you know. Giant human vs. smallish one.”

I feel better now, having shifted the attention from what’s been consuming me.

“Plus my back hurts,” I complain. “I’m too old to be waitressing, Chris. Please tell me you’ll be a dirt bike champion before you turn thirty so you don’t have to serve beer in your forties.”

Chris sets her fork down on the table with a forceful clack. “First of all,” she begins. “Sometimes racing pisses me off.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Is it The Asshole?”

“Yes. He came out of fucking nowhere again today and tore the shit out of the track again!”

Chris races dirt bikes semi-competitively. It’s not something she has grand aspirations to, but a pretty all-consuming hobby. But recently she’s complained of some asshole who’s been using the track she trains on. She prides herself on being the first one there in the mornings, and he’s started showing up before her. “But he never turns up at any of the races!” she complained to me and Shelby the other day.

But now Chris waves a hand. “Never mind. That’s not the point. The point is you know I have things to say about what you just said.”

I narrow my eyes and cross my arms, but inwardly, I’m smiling.

Because this is what I actually sat down here for, isn’t it? Chris may be over a decade younger than me, but I can always count on her for the best pep talks. Even if it’s not strictly for the topic I’m telling her about.

“Being a champion is overrated,” she says as I sit back in my chair, ready to soak it in.

“Being a winner in your own eyes is what’s most important. But I digress.” She points at me. “You, Lana, are here by choice. You could have kept your cushy lawyer job in the city. But like you always say, then you’d still live in the city.”

“And I’d still be a lawyer.”

“Exactly. You could have taken a lawyer job here,” she reminds me.

I grimace. I didn’t hate being in law. I didn’t love it, either. I did it because I wanted to make my mom proud. She was a waitress, and she always wanted more for me. She had me when she was a teenager. She dropped out of school, her parents disowned her, and she raised me on her own, making ends meet through a job in a diner while I was in daycare. Mom always swore I could do anything I wanted, even though all I wanted was to be a waitress like her. In my eyes she was a star.

“Anyway Lana, you love it here. And we love you.”

She’s talking about the Rusty Dinghy. “You’re right,” I say. She is. When I’m serving, I get to be this cheery person bringing people delicious food. I make people happy, just like Mom did. Even if sometimes my body aches.

Chris somehow knows I’m thinking about Mom, because she asks, “When’s Lori back, anyway?”

“September,” I say, sighing. I fill Chris in on Mom’s latest adventures.

When I quit law, I was most concerned about disappointing her. But when I finished my speech about transitioning to a life where I could spend more time with the girls and rediscover who I am after my divorce and a life in law, she wasn’t upset. She was inspired. At 52, she went back to school to become a midwife, and is currently doing a year of midwifery work in Canada’s most underserved communities in the far north. I’m proud of her, but damn, I miss having her close. And 3500km away from here is kind of as far as she can get.

“She’s been gone forever,” Chris says. “I could use a Lori hug.”

“Me too,” I say. And some Mom advice.

Because suddenly my stomach swirls almost to the point of nausea. My hands take up their shaking again.

It’s not my back. It’s not work.

It’s the man I have to make a decision on today. Today, on the final day of Raphael’s trial week, I have to decide if I can deal with these raging hormones around him when everything else is, frankly, perfect.

Or if I go back to the hell of begging time off work, posting new want ads. Interviews.

Chris has resumed eating her salad, but pauses, frowning. “Wait a minute. Did you just make me give you a pep talk without actually telling me what’s wrong? ”

I knew she’d see through me eventually. I don’t know why I can’t just talk about my feelings directly when I’m such a straight shooter when it comes to literally everything else.

I’m grateful she got there.

I grimace. “I thought it might work universally.”

Chris narrows her eyes. Then she grins. “It’s your hot ‘manny’,” she says around a mouthful of salad.

“Oh my God, Chris!” I look around, but there’s no one else on the patio. It’s slow right now, which is why I’m taking my break out here with her. Still, she needs to stuff it. A panicky feeling starts rising up around me like I’m standing on the beach, in the middle of a rapidly rising tide. “Just…it’s never going to happen, okay?”

Chris has been blatant about me hooking up with Raphael. She’s kidding—teasing me—but part of me is fairly certain she doesn’t think it would be a terrible idea the way I do.

Then again, she speeds around a dirt track at a hundred miles an hour on two wheels and a deafening, sputtering motor. For fun. Which reminds me—I dart my eyes to the box on the table, desperate to change the subject. “You bought a new pair of motorcycle boots, didn’t you?” I say in a gotcha voice.

Chris frowns. “Huh?”

I point my chin at the black box on the side of the table, giving her a knowing smile. “You said you weren’t allowed to buy a new pair until next year.”

Chris sets her fork down. “Lana, you’re the smartest woman I know. But do you seriously think this holds a pair of boots?” She holds the box up. Now that it’s in her hand, it’s very clear it’s not boots. In fact, the box looks too narrow to even hold more than some slipper flats. Some clown-sized slipper flats, which are not Chris’s style, regular or clown-length. “Do you know how big motorcycle boots are, Lana?”

“Yes,” I scowl. “So what’s in the box?”

Her serious face spreads into a Cheshire Cat grin, and suddenly, my stomach turns. I don’t have her. She has me. “Why Lana, it’s for you. Remember?”

I lean forward, shoving her hand down by the forearm. “You’re not serious!” I hiss, looking around the patio. We’re still alone.

Unfortunately, she is. She angles the box to me and flashes open the lid. It’s quick—very quick—but it’s enough for me to see the very large flesh-colored penis within.

“Are you crazy?” I whisper-yell. I glance around the patio of the Rusty Dinghy to see if anyone is nearby. Luckily, we're still the only ones on this side of the space.

“I told you if you didn’t go on a date before the summer I was ordering you one,” Chris says.

“You told me that over half a bottle of Pinot! With Shelby! You were joking!”

Chris slides the box across the table at me. “Clearly I was not!”

I slide it right back. “I’m not keeping that.”

“Oh come on, I did a special quiz and everything! Pretended I was you!” She slides it toward me again.

“And I qualified for the jumbo-shlong?”

Chris laughs uproariously. “I may have embellished the answers. Just a little. ”

She lifts it up and hands it to me. But she barely holds onto the end of the box, and the lid pops open. I think it’s going to be fine, but to my abject horror, the thing begins to tip out.

I scramble to catch it, but in horrible slow motion, the thing falls with a thud on the table, knocking Chris’s fork out of her salad, along with a few leaves, which land on the thing.

I grab it. “Have you lost your mind ?” I exclaim, grabbing the thing with a wobble and stuffing it under the table. “Chris!”

We may be alone on this corner of the patio, but we're still at a restaurant, and the beach is busy on the other side of the railing.

Chris has her hand over her mouth, and I see tears escaping her eyes. She’s not sorry. She’s trying not to die from laughing!

I reach one hand out and slap it on the box, dragging it under the table. “I’m going to kill you!” I whisper.

“You’re going to thank me!” Chris says, trying to remain calm.

I get the thing in its box, but don’t bring it back up on the table.

“So, you were saying, your super-hot nanny might be living with you?” she asks.

“Who says he’s hot? You’ve never even met him!” Sweat spreads across my temples. “I mean, Oh my God, Chris, I’m still holding this…thing.”

Chris rolls her eyes. But not about the second thing. “Please. The whole town has heard about ‘Lana’s handsome young man-helper’. ”

I balk.

Chris takes a sip of her soda. “Fred told me Ida Clark nearly rear ended Miles’ delivery van on Main Street yesterday afternoon because your nanny bent down to pet a puppy on the sidewalk.”

“Oh my God,” I breathe.

Fred—Winnifred to her mother only—is our chief of police, who comes by the Rusty Dinghy only to deal with obnoxious drunken tourists and for Mac’s Thursday night brisket. Fred suffers no fools. Neither does Ida, the local realtor, for that matter, or Miles, the coffee shop owner.

Still, some sick part of me wishes I could have seen that whole thing transpire. I mean, I would like to see him pet a puppy. Somehow I doubt Raphael even noticed.

When I look back at Chris, she’s grinning mischievously. She just spotted me staring into space, daydreaming about Raphael. “Please,” I say. “He’s not that handsome.”

“Liar.”

I sigh, closing my eyes. Resting the box on my lap I cover them with one hand. “Okay fine, I guess he’s a little handsome.”

My pulse and skin say, Liar. He’s beautiful.

“But he’s a child,” I continue. “Younger than you.”

Two things happen at once then. Chris kicks me under the table, eliciting a little yip from me as pain shoots through my shin. And a male voice says, “A child? Damn.”

I blink, opening my eyes, and instantly forget the pain in my shin. Nausea pulls into first place in my bodily sensations.

Because there, leaning over the railing of the patio, is Raphael. His arms are crossed across his chest, his twinkling eyes pinned on me.

While I’m holding a dildo.