Cassidy Kincaid Mysteries Box Set Page 7

  As if he could read her mind, he stood and stepped close. His fingers brushed a hair off her forehead. “Déjame,” he said. Let me.

  The energy she felt seemed to increase with every step they took together towards her room, so by the time she was at the doorstep, her fingers were shaking and the key fell out of her hand. Her body felt like a sizzling firecracker about to shoot into space, with a crowd watching in eager anticipation. It was intoxicating. Mel picked up the key and as he thrust it into the lock, they turned toward each other, and she looked into his blue eyes. He slid his other hand around her waist. She lifted her face to his and kissed him, a soft, tender kiss that led to another kiss and another, their bodies pressing together. Then the door opened, and they were inside the dark room. She stepped out of her flip-flops, feeling jittery. This was happening, and she realized that she had wanted it all along. There was something powerful about Mel’s presence, something that drew her in. She briefly wondered if she should be resisting it when Mel’s hand lifted her shirt over her head and pulled her close.

  She unbuttoned his shirt as they kissed in the dark. His chest was warm and he felt so strong, as if he could scoop her up in his arms and carry her for miles. He kissed her softly, but urgently, and she returned his kisses, her mouth hungry as they stood in the middle of the room. His hands caressed her shoulders, then they slid down the straps of her bra, slowly, the satiny fabric tickling her arms, and she shuddered. As he kissed his way down her collarbone, she ran her hands through his hair, which was loose now, and when he arrived at her nipple, she gasped, her body arching to his lips. He pulled the fabric farther down, and then his hands were caressing her. Cassidy moaned, her skin sizzling with the sensation.

  He unbuttoned her shorts that fell to the floor, then slid her panties down. Her skin trembled as his mouth kissed up her inner thigh, his fingers feathering alongside, caressing. His tongue flicked against her, and she closed her eyes. Her hips arched into him, and everything fell away—her thoughts, her loneliness, her fear—and she gave into the sensation building inside her. The silky feel of his hair in her hands somehow heightened her desire and she began to cry out as the pulses of pleasure rocked through her. With her legs quivering, he kissed his way back up her body, taking his time. The blood racing around in her body slowed and the room returned to focus. Mel was kissing her softly behind the ear and holding her close—his erection hard against her body, causing a craving so powerful she felt dizzy. They lowered onto the bed, her breathing fast, and her body reaching for his. Mel shifted and slowly, their bodies connected. A rush of pleasure shot through her, heating her blood all the way down to her toes. Cassidy gasped in the darkness as the sensation spread through her body. It felt so good to give in, to receive this gift of pleasure because hiding behind it was the pain of everything she had lost. All she had was this moment of joy, so she moved with Mel’s body and focused on feeling everything moment by moment: his lips on her breast, his breaths in time with hers, his soft hand caressing her face. Her climax rose from the tops of her thighs to her belly and exploded inside her like a bright, peaceful wave.

  Afterward, they lay there together, with her hand draped across his shoulder and her head on his chest. His fingers caressed her back softly. She didn’t want to ask him to stay—the words sounded desperate in her mind—but he made no motion to go, so she relaxed and listened to his breathing grow deeper, until her eyes felt heavy. She drifted off, still tucked into his embrace.

  Cassidy woke slowly, the details of the day before returning to her in pieces. She was both relieved and apprehensive that Mel, breathing softly, was still there. After being alone for a year, this new landscape was not familiar. She had no roadmap for navigating sleepovers with near-strangers. Her heart ached for the life she no longer had: Saturday mornings reading the paper alongside Pete, the silence broken only by slurps of coffee, but their bodies so close that she could feel his warmth. Was it something about Costa Rica that had made her so bold—pura vida and all that? Or had seeing other couples enjoying time alone in a beautiful place made her desperate to harvest some of that happiness too?

  First, sweet Héctor, she thought with a rush of tenderness. Now Mel. Cassidy’s grief counselor had encouraged her to take more risks. Well, I guess I’m a good listener.

  Light was filling in the cracks of the slatted blinds, and the frosted glass door was lit by a soft glow. Cassidy realized that she had slept with her contact lenses in, and now her irritated eyes wouldn’t focus. The numbers on the clock danced in a red blur.

  Mel rolled over and tucked his arm around her middle, emitting a low sigh that to her ears, sounded like a purr.

  “Buenas días, preciosa,” he said, kissing her temple.

  Cassidy did not feel gorgeous, not in the least. She laughed and pulled his arm tighter around her.

  “Let’s stay in bed all day,” Mel said, stroking her arm.

  “What about the bar?” Cassidy asked.

  “Screw the bar,” he said. She peeked at his face and saw that his eyes were still closed.

  Then he yawned loudly. Cassidy rolled out of bed. “I need a shower.”

  “Can I help?” he asked, propping himself up on an elbow.

  Cassidy felt suddenly awkward, even though she knew she shouldn’t, not after what they had shared the night before.

  Mel noticed, and his eyes changing from playful to gentle. “You want me to go?” he asked.

  “No,” Cassidy said, a little too quickly. “Would you wait . . . a little longer?”

  Mel gave her a nod.

  He had dressed in his khakis and linen shirt when Cassidy returned. They stood by the door in a long embrace. He kissed her once, a gentle kiss that made her chest ache for more. The thought made her feel guilty. Wasn’t it wrong for her to be acting this way? If Pete could look down on her from somewhere, would he be disappointed in her, or proud of her for trying to find happiness without him?

  “I found this,” Mel said, picking up a piece of paper from the top of dresser.

  Cassidy vaguely remembered ignoring the scrap of paper on the floor the night before.

  It was a note from Bruce:

  You’re in. Meet at Bambu in

  Playa del Coco at noon.

  “You going?” Mel asked. Did she imagine the look of concern in his eyes?

  Cassidy shrugged. “I kind of have to,” she replied.

  “San Juan is a little rough,” he said.

  Cassidy looked into his face again, wondering if she was stepping over some kind of invisible threshold by giving him permission to worry about her. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Somehow I know you will be,” he said with a small smile. “Send me picture of you charging más grande olas.”

  “Okay,” she said, then realized that she didn’t even know his last name.

  Mel gave her one last kiss, and then he stepped from her room and closed the door.

  Eight

  Thankfully, the trip started with cocktails. Cassidy had woken early but instead chose to use her last few hours of Wi-Fi to hammer away at her projects. She “chatted” with her advisor about teaching a section of his upcoming class and writing another paper he had in mind for her, and emailed her brother Quinn about her change of plans. Ever since their father passed away when they were teens, they had established a kind of pact to “be each other’s person.” Quinn ran a bar in San Francisco and was always training for some marathon or other, so kept weird hours. They usually talked about once a week, most often in the afternoons. Certainly never in the mornings when he was only just dipping into his good REM sleep.

  She cancelled her flight home and figured she would wait to book a new one until after she was sure of her departure date. She checked out of her room at Crazy Mike’s, though they graciously offered to store her extra gear and laptop while she was away. Earlier in the day, she had accepted Mel’s friend request on WhatsApp, but he wasn’t at the bar when she walked through it on her way to catch her bus for
Playas del Coco. She remembered their night with a shiver of secret delight and wondered if she would ever see him again.

  The bus ride made her sleepy, but her mind couldn’t rest. Would she find answers in San Juan, or more dead ends? Either way, she could tell Rebecca and Pamela that she had tried, really tried, to find any trace of Reeve.

  The open-air bar faced the cocoa brown sand. She looked for a table of rowdy surf rats but didn’t see such a group. Bruce had not yet arrived; she was a little early. So she ordered a cup of coffee and sat watching the young waitresses buzz around the tables. A group of forty-something women had ordered a round of drinks and chips and salsa. Halfway through her coffee, one of the women came to the bar. “You Cassidy?” she asked.

  Surprised, Cassidy turned to her, and nodded.

  The woman, who looked impossibly petite, with deeply tanned skin and dark wavy hair, gave her a lopsided grin. “I thought so. Bruce told us to keep an eye out for you. He’s running a bit late.” The woman extended her hand, and Cassidy shook it. “I’m Benita.” She tilted her head to the rectangular table situated in the shade where four other women were gathered. “Come on, we ordered you a drink.”

  Cassidy picked up her bag and followed Benita to the table.

  “Girls, this is Cassidy—” she broke off and gave Cassidy a scrutinizing look. “Cassie? Cass?”

  “Not Cassie,” she said, relieved to have gotten that out of the way. She loathed Cassie—it sounded like a kid’s action figure, or a line of cosmetics. “Cass is okay.” She didn’t tell them Pete’s nicknames: CeeCee, Kincaid, or on special occasions, Kinney. Her gut lurched with remorse—she realized that she had never made up her mind about taking his last name.

  The group gave her a rowdy greeting, and one woman passed her a glass containing orange juice with a blush of bright red floating like a cloud near the top. They toasted to epic waves and drank. Cassidy tasted the cocktail and figured she was holding a tequila sunrise. The orange juice was fresh squeezed and ice cold.

  The group introduced themselves. Besides Benita, she met Marissa, Libby, Jillian, and Taylor.

  “Glad to have you,” Benita said, raising her glass.

  Cassidy smiled. “Thanks for letting me crash your trip.”

  “Absolutely,” Benita said. “Us surfer girls have to stick together.”

  “Have you guys done trips with Bruce before?” she asked, sipping her drink.

  “Yep, two years ago he chartered us a boat in El Salvador.”

  “And he set us up with a killer spot at a new resort last spring—in Mexico. It was just us and these two hot local boys,” Marissa said.

  The group razzed her. “You could have been their mama,” Benita chided.

  “Hey,” Marissa said, grinning. “No harm in lookin’, right?”

  “Jared’s not good enough for you?” one of them teased.

  “Jared’s her husband,” Benita said. “He’s a model.”

  Marissa, who could be a model herself with her long blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, and tall, slender build, rolled her eyes. “Please, you guys are too much,” she said.

  “So, yeah, we know Bruce,” Benita said. “He always seems to have something new, or can put something together that’s unique.”

  “Have you surfed any of the waves we’re headed to?”

  “Some of us have surfed Manzanillo. It’s in front of a shi-shi resort—”

  “At five hundred bucks a night,” Taylor interrupted.

  “So what? Why make money if you don’t spend it?” Benita countered.

  “You make money,” Taylor corrected. “I make a living.”

  Benita shrugged.

  “Manzanillo’s a barreling left,” added Libby. “Epic when it’s on.”

  “Urchins though,” said Jillian. “That’s why the boat is key.”

  Cassidy felt like she was getting whiplash from following all the threads of this conversation.

  “We usually do a trip a year, the six of us, except this year Michelle had to bail last minute. Her kid got appendicitis. Enter you—her replacement. We all live within a few hours of each other, but life gets in the way, and we don’t always get a chance to surf together. Three years ago we went to the Maldives.”

  “That crossing just about killed me,” Taylor groaned.

  “But then we scored, so you forgot all about it,” replied Libby.

  Taylor grinned. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

  Cassidy had read about surf trips in the Maldives, which were located in the Indian Ocean. She wondered how Bruce’s boat trip would compare. Despite her trouble with cars, boats were unpredictable. The trip to Witch’s and Ollie’s hadn’t bothered her, but an oceanography trip off the Oregon coast a few years ago had been sheer torture, start to finish.

  “Where you from?” Marissa asked, tying up her long blonde hair in a loose topknot.

  “Eugene,” she said before thinking. “But I learned to surf in Ventura. I moved there when I was ten.” She hadn’t meant to say so much so soon. It must be the tequila.

  Just then, Bruce arrived. “Ladies,” he said with a little bow. “Everything’s set. We’re ready when you are.”

  In a flash, the women downed their drinks. Libby threw some bills down on the table, and the group collected their things.

  Cassidy took a deep breath and followed them down to the water’s edge. Was she embarking the trip of a lifetime, or was this the final step towards some terrible truth?

  After they boarded the Trinity, Bruce’s bigger boat, complete with three bunkrooms and a modest galley manned by a slight, dark-skinned older man named Jesus, they set out for a sunset surf session at Witch’s Rock. The afternoon sun pierced Cassidy with its harsh glare, but once they were underway, she went up to the deck to feel the breeze. Half of the women were drinking beers, and all were busy donning sunscreen and zinc or taking photos. Cassidy jumped in to help get a group shot of them on the bow. The wind made small talk too awkward, so Cassidy settled in for the ride, watching Witch’s Rock transform from a tiny lump on the horizon to a haunting square of solid rock—like a giant’s pale yellow tooth poking out from the depths.

  Once they arrived, Bruce idled outside, watching the sets carefully, while the women evaluated the surf. In the low light, waves exploded into piles of fluffy, white spray, each droplet turning into tiny shimmering pearls. The waves looked bigger than on her previous trip, but the low light and being outside of the waves made size difficult to evaluate.

  “Yeeeeew,” someone belted out when a set broke.

  “Let’s do it!” someone else added, and just like that, the women were grabbing their boards and jumping over the side.

  Cassidy was quick to follow, and caught up with Benita.

  “Last time it was world-class, man, we got some incredible barrels on that trip. The other times, well, it was pretty good. Another time the winds were so strong we couldn’t paddle into the waves.”

  Cassidy reached the end of the lineup and pushed up to a sitting position.

  “What about you?”

  “I was here a few days ago. It was really good,” she replied. “But before that, I’d never surfed in Costa Rica.”

  Benita raised her eyebrows.

  Just then Jillian charged a set, and the peanut gallery went wild with hoots and cheers of encouragement. Cassidy watched Jillian disappear, and the wave rear up behind her, blocking Jillian from view. Libby was next, followed by Marissa, the only longboarder, then Taylor.

  They waited through a lull. Benita eyed Bruce’s boat. “Why isn’t Bruce out here?” she asked.

  “Is it too big for bodysurfing?” she wondered.

  Benita raised an eyebrow. “Nah, that guy will take on anything. My son is the same way—he surfs the Wedge. Talk about nuts.”

  Cassidy stayed quiet, realizing that she would soon have to share parts of her life with these people.

  “You want this one?” she asked Cassidy as a set approached.

  “Go a
head,” Cassidy replied, already maneuvering for the wave behind it. Benita paddled forward with the incoming wave and dropped in. Cassidy, paddling north a few strokes to meet the bump’s rising peak, spun and began paddling forward. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the other surfers paddling back out. One of them let out a hoot as she stroked into the wave.

  The wave gathered power upwards, forming a steep curve. Cassidy’s board leapt into space, her arms flying from her sides as the ocean fell away. Landing the drop and pulling up, towards the center of the wall, she kept her eyes ahead where the wall formed an endless slope of dazzling, sapphire blue. Her hips swiveled, and she carved a swooping turn, springing her energy off the crest and then soaring back down the speeding slope of the wave again. Reaching the trough, she swung her body in a smooth arc and aimed for the pocket. Once there, the clean wall still forming, building, thinning as she raced past, she trailed her hand in the wave, its warm, silky texture weaving through her fingers.

  Feeling an awed sense of joy surface within her, she sped low again, this time leaning far into the bottom turn, slapping the water in the trough as she came around and soared towards the lip. Yes! Zipping past its fluttering crest, she carved down the wave at an angle. The channel was near; she could tell by the way the wave was dying, its slope tapering. In a smooth arc, Cassidy zoomed over the lip, the offshore wind blasting at her back as she flew over the crush of whitewater and rejoined the sea.

  “Nice one!” one of the women said when she returned to the pack.

  Cassidy exhaled a nervous jitter.

  And so it went, with the women trading waves, complete with hoots and cheers, telling inside jokes and sharing plenty of laughter. Cassidy stayed quiet, not wanting to intrude or stand out. They did their best to include her but didn’t force her to participate. By the time they paddled in, the sun melting into the distant ocean, Cassidy was feeling relaxed and pleasantly tired.