Page 11 of California Waves

He put on his running gear. In his book, a good, hard run could fix any kind of mood. As he pulled the navy blue T-shirt over his head, he touched the Saint Christopher’s medal that always hung on a gold chain around his neck. It had been passed down from his grandfather. His mother swore the medal had seen her dad safely through World War II, and scientist or not, sometimes Hersch believed it was part of the reason he’d come home safely from space. He never took it off.

It was the time of year when he’d normally be training for an Ironman competition. He loved the challenge, lived for it, really, and it was the most fun way he could think of to stay in top physical shape for his missions. But the Ironman meant completing the swimming section, and how was he going to do that when he couldn’t even dip his big toe in the water? It infuriated him that something so simple was holding him back.

He pulled on his shorts and socks and then warmed up with his tried and tested routine of calisthenic stretches before heading out.

He chose a trail far away from the ocean in Garland Ranch Regional Park in Carmel Valley. It was beautiful, green, and lush, with a few lingering wildflowers and a small grove of redwood trees at its heart. He began running and soon felt as though every trail went straight uphill without ever having a corresponding downhill, even though he’d chosen what should have been an easy run by his standards. He was running hard and fast, a sweat quickly forming as he tried to burn off his frustration, feeling the sweat drip down the sides of his face. Even as the breath was dragging into his lungs, he blinked sweat out of his eyes and took a moment to really appreciate the scrubby greenery and natural beauty of his surroundings.

Mila Davenport was right. There was something truly special about Carmel. It was the right place to make his new home.

And that couldn’t happen soon enough. He’d been in his hotel for only a few days, but he really needed to get out of there. He could already picture himself in his new house. In spite of the fact that nothing had inspired him in the online listings, he had a feeling that Mila would come up with something. She seemed a lot like him—somebody who really rose to a challenge. Not so long ago, she’d been flying high as one of the top female surfers in the world, when an accident had wrecked her career. The more he’d learned about her, the more he’d found himself completely engaged in her story. He’d kept clicking and reading, clicking and reading, discovering all that he could about her career and the accident that had ended it.

He’d studied the photographs, read the numerous media articles. His heart had gone out to a young and stunning Mila with the world’s biggest grin, blonde hair wet from the ocean and slicked back, and pearly-white teeth on show. She hadn’t known then how quickly everything she’d worked for and believed in could be taken away. The life she’d worked for had been over in a matter of moments. Just one bad wave.

They had that in common, too, because if he wasn’t very careful, everything he had worked so hard for and believed in was going to be swept away by his fear of the water. It was such a stupid thing, and as his feet pounded solid ground, he felt his frustration rise again to the surface. He ran harder, pushing himself. He was going to have to keep pushing himself, in all manner of uncomfortable ways. He could do this. He knew he could.

Mila still had her sunny smile, but he saw the shadow behind it. The older and probably wiser Mila had learned the hard way that life wasn’t fair, that talent, hard work, and luck weren’t always enough. Luck could be both good and bad, and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about where it fell.

But at least she’d found a new path for herself. He deeply admired the guts and dedication it must have taken for her to hang up her board professionally and retrain for a completely different career. Not only had she started over, but she’d also worked her way to the top of her second profession. She had gumption in spades, and he liked that. In fact, it was sexy as hell.

He looked up, and suddenly he was able to picture Mila looking down at him from the top of the hill he was climbing. She was giving him that warm, knowing smile she had, daring him, and it made him pick up the pace and pound the ground. Despite the burning sensation in his legs, he smiled back. Mila Davenport had gotten under his skin. If she did find him a house—no, scratch that. When she found him a house, he wondered what the appropriate amount of time would be before he could invite his Realtor out for a date.

It had been a long time since any woman had appealed to him the way she did. In the past year, he’d not felt even a flicker of interest about a person of the opposite sex. It was as though every part of him was struggling to come back to life. Even his libido. But since he’d met Mila, he seemed to have switched on again. Switched on to Mila Davenport.

He rounded a bend and realized that his speed had almost doubled. Just the thought of Mila spurred him on. But then doubt began to creep in, swirling its sly way around his guts. Maybe he’d gotten ahead of himself. He only had to think about going on a date with Mila when he began to write the whole story in his mind. He could envision so clearly the romantic restaurants, holding hands, weekend hikes, and then moving to a physical relationship. Their chemistry would be electric. They would become enchanted with each other until, one day, they’d get married. It wasn’t hard to picture her looking up at him with confidence as he slipped a ring onto her finger.

It was a tempting fantasy, but he’d seen how hard it was for his friends who had wives and families to leave for space, knowing the dangers they faced. He’d never wanted to leave anyone he loved at home. It was too painful for everyone involved, and he’d witnessed too many times the breakdown of a perfect couple when faced with the immense distance space put between them.

And kids he’d have to leave behind? Well, he didn’t think he could do it. He loved his mother dearly, and he’d become pretty famous with her birthday cake in space, but it wasn’t like he had a choice in having a mother. Having a wife and kids was a decision—one that should never be taken lightly.

Not that he lived like a monk, of course. He enjoyed the company of women and sex as much as the next red-blooded male, and Mila seemed like a woman who could do casual, which at this point was all he was capable of. Even as he could imagine her accepting his ring, he could also imagine the two of them burning up the sheets. Neither had acknowledged it, but the chemistry was undeniable. He was, after all, a man of science.

By the time Hersch returned to his hotel room, he knew two things—he was going to work really hard to find a house he could be at least reasonably happy in for the next couple of years. And he was definitely going to ask out his Realtor.

Some challenges were meant to be faced, and he was determined to succeed in this one.

Chapter Six

Mila checked the waterproof watch that tracked her every movement and every appointment. She had a couple of hours before her surf classes began, so she headed into the office, centrally located in town. She was used to cramming one more thing into her daily schedule. In fact, she positively thrived on wringing every possible moment out of each day, so she rushed home, showered, and put on linen trousers and a soft blue sweater. Usually, that’s where she would have stopped on a Saturday, but now she blow-dried her hair, swiped some mascara across her lashes, and applied a watermelon balm to her lips. When she went into the office, she was always in her business persona, even if it was only for a couple of hours before she slipped back into her wetsuit and took her place in the ocean once more. There was land Mila and ocean Mila, and she was pretty good at jumping between those two personas. She had the transformation down to a slick ten minutes. Five, if she was really pushed for time.

Even though she was on a tight schedule, she allowed herself to pause as she pulled out of her driveway to absorb the sense of sanctuary that her little house always gave her. Apart from a pretty wooden archway entwined with fragrant white clematis, it was unremarkable from the outside—just a simple cabin from the late 1930s with a modernized interior. But to her, it was a little piece of paradise.

When she’d been riding the high of big-time prize money from surfing, Erin, her very sensible sister, had advised her to be smart and use the money to buy a house. At the time, it hadn’t been at the top of Mila’s shopping list, but Erin, in her quiet way, had persisted. They’d started looking just for fun, and then one day, this house had come on the market. It was called Mermaid’s Hideaway, and even before they’d stepped inside, the two sisters had looked at each other and known—this was The One. If only it were that easy with men.

The cabin was brown with red trim, unassuming and quiet, tucked as it was behind a wooden fence. It boasted a mature garden, as the real estate listing had said, and from the very back of her garden, she could see the ocean. That had been absolutely critical to her when she’d come up with her list of must-haves for her own home. She didn’t need to be right on the ocean—she couldn’t have afforded waterfront anyway—but she absolutely had to be able to glimpse the water and be close enough to walk to the beach with a surfboard. The house checked those boxes, or she wouldn’t have looked at it.

So she didn’t mind that Mermaid’s Hideaway wasn’t a grand home, with its two bedrooms, one bathroom, and less than a thousand square feet. She wouldn’t have wanted the trouble of looking after a bigger home anyway. Life was too short for dusting and vacuuming. It had been built by craftsmen almost a hundred years ago and boasted scarred hardwood floors and rustic wooden walls that she’d never change—they were too charming. The centerpiece of the living room was a big fireplace with a copper hood. The kitchen had a stained-glass window and wooden cupboards that she thought might be original to the house, but a previous owner had done the best kind of renovation by keeping the charm of the old while adding the convenience of the new. Stainless-steel appliances, and top-end ones at that, and a modern stone countertop made her little kitchen a pleasure to cook in. Not that she was the world’s greatest cook, but she could throw together a decent meal if she had to. Her mother had made sure of that.

Skylights let in more light, and she’d painted her bedroom the softest possible shade of blue. The ceiling rose up to a peak, and from her bedroom window over the garden, she could glimpse the sea. She liked to think that it was the first thing she saw every morning when she got out of bed and the last thing she saw at night. It left her with an incredible sense of peace.

She sometimes thought that it was buying her own house that had planted the seed of interest in a real estate career. Dan Ferguson had been the listing agent—he owned his own real estate firm—when she’d bought her place. He was a jovial man in his fifties who worked hard but also enjoyed life, and she’d liked him immediately. She’d pestered him with questions, not only first-time-buyer questions, but also hey-I’m-interested-in-real-estate questions, and he’d cheerfully answered them all. So, when she’d finished licking her wounds and accepted that her surfing career was in fact over, she’d gone to Dan and asked him to train her. It hadn’t been an instantaneous decision, of course, but she’d gotten there. So far, her career change was working out. Of course, she missed those moments of competition when she crushed it and walked away with a trophy, but she could still surf, and now she could give others the pleasure of learning how, and that was more rewarding than she ever could have imagined. Also, she’d turned out to be pretty good at real estate sales and made a very tidy living.

With a last glance at herself in the rear view mirror and a final check of her watch, she pulled out of her driveway and drove to the real estate office in town.

She greeted the receptionist who manned the phones all weekend, but found that she was the only agent in the office. Her colleagues were either out showing houses or taking a rare Saturday off.

She settled at her desk and fired up her computer. She was pretty good at keeping the list of the current inventory in the area—and even a little beyond it—in her head, but she hoped there was something she’d overlooked, the kind of house that would be perfect for Herschel Greenfield. Concentrating, she sifted through every single listing, carefully combing through the ones in Carmel Heights, but she simply couldn’t imagine Herschel in any of them. Funny how she had this clear image of what he needed—even though they’d only just met. It was more than a professional instinct, but something running deeper. Still, she’d have to show him a few options to get the ball rolling, as he wanted to move quickly.

She pulled together the few listings that had most of what he wanted. Finding a house with three bedrooms was easy, and most had a two-car garage, but he wouldn’t want a property that lacked the wow factor. No, he’d want a home that had architectural appeal and was well-crafted and built to last.

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