She didn’t say anything, but he saw her mind working behind those incredible blue eyes.
“When I was growing up in Santa Barbara, I didn’t have plans for my future. My dad was the district attorney, and I was a beach bum.”
“Somehow, that doesn’t fit. I don’t see you lying around on the beach working on your tan.”
He laughed. “No, lying around wasn’t my style. Surfing was. Surfing and diving. Travis-Travis Cole, my closest friend since we were six-and I spent every afternoon on the waves or under them. And we cut enough classes that I had to study my ass off to pass my finals.”
“Your dad didn’t like that.”
“Hell no. He didn’t like Travis, who was from a wealthy family. They had the kind of money that seemed to grow on trees. I didn’t have the same advantages. We weren’t poor by any stretch, but putting me through college and law school like my father planned would wipe out their savings account.” Mitch heated with regret remembering when he told his dad he’d be a lawyer over his dead body. Rod Bianchi was dead less than a year later.
“I joined the military right out of high school to get away from Dad. It was the military or college, and I really didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to travel the world with Travis on his yacht, diving in the tropics and surfing waves that hit empty beaches. But I couldn’t do it. I told myself it was because my mom would be devastated, but in truth I was still under Dad’s thumb. No matter how many shenanigans I pulled with Travis, I kept going home and asking for forgiveness.”
“You probably would have gotten bored with that after, oh, ten or twenty years.”
He nodded, gave her a half smile, though his memories were of an unhappier time.
Something passed across Claire’s expression that told Mitch now was the time to get her to talk about her dad, but then it was gone and she said, “So you joined the Marines because he had been in the Air Force.”
“Yeah.”
“And why’d you leave?”
“My dad died. Heart attack.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He was a workaholic. On the job 24/7. He didn’t know the meaning of the word relax, and his doctor had been warning him for years that if he didn’t slow down or take care of himself, he would die early. Rod Bianchi didn’t believe him. He was in shape, worked out at the gym every morning, ate healthy. He died at his desk.”
“And you came home to be a beach bum?”
“I considered it. But I ended up going to college. Travis got tired of traipsing across the planet, so he joined me. We got a place on the beach and spent a lot of time on the waves, and a little time in class.”
“How’d you end up becoming a writer?”
Now they were getting into the lies. It had felt so good to tell Claire the truth about himself that he dreaded the next sentence that came out of his mouth.
“I worked on the campus newspaper. I liked it, and when I graduated I took a job on a paper in the south. Then moved my way up the Eastern Seaboard. Came back to California when my mom died. When my grandmother passed a year later and I had a bit of money, I decided that if I was ever going to do something big, I needed to try now. So I’m trying to write the Great American Novel.”
The lies came off his tongue effortlessly, but he wished his heart wasn’t so twisted. He wanted to tell Claire everything-how he joined the FBI because he thought that would have pleased his father, the man he had fought with only days before he died. How his mom had blamed him for his dad’s early death.
Instead, he created a fictional past for Claire and hated himself for it. He couldn’t tell her he thought her father was innocent, or that he had intentionally befriended her in order to capture Tom O’Brien.
Claire took his hand and kissed it. “You’ll have to teach me to surf someday.”
“There’re no beaches in Sacramento.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Really? Guess we’ll have to head to the coast for a weekend sometime.”
His heart did a flip and his hand tightened within her grasp.
“Guess we’ll have to,” he said thickly.
Instruments were being tuned in the bar, and Claire smiled. “That’s Finnegan’s Wake.”
“What?”
“The band. Named after the classic Irish folk song. A homage of sorts. This is their first time here.”
“I thought this was a British pub.” He pointed to the British flag hanging on the interior glass windows of the converted warehouse. “And isn’t that Queen Elizabeth?” he said, gesturing toward a mural.
She laughed. “Come on, let’s dance.”
Mitch had seen Claire dance before, but not when they’d been together. When he’d been watching her, following her.
Her body moved erotically back and forth to the fluid tempo of music as he danced with her. Seeing her so free was a treat. Every morning when they talked she was on guard and cautious. Now. . was this the real Claire? Was this the woman she’d have been had her life not been turned upside down when she was fourteen? Or was this the woman she’d become because of the murders? She danced for herself, no one else. Tonight, she seemed relaxed. Almost. . happy. Happy with him.
She couldn’t possibly know how her movement affected him. Her eyes closed and she wore that half smile Mitch loved so much. At this moment, her entire demeanor said “peace,” when usually Claire seemed to struggle so.
She opened her eyes, looking right at him, all her beauty and charm and those seductive bright blue eyes focused on him. She wrapped her hands around his neck and closed her eyes again. The music had changed to something more folksy. Whatever it was, she liked it and moved accordingly.
“I love. .”
“What?” he said, unable to hear her over the noise.
She stood on her tiptoes and leaned against him until her lips practically touched his ear. Her warm breath had him holding his. “I love this song.”
She rested her head on his shoulder and his arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her tight against him. The dance floor wasn’t large, about ten feet square, and more people joined them, pushing them closer. She kissed the side of his neck and Mitch held her tighter, one hand on the small of her back, the other on her neck.
Throughout the evening they danced, they drank a bit, and Mitch wanted to be nowhere else in the world but with Claire.
She wrapped an arm around his waist at the end of the evening and said, “That was fun.”
“I agree.”
They walked out to the parking lot, arm in arm. Mitch unlocked the passenger door for Claire. He’d taken out everything that might identify him as an FBI agent. His gun was in his trunk. He felt naked without it, but Claire would have been able to see-or feel-the piece on him.
“Wow, chivalry,” she said and turned to face him.
She kissed him. Everything about Claire was larger than life, and her kiss was nothing less. Her
