Of course, imagining that their issues matched—or should, if he looked hard enough—told him any number of things about himself he had zero interest in analyzing just then.
“Are you asking me for help, Scotland?” he asked lazily, ignoring the tightening sensation in his chest as he sat up on his board and relaxed into the roll of the waves beneath him. “Or are you just complaining?”
“It’s evidently quite important to you that I make a fool out of myself according to your preferred method. I wouldn’t wish to let you down.”
“I’m out in the water with a nearly naked woman. What letdown are you worried about? The worst thing that’s going to happen to you is that you fall off, and if there’s a God, lose that bikini. I’m here for it.”
She raised two fingers at him, but he somehow didn’t believe that she was making that particular V for victory.
And then he sat back and laughed himself silly as his angry, no longer dour or businesslike redhead tried to hurl herself up onto her surfboard.
He lost track of how many times she scrabbled up, then tried to get to her feet, only to lose her balance and have the board shoot out from under her.
She fell over and over, splashing into the waves and then paddling furiously to the surface, but she always tried again. She kept muttering out filthy curses in that increasingly more obvious accent of hers, one after the next. Sounding more and more Scottish as she went.
Jason sat back on his own surfboard, busting a gut laughing and watching the show. When she fell for approximately the nine millionth time, he reached out and caught the tip of her board with one hand as it shot away from her. And he studied her when she bobbed up to the surface, rising and falling with the swell of the water.
“You about ready to admit defeat?”
She bared her teeth at him. “Death first.”
But when she swam over to climb up onto her board again, he reached down and hooked her under one arm. Then hauled her out of the water, up and onto his board. He settled her between his legs, then he reached over and clipped her surfboard to his, countering the jerky little movements she made with his thighs.
“Are you trying to dump us both in the water?” he asked lazily enough, and snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her back against him. “I don’t think you understand balance. Maybe in a global sense.”
“Let me guess. You’re going to teach me. It’s my lucky day.”
Jason figured it was his lucky day, anyway. She was sleek and wet. The breeze had dried him off, which meant she was cool against his chest, and fit there between his thighs a little too perfectly. He wanted to settle his mouth in that place where her neck joined her shoulder. He wanted to push her forward onto her hands, lift that fine ass of hers and settle into her from behind—and who cared if they drifted all the way out to sea?
But he did none of those things, because he was a goddamn saint.
“Settle down, Scotland.” She wiggled a little, then stopped when he pressed his thighs tighter against her, and he liked that a whole lot more than was wise. “You need to stop thinking about all the ways you can conquer the surfboard, and more about the way the water’s going to conquer you if you don’t respect it a little more.”
She scowled over her pale shoulder, gleaming with a new spray of golden freckles. “I thought the entire point of surfing was conquering the bloody water.”
“We already covered this. Stop looking for the point. Start looking for balance. And because I can tell you’re not going to get this, balance isn’t about conquering anything. It’s about letting yourself become a part of it and taking what you need.”
This time, Lucinda sighed. “Nothing in your portfolio suggested you were a new-age hippie.”
She sounded appalled.
Jason laughed again, and had the distinct pleasure of feeling the way she shivered in response, right there against him. He could see the goose bumps that rose on her neck and snaked down her arms. He was fascinated and more than a little hot himself, but somehow kept himself from licking them up with his tongue.
“I’m not a hippie, darlin’. I’m Hawaiian.”
He moved then, setting her farther in front of him on the board, liking how easy it was to lift her and move her where he wanted her. Then he jackknifed himself up, bringing his feet out of the water and onto the board, then standing in a single swift movement that he’d practiced so many times it didn’t require thought. And before she could comment on it or jerk around on the board, he reached down and picked her up, too.
“What are you doing?”
And Jason knew that she had no idea how panicked she sounded, or she would probably have bitten off her own tongue.
He kept hold of her. “Relax.”
“Right. Because, first of all, everyone relaxes on command. The best thing to say to someone when they’re not relaxed, in fact, is relax in exactly that tone. That does the trick, every time.”
“Stop talking, Lucinda.”
He pulled her close to him again, with one big hand on that soft, sweet belly of hers. And he wanted nothing more than to eat up the way she shuddered, then flushed red. Everywhere.
But he didn’t put his mouth on her the way he wanted to do. Instead, he held her there, keeping the board balanced beneath them as they floated.
“You don’t fight the waves. Fighting them is a quick way to end up face down in the water. You feel them. Every one of them.”
He could feel her tense. Every sweet little curve of that lush body of hers, wound up and ready to fight no matter what he said. But instead of hurling something back at him, she only shuddered again, holding her arms out from her sides.
Like she’d seen surfing on television once.
“Good girl,” he murmured approvingly, and then grinned at the little noise she made in response to that. “Balance,” he said again. “You’re never going to beat a wave into submission. But you can ride it.”
And for a while, all they did was stand there like the surfboard was a paddleboard and let the ocean do its thing. One wave after another lifted them up, then brought them down again. Over and over, without end.
It was the rhythm of his life. It was his own heartbeat, there in his chest.
It was what brought him back to himself and it was why he’d come here, where no one was around to snap pictures of him or get in his face about his father or football or both, so he could find that heartbeat again.
But helping Lucinda find that same rhythm charmed him, somehow. And made his actual beat a little faster.
Eventually, Jason let go of her and let her find her feet on her own. Once she got the hang of that, he jumped off the board, leaving her to do it on her own. When she had that down, he unclipped the boards and pulled himself onto the other one so he could watch her.
“Now what?” she demanded, her body in the correct position, if far too rigid. And the frown on her face a clue that she wasn’t anywhere close to relaxed or balanced.
But he gave her points for trying.
He pointed at the water. “Now you jump in and climb