around a friendly wave that sent them about their business.
"When my father hears about this, he'll never let me surf again."
"Why does he have to hear about it?"
"He always does." She made a concentrated effort not to look at her
bodyguards.
"Everybody wipes out." Beautiful eyes, he thought again, then looked
deliberately out to sea. "You were doing pretty good."
"Really." She colored a bit. "You're wonderful. I've watched you."
"Thanks." He grinned and showed a chipped tooth.
Emma stared at him as memory came flooding back. "You're Michael."
"Yeah." His grin widened. "How'd you know?"
"You don't remember me." She pushed herself up to sit. "met you, well,
it was a long time ago. I'm Emma. Emma McAvoy. Your father brought
you to the rehearsal hall one Afternoon."
"McAvoy?" Michael dragged a hand through his dripping hair. "Brian
McAvoy?" As he said the name he saw Emma take a quick look round to see
if anyone had heard him. "I remember you. You sent me a picture. I've
still got it." His eyes narrowed as he glanced over his shoulder. "So
that's what they're doing here," he murmured, studying the guards. "I
thought they were narcs or something."
"Bodyguards," she said dully, then shrugged it off. "My father
worries."
"Yeah, I bet." He remembered, clearly, the police photograph of a little
boy. It left him with nothing else to say.
"I remember your father." She began to draw idle circles in the sand.
"He came to the hospital to see me after we lost my brother."
"He's a captain now," Michael said for lack of anything else.
"That's nice." She'd been raised to be polite under any circumstances.
"You'll tell him I said hello, won't you?"
"Sure." They ran out of things to say so that the whoosh of the waves
filled the gaps. "Ah, listen, do you want a Coke or something?"
She looked up, dazzled to be asked. It was the first time in her life
she had had more than a five-minute conversation with a boy. Men,
certainly. Her life had been frill of men. But being asked to have a
Coke with a boy only a few years her senior was a wonderful, and beady,
experience. She nearly agreed before she remembered the .rds. She
couldn't bear them watching.
"Thanks, but I'd better go. Dad was going to pick me up in a couple of
hours, but I don't think I'm up to any more surfing today. I'll have to
call him."
"I could take you." He made a restless movement with his shoulders. It
was stupid to feel so tongue-tied with a kid. But he couldn't remember
being more nervous since he'd asked Nancy Brimmer to the ninth-grade
Valentine's Dance. "Give you a ride home," he continued as Emma stared
at him. "If you want."
"You probably have something you want to do."
"No. Not really."
He wanted to meet her father again, Emma decided after one ecstatic
moment. A boy like him-why, he must have been at least
eighteen-wouldn't be interested in her. But the daughter of Brian