Laguna Cove Read Free Page B

seen her wipe out.
    “That’s quite a spill you took out there,” he said, eyeing her carefully.
    “It wasn’t that bad, really.” She grabbed a towel and headed for the sliding glass doors that led to the living room, hoping he wouldn’t follow.
    “Tell that to the judges,” he said, right behind her now.
    “Well, did you happen to see any of the waves I had before that?” she asked, trying to sound neutral so he wouldn’t know how upset she was by his criticism. She wiggled out of her wetsuit and hung it on a hook by the door. “Because some of them were really good.” She turned to face him briefly, taking in his towering six-foot-four frame, the hair that despite the slight thinning was still as blond as hers, the tanned face, and the deep lines that fanned away from his clear green eyes that were also just like hers.
    “All of them have got to be good, Ellie, not just some of them. You think your brother won NSSA by one or two merely decent waves?”
    Ellie reached for the door handle and rolled her eyes. But her back was toward him, so it’s not like he could see it.
    “And don’t roll your eyes at me. I can see your reflection in the window, you know.”
    Leave it to my dad to find a maid that does windows! “Okay, so I slipped a little. Trust me, it’s no big deal. I’ll get it straight before the contest, so you don’t have to worry,” she said, hurrying up the stairs to her room, where she could finally escape his never-ending scrutiny.
    “Ellie?”
    Jeez, what now? she thought. She was just outside her door, so close to freedom.
    “This is for you.” He handed her his platinum credit card. “Stop by the mall later and get yourself whatever you need for school tomorrow.”
    Taking the card, she looked at him, immediately feeling guilty for everything she’d just been thinking. But it was always like that. He’d pile on the pressure to the point where she was just about to scream, then quickly follow it up by an act of extreme kindness or generosity. She knew he meant well, but sometimes he really got on her nerves.

chapter four
    Anne woke to the sound of a persistent high-pitched ringing. Assuming it was there to accompany the incessant drumming in her head (it was beginning to sound like a really bad garage band in there), she lay in her new bed with her eyes shut tight, promising to whoever might be in charge of these things that if they would just put an end to the incessant pounding, the cotton mouth, and the nausea, then she would never, ever drink red wine (or anything else, for that matter) again.
    Ever!
    Well, at least not until her twenty-first birthday.
    Really.
    She wasn’t just saying that.
    When the ringing abruptly stopped, her eyes popped open. Could it be? But when it resumed a moment later, she realized it was the phone, not her head, that was making all that racket.
    Tossing the covers aside, she stumbled out of bed, wondering where the phone was located. In her old room in Connecticut, she’d had a cordless with her own private number, a cell phone with a different number, a laptop, two e-mail addresses, and a BlackBerry that they could all be forwarded to. And it was all within easy reach of her big, comfortable canopy bed. Communication with everyone who mattered had always been right at her fingertips.
    But here, in her dad’s strange new digs, she didn’t even know where to start. Since she had fallen asleep not long after finding her room the day before, the rest of the house had so far remained a mystery. Sprinting out of her room, she headed down the hall and toward the kitchen, partly because it seemed like the logical place to start, and partly because it was the only other room she was familiar with.
    “Hello?” she said, picking up the receiver of a brand-new silvercolored phone designed to look retro, but with all the modern conveniences.
    “Did I wake you?” her dad asked from God-knows-where.
    “Kind of. Where are you?” She settled onto a