Page 12 of SEAL’S Baby Surprise (Lanes #2)

LEE

Morning arrives. I can hear both Austin and Julia stirring. Ark gets off me, hops into the narrow space between my bed and the driver’s seat of the van, stretches, shakes, and ambles off down the hall.

It is such a relief to have the big dog climb off me, I just lie there for a minute. It is so still, I can hear Ark scuffling and snuffling around the van.

The twins arrive to have breakfast with Julia and walk with her to Mother Hubbard’s. Idly, I wonder what their parents are doing, since they always eat breakfast, and sometimes eat lunch and dinner with Julia and Austin.

While Austin is feeding the children, I get up, use the bathroom and grab a shower. I look at the sweats I’ve been wearing with distaste.

I’m going to have to find some way to get more clothes. I’ve worn these for two days, and they are beginning to be more than a little ripe.

I pull them on, because the alternative is that horrid wedding dress. I’d designed it. Whatever was I thinking, anyway? It is an expensive, single-use garment. Maybe I had thought like some of the tribal women of old, that I should wear the family wealth.

I wander out to the kitchen area. Austin is seated in his large beach chair, a cup of coffee on the small table beside him.

“You okay with continental breakfast?” he asks, nodding toward the basket of fruit and plate of pastries sitting on the condiment table.

“Sure,” I reply. I pour myself a cup of coffee, get a paper plate and load it up with fruit and pastries, then sit in the guest chair on the other side of the small table where Austin has parked his coffee.

I munch quietly for a little while, looking out across the beach down toward the ocean. It is peaceful, and reasonably cool, but the day is starting to warm right up. The waves sparkle in the sunlight. Ark dashes down and chases them.

Austin is doing something with a graph on his tablet, so I don’t bother him. I figure I’ve interrupted his work often enough.

By the time I finish my pastry and fruit, I’m tired of looking at the view even though Ark is pretty entertaining. I go in and get my book, come back, and settle down to read for a while.

I’m just beginning to read Chapter Nine, in which Meg goes visiting, when Austin says, “I need to take Ark for a run. He’s been really good these last two days, but he’s a big dog, and he gets restless if we don’t get out on the water at least once a day.

Will you be all right staying here for an hour or two? I’ll be home in time for lunch.”

“I should be fine,” I say. “I think I’d like to watch some television or maybe take a nap.”

Austin looks a little disappointed. Was he hoping I would go with? But I really don’t want to run around in smelly sweats, and I don’t have a swimsuit. As nearly as I can tell, Freedom Beach isn’t a nudie beach. Or at least I haven’t seen anyone running around in the buff.

“I’ll get the remote for you,” he says. “Just be sure you brush your feet off before you climb up on my bed. I hate sleeping with sand.”

I giggle at that. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“You’d think,” he says, “but you never know.”

I go inside, and just to make sure I don’t have sand on my feet, I rinse them off in the sink. When I come out, Austin frowns at me. “We’re going to have to do something about clothes for you,” he says. “Those sweats are okay as emergency gear, but you probably don’t want to live in them.”

“Clothes,” I say. “Yes, please. I’ll pay you back.”

“Not to worry,” Austin says. “We can go shopping after lunch. Julia needs some things, too. I’ll lock the door when I leave — just to keep the riffraff out, all right?”

“All right,” I reply.

After Austin and Ark leave, I settle down on his bed to watch television. I sort of wish he was here. He makes me feel safe, even more than Ark does.

I’m not sure what I’d had in mind when I’d tried to leave last night. His scent surrounds me. It’s a heady mixture of masculine cologne, laundry soap, and salt water. There’s even a little bit of doggy odor. Probably because Ark likes to sleep with people.

I get bored with the movie I’m watching. It’s some kind of stupid sit-com with fairy tales. Really? Who believes in that stuff anyway?

I start channel surfing. Weather predictions — sunny. Surfing conditions, red tide locations, cooking show — ew! Someone else can do that.

I watch two minutes of a fashion show and realize it’s in drag. Fine for whomever, but not my bag. It is coming up on eleven o’clock.

As the chronometer on Austin’s headboard ticks over to the hour, the television blares, “News flash! Lovely bride gone missing!” The talking head goes on to describe the missing woman.

A photograph flashes up on the screen, of a sweet-faced girl in theatrical makeup.

Oh no.

Oh no, no, no.

That’s me.

I panic! He’ll know! He’ll see, and he’ll hate me for being a rich society girl, or for running off. Or Jason will see me and make me go back. What was the most memorable part? Pink. Pink hair. Long, pink hair.

Austin hasn’t seen this. Maybe he won’t know. He’s seen the hair. Oh, God! What am I going to do about the hair?

I start going through drawers until I find a big pair of sewing shears. I grab a big handful of hair and cut it off. Pink! Pink, almost all the way down. I cut off more of it. More pink. Then more, and more, and more.

I have just hacked off the last bit of pink, when Austin comes in.

“Lee?” he asks. “What in the world did you do to your hair?”

“I cut it off!” I hiss at him, waving the scissors. “Pink, pink, pink…I cut off all the pink. I’m not a pink girl anymore, I’m not!”

I realize a little too late that I’m practically screeching, and I sound more than just a little bit crazy.

“Shhh, shhh,” Austin tries to sooth me. “Easy, Lee. Just take it easy.” He catches the hand with the scissors. “Just let me have the sharp things, all right? I think you’ve done enough cutting. What was wrong with your hair?”

“They’ll see me. They’ll see the pink, and they’ll make me go back. I won’t! I won’t go back. I won’t marry him. I won’t!”

“Whoa up there, sweetheart,” Austin says gently. “This isn’t the Middle Ages. Nobody can make you marry anybody unless you want to. You cut off your hair to keep from being recognized?”

I nod. He understands. Austin understands a lot of things that no one else does. “I can’t be the pink girl anymore. She’s got to go away, just disappear.”

“Going off the grid can be kinda hard,” Austin says. “You gotta have an ID for just about everything, including getting a job.”

“Can I work for you?” I ask.

“Oh, my mermaid, my lady of the sea, I’d let you in a minute if I had any work you could do.

But I’m kind of a one-man show. I’d even pay you cash so you wouldn’t have to have identification to buy stuff.

But let’s let that ride for a minute. Let’s get you cleaned up before Julia comes home so you don’t scare her. ”

At that, I burst into tears. I like Julia, and I don’t want to scare her. She’s sweet and cute and smart.

“Easy, easy, now,” Austin says. And he lifts me up and sets me on the kitchen counter.

Me, the girl Jason had always called the “chunky monkey” and other things that were supposed to be endearments, but maybe weren’t quite so nice.

“Let’s look at you. You’ve got a good shape to your head, I think we can make you look real sharp, kind of like G.I. Jane. Whadaya say?”

I try to blink the tears out of my eyes and calm down a little. “Okay. I guess I cut it a little short?”

Austin chuckles, but it’s a nice chuckle like he’s laughing with me, not at me. “Just a little bit. But I’ll get out my clippers, and we’ll get you fixed up right away.”

Austin hauls me outside and sets me down on a little stool. He brings his personal kit along with him, and he takes what looks like dog clippers out of it.

He looks at my hair, then he looks in the bag, and he puts a thing that looks kind of like a rake on the end of the clippers. “I’ll have to use the shortest guide,” he says. “Some places you cut it right down to the scalp.”

“Had to get the pink off,” I say.

“You know, if you’d waited just a little bit, I could’ve gone to the store and gotten some dye. We could have made you a strawberry blond or a brunette. Shoot, we could have dyed your head goth-girl black.”

He begins moving the clippers over my head. “But it’s okay. You’ll maybe look like a cancer victim for a while. But one thing about hair, the stuff grows.”

He makes one last pass with the clippers, and says, “There. That’s the best we can do until it grows out some.” He hands me a square shaving mirror out of his kit.

The mirror is so small, I can only see pieces of my face and hair at a time. I look like a concentration camp refugee.

My eyes are huge and blue. My scalp, where my hair used to be, is just as white as a super-fine sheet. Anyone can see my hair came off recently.

Besides, I look awful! Someone is making a whiny, keening noise, and I realize it’s me!

I don’t want to see anybody. I don’t want anybody to look at me! I run into the van, into my tiny alcove, draw the curtain, curl up on the narrow bed, and hide under the blanket.