ONE

“You have an admirer,” Liz Santangelo said.

She and I were on my patio under a San Diego sun that was threatening to disappear into a February storm. I was getting ready to hit the water, and Liz was about to head to work.

Without turning to look, I knew who she meant. A woman in her late twenties, small, attractive. She’d bicycled past on the boardwalk when Liz and I had first stepped outside. Now she was on the beach, off to our right, pretending to read a book. She was trying to be unobtrusive. I wasn’t the world’s greatest PI but I knew when someone was keeping an eye on me.

I tied a knot in the drawstring to my board shorts. “I don’t have a shirt on. Probably hard for her not to stare.”

“She must be too far away to see your faults,” Liz replied.

“Bah.” I pulled the red rash guard over my head, stretched it over my chest and moved my gaze to the woman. “Just intimidated by my looks.”

The woman turned away when our eyes met. She closed her book, picked up her towel, and headed up the beach to the north.

“Yes, clearly she’s infatuated,” Liz said.

The woman stepped off the sand, crossed the boardwalk, and disappeared down one of the many alleys that led to Mission Boulevard. I didn’t have an office and people regularly showed up on the beach, as it was the best place to find me. Usually they came and talked to me instead of disappearing into an alley, though.

“A long time ago, you staring at her ass like that would’ve bothered me,” Liz said, tugging on my hand.

I laughed and turned back to her. “Not what I was looking at.”

Liz and I had finally uncomplicated our complicated relationship. After years of ebb and flow, we were riding the same current. I was a private investigator; she was a homicide detective. We butted heads professionally, and that had screwed up the personal side of things. But after working a case that made me reevaluate what was important, I had gone looking for some normalcy and good in my life.

I’d found both in Liz.

She glanced up at the sky. “You really going to go surf in the rain?”

“Not raining yet,” I said.

“Yet.”

February was arguably the worst month of the year in San Diego for weather. It could get downright cold and wet, making the city feel very un-Southern California-like. Watching the thick gray blanket unroll above us on the first day of the month, I thought we might be in for the local version of a monsoon.

I grabbed my board and started keying in the tri-fins. “I can get in a little time before the stinking rain blows it all up.”

“Rain is fine,” she said, smiling.

“Rain sucks,” I said.

She shook her head, but the smile remained.

Things were easy between us. No tension, nothing riding below the surface, no distrust. We’d seen each other at our worst and decided that wasn’t so bad. Our lives were better with the other in it. I was happier than I’d ever been, and it was our relationship that was driving that.

“Oh, look,” Liz said. “She’s baaack.”

I got the last fin in place and looked down the boardwalk. The woman had returned, this time with a longboard tucked under her arm. She had replaced her T-shirt with a rash guard. She glanced our way and let her eyes sweep past us, like she was just taking a look up the beach. She walked toward the edge of the water.

“Maybe she wants lessons,” Liz suggested, her tone somewhere between amused and annoyed.

I stood. “My day is made.”

“How’s that?”

“Jealousy. It always makes my day.”

Liz rolled her eyes. “I’m not jealous.”

“Said the really jealous woman.”

She tried to hold in a laugh but failed. “Whatever. I’m leaving.”

I leaned over and kissed her. I started to pull away, but she caught my arm and held me there for a moment longer before letting me go.

“Tell her I have a gun and I’m more than happy to use it,” she said.

I watched Liz head around the side of the house before turning back to the water. The woman was strapping the leash onto her ankle, surveying the ocean in front of her. Maybe we had overestimated her interest in me, our suspicious natures getting the better of us.

Time to go find out.