Life's a Beach by Claire Cook Read Free Book Online

guy with blue shorts and freckles. Actually, he’s my nephew, Riley.”

    “Oh,” she said. “No children of your own yet?”

    “Nope,” I said. “Totally child-free.”

    Allison Flagg rested her hand lightly on mine and lowered her voice. “I know a great fertility specialist. And I have some extra eggs frozen if you need to borrow any.”

     

    6

    I SPLASHED WATER ON MY FACE IN THE BATHHOUSE, trying to cool off. Why was it that perfect strangers thought they had the right to butt into my private life? It just made me so angry that they somehow thought they knew me better than I knew myself. And the worst part was:
What if they did?

    The find-a-guy-to-make-babies-with thing had never been a part of my dreams. Even when we were kids and Geri handed down her Ken doll to me, I ignored him and wanted G.I. Joe, honorably discharged from service and suitably dressed for an exotic adventure. And when it came to real live boys, Geri and her very first boyfriend seemed like an old married couple. I was pretty sure I remembered being lulled asleep upstairs by the sound of them discussing health insurance on the living room sofa below.

    I, on the other hand, had to admit to an early fetish for AFS students. Hans from Denmark, Pato from Guatemala, Joshua from New Zealand. By the time I graduated from high school, my photo albums had a real United Nations feel, and I had big plans for my first passport.

    A friend and I bought backpacks and headed for Europe as soon as we graduated from college. We planned to visit at least a dozen countries, staying at youth hostels and traveling by train, but we never made it out of England. We met two guys on the beach, Archie and Owen, or something like that. They took us to a fancy spa, complete with gambling, dancing, and therapeutic waters. They told us they were the spa managers and hired us to work for them selling discount packages back in the States. It was a fifty-fifty split, which would have been a great deal, except that it turned out they didn’t actually work for the spa. Looking back, it was the first of a long line of men and sales jobs that always promised more than they delivered.

    I yanked a sheet of paper towel from its dispenser and managed to pat my face dry without dislodging my eye makeup. I walked out of the bathhouse. As I rounded the corner of the building, I almost plowed right into a curly-haired guy in jeans and a black T-shirt. I stepped to my right. He stepped to my right, too. We both stepped to my left.

    “Dance?” he asked.

    “Too early for me. But thanks.” He had hazel eyes and his hair was kind of a sandy color.

    “So,” he said. “Having fun yet? It gets pretty boring, doesn’t it?”

    He had a point, but just in case it was a trick question, I said, “Oh, no, not at all. I’m completely fascinated.”

    He held out his hand and said, “Tim Kelly.”

    “Hi. Ginger Walsh.” He was probably my age, give or take. “So, what do you do?”

    “I’m the gaffer.”

    “Is that like a gopher?”

    His eyes clouded over. “No,” he said like he’d said it many times before. “It’s like an electrician.”

    “Wow,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to meet an electrician.”

    He laughed. “You’re here with one of the kids, right?”

    “Yeah, my nephew.”

    “You want me to get better lighting for him?”

    Tim Kelly was seriously cute. I smiled. “I’ll talk to his makeup artist and get back to you.”

    “Good,” he said. “I’ll look forward to it.”

    I made a wide circle so I could casually bypass Allison Flagg and sit at another mini picnic table. It was just a few feet closer to the action, but it made a big difference. I could see and hear everything much more clearly now, and even managed to give Riley a thumbs-up when he looked over. The technical advisors had apparently worked through their philosophical differences about the maypole dance, and each of the dozen or so kids was holding the end of a long