Page 120 of Sucker For You

A second tickle of laughter quirked her mouth. “Good.”

“Better than good,” he contradicted her, and she snorted. He kissed her again and rummaged for a pair of glasses while she popped the cork. “But in the meantime, where are we off to today?”

“Hmm.” She clinked their fizzing flutes, sipped. Her tongue moved toward a single gleaming drop on her lip. “Well. . .”

Brrrriiinng!

This time, it was Wes’s phone that interrupted them:

Incoming Call:Monterey County Courthouse

He cursed, but couldn’t ignore it. “Hello?”

“Am I speaking with Wes Monaghan?”

“Guilty.” If he couldn’t send the clerk to voicemail, though, he could certainly keep kissing Isabel. He caught her champagne droplet on his own tongue.

“Mr. Monaghan, you have an appointment scheduled on September twenty-sixth with Judge Cruz of the Monterey County Superior Court to legalize a marriage between yourself and one Isabel Wright. However, you requested to be put on a standby list in the event of an earlier appointment becoming available. I’m pleased to inform you that Judge Cruz has had a cancellation this morning. If you can submit all necessary documents to the county clerk by nine-thirty today, we canissue your marriage license and Judge Cruz will be available to officiate at ten o’clock.”

Ten?

The bungalow’s clocktopus pointed to just after eight.

A flight to San Jose from his parents’ house outside Detroit took five hours, minimum. Adrian had landed at LaGuardia yesterday. Erin was currently in the air en route to Cape Canaveral. . .

But he just lifted an eyebrow at his fiancée.

Okay, her fingers circled.Yes.

“Ten o’clock is great.”

“Confirmed.”

Call Ended

“Right,” he resumed to Isabel, silencing and pocketing his phone against further interruptions, smiling so widely that he could taste the sunshine. He stroked a finger over her ear to tuck back her wild and silky hair, then wandered down her jaw, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. “We have two hours until we’re due at the courthouse. You had something else you wanted to do today, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” She turned her own smile into his hand. “I want. . .”

“. . . to swim.” Isabel returned her champagne glass to the counter. “I want to go swimming in the bay with you. I want to take our octopus with us.”

“Oh.” Wes’s fingers quieted on her cheek. He raised an eyebrow. “You want to. . .”

“She’s dying. And—this won’t fix anything,” she admitted. She burrowed deeper into his palm to still the sudden sadness shivering in her lips. “But it’s what I can offer her. Wes, I don’t want her to fade away in a tank. I want her to experience the ocean again, even if it’s only this one last time.”

Slowly, he nodded.

So they discarded denim and cotton for water-resistant nylon. Wes removed the aquarium’s weights and Isabel scooped their pale little creature out of the halimeda and coral, away from discarded shells and toys, into her hands. A wet dribble marked her passage to the door, under the driftwood gate with its crystals chiming in the cool sea air, across Tide Avenue to the stony, sloping sand. A salt crust on the rims of the tide pools itched her bare feet. Her eyes itched, too.

She wouldn’t cry yet.

This is good. This is right.

Smiling against her tears and the sun, she waded into the surf. She stepped over the bubbles of clams breathing beneath the silt, pushed through freezing foam as the ocean gushed up past her knees. When her skin prickled and her lungs clenched with animalistic protest, she didn’t stop. She shuffled farther, deeper. Wes exhaled a profane yelp (“Jesus with jalapeños!”) beside her as the currents struck his stomach—and then the kelp-slick waves were swallowing her thighs, her hips, her ribs. She kicked off the substrate. Fronds skimmed her ankles. She extended her arms toward the horizon.

And in her hands?

In her cradling palms, with the sea lapping through her fingers—brine, plankton, prey, danger, life—the octopus stirred.