AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When she heard the total of the purchases from this store alone, she did some quick mental math. Tabon had spent over two-thousand dollars in the course of the last hour.
She put her hand on his arm. “I’ll pay you back for all of this, as soon as—”
“No. You won’t,” he said, leaning forward and quickly brushing her cheek with his lips.
By the time they pulled into the little town of Yachats, the sun was setting. It was a picture-perfect seaside village with restaurants and tourist shops dotting the main street.
Tabon took the road that ran along the shoreline and pulled over.
“Did you see that?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Just wait, you will.” He put the car in reverse and kept driving another couple of blocks, before pulling up to a house with a set of gates similar to those at Doc’s house.
“This is your house?” Ava asked when they opened and he drove through.
“Yep. All mine.”
He pulled the car into one of the bays of the four-car garage, turned off the engine, and looked over at her.
“It belonged to my grandparents, but it became mine when my gram passed away a couple of years ago.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I still miss her. More when I’m here. Gramps too, but he died when I was still in high school. Ready to go inside?”
Ava nodded.
“I’ll bring your stuff in later. I want you to see the view while there’s still a little bit of light.”
She waited while he unlocked the door and then punched in an alarm code.
“Come in,” he said, motioning for her to go ahead of him.
Ava walked over to the wall of windows in the front of the house and looked out at the Pacific Ocean.
“What do you look at?” she asked, nodding her head at the telescope she saw to the right.
“Whales, mainly. There are always pods of dolphins, seals, and otters out there too.”
“Whales?”
“Yep,” he answered. “Did you see that?” he asked pointing out at the water.
She shook her head.
“Look again,” he said, coming up behind her and pointing. “See that bushy stream of misty air? It’s called a blow. It’s what a whale does when it comes to the surface. Keep your eyes focused on that location and soon you’ll see it again.”
She watched and within a couple of minutes, she saw what he described.
“Look,” he said again. “Did you see them surface?”
“I did. How many are out there?”
“Not sure exactly. There’s a family of gray whales that lives here year-round. You’ll also see more of them migrating. I’ve heard something like eighteen thousand travel along this coast twice a year. Once in a while we even see Orcas.”
Ava was mesmerized by the sound of the waves crashing on the rocky shoreline, and captivated by the whales whose blow she saw every few minutes.
