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Yes, his new wife was an environmental crusader. But by Allah, we owned an oil conglomerate. We were one of the world’s largest suppliers of crude, and he wanted to rip it all apart. So now, I was on a leave of absence from my job as COO of the company—one that might be a permanent leave if I didn’t change my tune, according to him.
Inshallah.Whatever was ordained.
Scowling, I stared out over the water, watching for any dangers or any swimmers in trouble. We had a green flag for swimming today, but that didn’t mean the Ocean Rescue team could be any less vigilant.
Yeah…I was a lifeguard for the Sizzle Beach Ocean Rescue. I’d needed something to do while on my enforced sabbatical. Why I’d ended up here of all places, the location where my brother had fallen in love, was beyond me. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. When I’d seen an ad looking for lifeguards, that had seemed like an entertaining and useful way to spend the summer, too.
Okay, that wasn’t the full truth. I had intended to debunk his assertion that the place wasmagical.Of all the hokey bullshit.
Yeah, Sizzle Beach was beautiful, and I loved it here, actually. But there was nothing supernatural about it. It was just a tourist paradise.
“I’m going to patrol,” I said, rising to climb down the shaded stand where I’d sat with Logan, my regular shift partner.
“Sounds good,” he replied on a yawn.
On the off-season he was part of the Sizzle Beach Fire Department. They ran the Ocean Rescue, too, so in the summertime, he worked as a lifeguard, in addition to taking shifts as a firefighter when needed. He’d been out most of the night battling a blaze on the other side of the island. Exhausted, he was more than willing to let me walk our stretch of the beach to check for potential issues.
“Don’t fall asleep,” I teased.
He lifted his mega-sized iced coffee from Joe’s Coffee Bar, a coffee shop that turned into a bar in the evenings. “Caffeine, for the win.”
“Is that your third?”
“Fourth. Thinking of a straight-up quad espresso when this is gone.”
I shook my head. “Fuck, man, you’re gonna kill yourself. Why don’t you see if Breezy can cover for you. I know she was looking for some hours.”
“You just want to work with the hot lifeguard girls instead of me.” He only said that because he knew I had no interest in her. He liked to tease me about being immune to the female population. Untrue, but I didn’t argue with him. It wasn’t as if I were a monk. I was just selective.
“Nah. She might have broken up with Felix, but he’d kick any guy’s ass who came near her. Plus…she’s not really my type.”
“Hot isn’t your type?”
I laughed, shaking my head as I climbed down to the sand. Of course, I liked sexy women, but Breezy didn’t ring my bells. She was a cute girl-next-door local. Nice. Definitely attractive inside and out. But she didn’t even light up one bit of my awareness.
Just another sign that Sizzle Beach wasn’t some magical place. None of the women in proximity with me got a rise out of…any part of me.
“Hey, no alcohol on the beach,” I told some guys pulling beers from a cooler. They looked like they might be underage, but that part of the issue wasn’t mine to regulate.
“Come on, man,” a ballsy one complained. “Just walk on.”
“Do you want me to check your IDs?” My hand settled on the walkie-talkie the Ocean Rescue staff carried while patrolling. “Or call someone who will care about your age a lot more than I do? Get rid of it. There’s no alcohol allowed on the beach.”
Crossing my arms, I waited while he and his friends grumbled. The girls with them flushed, and I doubted it was from the sun. When it became clear, I wasn’t moving until they took action to follow the beach’s rules, one of them opened the cooler and transferred the beers to another bag then stood.
“Make sure none of that makes it back here. If any of the lifeguards catch you with alcohol, you will be fined.”
“Fine,” the only reasonable one huffed. “I’ll take this back to the car.”
One of the girls hopped up, scooping up her sandals as she moved. “I’ll come with you.”
He grinned at her, taking her hand as they picked their way through the crowd to return to the public parking.
“We all good here?” I asked the remaining kids.
“Whatever,” the ballsy guy replied.
I shook my head and moved on in my survey. Once I was a few yards from them, I radioed back to Logan, with a description and location, to tell him to keep an eye on the teens.
