LITMIR.BIZ

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her hands. She tried not to find his touch too distracting! “And then push up, bend your back and knees to start, get one leg under you, and pop up as fast as you can. If you do it slow, you’ll just tip over once you’re in the water.”

      Under his critical eye, she did it about a dozen times. If he kept this up she was going to be too tired to do it for real!

      “Okay,” he finally said, satisfied, peeling off his shirt and dropping it in the sand. “Let’s hit the water.”

      They didn’t go out very far, the water swirling around his hips, a little higher on her, lapping beneath her breastbone.

      “This is the best place to learn, right here.” He steadied the board for her while she managed to gracelessly flop on top of it.

      “Don’t even try to stand up the first couple of times, just ride it, get a sense for how your surfboard sleds.”

      “Sleds? As in snow?”

      “Same word,” he said, and she smiled thinking this might be as close as she got to sledding of any kind. Maybe she would have to be satisfied to look after two dreams with one activity!

      “Okay, here it comes. Paddle with those arms, not too fast, just to build momentum.”

      Shoshauna felt the wave lift the board, paddled and then felt the most amazing thing: as if she was the masthead at the head of that wave. The board was moving with its own power now and it shot her forward with incredible and exhilarating speed. The ride lasted maybe a full two seconds, and then she was tossed onto the sand with such force it lifted her shirt and ground sand into her skin.

      “Get up,” he yelled, “incoming.”

      Too late, the next wave pounded down on top of her, ground a little more sand into her skin.

      He was there in an instant hauling her to her feet.

      She was laughing so hard she was choking. “My God, Ronan, is there anything more fun in the entire world than that?”

      He looked at her, smiled. “Now, you’re stoked,” he said.

      “Stoked?”

      “Surfer word for ready, so excited about the waves you can barely stand it.”

      “That’s me,” she agreed, “stoked.” And it was true. She felt as if she had waited her whole life to feel this: excited, alive, tingling with the awareness of possibility.

      “Ready to try it standing up?”

      “I’m sooo ready,” she said.

      “You would have made a hell of a soldier,” he said with a rueful shake of his head, and she knew she had just been paid the highest of compliments.

      “I want to do it myself!”

      “Sweetheart, in surfing that’s the only way you can do it.”

      Sweetheart. Was it the exhilaration of that offhanded endearment that filled her with a brand-new kind of power, a brand-new confidence?

      She went back out, got on the board, carefully positioned herself, stomach down. She turned, watching over her shoulder for just the right wave.

      She floated up and over a few rolling waves, and then she saw one coming, the third in a set of three. She scrambled, but despite her practice runs, the board was impossibly slippery beneath her feet. It popped out from under her. The wave swallowed her, curled around her, tossed her and the board effortlessly toward the shore.

      She popped up, aware Ronan was right beside her, waiting, watching. But the truth was, despite a mouth full of seawater, she loved this! She loved feeling so part of the water, feeling so challenged. There was only excitement in her as she grabbed the board, swam back out and tried again. And again. And again.

      Ronan watched, offered occasional advice, shouted encouragement, but he’d been right. There was only one way to do this. No one could do it for you. It was just like life. He did not even try to retrieve the board for her, did not try to help her back on it after it got away for about the hundredth time. Was he waiting for her to fail? For exhaustion and frustration to steal the determination from her heart?

      But when she looked into the strong lines of his face, that was not what she saw. Not at all. She saw a man who believed she could do it and was willing to hold on to that belief, even while her own faith faded.

      It was his confidence in her, the look on his face, that made her turn the board back to shore one last time, watch the waves gathering over her shoulder. It was the look on his face that made Shoshauna feel as if she would die before she quit.

      Astonishingly, everything worked. The wave came, and the crest lifted her and the board. She found her feet; they stuck to the board; she crouched at exactly the right moment.

      She was riding the sea, being thrust with incredible power toward the shore.

      She rode its fabulous power for less than a full second, but she rode it long enough to feel its song beneath her, to feel her oneness with that power, to taste it, to know it, to want it. Her exhaustion disappeared, replaced by exhilaration.

      She was really not sure which was more exhilarating, riding the wave or having earned the look of quiet respect in Ronan’s face as he came up to her, held up his hand. “Slap my hand,” he told her.

      She did, and felt his power as surely as she had felt that of the wave.

      “That’s a high five, surfer lingo for a great ride,” he told her.

      She achieved two more satisfactory rides before exhaustion made her quit.

      He escorted her to shore. She was shivering with exhaustion and exertion and he wrapped her in the shirt he had discarded there in the sand.

      “I did it!” she whispered.

      “Yes, you did.”

      She thought of all the things she had done since they had landed on this island and felt a sigh of contentment within her. She was a different person than she had been a few short days ago, far more sure of herself, loving the glimpse she’d had of her own power, of what she was capable of doing once she had set her mind to it.

      “I want to see what you can do,” she said. She meant surfing, but suddenly her eyes were on his lips, and his were on hers.

      “Show me,” she asked him, her voice a plea. Show me where it all can go. Show me all that a person can be.

      He hesitated, looked at her lips, then looked at the waves, the lesser of two temptations. She saw the longing in his eyes, knew he was stoked. She caught a glimpse of the boy he must have once been, before he had learned to ride his power, tame it, leash it.

      And then he picked up the board and leaped over the crashing waves to the water beyond. He lay down on the board, paddled it out, his strength against the surging ocean nothing less than amazing. He scorned the surf that she had ridden, made his way strongly past the breakers, got up into a sitting position, straddling the board and then waited.

      He rode up and over the swells, waiting, gauging the waves, patient. She saw the wave coming that she knew he would choose.

      He dropped to his chest, paddled forward, a few hard strokes to get the board moving, glanced back just as the top of the wave picked up the back of his board. She saw the nose of the board lift out of the water, and then, just when she thought maybe he had missed it, in one quick snap, he was up.

      He rode the board sideways, one hip toward the nose of the board, the other toward the tail, his feet apart, knees bent, arms out, his position slightly crouched. She could see him altering his position, shifting his weight with his body position to steer the board. He was actually cutting across the face of the wave, down under the curl, his grace easy, confident and breathtaking. He made it look astonishingly easy.

      This was where it went, then. When a person exercised their power completely, it became a ballet, not a fight with the forces, but a beautiful,

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