Life Is A Beach: Life Is A Beach / A Real-Thing Fling

“We hold yoga classes on the roof at the Blue Moon on Tuesday nights. Eight o’clock sharp.” She spoke with a breathy little hitch in her voice that he found unbelievably sexy.

He pulled her even closer, felt her breasts pushing against his chest. “And you will be there, I suppose.”

“I suppose. I mean, definitely. Unless I have something else to do.”

What would this woman do in her spare time? he wondered. Make tofu-cilantro goodies such as the ones she’d lost at the bottom of the bay along with her bicycle? Hang out with Goldy in the lobby of the Blue Moon? Go on a date?

It occurred to him that Karma O’Connor might have a boyfriend. Or worse. She might be engaged. If she ran a dating service, she could have her pick of clients.

“You’re not taken or anything, are you?” he demanded out of the clear blue, surprising himself as well as her.

“Taken?” She moved away and blinked at him. He noticed that her eyelashes were curly and long.

“As in going steady. Or engaged. Or something,” he said, stammering around and feeling stupid.

“No.” She moved closer now, tightening her arm across his shoulders. This gave Slade an exultant feeling that he would have been hard put to describe. He knew she wasn’t his type. But he also knew that he might have a chance to get lucky for tonight. Or maybe the next few nights, if he played this right.

Not that it was only sex he was interested in. He wanted to know what made Karma O’Connor tick. He wanted to know why she thought the way she did, why she danced with her eyes closed. He wanted to know why she was running a place called Rent-a-Yenta and what she’d done before that. He wanted to know—

“You could come tomorrow night.”

He had to think for a few seconds to put this statement in its proper context. “To yoga class, you mean.”

“Yes, it would be good for you.”

“If I promise to be there, will you leave here with me now?” he said, sounding more urgent than he intended.

“And where would we go?” she asked. In another woman, this might have sounded coy, but he didn’t think Karma was capable of coyness.

“Somewhere away from the music, the smoke and other people. A walk on the beach, maybe.”

“You like walking on the beach?”

“I think so. I haven’t had many chances to do it.” Well, there was last night, but he’d rather forget that whole fiasco.

“It’s another way to bring movement into your life. Okay, you’re on.”

They broke apart, and Slade felt a pang of regret for the fact that he no longer held Karma in his arms. Watching the way she moved as they traversed the area between the dance floor and the door was some compensation, however, and putting his arm around her once they were outside on the sidewalk was even more.

They had turned to walk down the street toward the beach when he caught a glimpse of red hair sprouting from a knot on top of a head. The woman under the hair was on her way into the club that they had recently left, and it wasn’t just any woman. It was, he realized with a sinking heart, the woman he’d met last night, the one who had accompanied the men he was with into the alley as they tried to rob him. The woman whose bikini top had ended up in his pocket.

There are certain moments in life that you can see coming from a distance away, and when that happens, the best thing to do is avoid them at all costs. And he didn’t want to meet up with this redhead, whose name, he recalled, was Brenda.

But it was too late. Brenda had already seen him. Not that he was all that inconspicuous, as tall as he was and with the flamboyant Karma O’Connor on his arm.

“You!” Brenda shouted. “Come back here!”

“Looks to me like we’d better get out of here,” he muttered close to Karma’s ear. Fortunately at that moment a bunch of men wearing red fezzes on their heads tumbled out of a charter bus between him and Brenda, who let out a squawk of outrage.

Karma craned her neck. He had no doubt that she could see over the heads of the men in the red hats.

“That woman,” she said. “Is she trying to talk to you?” Brenda hollered something, the words indistinct.

“I think so,” Slade said. “We’d better run for it.”

He hadn’t anticipated the effect these words would have on Karma. Instead of agreeing with him, or better yet putting one foot in front of the other as fast as could be managed, she dug in her heels and said, “Why?”

“Because that woman and her companions tried to rob me last night. Because I decked the two guys, and she went off screaming down an alley.”

Karma narrowed her eyes. “What preceded this? I mean, why would you—”

Yesterday replayed itself in Slade’s memory. Plenty had happened, but there was no way he could explain it to Karma in the few moments remaining before Brenda clawed and climbed her way over the wedge of men who were still good-timing their way out of that bus.

“It was a matter of survival,” he said. “Let’s go!”

Karma was not to be hustled, however, and to his horror, he saw four of the men lifting Brenda up and passing her over their heads until she was gently set down on the other side of their still-moving line.

Brenda let out a little “Yow!” of triumph and bounced toward them. “Slade! Isn’t that your name?” she said, sparing a quick assessment of Karma, who stood mutely at his side.

Slade tried to edge away, but Karma was firmly rooted in place. She was staring at Brenda’s chest, which was a fine example of silicone art at its worst.

“You have my bikini top,” Brenda said without further preamble. “I want it back.”

“I don’t—”

“You do! You grabbed it up off the floor when I was dancing! I saw you!”

“But—”

“Hef gave it to me as a token of his esteem when I was Playmate of the Month!” Brenda was getting decidedly red in the face, almost as red as Slade remembered the disputed bikini top to be.

“Slade, is any of this true?” said Karma through tight lips.

“Some of it,” he admitted.

“Great. I’ve just signed up a pervert at Rent-a-Yenta,” Karma muttered under her breath, but at least his admission did what he hadn’t been able to do. It got Karma moving. She set off down the sidewalk at a pace that could only be described as rapid.

Slade turned to face Brenda, thinking that he might be able to talk her into being reasonable. “Your swimsuit top is at the houseboat. Stop by tomorrow and I’ll give it to you.”

“No,” said Brenda, stubbornness flaring in her eyes. “I want it now.”

“Tomorrow. No problem,” he said, backing away as placatingly as he could.

“Now! We’re going there right away! If you think I’m going to let you keep any article of my clothing for any length of time, you’re nuts. After what you did to my friends—”

“They deserved it,” he told her. “They tried to take my wallet.”

“I don’t care,” Brenda said, on the verge, he was sure, of another tirade or maybe hysterics from the look of her. But then fate intervened in the form of a very large woman walking a very large and very hairy dog, which began to sniff around Brenda’s feet in the way that dogs checked out fireplugs.