In the distance, a big roller took shape, gathering momentum.

She stopped paddling and turned her board.

No, oh, hell no.

“Darcy!” he yelled, though he knew she couldn’t hear. “Wait up.” He whistled to get her attention, to no avail.

He imagined the worst—she’d get battered by her surfboard, sucked out to sea, slammed under the force of the wave—and he felt responsible, letting her head blithely out into the open surf alone. “Damn it,” he said, paddling furiously in the direction he’d last seen her.

Then a movement flickered in the rise of the wave, and he stopped dead, bobbing on his board. His mouth dropped open as she went surfing past, giving him the cowabunga sign, a grin of delight on her face, her killer body, slick with salt water, flashing past, her hair streaming out behind from the speed, Botticelli’s Venus made flesh.

Logan stared like an idiot, mesmerized as she surfed up and down the tube, expertly carving turns, her feet seemingly glued to the board. She rode as if the water were a mountain of glass instead of an undulating tube, skimming one hand into the surface for more control. She flashed momentarily behind and then rose on the other side. At last, the white water caught up with her and she dove headfirst into the surf.

He still couldn’t move, riveted by the performance. It had been a long time, way too long, since a woman had taken him by surprise.

Too late, he saw an enormous wave rolling straight at him. Though he bailed over the side of his board, the force of the wave slapped him to the bottom of the ocean.

“This,” Logan said, “is what is known as a post-feast stupor.” He was slumped on the sofa in his mother’s designer living room, his feet propped on her designer coffee table. A football game—the third of the day—was playing on the TV, the crowd noise a low murmur punctuated by cheering. In the next room, Charlie was playing Parcheesi with his cousins. Inez, the housekeeper, was in the kitchen with his sisters, storing away the leftovers and cleaning up after the big meal.

Darcy, equally slumped, turned to him. “You mean you don’t want to go surfing again?”

He chuckled, the picture of her surfing like a goddess playing over and over again in his mind. “What, you don’t think you schooled me already?”

“I wasn’t trying to school you. I just love to surf and don’t get to do it often enough.”

“Where did you learn to surf like that?”

“Long Island. I was a lifeguard at Cupsogue Beach all through high school. Then in college, I did a study year abroad in Australia, just a bus ride away from Bondi Beach.”