Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 82940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Erin persisted, “Perhaps one of our freelancers might have a better chance? Jay is more likely to talk to someone he doesn’t know—he’s professional like that.”
Pat shook her head. “Erin, I assigned the story to you and I expect a full profile for the next issue.” She glanced down at her papers. “Now, what’s the story with the school funding crisis?” she asked Carrie, and Erin knew she’d better get an interview with Jay. Or else.
Her mind turned to the tricky task ahead. How to even approach Jay for what ultimately amounted to a favor? What could she say? Hey Jay, can I please invade your privacy because we have a personal connection and my editor wants your profile in our weekly community newspaper? Jay’s previous profiles had been in Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. And once, memorably, in GQ, where he and Archer had done a joint interview.
She doubted he would be very impressed by the likes of the Sea Shell.
* * *
By the next evening, Erin was still processing Pat’s request while balanced on a wave. Like a lot of her family, Erin tended to work out her problems on the surfboard. There was something about being out on the waves, sometimes near people, sometimes alone, but always separated from others so that her board felt like her own tiny island. She had to focus on her footwork, on wave patterns, on what other surfers around her were doing, but behind all that busy work, her brain could mull over whatever was bothering her.
She wasn’t sure why it felt like such a big deal to interview Jay. She perfectly understood Pat’s position—that Erin had withheld the scoop of the century from the Sea Shell. While Pat would probably have done the same thing in her place, and protected the privacy of her beloved brother, she still had to make an example of Erin.
Erin totally got that. But of all the punishments Pat could have come up with, did it have to be an interview with Jay Malone?
She’d thought about calling Mila to see if she wanted to surf with her, but somehow she knew she needed to work these problems out herself. Mila was already too invested in Jay—to the point of suggesting he might be a possible suitor. She didn’t want to give her big sister any more ideas.
The best surf was not far from Jay’s house. She could still recall that day not so very many months ago when Jay had been out surfing with them, and had said to her so confidently that one day he’d own one of those waterfront properties they could see from the waves. She remembered mocking him at the time. Those properties hardly ever came up for sale, and when they did, they tended to go so fast that Erin, who kept her ears pretty close to the ground in Carmel-by-the-Sea, often didn’t even hear about them. So to discover that he’d made good on that promise, and in such a short time, was quite astonishing.
She shook her head as she rode in, gazing toward Jay’s beautiful house. She might be astonished, but she wasn’t surprised. Put her very determined sister together with the most single-minded man she’d ever met, and it was inevitable they were going to get what they wanted.
She paddled out and rode back in again, and out and in again, and then she just sat out for a while, watching the sun go down. It was so beautiful she didn’t mind that she was getting cold, even in a wetsuit over her old black bikini. She hadn’t reached for her surfing gloves or booties, though, which she now regretted. It was time she headed back.
She was still riding the waves when the lights came on in Jay’s house. He was home.
Okay, she couldn’t call herself a journalist and be such a weenie she couldn’t ask a celebrity for an interview. She had to get a grip. She’d just catch another couple of waves, and then she’d text him. She’d keep it professional, making it clear she wasn’t asking for a personal favor—even though obviously she was—and if he said no, at least she’d have tried.
Pat could not ask more of her than that.
* * *
Jay had once been the kind of workaholic who put other workaholics to shame. He’d learned to manage on four hours of sleep a night, five if he was sleeping in, and when he wasn’t having to comply with his body’s irritating need for rest, he was either working, working out, promoting the list of clients he had, or doing his damnedest to increase his list. When he looked back on those years, they were a blur. And then one day, he’d ended up in the ER thinking he was having a heart attack. He was only thirty-one, and after ruling out a heart attack, to his great relief, the ER doc had sat him down and read him the riot act.