Riding His Longboard - Sienna Blake Page 0,2

off a yawn.

“I brought you your favorite treat to celebrate,” I whispered, turning to look at the glass in the door before I slid it out of my backpack, not wanting the nurses to catch me with contraband chocolate.

“Mmmm, it looks delicious,” Mum said, her eyes fluttering closed. “I’ll just close my eyes for a second or two and then I’ll dig in.”

I sat there for a few minutes, listening to her even breathing, watching her thin chest rise and fall in the silly yellow duck pajamas I’d bought her to bring some fun into this stark room. I leaned over her and whispered, “You don’t have to worry about a thing now, Mum. I’ll take care of everything. You just focus on getting better.”

I hoped to hell those words were true. I pulled my laptop out of my backpack and flipped it open, leaning back in the uncomfortable chair next to Mum’s bed. “Joel Slater,” I said as I typed his name into a search engine and was rewarded with dozens of stories. Many of the articles were from sports magazines and surfing websites talking about his accomplishments, but most of them were gossip rags speculating on his latest girlfriend or hookup. I slowly clicked through photo after photo showing Joel with bikini models, playgirls, heiresses and a female professional surfer who was almost as successful as he was.

My online search even pulled up an article I had written about Miranda Jacobs, the model who Joel dated for about three months last year. I had stood outside an exclusive club alongside the paparazzi to shout questions at her right after their breakup.

“Any chance of you and Joel Slater getting back together?” I shouted from the edge of the crowd, thrusting my phone out, voice recorder running. She rushed past and took a few steps up the stairs to the club before spinning around and walking straight up to me.

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” she said, her pink lips settling into a pout as she flipped her pale blonde hair over one shoulder. “Joel Slater makes you love him then dumps you right before a major competition. I thought I could break the cycle, but instead he broke me.”

She said it so quickly and in such a low voice that the other reporters couldn’t hear it before she clicked back up the steps in her pink stilettos. It was my first exclusive story for the magazine, and I had proudly typed “By Nicole Spencer” at the top, but Carl suggested I publish under the pseudonym “DirtyDownUnder.” I had cringed at the name but gave in when he explained that using my real name would make me a pariah among the celebrities I was trying to report on.

I tried to do the math on whether Miranda could be the mother of Joel’s new baby, but I wasn’t even sure how old he was. I’d have to get a closer look to figure that out. Not that I knew anything about babies.

If not Miranda, then which of the dozens of other women in these photos could be the mother? And how had they let Joel Slater get away? I wanted to be repulsed by this love ’em and leave ’em surfer, but instead I was shocked over just how attracted I was to him. And that was just from photos—if I ever saw him in person, I was afraid what I might do.

I looked over at my mother and wondered what she would say. She might tell me that he is a playboy who knocked up one of his flings and I should keep my distance. More likely, though, my romantic mother would say a man with dimples like that is worth taking a chance on love. “There’s no husband more devoted than a reformed bad boy,” she’d say.

“Nope,” I whispered out loud as if I really was having this conversation with my mother, who was now softly snoring beside me. “I don’t want a husband, I want the scoop! I will keep my heart out of this assignment, even if I have to flirt my ass off to get all the juicy details.”

Joel

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a cat mewling. No, wait. It was actually an ex-girlfriend shrieking at me for dumping her. Hold on, that wasn’t right.

“Jackson!”

In a rush, I remembered the baby and jumped out of my king-size bed, rushing down the hall clad in only my pajama bottoms.

“Hullo, little