Free Beautiful Mine (Beautiful Rivers #1) by J.L. White

destination. In addition to our many California devotees, we get tourists from all over the world.
    My parents’ business isn’t a secret, exactly, but I get bored with answering the same questions over and over again. And, frankly, the resort put me into the limelight enough when I was a kid. Articles about “the Rivers family” are mostly limited to the local papers and magazines—unlike articles about the resort itself, which are usually national or global in scope—so it was really nothing more than homegrown celebrity. But still. I don’t miss the scrutiny one bit. It’s the same reason I’m vague about how I make my living. I prefer to fly under the radar on that one.
    At dinner, I felt kind of funny about not speaking up when Whitney was telling me about the little boy whose adoptive family is from Swan Point, but as she went on with her story, I figured I could let it slide. However at this point, now that she’s asking, giving “Central California” as an answer doesn’t feel quite right. “Swan Pointe,” I say.
    “Where Nadim is!” she says.
    “Yep.”
    “Do you know Gerard and Abigail Sanders? They live kind of up in the hills there.”
    We know a shit ton of families in Swan Pointe, but they’re not one of them. “No.”
    “Huh. Still! Small world.”
    “It is. It’s funny the people I’ve run into. When I was in New Zealand, I ended up having drinks with a man who used to teach where my mom went to high school. He didn’t think he ever had a class with her in it, and when I called her later she confirmed it. But she remembered seeing him around campus.”
    “Oh wow.”
    “I think that was my closest connection. Well, except there were the twins I met in Curaçao. A brother and sister, and he works for my uncle. He made me swear not to report back how smashed he was though.” I laugh a bit at the memory. “Maybe that was the closest.”
    She comes up on her elbow again, this time resting her chin in her hand. “I think it’s so cool, all the places you’ve been.”
    “Is this your first time outside of the United States?” I ask, trailing my fingers down her back.
    “No. My dad took me to Vancouver the summer before sixth grade.”
    I try to picture her has a little sixth grader and smile. “Did you do the whole Victoria Gardens thing?”
    “Yeah!” She says, her eyes lighting up. “It was cool. Have you been there?”
    I nod. “Sort of. Freshman year. One day I was—”
    “Wait. Freshman in high school or college?”
    “College.”
    “And where’d you go?”
    “CSU San Marcos. I picked a school on the coast so I’d have a place nearby to dock my boat.”
    “Of course,” she says, grinning. “Go on.”
    “So one day, I was fed up with papers and tests and, oh my god, boring lectures, so I hopped in my boat and sailed up the coast, not knowing where I was going or when I’d be back.”
    “You just... hopped in your boat?”
    “Yeah. Right after class.” This was back when I just had my little Catalina sailboat, which had been a graduation gift from my parents. They were going to get me a car, like they did for my siblings, but I asked if I could get a sailboat for the same price instead. “Anyway, so I sailed up the coast for hours, feeling like I could just keep going forever, you know? But then I came to this marina that looked interesting so I stopped. I didn’t realize I was in Canada by then.”
    “You didn’t know where you were?”
    I shrug. “It’s all right. I always figure it out eventually.”
    She gives me a look that’s half perplexed, half amused, half impressed. I realize that’s three halves, but believe me, I’ve seen this look a lot so I’m not questioning the math.
    “Well, they weren’t too happy about me pulling in without a passport so I had to turn around and go back. By that point I’d cooled down enough though, so I just went ahead and went on home.”
    “What do you mean ‘cooled down’? About what?”
    I sigh. “I was