Free Clean Slate by Holley Trent Page A

the sink and craned her neck to see
the sky through the window. “I think the sky’s going to open up.” She set down
her glass yet again and jogged to the side door. “Need to close the Jeep
windows. Be right back.”
    No sooner had the screen door slammed did the
rain—fierce, ferocious torrents of rain—begin to pelt the windows.
Daisy moved to the door and just barely made out Trinity’s shape scurrying
around the yellow vehicle and pulling open the doors. She was hardly twenty
feet away, yet the heavy rain made her a blur.
    She ran back shrieking—completely doused with her
mascara running down her cheeks. “I bet you those idiots are going to try to
bodysurf it.”
    Daisy let her face scrunch with her confusion. “Surf?”
    “Just wait.”
    She didn’t have to wait long. The undeveloped field
visible from the wide kitchen picture window began to flood, and suddenly two
tall, lean figures carrying boogie boards ran out into it and slid into the
muddy water, skimming across it until they both flipped and fell into the boggy
ditch.
    Daisy turned to Trinity for explanation.
    Trinity shrugged and sipped.
    * * *
    Ben felt foolish playing in the mud like some kid in new
galoshes, but it was so damned liberating a thing to hang loose and let his
inhibitions fly away. He knew how it must have looked to the women standing
under the protection of the porch roof—a couple of guys in their early
thirties, surfing into a flooded ditch in drowning rain. They probably looked
pretty immature. Well, he’d never been one to pretend to be anything he wasn’t,
and being with Jerry was just fun .
    “I think Trinity could use a bit of a mud facial before
the wedding,” Jerry shouted, wearing a shit-eating grin and jostling Ben back
to reality.
    Ben put up his hands. “I refuse to be a witness to the
ensuing bloodshed.”
    He didn’t think it was possible, but his brother’s grin
went even bigger. He pushed his drenched, long hair back from his eyes and
tucked his board under his arm. “It’ll be worth it if only for the make-up
sex.”
    “I so didn’t hear that.”
    “Yeah, you might want to sleep in the apartment tonight.”
    Ben followed his brother to the house, his curiosity
gnawing at him far more than his sense of self-preservation ever did.
    “Hey, pixie?” Jerry dropped his board in front of the
porch and leapt onto the edge.
    Trinity leaned against one of the porch columns and
crossed her arms over her chest. “What?”
    Jerry held up one of his hands and showed her front and
back. “I lost that ring I got in Hawaii after winning that surfing tournament.
Can you help us look? It’s hard to see. Maybe if we all look…” he turned his gaze toward Daisy who’d been watching them
with bemusement. “It won’t disappear into the muck.”
    Trinity rolled her eyes and wedged her cell phone out of her
shorts pocket. She set it inside the door on the console table and kicked off
her leather flip-flops. “Where do you think it is?”
    Jerry bobbed his head toward the road. “Few feet from the
ditch, probably. Let’s find it before it gets washed in.”
    She hopped off the porch and squeaked at the force of the
rain. They ran off, hand-in-hand.
    “Can I help?” Daisy asked, already heeling off her shoes.
    I should say no.
    “What does it look like?” She peeled her baseball cap off
and let her bountiful hair expand into a magnificent red halo.
    He shifted his attention to the road. Jerry was doing a
fine job of pretending to scan the ground for his “lost” possession, which Ben
had actually seen him tuck into one of his cargo shorts’ pockets. Trinity was
bent at the waist, ankle-deep in mucky grass.
    Tell her not to
worry about it. That would be the honorable thing .
    He cleared his throat. “I think it’s silver and has waves
engraved around it.”
    “Okay. Silver.” She hopped down and cringed as her feet
met the soggy earth, but started running toward the already-searching duo.
    Ben followed