Ben’s new brother-in-law, the three-time world champion surfer Jason Mattis, has just made him an offer he can’t refuse. He’ll work as his assistant, and Jason will pay off his debts. That includes saving his former sponsor “Tennent Surf Company” and Lisa Tennent, who is in a familiar emotional and mental health crisis. Ben knows all about Lisa's frustration and anger and makes it his mission to be the friend and lover Lisa needs. Only she doesn’t know it yet.
“The Dasher” is a friends-to-lovers, single father, over 40 romance sequel to “The Perpetual”-with GenX pop culture references and lessons in self-love as we age.
Chapter One
Newport Beach, California, 2020
Lisa
I had no idea how long since Uncle Steve stopped talking. The information he’d just given me was still swirling in my head like a tornado picking up speed and sucking everything from my brain into it.
“Lisa, honey. If you intend to sell, some steps must be taken.” Uncle Steve’s voice was slow and hidden behind an old-fashioned busy signal in my ears, making my head throb.
Sell Tennent Surf Company? No. Not in my lifetime.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose, shutting my eyes tight.
My father’s oldest friend, not a real uncle, had dropped a bomb on me when I marched into his office. The company was in dire financial trouble, and since no one was taking action, I had to. Uncle Steve was the last person I wanted to see today.
I was already fed up with all the men in my life, but being spoken to like I was six years old, for the hundredth time, was going to make me spontaneously combust. From my runaway father to my indifferent, lazy brother and, finally, my evil ex-husband, they all thought I should go to the spa, get a massage and a pedicure, and let them handle manly stuff. Like running a business. How’s that going, men?
Not twenty minutes before, sitting in my car heading to beg Uncle Steve for help, I nearly ripped my steering wheel off trying to reach the merchandising contact at Walmart. I had to find out why the annual planning meeting with them hadn’t been scheduled, only to be told they weren’t renewing our contract for the T-shirts and board shorts we’d produced for them for years.
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Tennent Surf Company had one customer in the agreement with Walmart to be the exclusive young men’s surf brand for all two hundred- plus stores. My father sold out to the big box retailer to make a crazy amount of money and ensure the name wouldn’t be cool again.
“Massimo’s making a killing with Target,” he’d said to my mother when she’d protested the deal in 2004.
“Do you understand how this part of the business works, sweetheart?” my uncle said, tanned and smiling at me with his bright white-capped teeth. “The assets are less—”
“I know what it means.” I clenched my jaw and couldn’t meet his gaze, fearing that I might launch over his desk and choke him. My hand fell into my lap.
He sat back in his chair with a huff, frustrated with me. “Gus has to sign off on any action.”
“I don’t know where he is, Uncle Steve,” I whined. “He just disappeared.”
I tried to hold back the tears from the impossible situation my father had left us in. Tennent Surf Company was sinking fast, and we had no future business since Walmart dropped us.
I’d gone to Dad’s house on the cliffs of Laguna Niguel after he hadn’t returned my calls for over a week. Ice tingled my scalp at the “For Sale” sign on his front lawn. I’d called the realtor, and she’d been cryptic about when he’d listed it and where in the hell he was.
Taking off wasn’t unusual for Gus Tennent. He’d jump on a plane and follow the surf wherever there was a swell: Tahiti, Peru, South Africa, Portugal. He’d be gone for weeks and off the grid with no way to reach him. This vanishing act was beyond his usual antics.
“You can’t do anything without his signature. Not even file for bankruptcy.” Uncle Steve rolled a shiny pen in his fingers and bobbed in his chair. His silver hair was coiffed perfectly to the right with the blond flecks of the young man he used to be.
“We’re past the bankruptcy option.” I exhaled slowly.
surfing. Tennent was going down like the Titanic, and the lifeboat went
“Not exactly,” he said. “Try and cut more overhead. You’re hemorrhaging cash, and this won’t be able to last long, not without an infusion or an investor.”
He took a long inhale through his nose and held it for a second.
“What about Becca? She’s invested in the company before and may do it for you and Brad now.” Steve crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back in his big leather desk chair. He wore the custom platinum watch on his wrist—one of the gifts Dad had given to his friends with
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the Tennent logo on it when he’d signed the Walmart deal.
My mother, Rebecca ‘Becca’ Tennent, had been uncharacteristically silent when I told her Dad was missing. Their marriage had ended twenty years ago, and she harbored vicious feelings
about it and him.
She’d say things like, “He’s a stupid surfer who got lucky to find
me young and equally as stupid.” Not that she cared how her daughter had felt about the bile being spewed between her parents.
Sixteen years later, nobody was going to save the company with my father’s name.
“She won’t help,” I said.
My mother was from a wealthy family who’d invested in the development of Irvine, California, as a business haven in the 1980s and owned half of the commercial real estate in Orange County. My brother, Brad, and I even had trust funds once upon a time.
Dad drained those before we had the chance to squander the money at the age of twenty-one like most of our friends had. He’d somehow had the funds transferred to an account with him as the cosigner without us knowing about it and put it into Tennent Surf before the Walmart deal saved the struggling company. Fucking Uncle Steve steered that ship for my father.
I considered it my company after my involuntary investment and had to save it.
“So that’s it?” I threw my hands up. “I’m totally screwed.”
“Let me ask you something that may be hard, and you don’t have to answer it right now. Just sleep on it for me, okay?”
I grabbed my purse from the floor beside my chair and held onto it, ready to run, to get out of there and away from Uncle Steve and his smug attitude about my walls crumbling down. Tennent Surf Company was all I had. I’d lost my house, left my husband, misplaced my father, and there was another man in my life telling me not to be emotional.
I clamped onto my bottom lip as the ‘F’ sound started from my mouth. I wasn’t sure what would come out beginning with that letter. It turned out to be two words.
“Fuck. Fine, ask your question,” I shouted and clutched my bag, hoping it would pop like a balloon, waking me from this nightmare.
“Would you take on an investor?”
I would not.
“Why? So, I can be ‘mansplained’ more on how to run the business and make another cheap deal with JC Penney or Big Lots this time. No, damnit. This brand was the world’s leader in cool Southern California surf culture. I will not take it down the rag business equivalent
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of the sewer to make millions of dollars. There will be a renaissance; it’s coming. I will bring it back.”
I stood, still trying to pop my purse, squeezing it so tight something groaned inside. Maybe the Walmart deal ending was a blessing in disguise. Perhaps I could bring the company back from exile? I squeezed tighter.
Snap. Ugh, now my Gucci sunglasses are broken. How bad can things get?
“Lisa, be reasonable. You’ll need cash and a lot of it.”
“I’ll find a way.” I slung my stupidly expensive Goyard tote bag over my shoulder. “Just find my dad to sign the bankruptcy papers so I can at least get things caught up.”
Steve shook his head.
“Please, Uncle Steve.” I whimpered.
“I’ll put the wheels in motion. You have thirty days to come up
with a plan, take on an investor, or find Gus. It’s bankruptcy or an investor, Lisa. That’s it.”
I nodded and opened his office door.
I couldn’t come up with a plan except to talk to my mother, despite knowing she wouldn’t help. Still, I had to try.
~*~
“Men are useless,” I grumbled, backing out of the parking space
as my convertible top lowered. “Fucking useless.”
The curvy canyon drive to my mother’s retirement community
in Laguna Woods would clear my head. I was going to let my Audi A6 out on that road; the faster, the better. Not giving a fuck who saw me, I shouted along with Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff” blasting from my stereo.
At the stoplight at Bake Parkway and Lake Forest Drive, I took my emergency stash of Marlboro Lights out of the center console.
After discovering the IVF didn’t work for the third time, the hormones had been so severe I had an emotional meltdown. I bought a carton of cigarettes, determined to erode any part of my thirty-nine-year- old body that was still healthy. The pack had been sitting in my car for two years, and I’d only smoked one. Today’s bullshit found cause to light up another.
It was David who’d wanted kids. I wasn’t sure since my parents had screwed me up so badly. They hated each other and hadn’t acknowledged their children’s existence for a long time. They’d immersed themselves in the selfish mudslinging during their messy
divorce.Brad and I were caught between them. My parents continued working together for a good ten years after the implosion of their
9
marriage because my mother was the most talented menswear designer on the West Coast.
After Mom graduated from Parson’s Design School, she used her trust fund to start their company while Dad was still shaping surfboards and had a respectable following in 1986. The small swim trunk and surfboard company took off when they’d sponsored a seventeen-year-old, good-looking super shredder named Jason Mattis. A local kid with insane talent. It became a global brand, with Jason winning competitions all over the planet.
Mom was a behind-the-scenes design genius, trend forecaster, and marketing master. She’d made Jason the face of the brand with tremendous success. His popularity stole Gus’s spotlight. The clothing line grew more significant than Dad’s surfboards, and that was when the jealousy started. He wasn’t used to being upstaged by anyone, especially not his wife. He couldn’t handle being the third fiddle.
Dad took power away from Mom every chance he got, and when Jason retired, they couldn’t find the magic again. The brand and the lore of the surf mystique faded in the late 1990s and early 2000s, making the Tennent brand irrelevant and in debt. Hence, Gus’s inspiration from his old buddy Massimo to follow his lead and sell his name to a big box retailer. But Walmart? That was the death of cool.
Now, I had to beg Mom to bail out the company.
The drive took shorter than I’d hoped, and before I knew it, I’d smoked two Marlboro’s and drove up to the gate of the exclusive retirement community.
I had the key fob to get in since I’d stayed with her for about six months after leaving the house that I had paid half of, decorated, cooked in, slept in, and loved my husband for eleven years. Until I didn’t. I just didn’t. I didn’t cook or sleep or love anymore.
When the IVF hormones took over, I launched a stainless-steel electric teapot at my infuriating husband. I’d missed his head but shattered his first love, his seventy-inch television with the 4K for watching Fox Business News, Chargers football, Angels baseball, Ducks hockey, and UFC fighting every moment he wasn’t being a workaholic. I knew then it was time to leave before I physically hurt him or myself.
Why couldn’t I get pregnant? Why couldn’t I be like the women my age driving an SUV with soccer balls and ice skates in the trunk? Buying healthy lunch-sized snacks at Costco while trying to lose the baby weight and stretch marks?
Those torturous questions made their way into my brain daily. Now, I wondered if it would’ve made any difference. Having kids wouldn’t have saved my marriage. We’d eventually discover we weren’t
10
compatible. Then what?
We’d put our kids in the middle of fights and bile-spewing
insults, just like my parents. No way. I would preserve whatever sanity I had left and leave him before we ruined more than just our lives.
The familiar smells of eucalyptus and maple trees and the whirring of electric golf carts were almost soothing. I slowed to the speed limit and entered the Laguna Mutual neighborhood with accessible one- story ranch-style houses and the gurgling Aliso Creek nearby.
Mom’s house had a shaded courtyard in the front behind a large Maple wood gate. The silver sedan of her caretaker, Maria, sat in the driveway behind Mom’s golf cart that she hadn’t driven since she broke her hip a few years back. The doctor told her to move into assisted living, but she refused. She didn’t care to share space with another human being and had grown accustomed to having things her way. Using the repeated story about going from her parents to the sorority to her husband’s house, she liked her independence.
Unlike me, Mom and Brad had many friends. A group of ladies came over to drink Prosecco and play Mahjong with Mom, sloppily driving their drunk, old lady asses home in their matching golf carts.
Mom’s real frustration lately was not being able to play golf until she healed. But it was looking like she’d never be able to play ever again. Maria was leaving with a bundle she’d placed in the trunk of her
spotless Hyundai when she opened her arms to me.
“Miss Lisa,” she sang and met me at the base of the driveway
with a sweet embrace.
I almost started crying at the selfless woman who’d put up with
my demanding mother and hugged me like I was one of her own.
She jerked away and crinkled her nose. “You smell like
cigarettes. What’s wrong?”
She’d told me the tale of her Uncle Paco as a warning when I
was staying with Mom.
Every year for ‘Day of the Dead,’ they’d place a carton of cigarettes on the rocking chair on the porch, his perpetual spot. He’d smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. His teeth were brown, and his breath smelled. Eventually, he’d lost his ability to talk and sat alone on the porch covered in ashes.
“I had a couple on the way here. I’m not going to be like Tio Paco, I promise.”
She put her hands on my cheeks then jogged to her car, her sizeable rear end bouncing in leggings frayed at the seam. I’d have to talk to Mom about raising Maria’s salary to buy clothes.
She produced a mini bottle of Febreze from the center console 11
and a piece of Trident gum from her purse. “Here, take these and wash your hands before you see her.”
Selfless, always.
I sprayed all over and handed her the bottle, but she held up a hand in protest. “If you keep smoking, you’ll use it. I have others.”
I lowered my gum-chewing head like a sassy teenager learning a lesson. “I won’t smoke anymore.”
“Good,” she snapped like the mother of a sassy teenager, making me smile for the first time in what seemed like eons. She left me chomping on my gum and waved as she drove around the corner.
“It’s me,” I shouted.
Mom’s fluffy cat flew from somewhere and, in a blur, scurried down the hallway leading to the bedrooms.
“Oh, honey, I’m in the jacuzzi. Wanna see your naked mother, or can you wait for me to get out?”
I wasn’t in the mood to see my naked sixty-five-year-old mother. I doubt I ever would be.
“I’ll make tea,” I shouted back.
A door opened down the hall just as I found my dented teapot. “Do you have any of that Matcha Toasted Rice left?”
No answer.
I searched the cabinet with thirty boxes of teabags, mostly chamomile and ginger blends, hoping bags of my favorite green tea were
left.
When we lived together, she’d gotten me into tea drinking, and
I was addicted.
She floated in, her hair wrapped into a white turban towel and
matching spa robe with not a wrinkle on her glowing, dewy face. Her high, chiseled cheekbones had a rosy hue, most likely from the heat of the jacuzzi water. My mother was a stunning woman.
“You realize it’s almost noon, and you’re wearing a robe. It’s very lazy of you, Mom,” I teased over the steaming mug of turmeric- ginger blend tea.
I heard a tiny wince from her as she brushed past me in the small galley kitchen to reach for the kettle.
“I keep forgetting to take that home with me,” I said.
own.” Pouring the water she declared, “Well, it’s mine now. Get your
She tickled my hip to get out of her way and limped into the living room. I noticed her walking much better than in the months after her surgery. That was my mother; she tried not to let anyone see her out of her perfect existence, even if she was in excruciating pain. Not even
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me, who’d stayed with her after the surgery when she was bedridden. Lowering herself onto her beige suede lounger chair with a groan, a motor whirred raising her legs and reclining her. Maxi, her cat, jumped onto her lap, and she lifted her teacup to give the deprived feline
room to circle on her lap before committing to lying down.
She stroked the cat and sipped her tea, like Dr. Evil from Austin Powers or the stepmother from Cinderella. I smiled again and sat on the
matching couch.
“I saw Uncle Steve this morning,” I said, not wasting time.
My mother, Rebecca Tennent, would inherently start her visit
with small talk, like the weather or pointless gossip. I wasn’t in the mood. “How is Steve? Susan’s having shoulder surgery next month.
He’ll be in for some drama, for sure,” Mom said.
“Who cares about Susan? She was a total bitch to you.” “Whoa, missy.” Her eyes grew wide in a phony offended glare.
“Language.”
“Oh, whatever, Mom. It’s true, and you don’t like her. Admit it.” I respected my mother’s no-nonsense attitude about manners and
decorum, but it could wear on me. So many rules of polite society that she’d considered herself to be a part of, like some Southern Antebellum
duchess.She was born in Virginia, and maybe two centuries ago, her family was known as southern royalty, but this was California in the twenty-first century. I fucking couldn’t care less.
“I told him to draw up the bankruptcy papers. Only Dad can sign them. I’m not a stakeholder.” She wasn’t either, not since she’d signed over her stakes in the divorce to avoid paying my father half of her assets or alimony. “But I don’t know where he is.”
Dad sometimes told Brad where he went, but not me, and certainly not Mom.
I leaned back, kicked off my Gucci sneakers, and put my feet up on the ottoman/coffee table. I jarred the wood tray holding several remote controls and an Alexa device.
Mom ignored my clumsiness, continuing her diatribe. “Did he really use Bernadette Spiro for his realtor?” It wasn’t a question but more of a statement and a snippy one. “Alexa, play Louis Armstrong.”
A soft jazzy trumpet came from hidden speakers.
“Mom, I don’t know and don’t care.” I glared at her. “I have to find him.”
She shrugged with indifference.
I dropped my head into my hands and relented to being on my own.
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“Honey, I’m worried about your mental health. Your aura’s all red. Why don’t you go see Ramanda?”
I groaned.
About ten years ago, Mom and her friends consulted a spiritual advisor, and they still swear by her stupid tarot cards and ridiculous crystals. I’d gone once, and once was enough. She’d pissed me off when she told me my womb wouldn’t work, especially not the way my husband expected it to.
I think about that all the time.
Looking back at what she’d said, maybe she had a point. David blamed me like I wasn’t concentrating enough, that I drank too much Diet Coke, and that my adolescent bout with bulimia (a short-lived peer- pressure thing I’d only done twice) had to do with my inability to produce an heir for his kingdom.
I love Mom; she’s my hero with her designs and standing up to Dad and even Grandpa whenever he mentioned that Dad was a lazy white trash surfer who had no idea how to run a business. Both men had epic misogynistic views of Mom’s role in business and life. She hadn’t stopped pushing back and had gotten her way even if the road there was
messy. As she petted her cat and sipped her tea, her degree of caring about Tennent Surf Company was at a harmfully low level. She wouldn’t
help, as I’d expected.
~*~
At about one in the afternoon, I left Mom half-asleep on her
lounger chair and drove, top down with Limp Bizkit on repeat blasting, to our small warehouse. We’d downsized from our facility in Tustin, which had been Tennent’s home for thirty years. Now we had a split room garage, one side design room and the other storage, two offices, and a bathroom.
When I turned into the one parking spot between ours and the industrial space next door, the metal door was rolled up.
Our employees were down to three—Tina, who’d been Dad’s assistant since the 1980s; Javier, the warehouse/shipping manager, had thirty underlings at one point, but now it was just him Last was Dottie, Mom’s pattern maker, who’d forgone a paycheck for over a year. She simply intended to be helpful.
Since Walmart ordered just the two pieces in different colors every season, she had little to do. She’d putter around and organize things. She was a sweet woman, and we gave her things to keep her busy.
A smirking Brad was in his office staring at his iPhone. I smothered the urge to smack his face for the unfortunate existence of
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being a man in my vicinity. He glanced through the glass partition separating his office from the warehouse space.
I scowled at him, and I might have growled.
Brad, my older brother by two years, would rather be anywhere except working. For the past sixteen years, we had one customer. He’d served no purpose as sales manager.
“I’m putting you on straight commission from now on,” I barked when he followed me into Dad’s former office that I’d commandeered in my mutiny to keep our shipwreck from sinking. An image of the Kraken from Clash of the Titans popped into my head.
Ooooh... Greek Titans on surfboards would be cool T-shirts— Medusa, Minotaur, and The Kraken. I’ll have to revisit that idea.
Sauntering in behind me, Brad whistled some unrecognizable tune with his stunning tanned skin and floppy blond hair. He was a pretty boy, and he knew it. After Jason retired, Mom convinced Brad to be our model, and he’d become quite popular.
Walmart had control over advertising creatives, and we had no say in their choice of models after that. Also, we couldn’t sponsor any more surfers—a dark period in the life of Tennent Surf.
“Walmart dropped us.” I exhaled and fell into the desk chair that was much too big for me. It was made for a prominent man—all leather and musk-scented.
“I knew it,” he said and sat in the leather director’s chair in front of the desk, kicking his feet up on it.
That made me boil over my already scorching pot. He couldn’t possibly have known before me. He was being pessimistic, which was unusual for him. While I was dark and broody, my brother was a light and positive being—the ying to my yang.
Steve.” “If you knew, you could’ve saved me from having to see Uncle
Brad slid his feet from the desk and sat up, pin-straight. “W-what did he say? Does he know where Dad is?”
Oh, Brad. My poor brother had Dad on a pedestal so tall the man could touch God.
I shook my head. “He would’ve told me if he did.” At least, I hoped he would. “Dad has to sign the company over to us. Then we can start bankruptcy.”
one?’” “Whichone,the‘saleoftheassets—one’orthe‘restructuring—
“Whatever gets us out of this mess.” I opened my laptop to three email notifications on my business account. All spam.
Tina appeared in my doorway. The late-middle-aged woman 15
with big curly hair and bright red lipstick hovered and tapped her long fake nails on the door frame.
“Hi. What’s up?” I asked.
She giggled. Her cheeks were flushed pink. “Jason Mattis is on the phone asking for Gus. I told him he wasn’t here, but you were, and he’s on hold to talk to you.”
This time, I straightened. Jason Mattis was a three-time World Surf Champion, a legend. “The Zen Shredder” was what Dad had called him and eventually, the whole world had too.
“Let’s dance,” Brad sang with a big smile. “Wow.”
“Oh...my.” I huffed like a thirteen-year-old girl whose first crush called her.
“Line one,” Tina said, then returned to her desk.
I smoothed my hair as if he could see me.
Brad scoffed. “Just answer it.”
I picked up the receiver and pressed line one. “Jason Mattis, as I
live and breathe.” I sounded like Mom with her southern belle accent. I
winced. “Rainbow Dash, how are you, My Little Pony-girl?”
The mention of his nickname for me when I was eight years old and carried around a “My Little Pony ‘Rainbow Dash’ doll everywhere,
even to the beach, broke me.
I put my hand to my mouth and shut my eyes as the tears pierced
my flimsy armor. I took a shaky breath, and it just flowed. The dam burst, followed by loud and raw sobs from the long-restrained strength I tried to portray. I covered the wails from behind my hand.
Brad grabbed the receiver, and Tina rushed to me with a box of tissues. The humiliation would start soon, but I had to let it out. It was all too much.
