Rising Tides
September 1965
The young man Dawn Gerritsen picked up just outside New Orleans looked like a bum, but so did a lot of students hitchhiking the world that summer. His hair wasn't clean; his clothes were a marriage of beat poet and circus performer. To his credit, he had neither the pasty complexion of a Beatles-mad Liverpudlian nor the California tan of a Beach Boy surfer. In the past year she had seen more than enough of both types making the grand tour of rock bands and European waves.
The hitchhiker's skin was freckled, and his eyes were pure Tupelo honey. Biloxi and Gulfport oozed from his throat, and the first time he called her ma'am, she wanted to drag him to a sun-dappled levee and make him moan it over and over until she knew, really knew, that she was back in the Deep South again.
She hadn't dragged him anywhere. She didn't even remember his name. She was too preoccupied for sex, and she wasn't looking for intimacy. After three formative years in Berkeley, she had given up on love, right along with patriotism, religion and happily-everafters. Her virginity had been an early casualty, a prize oddly devalued in California, like an ancie ... read full excerpt from: Rising Tides ebook
