Off the Hook (15 page)

“What? Oh, that.” Kate dismissed the bucket with a flick of her wrist. “I’m fine. Tell me more about this whole boating thing.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” she said. “How old you were when you learned how to drive a boat—”

“Pilot.” When Kate frowned at him, he lifted his shoulder in a half shrug. “You drive a car; you pilot a boat.”

“Okay,” Kate said, grinning. “Good to know.”

“And I don’t remember; it was just something we all did.”

She liked seeing him like this—relaxed, comfortable, almost happy. And his mood must have been contagious, because Kate couldn’t remember feeling so at ease since…well, honestly, she didn’t think it had ever happened.

Listening to him share the good parts of what it was like growing up at the Buoys, Kate could almost understand why the three of them kept coming back after everything that happened with their dad. They’d had some ugly times, no question, but it was the good times he told her about now, the times before Jimmy started drinking and the times after he quit.

Like when the boys were little: On the weekend before fishing season started, Jimmy would take them out on the boat to Millbanke Sound, where they’d spend those last few days of quiet alone, just the four of them. The older they got, the more crowded the boat got, but none of them cared, not even when there wasn’t enough floor space to sleep on anymore. Somehow they made do.

He talked about everything Jimmy had done to make the Buoys their home first and a lodge second and about how everything he knew, he’d learned at his dad’s side—from patience, to technique, to the way you could learn a lot about a person from the way they handled a tangled line.

The sentimental attachment to the Buoys, along with the pull of the ocean—specifically their little part of it—was too strong for any of them to resist.

It was where the three brothers spent most of their vacation time, even during the off-season, because no matter what else was going on, Liam told her, being able to get out on a boat made everything better. Rain, sun, or sleet, rough water or not, a couple of hours away from shore, away from the noise of life, did something to a body. Righted it.

With a slow teasing roll of his eyes, he corrected her terminology, explaining that if she had any hope of being a true fisherman, she needed to start using words like “bow and stern,” instead of “front and back,” and she needed to start thinking in terms of “knots,” not “kilometers.”

He talked about the different-colored buoys and symbols, what they meant to boaters, and how he knew where his “lane” was when he piloted. Phrases like “red right return” and “right rod to the beach” were going to have to be re-explained at some point, because the only thing she could focus on now was the gentle cadence of his voice and how much she’d missed hearing it.

Before she knew it, they’d rounded the corner of Duval Island, and then it was a straight shot to Port Hardy and the end of their peace for a while.

The Return-It crew met them at the dock and helped haul the shingles, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, up the ramp to their waiting truck. Once that was done, Liam led her to the old green pickup they always left at the Port Hardy dock, and they ran from one place to the next, digging up everything on their list, from plumbing supplies and bedding to lumber and sheets of drywall.

It seemed everywhere they went, people wanted to stop and talk to Liam, not because he’d played for the Tigers but because they’d heard he was working to reopen the Buoys, and they all wanted to wish him and his brothers well.

“Not a single autograph request.” Kate shot him a teasing wink as they paid for the two extra-large pizzas with extra olives. “Don’t they know that you’re a hotshot pitcher?”

“They know, but ball players aren’t the hotshots that do it for them here.” Liam pulled open the café door and waited for her to go ahead of him. “The only hotshots they care about in these parts are the guys who have their own fishing shows, and that’s not us.”

No, she thought, from what she knew of the O’Donnells, that wasn’t their style at all.

It was late afternoon when they climbed back into the truck and headed for the dock. Kate pulled out her phone and called the Buoys, but no one answered, so she was forced to leave a message. She tried again when they got to the dock and then again when they finished loading everything onto the boat. Still no answer.

“Is that normal?” she asked, frowning at Liam.

“Nope. Jessie’s not usually away from the phone very long, especially now that we’re taking reservations, and she always has a radio with her. Come on, let’s go.” He helped her onto the boat, then hurried through his checks before heading for home.

She knew damn well that cell coverage was pretty much nonexistent in those parts, but that didn’t stop Kate from checking the bars on her phone every few minutes.

“I’m sure they’re fine,” she said, and even though Liam nodded, neither one of them really believed it to be true.

The calmer waters of the morning gave way to heavy chops that the boat hit hard, sometimes lifting the bow right out of the water and slamming it down. Liam didn’t relax back in his seat this time but rather sat forward, his right hand wrapped around the radio mic until he thought they might be in range.

“
Fishin’ Impossible
to the Buoys. Jessie, you there?”

The radio crackled but no one answered.

“
Fishin’ Impossible
to the Buoys. Come in, Jessie.”

Nothing.

He kept trying for another twenty minutes or so before giving up and hooking the mic back into its clip. All Kate could do was worry and keep checking her phone for bars she knew wouldn’t appear. They finally shot through the strait and curled around toward Strip Cove. Both she and Liam leaned forward, squinting toward the dock, where someone—Jessie—was standing stock-still, staring at the smoke coming out of one of the other boats.

Kate wanted to tell Liam to slow down, that he was going to crash into the dock, but before she could, he was already barking orders.

“Throw the bumpers out on the port side.”

Port port port…oh God
. Was that left or right? Left! “Left” and “port” both had four letters.

The dock was getting awfully close by the time she threw the bumpers out, but by then he was slowing down.

“I’m gonna need you to jump out onto the dock and get the line—the rope—through the cleat there, the thing that looks like a metal T. You got it?”

Okay, she could do that. Even though Liam had slowed the boat, the incoming waves pushed it sideways, rolling it back and forth, but Kate was determined. Crouched on the narrow side ledge, she leapt onto the dock as soon as they got close, then turned and grabbed hold of the boat, tugging it near enough to get the rope through the cleat, as he’d said.

In her hurry, she’d only gotten a brief glance of Jessie, but as freaked out as Jessie looked, she wasn’t the main worry, and neither was the thin line of smoke trailing up from the stern of
The Reel Deal.
The worry was that Finn was nowhere to be seen.

Liam was off the boat before Kate finished tying the first knot.

“Jessie!” he hollered. “Are you okay? Where’s Finn?”

“I’m here,” Finn called, hustling out of the White cabin, waving an extinguisher.

In the time it took Finn to get from the cabin around the cove and to the dock, Kate finished securing the other dock line on
Fishin’
Impossible
. She made it to the rest of them just as Finn thrust the extinguisher at Liam.

“Take it.”

Liam sprayed down the rest of the smoke while they all stared at the charred and melted wreckage that was once the back end of
The
Reel
Deal
. As Kate stood there, it struck her as odd that even though Finn’s hair was wet, his clothes weren’t. But as quickly as it struck her, she noticed the pile of dripping clothes Jessie had clutched in her arms.

“Did you fall in?” she asked.

With a quick glance at Jessie, Finn nodded briefly.

“What the hell happened?” Liam asked.

“I had her running so I could check the props and the engine,” Finn said. “Figured I’d give her a minute to get going and ran up to grab a coffee. I was gone two, maybe three minutes, but by the time I got back outside, she was already burning. I’m guessing the intakes must’ve been plugged.”

“Shit.” Liam scraped his hand over the top of his head and sighed. “You sure you’re okay? Jessie?”

Finn nodded, but Jessie didn’t.

“Why didn’t you just grab the extinguisher outta there?” Liam asked, thumbing toward the boat on the other side of the dock.

“Didn’t work.” Together, Finn and Liam both glanced at the stern of
Buoy O’Buoy,
now littered with three extinguishers. “Jess came running with one from the kitchen, but it didn’t work, either, so she grabbed one out of Orange and we thought we had it all out.”

“You thought?”

“It sparked again a couple minutes ago, but there wasn’t enough in the Orange extinguisher to put it all out.”

“Jesus,” Liam muttered. “How old are those damn things?”

“I don’t know, but guess what’s going on the top of the next supply list?”

“We tried to call,” Kate said, frowning at Jessie, who still hadn’t said anything. “The phone and the radio.”

“Jess has been down here helping me, so the phone wasn’t exactly a priority, and as for my radio…” Finn tipped his head toward the water. “It’s going to need replacing.”

“Are you okay, Jessie?” Kate tried to tug the wet clothes out of her arms, but Jessie tightened her grip on them until Finn finally stepped toward them.

“She’s all right, aren’t you, Jess? Just a little spooked, is all.” He tipped her chin up a bit and smiled gently, until Jessie eventually blinked out of the fog she’d been in. “See, there she is.”

“What?” Giving her head a shake, Jessie stumbled back a step before looking down at the pile of clothes she held. “I’m fine. We’re fine. Who’s hungry?”

Before anyone could answer, Jessie turned and marched straight toward the lodge, leaving Kate staring after her.

“Seriously, is she okay?”

“She will be,” Liam said over a sigh. “Give her a couple minutes.”

And, sure enough, by the time they’d unloaded the supplies from
Fishin’
Impossible
and made their way into the pub for a pint, Jessie appeared to be her old self.

“We have a problem,” she said, chewing her bottom lip hard. “More than the fire, I mean. The insurance for both
The Reel Deal
and
Buoy O’Buoy
expired three years ago.”

Chapter 7

How can you get burned out doing something you love? I ask you, have you ever got tired of kissing a pretty girl?

—Tommy Lasorda

For the first time since he could remember, Liam didn’t throw a single pitch that night. After Jessie dropped that little bombshell about the boat insurance, he and Finn sat down and tried to refigure a way for the boats to run.

Buoy O’Buoy
was supposed to be their backup boat, the one that went out when there was a problem on one of the other two. It didn’t happen all the time, but it happened often enough that any lodge would be stupid not to have at least one backup.

With only two boats now, they’d have to decide if they were feeling lucky enough to run both boats all the time or if they’d take the cautious route and keep
Buoy O’Buoy
as backup. Either way there were going to be problems.

After going back and forth with Ro over the phone, they decided to hold off making any decision until he was there in person.

The fire had been an accident, they all knew it, but Liam also knew that Finn felt responsible and, no matter what anyone said, that wouldn’t change, which was why after supper Liam pulled a half-sack of beer out of the fridge and headed down to the dock. Finn had excused himself before the rest of them finished, and the best bet on where to find him would be down at the dock.

He wasn’t there, which meant wherever he was, he wanted to be left the hell alone, and Liam knew better than to go anywhere near him when that happened. That was okay, because it meant Liam could lie down in the rowboat and stare up at the stars for a while.

God, when was the last time he’d done that?

Using a couple of the old-style life jackets as a pillow, he lay on his back with his knees bent and calves resting on the bench seat in front of him. At one time he fit in there perfectly, but not anymore, and he didn’t care.

After pulling one can from the pack, he set the rest down beside him, cracked the one open, and propped it on his stomach.

What the hell were they going to do with this place? No lodge could run on two boats—that was just stupid—but what else could they do? He hadn’t heard another word from his agent, not since he’d emailed at the beginning of the week when Kate walked in on him, which meant the hope for that call-up must have gone up in flames, like the boat.

There had to be something Liam could do to scrape up some more money. His apartment and car were both leased, and his investments still hadn’t rebounded from the massive hit they took last year, which left…nothing. The only memorabilia he had was the very first ball he ever pitched for the Tigers, and that thing didn’t mean anything to anyone but him. It wasn’t like he was the hotshot pitcher Kate said he was. He was Liam O’Donnell, a has-been whose injury-prone arm had knocked him off everyone’s radar before he’d even made his mark in the league.

He wasn’t even an asterisk on the commentators’ cheat sheets.

And to think he’d been so determined to have it all, he’d walked away from the only woman who’d ever taken his breath away. She’d done it again today on the ride into Hardy.

If Liam hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn she’d never seen the ocean before. Everything about it seemed to amaze her, from the way the sun danced across the water with diamond tap shoes to the way gulls bobbed up and down over the swells without a care in the world.