Brodie took a lingering look at the woman presently slumbering in his bunk, then ducked through the hatch and made his way to the galley. He was satisfyingly fatigued, voraciously hungry, and more than a little disconcerted. In an effort to ignore that last part, he focused on the hunger issue. A quick look at the cupboards proved he’d have to go raid his boathouse for something resembling real sustenance. He brewed a quick pot of tea and took an insulated mug of it topside, already engaging in the internal battle of just go with it, don’t overthink it . . . knowing he was going to lose that one handily.
A short yap had him glancing over at the dock where Whomper wriggled in glee upon spying him, but remained in a very proper sit. “Well, aren’t you the repentant lad after running off with my newly planed pine mold piece. Don’t suppose you brought that back with you?” He glanced past the pup, but there was no trace of the hand-carved piece that had taken him a good hour to make that morning. He looked back to Whomper, who ducked his chin but kept soulful eyes pinned on Brodie. “Heartbreaker,” he muttered, then slapped his chest. “Permission to come aboard.”
Whomper didn’t have to be told twice, but merely launched himself straight from the dock. Brodie barely had time to set his mug on the rail before catching the ball of scruff against his bare chest.
He winced. “All that digging, you’d think ye’d have no claws left, laddie.” He chuckled as Whomper set about making up with him by trying to lick his face clean off. “Okay, okay, all is forgiven. Down, boy-o.” He set the pup on the deck and retrieved his tea. Whomper set off investigating all corners of the deck, making Brodie smile again. The mutt had natural sea legs and seemed quite sure-footed on the gently rocking deck. He did a quick scan, but didn’t see anything that would bring the dog any harm, so left him to his explorations, took his tea, and climbed up to the helm, where he sat and looked out over the horizon toward the bay.
He had to tell her, of course. About the situation with Cami.
Brodie cursed under his breath, hating that there was a situation of any kind that even needed discussing where that woman was involved. But involve herself she had, and quite ingeniously. If the chance to build a historic, wood-hull schooner wasn’t such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—what greater one for a modern-day shipbuilder could there ever be?—he wouldn’t have even returned Brooks Winstock’s phone call.
He’d told himself he’d simply find a way to separate the two things. It wasn’t like his rejection of the man’s daughter would have any bearing on the business dealings they might have. Hell, Cami was a married woman, so Brodie had been pretty damn certain Winstock wouldn’t know about the rejection in the first place. Of course, the man would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to have at least heard the rumors about his only child’s extracurricular activities, but Winstock was calling him, not the other way around; Brodie had assumed if it was known, it wouldn’t be mentioned. Gentlemen didn’t, after all.
His only true concern was that Cami would see the business link to her family as an opportunity to make yet another attempt to leverage herself into his bed . . . or upon hearing about the deal, she would exact her retribution by making sure Brodie was dropped from the project altogether.
“Boy, did you read that wrong,” he muttered, sipping his tea. He was deep in thought, trying to figure out the best way to explain the situation, when a woman’s voice broke into his ruminations. He smiled.
“I know you probably have a gazillion pairs,” Grace said as she climbed up to join him. “But I figured you probably didn’t give it to him as a chew toy.” She held up a half-mangled boat shoe.
Brodie reached for the shoe. “Does the wee bit have to have something clamped in his jaws at all times? I’m starting to think he’s got a problem.”
“Don’t ask me. I’ve just been thankful the boathouse has a huge pile of old pot buoys shoved in the back corner. I figure it’ll take him a while to work through the stack.”
Brodie chuckled and tossed the shoe to the deck. “Come,” he said, levering his feet off the console and motioning her to sit on his lap. “Limited seating up here.”
He’d pulled on his jeans but nothing more and saw she’d pulled on her khaki shorts and tee . . . and nothing more, either. He smiled approvingly. And, fatigued or not, the rest of his body smiled, too.
She stayed at the top of the ladder. “I was thinking I’d go and find something for lunch. I looked in your galley, but—”
“I did, too. Like minds,” he said with a grin. “I’m sure I could find something back up at the boathouse.” He started to stand, but she waved him back to his seat.
“I’ll go. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Just didn’t want you thinking I’d up and vanished. Want me to take Whomper with me?”
He didn’t want her to go anywhere. The sun was in his eyes, so her face was in shadow, and he couldn’t read her expression. Her tone was casual enough, her body relaxed, but . . . something wasn’t right. Or it wasn’t the same, anyway. “Grace—”
“Not yet,” she said quickly. Then her face creased in a half smile and he saw that she was nervous. Of all things. “I’m just—that was . . .” She looked embarrassed, but kept the smile on her face. “Let me go get us some lunch. Okay?”
He might not have had experience with long-term relationships, but he knew enough about women in general to know that pushing was never a good idea, and more likely to reap a result opposite the one sought. But he really didn’t want her to go, at least not without first figuring out where her head had gone once he’d left her alone in his bed.
“Want some help?”
“I’ve got it.” She started to climb back down the ladder rail.
“Grace?”
She paused, then levered herself up just enough so she could see him. “Yes?”
“It’s going to be okay.”
“What will?” she asked, looking wary.
Brilliant. You idiot. But he couldn’t seem to help himself. She wasn’t okay, and so he’d had to say something. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Whatever isn’t, at the moment. We’ll figure it out.”
She held his gaze for a long, silent moment, and he kicked himself all over again. “I usually figure things out by myself,” she said at length.
“So you said. I’m just saying . . . maybe give sharing the load a go.” He smiled then. “Could be, I’ll be no help whatsoever, but I’ll do my best to try.”
“It’s just lunch,” she said, trying for a glib tone. Failing.
“Okay,” he said, matching her smile, knowing he’d done exactly what he’d known not to do. He’d pushed. Better he should stop while he was behind.
She climbed down and he heard her give a stern warning to the pup before climbing to the dock. He turned and watched her walk away. “I don’t know what I’m doing, either,” he called, not all that loudly, but knowing his voice would carry to her.
She turned, walked backward a few steps, looking at him. Then she shot him a quick, real smile, along with a sharp first mate salute, and turned back toward the shore.
He saluted her back, then sighed and slumped his shoulders. “Permission to break my heart,” he murmured, watching her retreat.
Not pushing might be the right thing to do, but sitting there watching her walk away felt like a really wrong thing to do.
A minute later he was smiling as he downed the rest of his tea. Decision made, he hopped down to the main deck, then went below and gathered up whatever bits and pieces they’d left behind. Back above deck, he whistled for the dog, who’d found his way up on the foredeck, and Brodie wondered just how much rope he probably had to replace. “Come on, Mischief,” he said, patting his chest. Whomper sprang up and Brodie bent to capture him against his chest.
“Let’s go find your mistress, shall we?” He hopped to the dock and put Whomper down, smiling as the pup tore off toward the boathouse. He might not know what the hell he was doing, but she’d already admitted that neither did she. So chances were she was falling back on what felt comfortable. And that was building walls and figuring things out alone. And where had that gotten her? Sticking with what was safe, that’s where.
Nothing about what was happening between them—or what could happen—felt like it was anything close to safe.
He was good at letting things go when the going got tough, at moving on when things looked like they might get complicated. At least where women were concerned. And where had that gotten him?
If they had a chance to get past the early part and explore new ground, better to break the pattern right from the start.
He knew she thought his natural charm got him his way more often than not, so it seemed a smart thing would be to use his best skill to set things on the right path before they had a chance to go all wrong. “Go with your strength, mate.” His grin began to falter as a few knots started to twist in his gut. “Go with your strength.”
She wasn’t in his boathouse. He found her in hers. “I know I don’t keep the pantry stocked as I should, but it’s embarrassing to think you’ve got more in that cooler than I have in my whole kitchen.”
Whomper had dashed in first, so she wasn’t startled by Brodie’s entrance, but she did take a moment to slowly lower the lid of the cooler and close it with a purposeful little click. She lifted a can of dog food with a plastic lid snapped to the top. “Thought I’d feed Whomper, since we were eating.”
Brodie glanced down to the dog. “You didn’t tell her?” He looked back at Grace and smiled at the arched brow and questioning expression. Some of the knots loosened a bit. “I picked up a bit of kibble and a box of biscuits. Seeing as he was hanging about.” He lifted a shoulder. “I should have mentioned it. But you and I weren’t exactly on speaking terms.”
She was too far away for him to see if the revelation softened her up in any way. He glanced down at Whomper again. “I think we’re in trouble, mate.”
“Only because you don’t listen any better than he does,” she said. “Are you that afraid of what I might fix for lunch? Just because I’ve been living out of a cooler doesn’t mean I can’t put together a decent meal.”
She walked closer and he was further relieved to see the wink of humor in her eyes.
“It wasn’t your ability to construct a good lunch that concerned me.” He closed the remaining distance, aware that what happened in the next few minutes could very well keep the door to their continued journey open . . . or slam it shut in his face. He took the can from her hand and set it—“What in the world is that?”
She glanced down. “Just what it looks like. A suitcase table.”
“Right.” He looked at her. “Why?”
“I needed a little table. There was an old suitcase in the rubble of stuff, and a few old legs and brackets from some long-ago piece of furniture so I screwed them into the bottom of the suitcase and . . . table. Kitchen counter. Desk. It’s very all-purpose.”
“Clever.”
She smiled. “I thought so.”
He reached for her arms and very gently shuffled her forward until she was right up in his personal space. “I admire your amazing ability to build things out of odd bits, but what concerned me was your ability to construct some really sturdy walls while you made a few sandwiches.”
Up close, there was no hiding that his words surprised her. “I wasn’t—”
It was his turn to lift a questioning brow, which halted her denial cold. She looked him in the eye and didn’t seem all that pleased by his remarkable insight. The knots reformed and his inner voice launched into another tirade of self-recrimination.
She let out a half laugh, shook her head, and gave him that classic wry grin of hers. “Okay. So maybe I was. Trying to, anyway. It’s—”
“Safer. I know. Trust me.” He rubbed his hands up and down her arms, then nudged her a bit closer still and put his arms around her. “You can, though, you know. Trust me.”
“I’d like to,” she said in typical direct fashion. “I want to. It’s not an instant thing with me. I told you that.”
“And I listened.” Her eyebrow climbed and he smiled. “I did. Then I let you walk off, back to the Land of Safety. I almost stayed on the boat, telling myself it was because you wanted me to, asked me to. But I realized I was doing the same thing you were. Retreating, letting things slide and go where they may. But where has that gotten me? Where has it gotten you?”
“Brodie—”
“Just . . . allow me to complete the thought. Then you can kick me out. Though, fair warning.” He nodded at the can of dog food. “I feed him much better than you do. He’ll likely follow.”
“You’re threatening to hold my dog hostage?” she said, but he could see she was fighting a smile.
That was when he knew he’d done the right thing and the tension in his gut finally went away. “I’m saying he might choose self-imposed exile.”
“You do realize I might think of that as a win-win scenario.”
Brodie looked at the dog. “Did you hear that, mate? She’s saying she’s better off without us.”
On cue, Whomper lay down and put his chin on his paws, big eyes solemnly on Grace. Brodie looked back at Grace and did his best human impression of the same.
She smacked his shoulders with open palms, but was laughing as she said, “Oh my God. You are truly incorrigible.” She looked at Whomper. “Both of you.”
The dog gave a few tentative tail thumps, but kept his chin down.
She looked at Brodie. “I don’t know what to do with you.” Her expression sobered slightly, but her gaze stayed easily on his. It was as earnest and honest as he’d ever seen it. “I can’t impress upon you enough the depths to which I mean that.” She let him pull her hands from his shoulders and kiss her knuckles. “I really have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Me either. But it seems to me that our best bet is to figure it out together. Unless you really have no desire to try and figure out what the answers are and would rather brainstorm ways to convince yourself you shouldn’t go for it. Then I could simply let you do that as I wouldn’t have to risk anything, either. I wouldn’t even have to take the blame.”
“I can’t imagine your problem is that women are trying to get away from you.”
“Sure and I’m fun to play with, but smart women soon figure I’m, at best, catch and release, and they go off looking for bigger fish. Or better ones, anyway.”
Grace held his gaze for one sober moment, then burst out laughing.
“What? What did I say? I’m telling the truth.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it. The truth as you see it.” She was still laugh-snorting, and her eyes had teared up with the effort to squelch it. “Luv,” she said in a dead-on impersonation of his accent, “women would cart ye home to their mamas in a heartbeat if they thought they could get you there . . . and that their papas wouldn’t shoot you dead on sight.”
“Meaning?” he asked archly . . . but her laughter was contagious.
“Meaning you flirted shamelessly with me until you got me, then the very next thing you did was warn me that you’d disappoint me. The women didn’t have to release you, because A, if they were smart, as you say, then they knew pretty much right off that they’d never really caught you, and B, it didn’t matter, because you were wriggling off the hook before they could even set it.”
He opened his mouth to shoot her down . . . then closed it again.
She shot him a smug smile. “I rest my case.”
“So . . . what if I don’t want to wriggle off your hook? What do I do then?”
Her smug smile froze and she searched his suddenly very serious expression.
“See? Uncharted waters. Both of us. In all of those depths that you said I couldn’t imagine. Well, I can imagine. That’s all I was trying to say.”
It was her turn to open her mouth then shut it again. Only there was no smug smile from him this time.
“You really do listen,” she finally said.
“I try.”
“Why me?” she asked.
“Why me?” he countered.
Her eyes went wide and she made a gesture at him, head to toe. “Seriously?”
“If anything, with you I think that works against me, not for.”
“Well. I wouldn’t go that far.” Heat stole into her cheeks again.
He hooted a laugh and tugged her the rest of the way into his arms, pushing his fingers into her hair as he tipped her face up to his. “You don’t suffer fools, you curse like a sailor, and with your hair loose you look like a goddess emerging from the sea. I was lost before I had a chance.”
“Remind me never to get you a pair of glasses,” she said dryly.
“To me, you are all those things. That’s all that really matters, is it not?”
“Brodie . . .” She trailed off, sighed, but her gaze never left his.
“Let me ask you this. You said you don’t know what to do with me. Would you rather just do without me, then?”
Her felt her body soften and the tension went out of her shoulders. She shook her head. “No. I just—”
He pressed his lips against hers and said against them, “No just-ing. And no more words.” He took her mouth in a soul-searing kiss that said everything he wasn’t willing to put into words. Yet. “Kiss me back,” he murmured. “Show me what ye canno’ tell me.”
She pressed her lips to his in a hard kiss, but whatever her plan, it quickly shifted to something far deeper, more real. At least, when she softened completely into him, then slid her arms around his neck and kissed him like he was the last man she’d ever see, it felt like that to him.
When they broke off for air, she buried her face in his neck . . . and simply hung on.
And maybe, he thought, that was what you did with each other, for each other. You just . . . hung on.
“So,” he said, nuzzling her neck, keeping her wrapped up against his chest. “Tell me about this favor you need of me. We’ll start there, okay?” And then I’ll tell you about how Brooks Winstock is trying to buy his daughter a stud pony with a tall ship.
Yeah. He hoped it was a really big favor. Though he wasn’t sure there was a wish he could grant that was big enough to keep Grace hanging on after he got done telling her about that.