by Julie Cannon
OMFG! Alissa wasn’t making love to me. It was all a dream. I wanted to crawl between the seams in the tile on the floor and never come out again. I was completely humiliated. No, that wasn’t a strong enough word. I was mortified.
“You’re sweating,” Alissa said, touching my forehead.
Without thinking I grabbed her hand and almost yanked it away. I was so keyed up from my wet dream I wasn’t certain I wouldn’t come instantly if she did touch me for real. Judging by the look on her face, I think I’d frightened her. I loosened my grip and rubbed her wrist.
“I’m fine. Sorry. You just startled me. That’s all.”
“You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry,” I said again, getting up. I needed distance from the memories of my wet dream starring Alissa. “I’m going back to check the bridge.” It was a weak excuse but one that got me out of that very small room.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bert
What in the hell was I thinking when I’d agreed to let Alissa work the boat? Even more stupid was that I had assigned her to me. God, I needed my head examined. That meant I had to spend hours with her showing her everything on the boat, listening to her voice as she asked questions. I stood beside, behind, and in front of her, catching a whiff of the smell of my shampoo in her hair, touching her hand to show her the correct grip, holding her waist as she leaned forward to grasp the end of a net. She was a bright, attentive, very fast learner. Out of all the deckhands I’ve ever trained, I have to admit she’d picked up the necessary skills quickest and was definitely the best looking. Her skin had tanned into a healthy glow, and her strength returned a little every day. I found myself looking forward to our morning sessions.
One afternoon a storm materialized out of almost nowhere, a common occurrence in these waters. It was the third one since we picked her up and by far the most fierce. As the sky darkened, the crew, including Alissa, checked the gear and secured anything that wasn’t fastened down. It wasn’t long before the height and intensity of the waves increased to dangerous levels. The storm was directly in our path, and to go around it would result in delay and thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
The boat was getting more and more difficult to control in the high seas. She vibrated as her powerful engines struggled to push through the rough water. I stood on the bridge, my feet shoulder width apart, my hands tight on the wheel. The windows were closed and I was dry, but I had my life vest on over my sweatshirt. I wasn’t taking any chances. I’d seen far too many rogue waves in this sea, and if I were unlucky enough to be swept off, I’d have at least half a chance to survive. The door to my left opened, admitting a blast of cold air, more than a few raindrops, and Alissa.
“What are you doing up here?”
“I came to see if you needed anything.”
“You came to see if I needed anything?” I was incredulous. We were in the middle of a monster tropical storm, and she came up to see if I needed anything? What the hell did she think she was, a waitress? “Why aren’t you below with the rest of the crew?” That was almost true. Hook was to my right, watching the radar for any break in the storm.
“I came to see if you needed anything,” she repeated.
“Everyone else is in their bunks waiting for the storm to pass. And that’s exactly where you should be.” I was furious that she was risking her life by being up here with me and not tucked safe in my cabin.
“I’m not afraid of a little storm,” Alissa replied defensively, nodding toward the rain blasting the windows with sheets of water. The boat lurched forward, and she grabbed the rail that was just below the dash with both hands. The rocking of the boat was becoming more severe.
“This is not a little storm,” I snapped back, moving the wheel three quarters of a turn to the left. “Have you ever been in a storm with gale-force winds of,” I looked at the wind-speed indicator, “seventy knots?” When she didn’t answer I said, “I didn’t think so.” For some reason the I told you so didn’t feel quite as satisfying as I’d thought it would.
“Fine. Then I’ll go back below deck.” She started to reach for the door.
“Stay here,” I shouted. It was bad enough I was afraid that she was up here with me. It would be worse to imagine her going back out into the storm to head below.
For the next several hours the storm was relentless, giant waves of water splashing over the bow. My arms ached from fighting the wheel, but I refused both Alissa and Hook’s offer to relieve me. This was my boat, my crew, and my responsibility.
Finally, after hours of being tossed around in the ocean like my nephew’s plastic boat in the bathtub, a rainbow peeked through the clouds.
“Look!” Alissa said excitedly, pointing out the window. There was a break in the storm, and the patch of blue sky was a welcome sight. Her smile was infectious, and the muscles in my shoulders started to relax. I tilted my head from side to side to relieve some of the stress in my neck. I think I even started breathing again. I unbuckled my life vest and tossed it on the seat beside me.
Alissa moved behind me and started rubbing my neck. God, that felt good. No, it felt fucking fabulous. Her fingers were cool but her touch was warm, and the longer she touched me the more difficulty I had paying attention to what I was supposed to be doing. More than once I felt my eyelids close and my eyes begin to float to the back of my head before I forced myself awake. It would not be good for me to fall asleep at the wheel.
“Thanks,” I said, shrugging my shoulders and stepping away from Alissa’s magic hands. “I think it’s safe enough now for you to go below. But keep your vest on until you get there,” I added. I didn’t look at Alissa, actually, but turned slightly away, effectively dismissing her from the bridge. She didn’t say anything as she closed the door behind her.
I glanced at Hook, who was looking at me strangely. “Don’t say it,” I warned him. “I mean it, Hook,” I said when he opened his mouth. Thankfully he closed it and went back to writing something in the ship’s log beside him.
This time when the door opened it was Rock relieving me for a few much-needed hours of rest. I briefed him quickly but thoroughly and headed to my cabin.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Alissa
It was three more days until we got to wherever Bert planned to fish. During that time I learned how to play hearts and pinochle and lost all of the five dollars Bert staked me in poker. Luckily it wasn’t strip poker or I’d have lost a lot more.
On the afternoon of the thirteenth day at sea, the Dream slowed its engines and Bert turned on the sonar. Rock climbed up into the crow’s nest with a water bottle and a pair of binoculars.
I was on deck next to Hook, my chaperone for the day. Earlier this morning I’d convinced Bert to let me help, and even though I knew she wasn’t too happy about it, she agreed, with the stipulation that I covered myself from my head to my toes to protect my skin from the sun. As an extra layer of protection I slathered SPF45 sunscreen over my arms and hands. I was trying to rub it into my shoulders when Bert knocked on her cabin door.
“How did those fit?” she asked from the outside of the door. She had given me a pair of lightweight GoreTex pants and a long-sleeve shirt to wear.
I opened the door with one hand, holding a tube of sunscreen in the other. I had on the pants and only a thin, sleeveless T-shirt, and Bert gave me the once-over, lingering on my breasts before she looked at my face and, ultimately, my eyes. The tension and temperature in the room skyrocketed at the unmistakable heat and desire I saw in her eyes. We’d spent the last eight nights in the same bed, and I’d had at least half a dozen dreams about what would happen if she put her hands on me.
“Let me help you with that,” Bert said, taking the bottle out of my hand. “Where do you need it?” I could swear her voice was a little shaky.
“My neck and shoulders,” I answered, my voice also a member of the shaky club. I turned around, my throat suddenly very dry.
Warm, strong hands rubbed t
he lotion over my skin, starting at the back of my neck and moving across my shoulders. When her slick hands slid under the straps of the T-shirt to coat that area, I swear I felt waves crash around in my stomach. Her hands moved down my arms, slowly rubbing in more lotion. Then she stepped closer. Her breath on my neck sent chills down my spine and warmth in regions farther south.
God, her hands felt good on me. Night after night I’d dreamed of what this would feel like, and it was nothing compared to the real thing. And this was only medicinal. If Bert touched me for real, the top of my head would probably blow off, or maybe other parts would.
“I want you on the bridge with me today,” she said, rubbing the lotion onto my arms.
“You already said I could help.” I somehow managed to say from my very dry mouth.
“We’re scouting for the school, and as soon as we find it, controlled chaos will break loose. I want you out of the way.”
I turned around and faced Bert. “You’ve spent the last three days showing me what to do. I’m not going to sit up here twiddling my thumbs while the guys do all the work.”
Bert studied me for several moments, obviously weighing the pros and cons of my request. Her situation was interesting because she was always so decisive about what needed to be done and by whom. She never hesitated when someone asked a question.
“All right,” she said in a tone more resigned than accepting. “I’ll put you with Hook today. You need to do exactly what he says—”
“When he says to do it, no questions asked.” I could tell she was fighting a smile so I smiled for her. “I can follow directions, Bert. I won’t get hurt. But if I do it’s my own fault, and I promise not to sue you,” I added, trying to get her to not look so serious. I didn’t succeed, as she had her game face on this morning.
It was late afternoon when I finally had the chance to prove myself. “What should we be on the lookout for?” I asked Hook. We were standing next to the outer rail of the deck.
“If it’s flat and calm, you’ll see the fish break the surface. Tuna come to the surface to warm up and digest their food faster,” Hook said when I stared at him, confused. “Up in the crow’s nest,” he turned and pointed above our heads, “you can see the patches of color of the schools. Come on. We’ve got to bait.”
I helped Limpet and Hook lug boxes of frozen bait from the freezer below deck to the top deck. Hook passed around his pocketknife for each of us to use to open our boxes. When Limpet passed it to me he said, “Be careful with that. You can shave your legs with it and lose a finger.” He was right, as the blade sliced through the thick tape like it was warm margarine. Lefty came up with a long pole with a net on the end, which he told me was for scooping out the fresh bait in the hold. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Bert through the window, concentrating on something in front of her.
“What do we do now?” I asked Hook after the boxes were open.
“When the captain gives us the go-ahead, we start baiting the water.”
“Why fresh and frozen?”
“Tuna won’t go after just frozen bait. Eventually it sinks to the bottom, so we throw in some live now and then to get and keep their attention.”
I scoured the water, hoping to see whatever Bert and Rock were trying to find. Bert had told me it would be a large school of tuna, and I had seen several schools during various times I had taken my boat out.
I pulled one of Bert’s spare hats down low on my forehead and adjusted the sunglasses she’d loaned me as well. The blast of an air horn startled me, and immediately after that Hook shouted, “Let’s go.”
He and Limpet started tossing fish from the boxes into the water. I watched for a few minutes to see if there was any special way to do it, then grabbed a handful and tossed. The fish were about two inches in circumference and about four to six inches long. It didn’t take long for my hands to get really cold.
After only fifteen minutes of baiting, I had to switch sides and toss with my other hand. This and just about every other thing I’d done on the boat had told me I was spending way too much time behind a desk. I vowed to make it to the gym at least three times a week when I got home.
It didn’t take long before sweat escaped from my hatband and slid down the side of my face. A drop or two dripped into my eyes before I could wipe it away and stung like a bitch. At least I’d somewhat recovered from my original sunburn, and my nipples were pretty much healed as well, thank God. I put on the magic balm Bert gave me that first day three times a day, and it worked. It smelled bad but I didn’t care. It wasn’t like anyone was going to get close to my nipples. Bert didn’t seem interested. But I needed to concentrate on what I was doing, not stand there having wet dreams.
We spent the next few hours watching the surface of the water for any signs of the catch. My head was pounding and my eyes felt like they were being pulled out of their sockets, but I refused to give in. I couldn’t. First of all I never quit, and second, and most important, I certainly couldn’t after my speech to Bert in the galley the other night.
“Tuna!” Rock shouted from the crow’s nest.
I looked up at him, shielding my eyes from the sun. He was pointing to the left of Hook and me, and I turned back to see what he was talking about.
“There,” Hook said excitedly, pointing toward a faint splash in the water about a hundred yards out. “Do you see it?”
“I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I think so,” I admitted.
“Drop the net.” Bert’s voice over the loud speaker startled me.
The large crane that Bert had been maneuvering the other day started moving. Slowly a large net slid off the back of the boat and into the water. I heard the engines slow as Bert steered toward the school. The net had buoys at the top to keep it from sinking. Bert had explained that once the net is around the school, the men gradually winch in a steel draw cord running along the bottom of the net to close it. That way they force the tuna to swim in a small area.
The hum of the winch started and didn’t stop for over an hour. Slowly it pulled the net in and secured the catch.
Hook turned to me. “Our job is done for now.”
Flick, decked out in full diving gear, slid into the water. Once the tuna were in the net, his job was to go into the water and survey the trapped fish. If they weren’t in the legal size range, they had to be released. Forty minutes later his head popped out of the water, followed by his raised arm, his thumb in the up position.
“What happens now?” I asked, thrilled to stop tossing fish into the sea. My arms were killing me.
“We transfer the tuna to the transport nets.” Hook pointed to another ship off our starboard bow. “The transport nets can hold about ten thousand fish, and they’re built to withstand storms and rough seas. Their net is made of high-density polyethylene tubing filled with polyurethane foam. It’s the tubing normally used for sewer pipes or gas distribution where durability is critical.”
That was interesting but way too much technical information for what I needed. “Then they haul the tuna back to the…what’s it called? The farm?”
“Right. The fish are kept and fattened up in tuna farms. It’s a lot cheaper to do it this way than try to find, catch, and transport full-grown fish.”
“How much is a net full of fish worth?” I asked, curious and fascinated.
“One trip can bring home twenty tons of juvenile tuna worth twenty million.”
“Dollars? Twenty million dollars?” I looked back at the net circling the school. The amount was incredible.
“Yep. But that’s the cost of the tuna when they’re harvested. We don’t get twenty million for what’s in that net.”
“That’s a relief,” I said. “I’d hate to think we’d have to fight off pirates on the way home. How long does it take to get to the farm?”
“From here, about two weeks. We stay behind the transport ship in case we have a problem. I was on one ship, before the Dream, and the tow rope snapped. Three hundred feet o
f tow rope sank to the bottom of the ocean like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Fish scattered everywhere. We never caught them all. It took another week to round up enough to bring back.”
The rest of the day I watched as Bert and her crew expertly maneuvered the catch net in place adjacent to the transport nets. Several divers were in the water, Flick included, making sure everything was exactly where it should be. Before Hook left to help with the transfer, he explained that this was the most difficult part of the catch.
Our catch net had to be lined up exactly with the transfer net so that when we opened ours, the fish swam into the other net. If the nets weren’t lined up precisely where they needed to be, a few fish might escape and the entire school would follow.
It was several hours later when Bert hoisted the giant net above the deck to its resting place against the boom. Since it
was so close to dark, the crew secured it and everyone called it
a day.
*
Alissa
It was late in the afternoon of the fourth day scouting for catch. We had netted a school earlier in the morning but released them due to their size. I still felt Bert’s eyes on me, but not all the time, as I had for the past few days. I’d proved to her that I could do as I was told: stay out of the way and not get hurt. We were baiting the water when Limpet asked innocently, “How did you know you liked girls?”
Hook slapped his arm. “Shut up, you dumb shit. You don’t ask something like that. It’s none of your business.”
I smiled at Limpet, who was now blushing nine shades of red. “It’s okay. I don’t mind when someone asks questions. As a matter of fact, I prefer it. It’s when they don’t and draw assumptions and jump to wrong conclusions that pisses me off.” Limpet turned to Hook with a smug look on his face.
“I guess I was about seventeen or eighteen. All my friends were all excited about their date to the senior prom, and all I could think about was how much I wanted to dance with Suzanne Alexander.”