Lured In

by Laura Drewry

  She could feel Liam and Sam watching them, but she didn’t care. The whole lot of them could go screw themselves for all she cared. With a hard shove, she let him go and marched down the dock as fast as she could, passing Ryan and Chuck along the way.

  “All right,” Brock said as he passed by. “Let’s do this. Liam, you hop on and we’ll push off.”

  Jessie didn’t look back; she didn’t even slow down until she was in the kitchen, chugging her second glass of water.

  “Whoa,” Olivia murmured. “Well, that’s what happens when you sleep on the hard floor; you wake up in a bad mood.”

  Jessie gripped her glass harder. “My. Mood. Is. Just. Fine.”

  Olivia’s eyes opened a little wider as she moved around Jessie to get to the fridge.

  “Sure,” she said. “If you were a fire-breathing dragon.”

  With a hard snort, Jessie shook her head slowly, then forced a few long, even breaths in and out.

  “Okay,” she said, rolling her shoulders a few times. “I need to get Kate and Ronan loaded and out of here. Do you need anything from me?”

  “Nope, it’s all sunshine and rainbows in my world.”

  “Yeah,” Jessie muttered. “Mine would be sunshine and rainbows, too, if I didn’t have to deal with assholes first thing in the morning and if I worked within a twenty-foot radius of the ice cream all day.”

  Chapter 16

  “Good things come to those who bait.”

  They weren’t even half an hour out when Liam leaned over the back of Finn’s seat.

  “Whatever the fuck you did to her can be undone,” he said, keeping his voice low enough that the others couldn’t hear it over the motors. “But right now, today, we need to focus on this and give a good show, you got that?”

  Yeah, he got that, but Liam was wrong; Finn hadn’t done anything to Jess except make her complicated decision less complicated.

  Last night it was like some kind of Fawlty Towers episode with the number of doors opening and closing in the lodge, and he hadn’t lived down the hall from Jess for that long without knowing her footsteps when he heard them.

  It was his chance to get a couple of minutes alone with her, but by the time he’d found his other shoe buried under Ro’s duffel bag and got upstairs, she was nowhere to be found. As he came out of her office, he heard the front door open and click shut, but it wasn’t her coming in; it was Sam going out. And it took Finn about two seconds to figure out where he was going.

  It might have been the middle of the night, but the moon was bright enough for him to know it was Jess standing down there in Da’s big sweater.

  Finn had never considered himself the jealous type; sure, he wasn’t happy when Jess told him she’d be spending time alone with Sam to talk, but what guy wants his girl hanging around her ex? Especially when that ex looked like Sam.

  Still, he was curious, so that’s why he tucked up against the doorframe, hidden from their direct view. It had to be a good couple of hundred meters between the porch and where Jess stood on the dock, so Finn couldn’t see everything through the dark, but the moon was just bright enough that he could see what he needed to.

  Like how amazing she looked standing there, wrapped in Da’s old sweater, with the yellowish moonlight shining down on her as if she was the only reason it shone in the first place.

  Like the way Sam reached over and took Jess’s hands, and the way she didn’t kick him in the balls for touching her. Like the way Sam seemed to get so animated when he talked, and the way she didn’t seem to take her eyes off him.

  Like the way she’d barely hesitated before stepping onto the boat with him. Like the way the two of them sat in there, door closed, for the better part of half an hour before climbing back out.

  Like the way Sam smiled so big when they stepped out onto the dock. And what the fuck was all that “Yes!” shit about? Maybe he should have stayed outside and waited for them to get to the porch, but that was only going to end one way—and while it was one thing to take a round out of his brothers when they pissed him off, one good swing at Sam would no doubt end in a lawsuit.

  So Finn went down to his room, closed the door, and flopped on the end of his bed, where he spent most of the night trying to convince himself he’d read the whole situation wrong.

  Jess had told him she’d never felt that “thing” for Sam, but she’d also said he was the sweetest and cutest guy she’d ever met. She’d said she was in love with Finn, but he’d never said it back. Had Sam?

  The couple of hours of sleep he managed to get in before his alarm went off helped to reboot him a little. All he needed to do was ask Jess; she’d tell him the truth and then he’d know for sure that he’d just overreacted about the whole thing.

  Instead, she’d tried to feed him some line of bullshit about having a lot to think about and not enough time to explain it to him.

  What the fuck was there to explain? And what happened to looping him in?

  Finn gripped the wheel tighter as he took the boat around toward Sweeper Island and eased back on the accelerator. Sam and his crew set straight to work rigging their gear up, which gave Liam another chance to remind Finn why they were out there.

  “At the end of the day, the Buoys is all we have,” he warned. “So unless you want to head back up to Fort Mac and collect unemployment again, get your fuckin’ head in the game.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Finn said. “I’m all-in.”

  And for ten hours straight he was the best damn fish whisperer anyone had ever seen. Smiling, laughing, setting Ashley up with a camp chair, helping Liam reel when his arm started to give out…Nobody watching would have guessed how lucky Sam was that the Buoys didn’t use barbed hooks, because Finn would have liked nothing better than to ram one of those suckers into the son of a bitch’s head.

  Instead, he leaned over the side of the boat with the pliers and helped Sam slide the barbless hook out of his catch’s mouth.

  “Viewers like to know the weight and length,” Ashley said. “So if you could swing it over here a little.”

  “No can do,” Finn said, still smiling. “On my boat, catch and release means just that: The less handling, the better. Fish stay in the water while we unhook them, and if your guys need better shots, they’ll need to angle themselves over the side.”

  She couldn’t even argue with him, because it was one of the clauses he’d insisted on being added to the contract.

  A few times during the day Liam quirked a brow at him in silent question, but Finn never flinched, just smiled bigger. The only thing he wouldn’t do was pick up the radio.

  As she always did, Jess radioed in at the top of every hour, but Finn made good and sure he was too busy to answer. If Liam wanted to call their miles back to her, he was welcome to it, but Finn had guests to attend to, including making sure Ryan and Chuck stayed hydrated out in the sun.

  With the shuffled schedules Kate and Ro were working, they were still out with their afternoon runs when Finn finally guided the boat into its spot along the north side of the dock.

  A bunch of the guests wandered down to watch, but there was no Jess to greet him with a tall glass of Gat. And that didn’t bother him at all.

  Nope, not one little bit. Fuck.

  Once everyone was off the boat, Liam led them all up to the lodge, while Finn hung back to clean his boat. He didn’t usually take that long, but he needed to make sure it was in tip-top shape for tomorrow when they went fishing for halibut.

  No catch and release tomorrow, because Olivia had promised him a big halibut dinner if he brought some back.

  He managed to drag out the cleaning long enough that Kate and Ro both returned from their runs, which was great, because then he could help them process the catch and clean their boats.

  In fact, he told Kate to head on up and he’d clean her boat for her—’cause, you know, he was that kind of a great guy. By the time he got up to the lodge, the place was a freakin’ zoo. The restaurant was packed,
there were drinks aplenty, and, as was the way in a fishing lodge, every single person had a better fish story than the last person. And for some reason, each story was louder than the last, too.

  It was just the way Jess liked it—crazy and chaotic. Maybe that’s why she didn’t have a pint waiting for him when he got there.

  Yeah, right. And maybe Da was going to walk through the door and announce the next round was on the house.

  Finn downed his first pint and was pouring his second when Jess breezed by him on her way through to the kitchen. Tray raised, hips swaying, she smelled like cherry ChapStick and sunshine, and if she would have so much as flicked those brown eyes of hers his way, he’d have knocked that bloody tray out of her hands and kissed her, deep and long, until they both agreed to go back to yesterday morning, back to before things started going sideways.

  But she didn’t even acknowledge he was standing there, so he just chugged his beer and went out to see if any of the guests needed refills. With so many people and so much noise, he hardly noticed Jess coming and going, and he sure as hell didn’t notice how everyone in the room except him got her attention at one point or another.

  Halfway through his third pint, with most of the crowd either off in the great room or…he didn’t care where they were…Finn headed to the taps to top up his glass, but Liam grabbed the tap and wouldn’t move.

  “There’s two reasons I’m not gonna let you do that,” he said.

  “Yeah?” Finn snorted. “Enlighten me.”

  Shifting a little so his back was to those still lingering over their meals, Liam gave Finn a pointed look. “First of all, you don’t top up a Guinness. God’s sake, man, just the thought of it’ll send every dead Irishman spinning in his grave.”

  Finn’s only response was a tip of his head and an indifferent blink.

  “And second,” Liam said, tugging the glass out of Finn’s hand, “you didn’t eat anything on the boat all day and you haven’t touched a plate here yet.”

  “So what?”

  “So go eat something, have a couple glasses of water, and then we’ll talk about letting you near the tap again.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I didn’t ask if you were hungry; go sit your ass down and I’ll bring you something.”

  If Finn weren’t so pissed off, it would have been funny how Liam managed to keep his voice down as he ground out each word.

  “And before you think about saying something stupid here, Finn, let me tell you this. You are going to eat whatever I bring you, because if you don’t, I’ll have Ro hold you down while I cram it down your fucking throat. Are we good?”

  With a scowl and a shrug, Finn slumped over to the only clean table in the room—the one under the window—and stared out over the back lawn of the Buoys.

  About a hundred meters or so away from the main lodge were the five A-frames that used to house employees, back when Finn and his brothers were in school and Da needed to hire help.

  Things had changed over the years; the middle cabin had been turned into the sweatbox, a makeshift gym that housed a treadmill, exercise bike, and some free weights for those who chose to use them. The one to the immediate left was Kate and Liam’s place, and the one to the immediate right was Olivia’s. The other two had been sitting empty until this week, when they opened them up to guests.

  For some reason he didn’t want to think about too deeply, Finn’s gaze kept swinging to Number 2, Kate and Liam’s place. The damn thing was hardly bigger than a toolshed, and yet Kate had managed to turn it into their home.

  Wasn’t anything big, either, just normal things like the way she set her yellow gum boots on the tiny porch outside the front door, or the way she’d hung a narrow little planter over the porch rail and filled it with whatever those flowers were.

  Gardenias? Geraniums? Who cared; it was nice.

  “Here.” Liam dropped a plate in front of him, then lowered himself onto the opposite chair. “Just eat it.”

  Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem, because even hamburgers tasted better when Olivia made them, but tonight Finn could have been eating his napkin for all he tasted it.

  Liam waited until Finn had finished almost half before he reached across and grabbed a handful of Finn’s yam fries.

  “You gonna tell me what happened?”

  “No.”

  “Did I or did I not tell you not to do anything stupid?”

  “You did. And I didn’t.”

  “Mmmm.” Liam’s hum got higher the more he twisted his head that way. “Bet if I asked Jessie, she’d have a different answer.”

  “So go ask her, I don’t give a shit.”

  Liam didn’t move, just sat there bobbing his head like one of those stupid bobble-head dogs while he ate more fries.

  “See, here’s the thing about Jessie,” he said. “She’s not perfect; hell, she’s not even close.”

  Do not punch him, do not punch him.

  “And she knows it.”

  A piece of bun lodged in Finn’s throat, making him choke for a second before it dislodged.

  “When she’s wrong,” Liam went on, “she usually comes right out and admits it, and since she’s not saying a thing, I have to wonder who’s in the wrong here.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re right, you got me there.” Liam lifted his hands and let them fall to the table. “But here’s what I do know. D’you remember how Da used to go and stand at the end of the dock sometimes?”

  “Yeah. He always took his rosary with him.”

  “Right, and he’d stand there staring out at the water and rubbing those beads, but I never thought much of it, you know? Then about four or five years back, I came home for a few days before spring training started, and sure enough, I went looking for him one night and there he was, standing out there like he always did.”

  Finn didn’t say anything, just stuffed the last bit of his burger in his mouth and forced himself to swallow it.

  “So I went down and stood there with him, and I’ll never forget what he said.”

  “Let me guess,” Finn snorted. “Hail Mary, full of grace.”

  Liam didn’t even blink.

  “He said, ‘I wish she’d just come back.’ All those years he’d been going out there waiting for Ma and praying she’d come back to him. Can you believe that shit?”

  “That’s—” Finn didn’t get to finish, because Liam was already talking over him.

  “I know,” Liam said, quirking his brow a little. “So I’m going to give you a piece of free advice that you’d be wise to heed.”

  “This ought to be good.”

  “If you think for even a fraction of a second that Jessie’s the one for you, then you need to grab on to her with both hands and never let go. Never give her a reason to leave. Don’t be Da. Don’t wake up every day for the next twenty years waiting for something to happen. You need to get off your ass and make it happen, and the only way you’re going to do that is if you let go of what Ma did to you.”

  “I can’t just—”

  “ ’Course you can. If you want this thing with Jessie to work, just do it, just tell that whole fucked-up part of your brain to fuck off and get on with it; otherwise you’re going to lose her for good, and then you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting it.”

  Any other time, Finn would have thrown a smart-ass comment back at him, but he didn’t because Liam was as serious as Finn had ever seen him.

  “It’s not that simple, Liam. She and Sam have something going on—don’t ask, ’cause I don’t know what it is—but it can’t be good, because she said it’s complicated.”

  “Oooh.” Liam actually winced. “Shit, man, that ranks right up there with ‘we need to talk.’ ”

  “Right?” Finn balled up his napkin, tossed it on his plate, then pushed it to the middle of the table. “And you know what’s really stupid? I don’t even want to know what it is, because I still hav
e to spend another day out on the boat with that son of a bitch, and if Jess says what I think she’s going to say, then…fuck. But right now I don’t know what the problem is, so I’m just mad, and mad I can handle. Mad I know what to do with.”

  Liam nodded slowly, whispering the words Finn was too afraid to say himself. “It’s the sad that’ll kill you.”

  —

  Bunking with Olivia was only going to be marginally better than sacking out on the floor. What Jessie would gain in physical comfort, she’d no doubt lose in mental tranquility, because Olivia had already told her she’d wait up so they could talk.

  Great.

  So now Jessie was wiping the kitchen down for the third time, hoping if she stayed in the lodge long enough, Olivia would fall asleep. She’d just hung the cloth over the edge of the sink when footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  Part of her hoped it was Finn, so she could sit his ass down and talk to him, but the other part hoped it wasn’t, because even though she’d spent the whole day trying to get past it, she couldn’t. After everything they’d told each other, and everything they’d been to each other, he didn’t even give her a chance to explain. Instead, he immediately jumped to the idea that she was about to gut him like his mother did.

  She still saw red every time she remembered that look on his face and heard that raw scrape of his voice again. Hells to the no on that one, she wasn’t pulling a Maggie, and the fact he’d even think it was enough to make Jessie want to punch him—and she’d never wanted to strike another human being in her whole life.

  The footsteps got closer, then there was a thud, a stumble, and a harsh grumble.

  “Fuck me.”

  Ronan hobbled into the kitchen a second later, still grumbling, dressed in baggy blue sweatpants and a plain white T-shirt.

  “D’you fall up the stairs again?” she asked, feeling the first genuine smile of the day.