by Jill Shalvis
“No idea,” he said. “But I’m going to find out.” He looked over at Michael, now huddled in the blankets that Cole had wrapped him in.
Tanner crouched beside him, ignoring the sharp protest from his bad leg. “What happened back there?”
Behind them, Cole was on the radio to Sam, head of operations. Sam wanted to know if they needed an ambulance waiting on shore. Cole looked to Tanner.
But Michael shook his head vehemently. “I don’t need medical attention. I need a lobotomy.”
No argument from Tanner. “Talk to me.”
“I had a bad dive in Mexico last year,” Michael said. “Gave me claustrophobia. I wanted to get past it.”
Over his head, Tanner met the cool gaze of Cole. If you didn’t know the guy, you’d never guess he was pissed off. But he was, and Tanner was right with him. Every single client of theirs was required to fill out multiple forms. One of the many questions was: Are you claustrophobic?
Clearly Michael had lied. Nothing to be done about it now. They were just lucky it’d turned out as well as it had.
Michael’s bride was smiling and taking pics as they got out of the water. “You weren’t down for long,” she said, clueless to what had gone on below. “You have fun?”
Michael slid his sheepish, apologetic gaze to Tanner. “Yes,” he said.
His bride beamed.
“How do you do it?” Michael asked Tanner quietly. “Always stay so calm?”
For one thing, scuba diving was as natural to him as breathing. So was swimming. For another, his life hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park. That he was now a one-third owner of a charter company consisting of a warehouse, yard, waterfront, dock, hut, and fifty-foot Wright Sport boat, where he was the resident scuba diving instructor and communications expert, was a piece of cake compared to where he’d been. “It’s my job,” he said.
“Your job gave you nuts of steel?”
“Actually,” Cole said helpfully, “his life’s given him nuts of steel.”
Michael looked like he thought this was really cool. And once upon a time, Tanner might’ve enjoyed being thought of that way. Back in high school, for instance, when he’d lived on adrenaline rushes.
He no longer thrived on being stupid. In fact, he’d made it a lifelong goal to never be stupid again.
An hour later he, Cole, and Sam were at the Love Shack, Lucky Harbor’s local bar and grill. They had a stack of hot wings and a pitcher of beer. As always, they all raised their glasses and clinked them together. “To Gil,” Sam said.
“To Gil,” Cole said.
“To Gil,” Tanner echoed, and felt the usual tug in his gut at the name.
Gil had been, and in many ways still was, the fourth musketeer of their tight-knit group. He’d been gone and buried for two years now, but that hadn’t erased the hole he’d left in Tanner’s heart. Losing Gil in the Gulf after a rig fire had changed Tanner’s life. Or maybe that had been because he’d nearly lost his own at the same time. At the reminder, he rubbed his leg, which was aching like a sonofabitch today.
Sam’s gaze slid to the movement.
“I’m fine,” Tanner said.
Sam and Cole exchanged annoying “right” glances.
“I am,” he said.
“Uh-huh.” Cole dove into the wings. “Saw Josh last week. He said you were overdue for an appointment.”
Probably true. But Dr. Josh Scott, an old friend and excellent physician, couldn’t fix his leg. All that could be done had been done. “Subject change.”
“Fine,” Cole said. “How was dinner with Troy last night?”
Troy was Tanner’s fifteen-year-old Mini-Me and until two weeks ago, he’d lived in Florida with Tanner’s ex, Elisa. “Good,” he said. “I think I actually got four whole sentences out of him this time.”
“Progress,” Cole said.
“He’s a teen,” Sam said. “Four sentences is a miracle.”
Plus it was a hell of a lot better than Tanner and Troy had managed in the past. He might not be Father of the Year but, unlike his own dad, who’d taken off when Tanner was five, he was trying.
“And it’s not like you were a joy at fifteen,” Cole reminded him.
Tanner eyed him over his beer. “What was wrong with me at fifteen?”
Cole laughed but when Tanner just looked at him, he turned it into a cough instead. “You were a real punk ass. Wild. Uncontrollable. Always looking for trouble.” He turned to Sam. “Right?”
Sam stuffed a fry into his mouth. Sam pleaded the fifth a lot.
“Whatever,” Cole said in disgust, and pointed a finger at each of them in turn. “You were both shitheads.”
“And yet you hung out with us,” Tanner said.
“Well, someone had to keep you two assholes in line. And you know how teenagers are,” he said to Tanner. “It’s just going to take you time to connect with him. Time and effort.”
Tanner was more than willing to put in the effort. In fact, he’d never tried harder at anything than he had at being a dad, but in truth there were times when it’d be easier to part the Red Sea. This parenting-a-teenager shit was not for the faint of heart.
“Heard he got fired from the pier,” Sam said. “Something about having a bad attitude with his boss at the arcade.”
“Yeah,” Tanner said, and shook his head. When he’d been fifteen, he’d gone to school, then football practice, and then he’d bagged at the grocery store for gas and car insurance money before finally going home to handle the house for his single mom. In comparison, his son’s life was a walk in the park. “That’s not why I’m pissed.”
“Is it because he was taken to the police station for filling the principal’s car full of packing peanuts?” Cole asked.
“I bet it was that he posted a pic of his handiwork on Facebook after,” Sam said.
“He says he didn’t do it, that someone hacked into his account and put up the pic to get him in trouble.” Tanner scrubbed a hand down his face. “But even if he did, Jesus. At least I was always smart enough not to document my own crimes.”
Sam shook his head. “Not always, you weren’t. Seventh grade, when you had a thing for the mayor’s daughter. You stole the town’s Christmas tree lights and used them to decorate her front yard, and then when everyone freaked out about the theft, you got caught in the act of trying to return the lights.”
Cole started laughing at the memory and spilled his own beer. Tanner supposed it was wrong of him to hope that he choked on it. “Okay, fine,” he said. “So the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“Maybe it’s karma,” Sam said. “You were wild and stupid and now he’s following in your footsteps.”
Sam was only kidding but the way Tanner saw it, Troy’s bad ’tude was all on him. He could remember all too well the inner fury of being a kid who’d been dumped by his dad. And no, Tanner hadn’t dumped Troy, but the kid didn’t see it that way.
Tanner had been a teenager himself when he’d found out he was going to be a father. As a seventeen-year-old with no means to support himself, much less the girl he’d slept with on the beach after a party one night, he’d done the best he could. This had involved marrying Elisa to give her and their baby his name, throwing away a lucrative football scholarship to ship off to the navy, and growing up pretty damn fast.
Elisa had dumped him shortly after Troy’s birth and moved with the baby to Florida to live with her grandparents, but Tanner had still done what he could, making sure that he’d provided for the both of them along with his mom.
When he and the guys had first come back to Lucky Harbor from the Gulf of Mexico, he’d asked Elisa for custody, or at least partial. She’d refused, and for the past two years Tanner had done the best he could from three thousand miles away, visiting Troy as often as possible, calling, emailing…
And then two weeks ago Elisa had changed her tune, showing up in town with Troy in tow, as well as Boyfriend Dan. Suddenly she’d been all about sharing custody of
their son.
No idiot, Tanner had jumped right on that, but there’d been problems he hadn’t foreseen. Such as Troy’s bad attitude, resentment, and basic hatred of all authority figures—of whom Tanner was apparently the king.
“If the kid’s anything like you,” Cole said, “and we all know he’s exactly like you, then keeping him busy is the key. He just lost a job. Why don’t we give him one?”
“I like it,” Sam said. “The boat needs a massive detailing, the dock needs a good bleaching, and the equipment needs its seasonal going-over—every single inch of every single piece of equipment with a fine-tooth comb.”
“And you trust a pissed-off-at-the-world fifteen-year-old to do all that?” Tanner asked in disbelief.
“It’s better than us doing it,” Sam said pragmatically. “He’s already grounded from anything except school, right? He probably thinks his life is over. You’d be doing him a favor, and you need that. You need him to owe you.”
“It’s a great idea,” Cole said.
Actually, Tanner couldn’t think of a worse idea. But his so-called friends just grinned at him. “Shit,” he said, and they out and out laughed at him. He pointed at Sam. “You’re next, you know. You’re getting married in a month. This kid thing is coming for you, and I can’t wait. I’m going to laugh my ass off.”
“That’s just mean, man,” Sam said.
“You’ll get the hang of daddy duty,” Cole told Tanner, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Sooner or later.”
God, he hoped so, but sooner would be better than later. The problem was, Tanner had undeniable survival skills, an arguable amount of life skills, and absolutely no known dad skills.
Chapter 4
Callie was woken before the crack of dawn by a call from a panicked bride who’d decided she wanted to elope instead of face her elaborate wedding in two days.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Lacey wailed. “All this crazy fuss. I just want to cancel.”
Callie had a lot of experience with these sorts of calls. But up until yesterday Lacey had been over-the-moon ecstatic about everything, down to the color of the nail polish she planned on using on her Yorkshire terrier. “What happened?” Callie asked, stumbling to her kitchen for coffee before remembering she no longer had a coffeemaker.
“It started last night,” Lacey said. “Joe said all I ever talk about is the wedding and he’s sick of it. Can you believe it? All this work I’ve done and he’s over it before it even happens!”
Callie opened her freezer and stared at the ice cream. No, she told herself firmly. You are not having ice cream for breakfast. “Sometimes grooms feel a little left out, that’s all,” she said. “You could involve him in some of the decisions that have to be made. Maybe he could help arrange the flowers at the reception site or—”
“He can’t be trusted with the flowers!” Lacey cried. “He thought we could do without flowers, said he didn’t see the big deal. And then he tried to tell me that the seating arrangements are all wrong, that his Uncle Bob can’t sit next to his Aunt Judy because they’ll kill each other. But now’s a fine time to tell me that! Do you know how difficult it is to work with tables that only seat six?”
Yes, Callie knew exactly. With a sigh, she shut the freezer. “I’ll rework the seating arrangement for you.”
“Great. But can you give my fiancé a personality transplant?” Lacey asked. “No? Then I want to elope! You’re my virtual wedding planner, can you help me elope or not?”
Callie drew a deep breath. “Yes. But I want you to do me one favor. Remember how Joe proposed? It was just as you’d asked him to do, in front of all your family and friends on the beach at sunset. He even got you the exact ring you wanted, the one with the bigger diamond that he couldn’t really afford.”
Lacey sighed dreamily. “Yes. He did do that for me.”
“He’d do anything for you,” Callie said. “And if he’s voicing his thoughts to you, you’re already ahead of the game in the marriage department. It means you’re communicating. All you have to do now is listen and hear him. He’s feeling left out, Lacey, that’s all. Find a way to let him help you.”
“You really think that’ll solve the problem?”
“Absolutely,” Callie said. “Talk to him. And if you still want to elope afterward, we’ll make that happen. Call me tonight.”
“Okay. Thanks, Callie. You’re like magic.”
Yes. She was. She was magic at creating the illusion that romance lasted forever in spite of the fact that the statistics were stacked against Lacey and Joe making it to their second wedding anniversary.
God, she really needed a new job. And possibly a new life.
She showered and pulled on another “work” outfit—a pretty blouse and blazer and…comfy sweatpants for a few Skype calls. An hour later her stomach was grumbling loud enough for her clients to hear. Her famously bad instincts warred with her desire to go back to the bakery to feed her newfound doughnut addiction.
And maybe also to see if Tanner was there again. A mistake waiting to happen, of course.
She’d had lunch yesterday with her grandma. She’d met the boyfriend candidate, who’d turned out to be Mr. Wykowski, an eighty-plus retired rocket scientist who resembled a pipe cleaner with eyes. A stooped pipe cleaner. But he was warm and kind and very patient. He had to be, to be thinking of dating her grandma.
Lucille had filled Callie in on the latest gossip in town as well as what she knew about Tanner. Finding out that he’d been in an oil rig fire and had nearly lost his life had made it difficult for her to breathe, but he was okay now. She’d seen this for herself. Yeah, he still obviously had trouble with his leg, but from what she understood, he was lucky to have the leg at all.
She couldn’t begin to imagine what he’d been through, but hearing about his bravery had only fueled her curiosity about him. Which meant that she couldn’t trust herself not to act like that pathetic little bookworm she’d once been.
In any case, she couldn’t go to the bakery. She had plans for breakfast with her two neighbors, Becca and Olivia. The three of them were becoming friends, and Callie was grateful to have them in this town that no longer felt like home.
When she’d grown up here, she hadn’t had a lot of friends. Her best friend from school, Hannah, had died of cancer five years ago. Her loss had made it easier to stay away.
She left her apartment and knocked on Olivia’s, right next door. Olivia stuck her head out wearing a man’s white button-down and what looked like absolutely nothing else.
“A new look?” Callie asked.
Olivia laughed and stroked a hand down her definite bedhead hair. “Yeah. Um, was everything okay last night? You slept good?”
Callie leaned against the wall. “You mean did I hear anything coming from your love nest after you stuffed something in the pipes?”
Olivia grimaced. “Socks. I used socks this time. Better than the rolls of toilet paper.”
“Worked like a charm,” Callie said. “Even more efficient than the insulation we don’t have.”
“Good.” Olivia gave a relieved smile. “Didn’t want a repeat of the other night. I’m still sorry about that, by the way.”
Unfortunately, the warehouse was so poorly constructed they could hear each other sneeze. And more. And in Olivia’s case there’d been a lot of that more lately, thanks to her new relationship with Cole, one of Tanner’s business partners.
“No worries,” Callie said. “I put on my headphones as a precautionary measure.”
Olivia groaned. “We’ve really got to get the landlord to put in some insulation. Listen, about breakfast…I’ve got a…thing.”
“Uh-huh,” Callie said on a laugh. “Let me guess. A six-foot, gorgeous, green-eyed thing that goes by the name of Cole?”
Olivia bit her lower lip. “He didn’t dock until three a.m. and we need a few more hours of shut-eye.”
“Go for it,” Callie said. “I’ll just get Becca. We’ll make
it a wedding planning breakfast.”
Becca was marrying Sam, Tanner’s other business partner, and Callie had promised to step in for this last month before the wedding and help however she could.
“You didn’t get her text?” Olivia asked.
“No, I—” Callie looked down at her phone. “Oh.” Indeed she’d missed a text from Becca:
The guys didn’t get in until 3 a.m. Sorry to bail on you, but I’m toast. I owe ya breakfast and I have a feeling Olivia does too.
Callie laughed. “Got it,” she told Olivia. “Go back to bed.”
“Thanks. Have a doughnut for me, will ya?” Olivia asked. “Try one of Leah’s old-fashioned chocolate glazes this time. You