“Don’t.”
“Too late.” She sighed and, picturing the way she curled those full lips up to her pert little nose any time she was exasperated, he grinned again. “I assume you’re calling to tell me that you won’t be coming for Thanksgiving or Christmas again this year,” she said next. She’d texted him the week before about the holidays.
“Wrong.” He might need to take her up on the invitation. Though why he would after years of saying no, he couldn’t fathom. “I’m calling to find out if that man of yours has an extra connector rod around his shop.” He named the specifics for his thirty-year-old engine.
Sara’s husband—a colonel in the air force who, as a hobby, rebuilt and refurbished old engines—was known to enthusiasts all over the country and made a mint dealing parts.
“A little too much torque in your wrench, sailor?”
“Put Jeff on, would you?”
“He’s out with Lily, teaching her to fly his new helicopter.”
Chris’s foot dropped from the rail to the deck of the boat. “She’s only four,” he said. “You really think that’s a good idea?”
“It’s a remote-control toy I bought him for his birthday.” Sara chuckled. “Listen to you, Chris, sounding all protective and unclelike.”
“She’s the only kid left in my family,” he said. And not technically even that. He wasn’t Lily’s uncle by blood or marriage. Just by insistence from her parents, who considered themselves his family.
“Have Jeff call when he gets in, will you?” he said, frowning at the lights of a couple of boats bobbing out on the dusky horizon. He resented them. Because he wasn’t out there with them.
“Of course. And don’t worry, Chris, if he doesn’t have the part, he’ll find it and overnight it to you.”
He was counting on it. He got ready to hang up. And then, watching those boats, he blurted, “I’m thinking of selling the house.”
“What?” Another squeal he didn’t need. “You were born in that house,” she said. “Your father was born in that house. It’s the most prime real estate in Comfort Cove.”
His house was prime real estate by default, not by money. The place was one of the original buildings in the area, built before Comfort Cove was even a village. And when ordinances had been passed to prevent erosion of the coast, forbidding the construction of any buildings within two acres of the ocean, his family home had been grandfathered in. It sat alone, at the top of the cliff that signified to boaters that they were reaching Comfort Cove.
“What do I need a three-bedroom house for? I’m hardly there.”
“It’s your home, Chris. You are absolutely not going to sell it.”
He watched the lights on the ocean.
“I could use the money to buy a new engine for the Son Catcher, a cabin cruiser to live on, pay off my truck and have enough left over for a comfortable savings account.”
“Live full-time on the ocean? Over my dead body, Christopher Talbot. You already give enough of yourself to the bitch that stole you from me. You will not sell that glorious house and let her take the rest of you.”
He considered what she said.
The house might be too much for him, yet those walls, the memories and voices they held, were all the family he had left.
Or would ever have.
But thinking about getting out sure beat sitting in the dark listening to the silence his folks had left behind.
CHAPTER TWELVE
EMMA HAD DINNER with her mother three times the week following her return visit to Citadel’s, and while they talked openly about Rob’s exodus from her life, Emma didn’t mention Cal’s impending visit.
Emma mentioned Chris, the fisherman, to no one.
She bought fabric for a floral quilt in bright colors for her bed and, as an afterthought, added fabric for matching pillow shams. She’d never made them before, but she’d started a wall hanging that was shaping up nicely. She was brightening her home, if not her life.
Rob called daily until she was tempted to block his number, but didn’t, as she didn’t want to suffer the backlash. And when his emails started showing up in her in-box, she read the first one to make sure he didn’t have a legitimate reason for contacting her, and then deleted the rest without reading them.
On Saturday night, Cal sent her his flight itinerary. He’d be arriving Monday just after four. She was picking him up straight from school. They were going to have dinner with Detective Miller and then he’d catch the red-eye back. He’d booked a changeable flight and could afford to stay longer if Emma needed him. Emma couldn’t sit still, thinking about seeing him again after so many years. For so long she’d clung to the memory of him, of her big brother, drawing strength from the past. Would having him in her life in the flesh be as good as the memory? Or would she find that she’d clung to something that wasn’t really there?
Would he be disappointed in her? A woman who’d spent her entire life playing it safe, because of the danger inherent in taking risks?
On Sunday, she paid her bills. Made out her grocery list, shopped and put away the week’s supplies. She ate a healthy lunch. Walked on the treadmill in her spare bedroom—purchased because it wasn’t safe for a woman to walk in the park alone—and then, after sewing for a bit, tried to read.
Camilla pulled the knife from her sock.
Words bounced on the page, morphing into an image of Chris’s face. Of Cal as a boy. Of Claire. Chris’s face. Cal. Claire.
Cal and Claire she could understand. They mattered.
But why couldn’t she let go of Chris?
It was his eyes. When he looked at her it was as if he saw things inside her that no one else ever saw. She hadn’t shown them to him. He’d just seemed to know.
He was a man from the docks. She was imagining things.
Camilla pulled the knife from her sock.
Rose had warned her about fishermen. Rose had fallen for one once. Which was why Emma and Claire hadn’t had a father until Frank Whittier had come into their lives.
Their biological father had married Rose, but he’d cared more about the sea than he had about his family. And when he’d had a chance to apprentice in Alaska with the promise of owning his own boat, he’d left them.
Unfortunately for him, he’d taken up with another man’s woman shortly after arriving in Alaska. A man who hadn’t been so ready to give up his wife.
Camilla pulled the knife from her sock.
Everyone knew that fishermen were all alike. Rugged and coarse. They were drinking men who spent their days fighting waves that could kill them in an instant. Men who weren’t available when you needed them.
Stop it already.
Emma stared at the book she held—a lighthearted adventure novel she’d been looking forward to for months.
Camilla pulled the knife from her sock.
Who was Camilla?
She stared. White and black piano keys appeared in her mind’s eye. Strong fingers coaxed beautiful music from them. Just as they’d later played all over her body…
Chris’s fingers had been clean, manicured. Nothing like the dirty fisherman’s hands Rose had warned her about.
She’d had sex before. Why in the heck couldn’t she put that one night behind her? Why did every taste and smell from that night linger in the deepest recesses of her being?
Camilla pulled the knife from her sock.
Emma had no idea who Camilla was, why she had a knife in her
sock or even why she was wearing socks.
“I’m sorry,” she said aloud, offering her regrets to her favorite author as she put the book down on the table beside her.
The table with the drawer that held her journal.
Pulling the drawer open, she removed the leather-bound book and read the two lines she’d written.
1. I want to be loved by a man who loves me so much that that love changes him.
2. I want to be brave enough to live life to the fullest.
Emma put the journal away and stood up from the couch.
Clearly she’d made a huge mistake in going to Citadel’s the night she’d caught Rob with Tiffany. She’d entered a dangerous world and it was time to get herself out of it—for once and for all.
Grabbing her purse, she didn’t even look at herself in the mirror, let alone stop to put on makeup or fix her hair. In her blue cotton slacks, loose-fitting sleeveless blouse and expensive flip-flops, she was not dressed for the seamier side of town. But she was going there, anyway.
She was going to find Chris and quit romanticizing or fantasizing, or whatever the heck she was doing.
She’d made a mistake; she would learn from it. She was not going to let it trap her at home.
Someplace out there was a life with her name on it. Waiting for her.
She just had to be brave.
* * *
CHRIS WENT FISHING on Sunday, making it his fourteenth day in a row on the water pulling up double traps. Because it was Sunday, he was on Trick’s boat alone. Hired hands could afford to take an occasional day off.
And because his conversation with Sara the day before had coughed up more issues than he wanted to give time to, he was tired, too. But he brought in a better than average catch, sold the entire take to Manny, bedded Trick’s boat down for the night and still had several hours of daylight to give to the little engine that could.
Jeff was sending him the part he needed—it was due to arrive by special courier later that day. He was going to be ready to drop it into place the second it arrived. And if all went well, he’d be back on the Son Catcher later that week. He hoped to God that Trick was ready to get back to work, as well.
Not that he minded the extra work—or extra money—Trick’s absence brought him. What he minded was that one of the brotherhood was at odds with the ocean.
In the denim shorts and stained gray T-shirt he’d worn under his coveralls, he was up to his elbows in grease and stepping out of the galley when he saw her. He stepped back quickly—his ages-old deck shoes saving him from falling on his ass as he nearly missed the stair.
The string of curse words he softly emitted didn’t take the sting off the anxiety he felt.
At Citadel’s the night before, after he’d unloaded the owner’s order, he’d shared a beer with Cody. The bartender had been on break and asked to have a word with him.
The woman, Emma, had been in there looking for him the week before. Cody had said more than he would have except that he’d assumed she already knew what Chris did for a living, and he’d been meaning to apologize for the indiscretion. Bottom line was, she knew where to find him.
Cody had said something else, too. Emma had seemed uneasy. She’d ordered wine but hadn’t taken more than a few sips, at which time she’d switched to soda.
What woman spent hours at a bar on a Friday night drinking soda?
She hadn’t asked the right questions for a woman trying to check up on a guy she might want to make it with. Like did he meet women there often. Or did he have a special woman. No, she’d said she was there for the music.
Cody thought she’d been looking for Chris.
In his experience, a woman did that only if she wanted something from him.
But what could she possibly want from him? He hadn’t left anything behind in the hotel room, had he?
Maybe she was coming back for more. There was always that chance—which was a good reason for Chris to avoid her.
Standing below, sweating, listening for her approach, Chris swore again.
Three sips of wine, Cody had said. From a woman he’d known to consume many, many glasses.
And now she was here. At the docks. Looking for him.
As far as he knew, there was only one reason a woman quit drinking. And looked up a man with whom she’d recently had sex.
A long time ago, Sara had refused a glass of wine he’d poured her, the time she’d been afraid they’d made a baby. She’d also broken their engagement shortly after his horrified reaction to her news.
Just as soon as she’d started her period.
She hadn’t wanted to be married to a man who would willingly take on the dangers of the ocean even when he might leave behind a fatherless child. She hadn’t wanted to marry a man who found the thought of being the father of her child so distressing.
It had been the beginning of an end, and that refused glass of wine had started it all.
Could Emma be pregnant? His absolute worst nightmare. Something that scared him more than death.
Flashbacks from their night together haunted him. The long-legged part. The moments when he’d felt like he could fly without a plane—and the part where he’d used the same condom twice because he hadn’t taken it off before they started in again and he hadn’t had a second one to use.
He could not be a partner. He could not be a husband. And he most definitely could not be a father.
* * *
“CAN I HELP you?”
The man had a definite paunch, but otherwise looked exactly like the stereotypical fisherman her mother had described. Manny, his tag read. He looked old enough to have been around the summer Rose had hung out at the docks.
Whether Manny had known the boat hand who’d hired on with a local fisherman more than twenty-nine years ago, Emma didn’t know. And she didn’t care. She had no intention of speaking to the man about her father.
“I’m looking for Chris. Do you know which boat is his?”
“If you mean Chris Talbot, yeah, I know. What do you want with him?”
Talbot. Piano man had a last name.
Turning away from Manny, she caught a glimpse of movement down at the dock. On a boat. A figure appeared briefly. So briefly she almost missed it.
But she hadn’t missed the ragged, dirty clothes. The machine parts strewn around the boat.
And she hadn’t missed the face.
“Uh, nothing,” she said. “Sorry to bother you.” She backed down the sidewalk, away from the marina store, leaving Manny standing outside on the stoop, and headed to her car as rapidly as she could without breaking into a run.
Heart pounding, feeling sick to her stomach, she started the car and sped away.
The one time she tread dangerously, the one time, and she had to have sex with a fisherman?
Her mother would have a stroke if she knew.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHRIS WAS A MAN of honor. When a man’s life depended on an entity like the ocean, duplicity didn’t much pay. And when his sole companion was his conscience, the only way to keep the relationship stable was to get along with it.
Which was why he called in another favor. He had a couple of police-officer acquaintances who were lobster lovers. They’d been purchasing fresh catch directly from Chris for years. In exchange, they drove by to check on his house occasionally while he was out on the water.
On Monday, they did a little detective work for him. Manny’s
surveillance camera had recorded an image of Emma’s car in the lot. The license plate was clearly visible. By the time Chris finished work for the day, the woman who wouldn’t get out of his mind had a last name. Sanderson. And an address, too. She didn’t have a landline, only a cell phone, and it was unlisted. His law-enforcement friends drew the line at passing along what was, technically, privileged information.
Any private eye could have ferreted out the information they did turn over. Just not as quickly.
At that moment, Chris was all about getting it done. If he had a potentially life-altering problem, he needed to tend to it immediately.
* * *
CAL’S FLIGHT WAS late. Waiting inside the terminal, just beyond the secured arrival gate, Emma realized what it meant to shake in her shoes. She was a nervous wreck. How was she going to recognize him? She should have brought a sign, told him what color she’d be wearing. Something. She hadn’t thought of it. This was Cal. She’d once lived with him.
He wouldn’t know her, either.
And what if Detective Miller’s suspect was Claire’s abductor? What if this day became one of those days that forever altered her life?
She needed to know what had happened to her baby sister. Finding Claire had been her life’s purpose since the day she had gone missing. Emma needed closure. But to go to bed at night without hope of ever seeing Claire again? For so long that hope had been the source of her strength. She was Claire’s big sister. She had to hold on.
She had to believe.
And what about Rose? Could her mother survive without hope? Without purpose?
With a twinge of guilt, thinking of her mother’s reaction were she to know what Emma was doing right then, Emma peered through another throng of travelers exiting the gate.
She just had to spot a man standing around with no one to meet him.
She had to quit thinking about the old wooden box of ribbons in her bag. She was doing the right thing.
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