Catch and Release

by Laura Drewry

  The only reason Hope hadn’t walked off the show right then and there—and she’d come pretty close to doing that—was that after everything she’d been through with the O’Donnells and getting Hooked to the place it was, she wasn’t about to let Luka or anyone else control that last episode. Hope owed it to them to make it the best she possibly could.

  Immediately after handing the flash drive to the Helijet pilot yesterday, Hope drove straight back to the studio and sat in front of her computer, taking in all the feedback as it came in. And, boy, did it come in. There were always a few naysayers, but Hope focused on the bulk of the responses, which were overwhelmingly positive.

  Viewers were touched by the honest emotion in the episode, by the vulnerability shown, and by the way the O’Donnells, Kate, and Jessie were somehow able to still show their guests an amazing time with all that going on in their lives. There was compassion for Maggie, offers of help to all of them, and even one message from a man who logged on to say that after watching the episode, he’d called the 1-800 number on the screen and was finally getting help for his own depression.

  Hope condensed all of it into one document and emailed it up to Jessie. When that was done, she typed up her resignation and left it on Luka’s desk.

  She loved her job, and she knew she was good at it, but there was no way in heaven or hell she was going to spend one more day working with someone who would even think to undermine her the way Luka had.

  And that was why she found herself on Sunday afternoon sitting on one of the lawn chairs she used as furniture in her apartment, thumbing through the classifieds. One ad blurred into the next, because Hope’s mind could focus on only one thing.

  And that was that the whole thing was bullshit.

  She hadn’t really done anything wrong, and she was tired of being blamed for it. So Ronan James O’Donnell could yell all he liked; he could even throw things or push her off the dock if he wanted to, she didn’t care. She was going to say her piece. And if she hurried, she could catch the charter flight with the rest of the guests going up this afternoon.

  She grabbed a couple of granola bars and her phone, dumped them into her bag, and wrenched her door open, only to run smack into—

  “Ronan?” Stumbling back, she lifted her bag and clutched it against her stomach. “What are you—I was just on my way out. I mean up. To you. To yell.”

  “Yeah?”

  Oh no, he wasn’t going to smile at her like that and expect her to fall into his arms like in some stupid chick flick, so she straightened her spine and glared at him with all the anger and hurt she’d been holding on to for the last two weeks.

  “Yeah.” Great job on the comeback, idiot.

  “Okay.” He crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “Have at it.”

  “What?”

  “You said you were going to yell at me, so yell. I’m pretty sure I deserve it.”

  “You’re damn right you deserve it, you arrogant asshole!” She shoved forward, jabbing her finger into his chest until he stumbled backward into the wall. “What the hell is wrong with you? I didn’t do a damn thing to you except make the stupid mistake of falling in love with you, and this is how you treat me? You’re right—you’re really not good at this shit, are you?”

  Hope heard a door open down the hallway, but she didn’t have to look to see who it was; she just held her hand out flat to stop the old woman in her tracks.

  “Mind your own business, Mrs. Burt.”

  “If you don’t want an audience, maybe you shouldn’t be yelling out in the corridor.” A second later the door clicked shut, and as much as Hope wanted to throw something at her neighbor’s door, she knew the old lady was right.

  “Go!” she said, pointing Ronan inside her apartment.

  He moved into the middle of the small living area and stood there, looking about as uncomfortable as he could be.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’m a total dick and I don’t deserve you.”

  “You’re damn right you don’t!” Oooh, she was mad; for the last two weeks she’d been a heartbroken, mixed-up ball of anger and fear, but now she was just pissed. And if he didn’t cough up a damn good reason soon…

  “I’m sorry.” His voice barely above a whisper, Ronan paled as he rubbed his hand over his mouth and tried again, his voice stronger this time but still a little unsure. “Fuck, Hope, I don’t know what…I’m…I’m so sorry. I saw Ma standing there, and then you…you looked so…and everything sort of collapsed in on me. I don’t know how else to explain it. I was—”

  He stopped, twisted his mouth, and looked away from her for a few seconds.

  “I was scared.”

  “Yeah?” Hope snapped. “Well, guess what, Ronan? So was I! For God’s sake, I can only imagine what that must have been like for you, seeing Maggie show up the way she did, but you blew me off like I was nothing, like everything we had together, everything we meant to each other, was nothing. Like it was shit.”

  She dropped her bag on the small coffee table and started rooting through it, until she found a package of tissues. Not that it much mattered, because by the time she got one out, her mascara was already running down her cheeks and her nose was nothing but a ball of snot.

  And she didn’t care one bit.

  “Hope.” He reached for her, but she jerked away and moved behind the patio lounger so at least there was something between them.

  “You didn’t even give me a chance to explain anything, Ronan. You just walled yourself up in that damn kitchen and then stuck your security guards at the door so I couldn’t get in.”

  “My what?”

  “Oh, don’t play stupid with me. Your brothers and Jessie might as well have barred the door, for God’s sake. Anytime they thought I was getting too close to their precious Ronan, they stormed in like it was the bloody Crusades, swords drawn, ready to slay the bitchy Hope if she got too close.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, looking honestly confused. “I never told them to keep you away from me, Hope. I mean, no, I wouldn’t have been very nice to you if you’d have talked to me then, but I never once told them to do anything.”

  “Well, they did.”

  “Okay.” He huffed out a loud breath and paced the six feet of empty space on his side of the couch. “You know what? I can’t…I can’t be mad at them for that, because they know what I’m like and they probably knew that if I talked to you before I got my shit together, I’d say things I’d never be able to take back.”

  “So you chose to not say anything. And you chose to not let me say anything.”

  He sucked his lips in behind his teeth and nodded.

  “What gives you that right? Just who the hell do you think you are?”

  “Hope, I—”

  “No, Ronan. You don’t get to make those decisions for me, not now, not ever. And if you think for one second I’m ever going to let you treat me like that again, you’re out of your goddamn mind.” The whole time she’d been yelling, she’d been pointing her finger at him, only this time it was wrapped in a dirty tissue. “I’m sorry for what you went through, I truly, truly am. And I’m sorry that it all got dumped in your lap the way it did, without any warning, but you’re not a kid anymore, Ronan, and it’s time you decided what it is you want.”

  He mumbled something, but she wasn’t done, so she just rolled over whatever it was he’d said.

  “If you want to keep living in fear, never trusting another human being, and expecting that everyone in the world is going to abandon you, then you need to walk out that door right now.” She pointed toward the door, never once letting her glare falter. “But if you’re going to stay with me, you need to trust me when I say that by God I love you and I’m not going anywhere. But know this: I’m not putting up with that kind of shit again. We’re either a team or we’re not, so you decide. Right now.”

  He’d started to smile as soon as she said she loved him, but he didn’t say anything. Instea
d, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small stack of…were those recipe cards? No, not recipe cards.

  “Flash cards?” she bellowed. “Are you freakin’ kidding me right now?”

  Ronan’s smile turned into something more like a grimace as he shrugged. “This chick once told me it was a legit way to communicate.”

  “Yeah, well, she was stupid.”

  “No, she wasn’t. She’s the smartest person I know.” He turned the first one around for her to see, and it almost did her in right there in the living room.

  In the center of the card was a horribly lopsided hand-drawn oval surrounded by different-colored equally lopsided flowers, and in the middle of the oval he’d simply written I love you.

  He dropped that one to the floor and showed her the second one, similar to the first except this one read I’m sorry. There must have been half a dozen or so of them, all flowery, all saying something different, from I can’t breathe without you to Please come back and Please forgive me. And then the last one had a single flower in the corner, and that was it.

  He let it fall to the floor with the rest and then lifted his hands in surrender.

  “I was a mess, Hope, and I took it out on you. I don’t have any good excuses for it and I can’t offer any kind of defense for it. All I can do is tell you that I was wrong, and I regret it more than you’ll ever know.” He looked away for a second, and when he turned back, he pressed his fist against his chest and choked as he tried to speak. “It’s like…there’s this huge fucking hole inside me that’s eating me up, and you’re the only one who can stop it. You’re the only one who can fill it, Hope. I…I…”

  He looked as if he were crumpling in on himself, something Hope recognized, because it was exactly how she’d been feeling for the last two weeks.

  “Oh, Ronan.” She rounded the lounger, took his face in her hands, and sighed. “I do love you.”

  His whole body heaved as he released a huge sigh.

  “I don’t know why,” she said, trying not to smile as she smoothed her thumb over his bottom lip. “Because you’re driving me crazy.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Finally a smile and a short shrug. “No, I’m not.”

  God, she’d missed that beautifully handsome face of his. And those eyes. And, yes, she’d especially missed his mouth, the way a single kiss from him could leave her stupid, as it was doing right now. Slow and gentle, lingering and teasing, he tugged her over to the footstool and pulled her down on his lap.

  “Tell me something,” she said, curling up against his chest.

  “Anything.”

  “What made you suddenly realize I wasn’t the horrible bitch you thought I was?”

  “Hey.” He tipped her face up to his and shook his head. “I never once thought you were a bitch.”

  His steady gaze and solemn look told her he wasn’t joking about that—not even a little bit.

  “Okay,” she said, squirming back down into the cradle of his arms. “What you made you suddenly realize I wasn’t the one who brought Maggie up?”

  “Well,” he said, “to start with, Liam and Finn must’ve told me a couple hundred times that you swore you didn’t know who she was, that you thought Peggy was just a long-lost relative.”

  “I did.”

  “I know. I mean, I didn’t then, but I do now, because I finally realized something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You say ‘we.’ Right from the very beginning, whenever you talked about the show or the production team, it was always ‘we,’ never ‘me’ or ‘I’ or ‘them,’ always ‘we.’ ”

  “Well, duh,” she scoffed. “A team consists of more than one person, so that would be a ‘we,’ but what the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “I just never thought about it before.” He threaded his fingers through hers and pressed a kiss against her knuckles. “So when you said, ‘We’ve got a lead on one for the finale,’ you didn’t really mean ‘we,’ as in you and everybody; you meant Luka.”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “So that’s what tripped me up.” He paused and snorted quietly. “Okay, there was a bunch of other shit, too, but I thought you meant you were in on it.”

  “I tried to tell you,” she said. “But you wouldn’t even look at me.”

  “I’m sorry.” He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, then tipped her face up again so he could kiss every inch of it, and between each one, he repeated his new mantra. “I’m sorry.”

  “Okay,” she laughed. “I get it.”

  He kissed her one more time, then tightened his arms around her. “Is there something you want to tell me about your job?”

  Hope snorted against his neck. “What job? I sort of quit.”

  “Yeah,” he drawled. “So we heard.”

  “What?” Hope sat straight up on his lap. “How did you hear already?”

  “Well, our good friend Luka called this morning to ask about the new contracts, and during that conversation—where there may or may not have been a few f-bombs dropped—she let it out that you’d quit. So…”

  “So what?” Hope asked. She wasn’t so sure she liked the sly look on his face.

  “You left copies of the contracts for us.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And one of them had the network guy’s card stapled to it—you know, that Edgar What’s-His-Name.”

  “Makepeace?”

  “Yeah, him. We called him.”

  “You called Edgar directly?”

  “Yeah.” Ronan shrugged dismissively, as if he called network executives all the time on their days off. “Anyway, we told him we’d sign on for another two seasons, but only if you’re the one running the show. If Luka so much as sends us an email or a text, the deal’s off.”

  Hope couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “But…but I quit.”

  “So un-quit. Edgar said he’d call you tomorrow to talk it over.” Ronan traced his finger down the side of her face and smiled slowly. “And just so there’s no misunderstanding, whatever you decide to do, I got your back, even if it means you go to Tuk. But if my opinion counts for anything, I’m voting for you to take your job back and come home.”

  “Home?” The word knotted in her throat until she barely managed to squeak it out.

  “To the Buoys.”

  “You want me to move up to the Buoys.”

  “Well…yeah,” he said, blushing a little. “JD misses you.”

  “Oh, does he, now?”

  “Well, maybe not him so much,” Ronan said, grinning. “But I do.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Fuck yeah,” he breathed. “So much.”

  “Me, too.” She smiled a kiss against his mouth, then froze there as questions started piling up faster than she could spit them out. “But what about work? I can’t not work all winter. I’ll need to find something, but then how am I going to get there? Flying in and out is expensive and boating is too slow, so do you think I should keep my apartment here until we figure it out or—”

  “Hope, sweetheart, you gotta stop, ’cause there’s only two things I can think about right now. Number one is you. I need to get you home, and I need to do that soon, because I can’t go another night without you in my bed.”

  “It was actually my bed,” she muttered, laughing when he growled at her. “But, okay, what’s number two?”

  Ronan’s eyes crinkled at the corners as his grin widened. “There’s going to be fifteen guests landing at the lodge in a couple hours, and they’re gonna be some pissed if they don’t get supper.”

  “Oh my God,” she cried, scrambling off his lap. “I wasn’t even thinking about that—you need to get back before Finn starts serving them all mac and cheese!”

  She grabbed his wrist and tugged him up, but instead of following her to the door, he stopped in the middle of her tiny, sparse living room and pulled her to him.
>
  “Ronan, you have to go or you’ll miss the charter taking the guests in.”

  Panic raced through Hope’s veins. If Ronan missed that flight, Finn really would feed the guests macaroni, and then…and then Hope forgot what she was worried about, because Ronan slid his fingers through her hair and tipped her face up to his. Her pulse thrummed in her veins as she fisted her hands around his T-shirt and held on.

  Ronan leaned closer, brushing his mouth against hers with the barest of touches, then breathed a soft kiss against her jaw.

  “Mmm,” she purred, tipping her head to the side so he’d kiss her neck and maybe flick his tongue against her earlobe just like…that. “Um…how many boxes of macaroni d’you think they have up there?”

  His lips curled into a smile against her neck. “Enough.”

  “Okay, good,” she laughed. “The bedroom’s down the hall.”

  Epilogue

  “Home is the nicest word there is.”

  Laura Ingalls, Little House on the Prairie

  Any thoughts Ronan had that they could all relax after the Buoys closed for the season were shot straight to hell when Jessie set her clipboard on the table.

  “So I started a list—” Whatever she said after that was drowned out by everyone else’s groans and heckles.

  “Okay, very funny,” she said when they’d all settled again. “But we need to prioritize and figure out who’s doing what; otherwise, we’re going to wake up next spring and be wondering why nothing’s done.”

  Ronan heaved out a sigh as he refilled everyone’s coffee. “She’s right.”

  “What?”

  “No!”

  “Don’t tell her that!”

  The only one who didn’t groan again was Finn, who just wrapped his arm around her and grinned.

  “Okay, so here’s what we have so far.” Jessie pulled the calendar off the fridge, set it next to the clipboard, and started penciling things in. “Liam and Kate are heading to Oakland this week here, Finn and I are going to spend these days with my folks, and Maggie’ll be here for Thanksgiving weekend.”