by Emily Bishop
Drew shook his head solemnly. “We need to get your life in order before we can even think about focusing on work.”
“Spoken like a model employee,” I said, grinning.
“I am a model employee, thank you very much. I’ll have you know I was Mystic Hardware’s employee of the month, every month, until I got you a job here.”
I laughed. “Until I started, you were the only employee here, besides the owner.”
“Still counts,” he said, grinning.
“Whatever. Can you just hand me some more paint so I can finish and get off this damn ladder?”
“Absolutely,” he said enthusiastically. “Right after my break.”
Drew strolled out the side door, already tapping away at his phone again. I couldn’t help but laugh as I climbed down the stepladder. Drew could be a little frustrating, but he was impossible to stay mad at.
Our fathers had been best friends when they were in high school, and we carried on the tradition. He was like a brother to me in every way that counted, shared gene pool aside. Drew and I were living proof that men and women could be friends without any romantic feelings whatsoever from either side.
Plus, he’d gotten me this job, which I loved. Despite the store’s name, Mystic Hardware didn’t sell wizarding supplies. Regardless, it still had a certain magic to it. I remembered coming in here with my father when I was a little girl, and I was amazed how little had changed since then.
The store had a creaking wooden floor. Dusty rays of sunshine shone lazily over the aisles stocked with tightly packed bags of soil, stacks of lumber, and everything in between.
The place smelled like an assortment of old spills, like somebody had kicked a can of paint thinner over in aisle four back in the eighties, and the faintly toxic aroma never quite left the air. It combined with the scent of metal nail dust, shiny tools, and plastic snow shovels.
The bell jingled over the door, signaling the arrival of a customer. I smoothed my apron and stepped to the front with a bright smile fixed on my face.
I froze, transfixed, rooted to the spot. One thing was certain: he was not from Mystic.
Okay, so maybe two things were certain: he wasn’t from Mystic, and he was freaking hot. Like the scorching kind of hot that sends your heart racing, making your mouth dry and other parts of your anatomy wet.
The sun caught his deep chestnut hair, revealing a slightly red tinge to it. It was cut shorter on the sides than the top and fell just so over his right eye. He had the most brilliant emerald-colored eyes I’d ever seen. They burned with a rare intensity and radiated with power, the likes of which we didn’t often get to see in Mystic.
He moved with confident, long-legged strides that ate up the distance between us in no time. The Henley shirt he wore hugged a figure that betrayed many hours dedicated to maintaining it and that deserved to be worshiped.
I was overcome with the urge to do just that when he came to a stop, so close to me that I caught a whiff of his clean, masculine scent. It was divine.
He cleared his throat, amusement glinting in his eyes.
Shit! He’d totally busted me staring at him like I wanted to eat him. Which I kind of did, but that was irrelevant. Embarrassment flooded over me. I was not the kind of girl who gets weak at the knees and falls all over every hot guy she comes into contact with. I had to redeem myself.
“Welcome to Mystic Hardware,” I said. “What can we help you with today?”
Whew. At least my voice sounded cool and professional.
“I’m building a boat. If you could point me in the right direction, I’d appreciate it.”
Holy orgasm, Batman! That voice sent a shudder through me. The man was built for sex, all the way down to his deliciously deep voice that rang with quiet authority.
I ordered my wildly beating heart to calm down and tried to ignore the ache rising between my legs. I really did need to get laid if my body was having this kind of a reaction to a customer asking me about boats.
“Sure, right this way,” I said, forcing my voice to sound calm as I led him toward the back of the store. “Are you interested in a kit? Sometimes, first-time builders find that easier.”
“It’s not my first time,” he said, smirking as he walked beside me. Suddenly, there was mischief in his eyes. “Far from it, I assure you.”
Was that a double entendre I heard? No. It couldn’t be. I had to get my mind out of the damn gutter when it came to this guy. The aisle seemed too narrow all of a sudden, forcing us closer together as we walked. Being that near to him didn’t help my uncontrollable thoughts.
I had to get my head in the game. “Okay, what design are you interested in?”
A sexy smile tugged at the edges of his mouth but he smoothed it out and was dead serious when he answered my question. “I’m suddenly thinking Nymph.”
Okay, it wasn’t just my sex-starved body causing my mind to play tricks on me. He was definitely flirting with me. Well, I could give as good as I got.
“I thought you said this wasn’t your first time?” I raised an eyebrow at him. The Nymph design was often favored by first-timers, even though it could take a while to complete.
“Oh, I don’t think a Nymph is really appropriate for a first time, even if many first-timers think they can handle one.” He smirked again.
“Many people would argue that a Nymph is perfect for your first time,” I countered.
“Maybe so,” he conceded. “But they would be wrong. A Nymph needs an experienced hand to be properly mastered.”
His words sent heat flashing through me, making me feel dizzy. I forced myself to keep it together and raised a manicured brow at him.
“And your hands are experienced?” I asked.
A low chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“Well, all right then. Here we are. If you’re so experienced, you won’t need my help in choosing your equipment.”
I pointed to the wall beside us at the back of the store. It held everything he needed. He carefully started looking over his options, picked up a thick tube of marine adhesive, and eyed the label.
I turned to head back to the paint section, and he grabbed my wrist gently. “But if you leave, whoever will argue that I’m choosing wrong?”
“You seem quite confident that you’re right… even when you really aren’t.” I smiled and glanced down at the glue he was holding.
He released my wrist. “Is that so?” he asked, a playful grin on his lips.
“It is. For example, that adhesive you just chose won’t be effective in the long run.”
Something flashed in his eyes. “I have used this glue for a long time, and all my boats are still perfectly fine. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”
I shrugged, not appreciating his dismissive comment. “If you say so. But can you tell me with absolute certainty that none of them are leaking like sieves when you get them wet?”
“Trust me, sweetheart. I know what I’m doing when it comes to getting them wet.”
I bristled at his words, partly from his dismissive tone and partly because of the dizzying wave of arousal they sent through me. I knew what I was talking about when it came to every piece of equipment that the store stocked, and I had grown up building boats with my dad at the marina.
Who the hell did he think he was, strolling into my store and telling me that I was wrong? And then trying to flirt with me as he did it?
Condescending much? Lucky for me, my father hadn’t raised a girl who would let any man talk down to her.
“See, I don’t think that you know what you’re doing,” I said. “That glue will dissolve in the elements in less than five years, which means that when your hull hits the water any time after that, it’ll leak like a rusty screen door.”
I abandoned the subtext and insinuations that had colored our conversation. I knew boats and I knew equipment, and I wasn’t going to let him brush that knowledge aside because he thought a girl co
uldn’t know that kind of stuff better than he did.
And he called me sweetheart. The nerve! I was nobody’s sweetheart.
Whoever he was, he had the good sense to look taken aback for a moment. He clenched his jaw and turned to face me directly. “No rusty screen doors to be found at any of my places, I assure you.”
Any of his places? So, he wasn’t from Mystic. I was right. People from my hometown were generally more laid back. This guy was polished and on edge. Even in his jeans and his Henley, he moved with the precision and lethal grace of a fighter pilot. There was nothing laid back about him.
“When was the last time you tested your hypothesis?” I challenged.
If he had been referring to his having a place in Mystic, it was unlikely that he’d been there for a long time, at least, not since I started working at the hardware store. I would’ve remembered him if he’d been in before.
It occurred to me that there were plenty of people in Mystic that I didn’t know. I also knew that Drew, or even the owner, might have assisted him if he had been in previously. But I wasn’t going to let those technicalities get in my way. The hardware store and everything it stocked was my turf. I was right about the glue, whether he was ready to face that fact or not.
“How long it’s been is irrelevant,” he shot back. “I only build things that last. It would take more than crappy glue to poke holes in anything that I’ve had a hand in.”
Wow. Shots fired. It seemed I’d struck a nerve. His beautiful face turned to stone. His eyes, so playful moments before, were now colder than ice. Like frozen pools reflecting the light of the forest surrounding it.
I shuddered unexpectedly at the change, but I wasn’t about to back down. “The elements don’t poke holes. It’s a subtler process of corrosion.”
“Subtlety isn’t my thing.” He fixed me with his intent gaze, rooting me to the spot once more. His stance was stubborn, legs spread wide and his muscled arms crossed over his chest.
Suddenly, the only two words left in my head were control and dominance. It had the strangest effect on my body. Alarm bells blared in my mind. Danger, Will Robinson. Danger!
“I can see that,” I breathed, forcing aside the images that my mind conjured up of what it would be like to have a man like that in my bed.
Not happening.
Some of the ice in his eyes melted at my words, but the tension and challenge was still there in his stance. In the set of his shoulders. In the square line formed by his jaw.
“Smart girl,” he said more quietly. Almost as if in contemplation.
“I am. Smart enough to ask you to leave. I think it might be best if you picked up your supplies elsewhere.” The store was my home turf. I would protect it, and my knowledge of its stock, with everything that I had.
Or maybe that was just a lame excuse. This man had me reeling. He made no secret that he wanted me. His confident swagger and suggestive comments were beyond inappropriate.
Even then, he wasn’t the first customer who’d ever hit on me. He was just the first one who made me want him back. He awoke a raw, instant desire in me, and it shook me to my core.
We locked eyes as the bell above the door jingled again. Drew came sauntering in, stopping when he noticed us locked in silent battle. The stranger gave a slight shake of his head, nodded once, and left.
“Who was that?” Drew asked, watching the guy’s back as he retreated toward the marina and down the bustling street.
“No idea,” I answered, trying to shake off the lingering feeling of his eyes on mine and his delicious scent hanging in the air.
Drew surveyed me carefully, his head tilted in curiosity. “He from around here?”
“Nope, don’t think so,” I replied softly, staring at the spot on the corner where he was waiting to cross the street.
“Yeah, I don’t think so either. Everything okay? You look kind of flustered.” Drew smirked.
He knew me way too well. I flipped him off and ignored his knowing smirk. We walked back to the paint aisle to finish up. But Drew wasn’t the one distracting me now. My thoughts were consumed by the mystery man.
As infuriating as the guy had been, there was something about him. Something that I couldn’t shake or, try as I might, forget.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. I stocked shelves, rang up customers, and talked with Drew but all of it felt like I was sleepwalking. Dirty thoughts kept flashing through my head every time I thought about the sexy stranger.
The daydream kept replaying in my mind until later on that night when I finally gave into the urge and discovered that the batteries of my vibrator had long since died.
Fuck my life.
Chapter Two
Shane
Despite getting kicked out of Mystic Hardware, I managed to gather up the materials to build my boat at another store. Now, I stood in the backyard of my father’s house, looking down at the unassembled pieces. It felt good to have a project to work on. Something not related to the oil rig accident.
The sun beat down on me, and I stripped my shirt off as I got to work. The breeze coming off the marina ruffled my hair and cooled my skin. The sparkling, endless ocean beckoned to me as it had since I was a child.
Living in Mystic had been a favorite part of my childhood, however brief our stay here had been. I loved the way our house sat right by the water. We had our own dock and boat house. Most of my days had been spent in and around the water to some degree. I think that was why I was so eager to work on this boat. It was a connection to a simpler, more carefree time.
I hadn’t been back to this house since we moved to Houston when I was six, but I’d always meant to. It was a shame it took a tragedy of this magnitude to get me back here. I pushed those grim thoughts away and started assembling the boat.
The parts began coming together. There was something soothing about the process. Bringing order to chaos. Taking something in pieces and making it whole. If only the other problems in my life were so easy to fix.
A few hours into the project, I headed into the house to grab a cold drink. My phone was charging in the kitchen. It vibrated angrily on the hard countertop every couple of seconds, alerting me to mentions of Perkins Enterprises in the news and on social media.
I sighed and clicked the phone on. Twitter was blowing up about the recent tragedy. A few people expressed their sympathies for those affected by the accident but the vast majority of the comments were negative.
The tweets featured sensationalist labels like #bloodforoil, direct outrage with #FuckPerkins, and my favorite, #ShamePerkins. Hah. “Shame” instead of Shane. Cruel… but admittedly clever.
In addition to all that, the world had noticed the fact that I’d taken a step back from the company while the investigation took place. I opened my email on the phone and saw several messages from my P.R. team.
They’d sent me some links to news stories about my departure. I emailed them back and instructed them to push back harder with the truth of the situation. I was stepping away to allow a full, transparent investigation, and I was conducting an investigation of my own in the meantime. I had taken time off from the day-to-day operations to investigate the supplier, the procurement process involved, and the incident itself.
Of course, there was only so much that I could do. My father had a huge office here in the house. He’d been fond of Mystic, and he spent a lot of time here when he could. He’d only stopped coming out here after he’d retired and married a much younger woman who found the place too “boring” for her tastes.
I knew that he had been paranoid about his record keeping for the last years of his reign of the company, and as such, he had had everything sent to Mystic for safekeeping. To somewhere only he had access to and kept locked up tighter than Fort Knox. Thankfully, I now had a key and access to the security system.
If there was any evidence for me to find, it would be here. But I couldn’t bring myself to go in there just yet. Poking through those old files felt too much
like digging up the past.
I wanted to figure out what happened, but I had plenty of time to look through everything. The EPA investigation would take two months, so that was how long I’d be staying in Mystic.
Two fucking months. There was only so much I could do remotely. Two months away from the office was going to feel like forever.
But it had been my plan to begin with, so I couldn’t bitch too much about it. Besides, I could use this time to build my boat, get out on the water, and do some fishing. Maybe being out here would do me some good.
I left my phone in the kitchen and went back outside with a cold beer. My barely-started boat sat on the lawn between me and the glimmering water. With some hard work, she’d be seaworthy and out on the water in no time.
I’d learned to build boats while we’d been living in Mystic, and it was a hobby that had stuck, regardless of how often we had moved.
The fact that some offshore girl thought she knew better than me just because she happened to work in a hardware store was laughable. I knew she had just been trying to be helpful, but boats were my thing. My favorite, and only, pastime.
I watched as a sea gull made a lazy circle overhead and settled on the mast of a sailing boat nearby.
I remembered naming the gulls as a child, remembered strolling around main street with my mother on Saturday mornings just like all the other families. I remembered wishing that we would stay there.
We didn’t, of course. It had been nothing but an idle childhood fantasy.
Perhaps if the girl in the hardware store knew who I was, she would have known better than to question me. Especially when it came to boats but about everything else as well, really. She definitely would have known better than to kick me out of her damn store if she knew that I was once Mystic royalty.
No one, and I mean no one, told me what to do. Or what not to do, for that matter. I couldn’t believe that that little scrap of a girl thought that she could. The cans of paint she’d been hauling around when I’d first arrived in the store looked like they weighed more than her.