Ten Good Reasons

by Lauren Christopher

  “What’s going on, kids?” J.P. asked.

  “Mr. Stevens, there’s a caught whale,” Lia said. “Valentine’s baby. We’re going to take a couple of minutes to radio it in.”

  “I have a plane to catch.”

  “I know. We’ll be just a minute,” Lia said.

  She pushed past both of them to her microphone.

  Kyle came bounding back up from the pod and then took the bridge steps two at a time to report back to Evan.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Lia said into the microphone, “we seem to have come across a baby whale in distress. We think it’s the calf of Valentine, who we found, unfortunately dead, the other day, after being trapped in netting. We’re stopping for a moment to radio in the details about this baby calf and make sure she can be saved.”

  Many of the guests had drifted toward the starboard side to see, and were leaning over the rails in their Yves Saint Laurent clothes, holding their champagne glasses so they wouldn’t spill. The sky grew darker. Waves rose higher and pitched against the side of the boat. The guests clutched the sides but refused to move away.

  “We need to get back,” Elle kept repeating. One or two other guests nodded their agreement, but the couples from the VIP event crowded her back and leaned toward the whale with concern.

  “Lia, we have to get back,” Elle’s voice rose. “What kind of idiots have you found here to run—”

  Lia clicked the microphone off in a panic.

  “Just a minute, Elle!” she whispered. “It’ll only be a minute.”

  “But J.P. has a plane to catch! And I . . . oh, God, I don’t feel well.” She gripped the rail by the bridge steps and leaned her head against it.

  “Maybe you should sit down.”

  “I don’t want to sit down. I want you to turn this boat back! Why can’t you get anything right?” she screeched. A few of the passengers turned to stare. “You said your little Sandy Cove friend Drew could handle this with his boat, but obviously he doesn’t know what he’s doing.” Her voice made an upward pitch at the end of every sentence and seemed to match the roll of the boat. Her face continued to take on a ruddy coloring as she gripped the stair rail with both hands. “And if I can’t count on you for anything, then how am I going to send you to Paris?” Another stifled scream.

  “What’s going on?” Evan came down from the bridge.

  Elle glanced up at him. His face was set in stone as he surveyed the situation.

  “Are you the captain?” Elle asked.

  “I am.”

  “My employee here does not know what she’s doing, and she—”

  “I think your employee is doing fine.”

  “Evan, let me handle this,” Lia said, putting up her hand. “Elle, let’s go sit down.” Lia gripped Elle’s arm and tried to shuffle her to the side.

  “I don’t want to sit down,” Elle said. “I want to—”

  The boat pitched, and Elle let out a scream, bouncing away from the rail and gripping the cabin wall. Lia lunged for her at the same time Evan did. He flew down the last four steps and found her elbow first.

  “Evan, I’ve got her. Let me handle this,” Lia said sternly.

  “Don’t you want to steer the boat?” Elle screeched.

  “You must be Elle,” he said.

  “Evan, I’ll handle it.” Lia pushed him back up. “Elle, do you want to come inside?”

  “I do, but I feel so . . .” Her fingertips tried to grip the fiberglass wall. When the next wave of nausea seemed to pass, she recomposed her features and glanced at Evan. “My employee here is failing to tell you, but we need to get back. J.P. Stevens is a very important man, and he has to—”

  “I know who J.P. Stevens is,” Evan said impatiently. “And we’re going to head back. And your employee is doing fine. She’s doing a great job, in fact, and—”

  “Evan!” Lia interrupted.

  He closed his mouth but continued to scowl.

  “Go do what you need to do.” She gave him a gentle shove. He was just going to make everything worse.

  He stared at both of them for another beat but finally launched back up to the bridge.

  Lia clicked the microphone back on. “Sometimes commercial fishing nets lift from the sea floor and accidentally trap animals they aren’t intended to trap: sharks, sea lions, and other marine mammals,” she explained to the guests. “Sometimes they entangle whales, and prevent the whales from diving properly or coming up for air.”

  “Why is she making that noise?” an elderly gentleman shouted back to Lia.

  “She’s trying to breathe,” Lia said into the microphone.

  The crowd offered a collective gasp and pushed closer.

  “Five degrees starboard!” Drew yelled up toward Evan.

  The boat puttered to the right, though Evan kept the motor to a minimum.

  Kyle careened down the stairs, toward Drew, and Lia strained to see over the heads of the passengers. She could see Douglas and Kyle both leaning way over the edge, Drew holding on to Douglas’s shirt. Her heart throbbed into her throat.

  “Lia, get control of this situation!” the Vampiress whispered harshly.

  Lia dropped the microphone and climbed the stairs to Evan.

  He was standing near the bridge rail, leaning slightly so he could see Drew’s hand gestures.

  “Did you radio it in? What did they say?” Lia asked.

  “They said they’d be here in an hour. Not sure she’ll make it. Kyle said both her pectorals are bound, as well as her tail—possibly two different nets. Can you tell the passengers to step back a little?”

  Lia scrambled for the upstairs microphone as the clouds ahead blackened. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you could please step back a little, it’ll give our captain and deckhand a chance to assess the situation. We’ve radioed this in, and another boat will be here in an hour.”

  “She won’t make it!” yelled someone from below.

  Evan glanced at Lia and nodded as they heard the whale make the screaming noise.

  “Captain!” the same voice yelled from below.

  Evan leaned over the edge of the bridge.

  “We can help! I’m ex-Navy, and my buddy here is ex–Coast Guard, and we’ve done this before.”

  Kyle moved out from the crowd at the front of the boat. “That’s right! Ed, Manny—come here and lend me a hand!”

  “Kyle, get out of there!” J.P. said, stepping forward.

  “Dad, we’ve got this. Just let everyone work.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

  “These guys do. I’m helping.”

  “You’re going to get hurt, son. Move back!”

  “Dad, relax.”

  The first raindrops began to fall as the ex-Navy Ed stepped between Kyle and his dad. “J.P., you’re not going to let this poor whale suffer, are you?” Ed clapped him on the back. “If you’re going to run for senator, you don’t want news like that out. Kyle, help out the deckhand there.”

  Kyle turned back toward Douglas and watched as Doug grasped a handful of red netting and began to pull it toward him. The rain came down harder, and some of the passengers went into the cabin, trying to squeeze themselves in. But many of the elderly men from the VIP event stayed out, all looking like former marines, not even caring now if the rain was soaking their cabana shirts. They helped Drew and Evan keep the boat in place by shouting positions up to the bridge. Douglas, Kyle, Ed, and Manny managed to get a small buoy attached to the whale in case they lost her again, then they used Evan’s curved knife and another one they found in the emergency kit, leaning forward and cutting at the netting that circled the whale’s bumpy gray body. The whale was staying at the surface and still making that terrible screaming noise through her blowhole.

  “Can you hold this?” Evan asked Lia, pointing to the w
heel. He looked longingly toward the rescue.

  “What? No! I can’t navigate a boat!”

  “I’ve switched off the motor. You just have to hold her steady with the wheel.”

  “Okay.” Lia shoved a wet wisp of hair out of her face and pushed the rain out of her eyes. “Okay, just come back up here if you feel we’re drifting too—”

  He was halfway down the stairs before she could even finish her sentence.

  Twenty minutes later, Evan and Kyle—both with wet hair swinging across their faces and their shirts plastered to their bodies—had the whale’s first pectoral fin freed, as it slapped happily into the air. Douglas came up and sat with Lia to make sure the boat didn’t turn, and asked if she wanted to go inside where it was dry, but she didn’t. She wanted to watch the rescue. She wanted to watch Evan, and watch the joy and relief on his face as he freed this baby.

  When the second pectoral fin came loose, Evan and Kyle high-fived, rainwater splashing everywhere, and the whale dove. She came back up, though, right beside the boat, as if she knew what was happening and wanted more help. The guys leaned forward again and hauled up as much netting from the back of her as they could.

  “I think it’s just her tail left,” Evan shouted.

  “Looks like both flukes,” Drew agreed.

  Ed and Manny pulled the netting up while Kyle and Evan used the knives. The tail was so powerful, Douglas pointed out, they had to be careful the whale didn’t slap it and pull them all in, but they systematically cut and pulled, cut and pulled, under Evan’s direction, and finally—after many shouts and screamed directions later—they all yelled and threw their hands in the air as the last of the netting seemed to come free. Lia could even hear the shouts from inside the cabin below, and knew all the society ladies must be watching through the portholes.

  The guys hauled the last of the nylon netting aboard while the freed whale dove down, leaving the surface strangely still.

  All the passengers seemed to hold their breath, peering over the side of the boat, waiting to see what she’d do. . . .

  The water was still and black. . . .

  Finally, about fifty yards out, she breached. Her body rose into the air, spun around, and slapped the water as she dove back down.

  The entire boat let out a cheer.

  The whale breached about forty times, getting farther and farther out, slapping her pectorals against the ocean water, slapping her tail. When her tail came up out of the water, they could see she had the same marking as her mother—another heart shape, outlined in white. Every time she breached, the entire boat yelled again, toasting one another with their champagne glasses, slapping one another’s rain-soaked backs.

  The baby whale was clearly thankful, clearly full of joy, clearly free.

  And, as Lia looked at Evan through misty eyes, high-fiving Kyle and Drew, she knew someone else was, too.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-six

  The ride back to the marina was wet but wonderful.

  Evan navigated, his polo shirt drenched against his chest. He caught Lia’s eye while he was talking to Ed Harper up on the bridge, and threw her a smile she hadn’t seen on him yet—one of peace. Lia couldn’t help but grin back.

  All the men kept clapping one another on the back, cheering for the baby whale they were now calling “Valentine II,” while the women joined them with clinks of their champagne flutes. Lia mingled with the crowd downstairs, some venturing out to the wet deck. They had taken on a feeling that they’d all gone through something together, and spoke in voices too loud with emotion, hugging one another, hugging Cora, and holding their glasses out for more champagne.

  Drew sat at the front of the boat, talking excitedly to Kyle. They waved their hands in the air as if they were drawing large arcs, and Lia had the feeling they were also drawing large plans. She hadn’t seen Drew smile that much in ages. Kyle motioned his father over and introduced him to Drew, and somehow Drew’s smile got even larger.

  Only the Vampiress looked uncertain: Her faux fur was matted from the rain, looking like she had a weasel around her neck, and her bob had lost its aura of control, wisps of wet black strands sticking out all over. She finally sprang loose out of the cabin.

  “Lia!” she hissed, grabbing Lia’s arm. “Is this a disaster? Or a boon?”

  Lia glanced again at the cabin filled with champagne toasts and damp hugs. “It’s not a disaster, Elle.”

  Elle looked around uncertainly but finally gave a hesitant nod. “J.P. seems happy.”

  Lia scanned the crowd herself. “Janice Peterson is toasting with Carmen DeLeon. Haven’t they been chairperson rivals for eight years?”

  The Vampiress gave a rare laugh. “They have.”

  “I think everyone had a good time. People feel like they made a difference today. And did it together.”

  Elle nodded, then turned toward Lia and looked her up and down.

  “You ready to talk about Paris?”

  Lia thought her jaw was going to hit the deck. “What?”

  “Paris. You still want to go, right?”

  For some reason, a flash of Evan went through Lia’s mind—Evan lying on the sheets this morning, his hair tousled, running his finger along her shoulder. Lia blinked the image away. What was that doing there? Evan had nothing to do with Paris. Evan had no business whatsoever being in her future flashes. She shoved him away—more forcefully this time—and replaced him with her old, familiar images of the future she’d always dreamed of: success in Paris, working, looking out her window at the Eiffel Tower, being her own woman. . . .

  “I do,” she said, trying to keep her voice in a pitch that sounded professional rather than like a young girl who just got a pony for Christmas.

  “Let’s talk. We’ll go over specifics.” Elle gazed around languidly, lifting her eyelashes with some degree of interest toward the other guests. As if she were discussing the weather. As if she weren’t just changing Lia’s life.

  Lia nodded, trying to breathe.

  * * *

  Evan shook hands with Ed Harper and nodded good-bye as he left the bridge. Ed had just offered him a job, which he politely turned down. But as he watched Ed walk away, he started to wonder why he’d said no.

  He’d never thought about staying anywhere permanently in the last two years, but Sandy Cove was starting to grow on him. He’d never thought he’d say that. People had grown annoying and wearisome to him in the years since Renece’s and Luke’s deaths, and connecting had seemed pointless. Why connect when people just let you down? Or betrayed you? Or abandoned you? Or died?

  But these charter guests had proven to be okay. And Kyle had turned out to be okay. And Drew was coming around. And Evan respected Douglas and Cora. And Joe the Mechanic was doing a great job, and his son was all right.

  And then Evan scanned the crowd for his favorite Sandy Cove resident of all. . . .

  He saw her from the back, shaking hands with a few of the guests, her rain-dampened ponytail over her shoulder, a drenched sweater giving testament to what a trouper she was.

  And she’d been something else these last couple of nights. He’d never had so much fun—in bed or out of it. She was nothing like Renece, but that’s part of what he loved about her. Or part of what he liked about her. Or loved. Whatever . . .

  He rubbed his hand over his neck and watched her again.

  Where had that word come from?

  He’d thought he’d never love anyone after Renece. He’d assigned himself the penance of never loving again. He’d had his chance. He’d let her die. And now he needed to roam the Earth, knowing he’d let his wife and son down, and wait for his turn to die, too.

  But something was definitely happening with Lia. His heart was cracking, opening up, letting her in. She made him laugh. She made him worry. She made him angry sometimes, and made him nervous. She made him fe
el protective again, and made him hard. She made him smile. She just made him feel. . . .

  He wanted to tell her, but he was afraid to put himself out there again. She wouldn’t feel the same way. She was attracted to men like Forrest. Men like Kyle, or J.P. Stevens. Men who fit in with her definition of “success.” He got that. And he could never give her that.

  So maybe he should just keep his mouth shut. . . .

  He descended from the bridge, standing near the base of the steps to wait for all the guests to disembark.

  “Evan!”

  His body went on full alert at her voice. Just as he sensed, she was bounding right toward him. He opened his arms just in time to catch her. And, as soon as he wrapped her toward him, the feeling of rightness overwhelmed him.

  He resisted the urge-to-kiss-her part, since Drew was still around, and looked into her face instead. “What is it?” A feeling of tenderness warmed him—coiling through his chest, his lungs, his heart.

  “Evan, you’ll never guess what! Kyle offered to invest in Drew’s boat!” Her eyes were wide with joy.

  “That’s great.”

  “We’re going to go out and celebrate tonight—you must come!”

  While Evan would have said no without a thought just a week ago, it sounded kind of nice all of a sudden. . . . “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. You must come. Drew said so. Did he tell you he got his captain for tomorrow?”

  “Yes, he mentioned that.” Another tug pulled at Evan’s chest.

  “So tonight we’ll celebrate. Doug will be there, Cora—we’re all going. You can meet our other friends, Xavier and Fin and my sister Giselle. Please come! And there’s more good news: Elle wants to talk to me about Paris!”

  Evan looked up sharply. “Paris?”

  “The promotion I wanted—remember?”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s all I ever wanted.”

  “Is that right?”

  “So will you come out with us?”

  Suddenly the urge to go out with everyone—to talk, to laugh, to connect—slid right out of his veins. “That’s okay, Cinderella. I’m pretty beat.”