Off the Hook

by Laura Drewry

  Off the Hook is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Loveswept Ebook Original

  Copyright © 2016 by Laura Drewry

  Excerpt from Lured In copyright © 2016 by Laura Drewry

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  eBook ISBN 9781101886687

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Lured In by Laura Drewry. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  Cover design: Sarah Hansen

  Cover photograph: Studio Firma/Stocksy

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Laura Drewry

  About the Author

  The Editor’s Corner

  Excerpt from Lured In

  Chapter 1

  I’d walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.

  —Pete Rose

  For the umpteenth time since takeoff, Kate looked down at her shoes and sighed. All she would have needed was five minutes to wash off her makeup and change into something a little more appropriate, but no. Due to a hiccup in the boss’s schedule, they’d pulled her out of the late-afternoon reception two hours early and whisked her straight to the waiting seaplane so they could get her to the lodge in time for the Cessna to get back and pick up Paul.

  She couldn’t even reach her suitcase, because it had already been stowed.

  So there she sat, staring out the window and wondering what was the most ridiculous thing about her right then. Was it the tight red cocktail dress and six-inch platform heels that made her look like she’d just stepped off the set of Real Housewives of Vancouver? Or was it the fact that with less than twenty-four hours’ notice, she had willingly agreed to leave everything behind to go live and work at a fishing lodge, when the only thing she knew about fishing was that George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg had made that movie about it?

  And they’d both died in that movie. Great.

  Two strikes against her going in, but neither mattered right then. The only thing Kate cared about was making sure she proved herself on this project so Paul would have no choice but to let her run her own show.

  For the last eight years, the Foster Group had paid her to research potential investors, arrange receptions for those people, and then glad-hand and charm them into signing on to Paul’s next real estate venture.

  It wasn’t what she wanted to be doing, but, still, it wasn’t a bad gig for a high school dropout whose previous occupations included such glamorous highlights as cleaning woman, construction-site lackey, lumberyard gofer, and dog walker. She hadn’t had two cents to rub together back then and went home every night smelling like grease, dirt, or wet dog, and while she didn’t miss any of that, at least she hadn’t had to dress up and walk around in ankle-breakers while creepy old rich dudes made inappropriate suggestions, each of which she rebuffed with firm politeness.

  It wasn’t all bad, though, because her job for the Foster Group had afforded her the chance to get a degree in hotel management while she worked. For the last few years Paul had been promising to give her a boost in the company, to put her in charge of one of his smaller hotels, but so far Paul’s promises had been nothing but words.

  It was funny how things worked out, Kate mused. Paul’s go-to guy, Josh, was supposed to be the one going to the lodge, not her, but from the little Paul had said when he’d called last night, Josh’s fiancée had carried on as if he were going to the moon instead of on a quick hour flight up the coast in the Cessna. Needless to say, Kate jumped at the chance to fill in.

  She might not know diddly-squat about fishing, but she’d always been quick to pick up new things. She’d dig in and get her hands dirty on whatever jobs they had for her, especially when Paul started throwing around words like “promotion” and “general manager.”

  The previous owner of the lodge had closed its doors a few years back, but since his recent passing, the family was working to reopen it. According to Paul, who’d been friends with the owner, their intentions were good but, given what Paul knew about their financial situations, there was little hope they’d be able to reopen in time for the upcoming fishing season, never mind pay off the significant tax bill that had gone unpaid for years. From the sounds of it, they couldn’t even afford to hire workers, so in their desperation they’d been only too happy to jump at Paul’s offer.

  And to Paul’s credit, his offer really was nothing short of brilliant. Since he’d been such good friends with the previous owner, Paul offered to send Josh to help with repairs and what all. If the family still couldn’t make the July 1 tax deadline and chose to sell the property, they’d give Paul first refusal. He’d been looking at a few different fishing properties lately, so if it turned out these people didn’t have to sell, Paul would take his offer to the Hewetts’ place over on Langara, which was also for sale. Either way, Josh (or, rather, Kate now) would have hands-on experience and would be able to walk in and run either lodge with minimal hiccups.

  The only hiccup in the plan was that Paul didn’t want the Hewett place. He wanted the Buoys, and what Paul Foster wanted, Paul Foster generally got.

  “That’s it ahead there.” From behind the controls, Walt pointed out Kate’s side window toward a triangular-ish island in the distance. Technically, that long narrow strip of land connecting it to the mainland made it a peninsula, but it still looked like an island.

  Walt banked the plane a little to the right, then evened out and headed straight in.

  “Wait. What? No, that’s not—” Pushing her face closer to the window, Kate peered down, frantically searching the area for another building somewhere—anywhere—in the vicinity. Nothing. But that place there—that wasn’t the lodge she’d seen in the pictures. “That’s the Buoys?”

  Walt nodded. “Fished there once myself fifteen or twenty years ago. Had some young kid as a guide and damn was he good; think he was the owner’s son.”

  “Yeah, but—” With less than a day’s notice that she’d be filling in on this job, Kate hadn’t had time to do her own research on the lodge, but Paul had told her not to worry, that his secretary, Lorraine, had all the information Kate would need. And sure enough, when Kate got on the plane an hour earlier, the red Foster Group binder Lorraine had put together was right there on her seat.

  And Lorraine had proved time and again that she was nothing if not thorough.

  If it hadn’t made Kate queasy during the flight, she might have done more than flip past the first couple of pages, but instead she’d taken a quick look at the gorgeous glossy photos in the brochures at the front and closed the binder before her stomach revolted. Sure, she knew brochure pictures lied; the photos were always taken on the most perfect day of the year, the scenes always set just right, so she didn’t expect the actual lodge to look exactly li
ke the photos.

  But this…

  As they loomed closer, she had no choice but to look through the binder again, because those gorgeous glossy photos she’d seen the first time clearly weren’t taken at the Buoys.

  Apparently Lorraine had filled the front of the binder with specs and details on the other lodges—the ones with spas, the ones Paul wanted to steal ideas from—not the one he wanted to buy.

  Pictures and specs of the Buoys were tucked in the back of the binder, behind property assessments and the last three dismal financial statements, and it didn’t take a genius to see it was night-and-day different from the other lodges. No spa, no masseuse…Oh, for the love of God, was there even…whew…yes, there was indoor plumbing. Internet, too, but it was sketchy, and cell service was nonexistent.

  Good God, it sounded scarcely better than prison. Kate skimmed the text quickly as Walt nosed the plane down toward the water, each word making her wonder what she’d agreed to. There wasn’t a building on the property that didn’t need repair; apparently the dock also needed work, and of the three boats at the lodge, two of them hadn’t been serviced in over three years.

  The Buoys had been run by a James O’Donnell…

  O’Donnell? No, couldn’t be. Keep reading.

  …owned it thirty-plus years…shut down a few years back…taxes in arrears…recently deceased…yada yada yada…contacts at the Buoys were his son, Ronan, and someone named Jessie Todd.

  “O’Donnell.” It was a fairly common Irish name, and there were plenty of Irish people in this part of the country, weren’t there? Of course there were—hell, she even had a little Irish blood—and yet in all her life, she’d only ever actually met one other O’Donnell, and he’d flipped her whole life upside down. It was ten years back, and she hadn’t even known him a week, but those days had been…wow…right up until the morning she’d woken up to find herself alone in that Vegas motel room.

  Yup, in the huge pile of screwups that she’d built her life on back then, he’d been the bright shining star on top of the heap. He’d left her not only alone in that room but broke, too, having spent almost every penny she’d had, and unemployed, as well, because at some point during their last night together, when she’d obviously still been glowing in the aftermath of the best sex she’d ever had, she called her boss at the lumberyard back home and told him to shove his stupid job up his ass.

  Kate still cringed at the memory. Her language had been more than a little colorful during that phone call, but once she got home, she’d been too embarrassed to call back and apologize. Like every other job she’d had before it, her work at the lumberyard had been nothing more than a part-time minimum-wage soul-sucking crapfest, but at least it had been a job, which was more than she had when she woke up that morning alone.

  She’d managed to scrounge up enough change in her purse for bus fare to the airport, but when she’d arrived back in Vancouver, she had to beg another dollar off a perfect stranger to get transit home.

  Not exactly a shining moment in her life, but it wasn’t like there’d been many shiny moments before it, either.

  That whole trip had been a massive mistake. She hadn’t even wanted to go, but Laurel and Jeanette wouldn’t let up about it, so, being the sheep she was back then, she’d maxed out her credit cards, packed the nicest clothes she owned (which were all pretty sad), and honestly tried to enjoy herself.

  To make matters worse, the first night they arrived, Laurel’s fiancé was injured in a car accident, so she and Jeanette had immediately changed their tickets and flown home the next morning. Kate, of course, had booked her trip the cheapest way possible, which didn’t include travel insurance, meaning she couldn’t switch her ticket without paying a couple hundred bucks she didn’t have.

  So she’d stayed in Vegas for five of the most amazing days of her life, had bet everything on those five days and ended up losing spectacularly. But, as the saying went, what happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas, and that’s where she’d left her O’Donnell and all his cute blue-eyed, Kelly Clarkson–singing, hand-holding ways.

  Pushing the whole thing into the back corner of her mind, where it should have stayed in the first place, Kate stared down at the photos in the binder, then squinted out the window again as the plane skimmed down onto the water.

  Not only was the Buoys about half the size of the other lodge in the pictures, there were no grand marble pillars at the entrance nor was there a ten-man hot tub anywhere on that huge wraparound porch.

  The three-level timber-frame building was anything but fancy, but Kate had to admit there was something about the way it sat snuggled deep into the cove that made it look cozy, inviting. Sure, it clearly needed work, but a little elbow grease never killed anyone, right?

  She was no stranger to hard work, and even though she hadn’t really done it in a while, she was ready. And more to the point, she was ready for the rewards at the end of it. Hell, she could already see the name tag she’d wear on her shirt this time next year: KATE HADLEY, GENERAL MANAGER. And first thing she’d do when she scored that job was add a spa.

  “Hope you brought bear spray.” Walt cocked his brow as he turned the plane against the current and eased it toward the dock, where a woman in a black-and-gray wool sweater stood ready to tie up. “Are you okay to carry your bag up? Mr. Foster’s waiting on me.”

  “Of course,” Kate muttered.

  When Paul Foster was waiting for you, you didn’t dillydally, so she didn’t think twice when Walt left her to deplane on her own. She wouldn’t have worried about that normally, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that platform heels and snow-dusted docks did not a good pair make.

  Kate scooted her butt to the edge of the seat and cast another wary glance down. It had been a trick and a half getting into the plane in that dress and those shoes, and that was when she’d been dealing with a smooth, dry dock. Now…yeah, there was no way this was going to be pretty.

  Screw it.

  With a sigh, she tugged off both her shoes and climbed out in her bare feet, her shoes tucked under her arm. Curling her toes against the frosty wood, Kate tugged the collar of her thin raincoat a little higher and tried to steady herself with a slow breath. Walt had already relocked the cargo door and had set her suitcase down when the woman—who looked to be around Kate’s age—slowly reached out her hand.

  “Jessie Todd,” she said.

  “Kate Hadley. Nice to meet you.”

  “You’re early. We weren’t expecting you until later tonight.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.” With a quick jerk on the bag’s zipper, Kate pulled out her bright-yellow gum boots, which were clearly built more for style than function, unlike Jessie’s thick green boots, which were clearly not a fashion statement of any kind. Neither was her black toque, but Kate would bet everything she owned that Jessie’s ears were a hell of a lot warmer than hers just then.

  “There was a scheduling conflict with the Cessna, so…” Kate chuckled quietly as she waved her hand down the front of herself. “Clearly I wasn’t expecting to be here this early, either.”

  “No problem,” Jessie said. “It’s just that I would have had the dock cleared if I’d known you were coming early.”

  “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay, but…uh…should I be worried that your suitcase is full of cocktail dresses and heels? ’Cause we might have ourselves a problem if it is.”

  “Oh. Um…” Kate deadpanned until Jessie’s eyes started to widen, then Kate laughed. “Kidding. Don’t worry, I’m good.”

  “Take care.” With a quick nod, Walt hopped back into the small plane and fired it up, then waved his thanks when Jessie untied him and helped Kate push the plane away from the dock.

  The whine of the engine drowned out every other sound as the two of them turned and headed up the dock, Kate taking two steps for every one of Jessie’s.

  Damn dress.

  “Is everything all right with Josh?” Jessi
e asked. “Foster’s secretary didn’t say much when she called this morning.”

  “He’s fine, but he’s planning a wedding, and you know how that is.”

  “No,” Jessie laughed. “I don’t, but I’m guessing his fiancée wasn’t keen on him being out of town for any stretch of time.”

  “Does make it a little more difficult to do fittings and things like cake testing, especially since the wedding’s in a couple months.”

  “And you’re sure you’re up for this? It’s going to be long hours and the work isn’t very pretty.”

  “Ha!” Kate snorted. The small wheels on her suitcase were already caked in snow, forcing her to yank harder so she could keep up with Jessie. “Don’t let the outfit fool you; back in the day, I spent the better part of a year working for a cleaning company that specialized in hoard removal, so as long as I’m not doing that again, I’m good to go. Just let me get changed and you can put me straight to work.”

  Jessie’s eyes narrowed a little, but then she nodded slowly. “All right, then. Let’s get you settled. You’re welcome to stay in the lodge for now, but if you’re still here when the season starts, you’ll have to move out to one of the cabins in the back. They’re not much, but they’re warm and dry and they’re a little more private than the lodge, which is something you’ll learn to appreciate once this place starts filling up.”

  “Okay, sounds good.”

  Head down so she could pick out the less slippery spots on the dock, Kate didn’t look up until they were on solid ground, and by that time a man had started toward them from the main lodge. He was still a good couple of hundred meters away, but for a second there Kate thought he sort of looked like…No. It couldn’t be. Was probably nothing more than the power of suggestion because she’d just been thinking about him, albeit briefly.

  It had to be the son mentioned in the paperwork. Ronan? Wasn’t that his name?