Off the Hook

by Laura Drewry

  And yet…something in Kate’s brain twitched. Granted, she hadn’t spent more than a few days with her O’Donnell, and it had been ten years ago, but she didn’t remember him ever mentioning anything about his family owning a fishing lodge. Come to that, he hadn’t shared anything about his family other than the fact that he had a couple of brothers, one older, one younger. Pretty much all she’d known about him back then was that he was cute as hell, sweet and funny, he was a pitcher on the Detroit farm team with an intense determination to make it to the show, and hands down he was the best kisser she’d ever met.

  Truth was, she’d never met another guy who could cause such complete and total pandemonium inside her with the mere brush of his lips. Oh sweet Lord, those lips…

  Shake it off, Hadley; it’s been ten years.

  Sure, she might not have spoken to him since he’d left her in that motel room, but it was nearly impossible not to know what was going on with him once he made it to the show. On principle, of course, she’d refused to cheer for him when he pitched his first big-league game against the Diamondbacks, but she couldn’t help feeling a little bit bad for him when his team got swept in the World Series a few years back. It wasn’t just that they got swept: They lost the last game in extra innings at home, and if that didn’t suck enough, he’d spent the entire post-season on the DL and hadn’t thrown a single pitch.

  She couldn’t imagine how frustrating that must have been for him, and if she hadn’t still been forcing herself to hate him, she might have shed a tear or two for him. Maybe.

  If that actually was him heading toward them, this was going to get really interesting really fast, and while she probably should have been a little nervous, the whole thing made her want to laugh. Could her luck truly be that bad?

  As Jessie led her closer, Kate sneaked another peek, trying to keep her face hidden until she could get a better look at him, hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe…he had a twin?

  The idea hadn’t even settled in her brain when the first whistled notes of “Since U Been Gone” hit her ears. Really? All this time and he hadn’t switched loyalties to some other pop star—Taylor Swift, maybe?

  Shit. This wasn’t funny. So why couldn’t she stop snickering?

  After all these years of working her way up, both personally and professionally, of finally turning her life into something good—no, better than good—the gods were going to dig up the biggest mistake she’d ever made and dump it on her like this without any warning?

  What. The. Hell.

  The woman she’d worked so hard to become over the last decade knew that while she’d been epically stupid down in Vegas, so had he—the difference being she hadn’t been the one who’d taken off in the middle of the night, leaving nothing but a quickly scrawled note and a half-eaten bag of Doritos behind.

  Even so, the old Kate, the one who’d sat alone in that damn room for hours, wallowing in self-pity and kicking herself for continuing to do such stupid, asinine things—yeah, that Kate—suddenly surged forward, dragging every single one of her old insecurities along for the ride.

  No.

  She couldn’t afford to be that Kate anymore, especially now. She needed to be Strong Kate, Resourceful Kate, Get-the-Job-Done Kate. She’d worked her butt off to get where she was, and this lodge was going to be her pièce de résistance. She was going to get that general manager job, and she wasn’t about to let the best kisser in the world or anyone else screw it up for her.

  There was a teeny tiny possibility he wouldn’t remember her; after all, they’d only been together for those few days, and…well…he’d obviously been with other women since. But even before Jessie slowed to a stop, Kate knew that was ridiculous. There were some things, no matter how short-lived, you just didn’t forget.

  Biting down hard on her lip, Kate managed to keep the nervous gurgling laugh at bay awhile longer—barely.

  Okay, Hadley, get a grip. The only way in and out of here was by boat or by air. She couldn’t even begin to guess how to start a boat, never mind drive one; Walt was already gone, and there was no way in hell he’d turn around for her when Paul was waiting for him.

  All she needed to do was lift her head and look him in the eye, show him that she’d done just fine after he’d dumped her like last week’s compost. So, inhaling a slow, steady breath, Kate lifted her face just as Jessie started the introductions.

  “Hey, Liam,” Jessie started, stepping aside a little as the whistling stopped abruptly. “This is—”

  “Kate?”

  It had been awhile since she’d seen his face on SportsCenter—apparently they didn’t give airtime to ball players who didn’t play; go figure—but as was the way with a lot of men, time had been overly generous.

  His eyes were still the color of the ocean, his thick brown hair cut short above his ears, and the thin scar that ran from the inside corner of his left eyebrow up toward his forehead was still there. It was the exact same face, and yet it had a maturity now that it hadn’t before.

  Standing in a pair of old army-green rain pants with patches of silver duct tape across both knees, a similar-type jacket zipped halfway up his chest, and a ratty, old Tigers ball cap on his head, he looked like shit. And God, was he cute.

  There.

  That moment right there made Kate very happy she hadn’t had time to change before getting on the plane. Sure, her dress was completely out of place, but if she had to see him again when she was completely unprepared, she wanted to look good, and if her stupid dress hadn’t been covered up by a raincoat or if she hadn’t been standing there in yellow gum boots, maybe she could have pulled it off a little better.

  Crap.

  Nope, it didn’t matter. Exude confidence and people will believe it, right? It was the tactic she’d used every time Paul gave her a new assignment, and this one would be no different, except this time she didn’t bother flashing her standard bright smile.

  “Hello, Liam.” The first time she met him, those blue eyes of his had sparkled like crazy whenever he looked at her. This time, the sparkle lasted about two seconds before it was replaced with disbelief, caution, and…yup, a wee bit of panic.

  “Wait.” Jessie frowned. “You two know each other?”

  “You could say that.” Kate had never whispered a word about him to anyone, not even after he made the big leagues, and since she’d never had a reporter stick a microphone in her face, she was guessing he’d left what happened in Vegas back in Vegas, too. If someone had wanted to go digging, they could have found out, but Liam had never been one of those players who lived his life on the covers of magazines.

  Not that she would have read those magazines if he had.

  Kate’s mind tripped over itself trying to figure out what to do. She could out him, tell this Jessie person exactly how they knew each other, but what if he and Jessie were a thing now? Besides, telling anyone about what happened would only shine a spotlight on her own stupidity, and she wasn’t exactly keen on doing that, either. No, this was Liam’s turf, and pissing him off could very well end up with Kate being sent back to Paul empty-handed, and she wasn’t having that, so she’d wait to see how Liam wanted to handle this.

  He hadn’t moved an inch since seeing Kate, and when he did finally speak again, he never took his eyes off her, even though he was clearly speaking to Jessie.

  “What is she doing here?”

  “Foster sent her.”

  “What? Oh no.” Liam shook his head as he dragged his gaze away from Kate and focused on Jessie. “The guy…the…you know…him. He was supposed to come. John. Jack. Whatever the hell his name was.”

  “Josh,” Jessie corrected. “And he had to back out at the last minute, so Kate’s taking his place.”

  With her hands wrapped around the handles of her bag, Kate stayed right where she was, her mouth shut tight.

  “But she can’t—” Liam stopped, swallowed hard, and exhaled. After a second, he tipped his face slightly, not enough to look at Kat
e but enough that it appeared he was talking to her. “Give us a second?”

  It wasn’t funny, except it kind of was, so, fighting back a smirk, Kate acknowledged Jessie’s apologetic shrug with a shrug of her own and then stood there looking around as the two of them headed a short ways up the path.

  They didn’t go very far, and even though Liam spoke in a low whisper, Kate didn’t need to hear him to know what he was saying: The tightness of his jaw and way he jabbed his thumb back toward the dock were a pretty good indication.

  Jessie’s whispers, on the other hand, weren’t quite as quiet as his.

  “You and your brothers jumped at the idea when Foster offered to send Josh over here to work; remember that conversation? Free help for us, which is all we can afford right now, and lodge experience for his people. You agreed to it, Liam.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Liam said, obviously forgetting to whisper. “That was when they said they were going to send Jack. Josh. Whatever. Not…her!”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Jessie growled. “And God help you if you even think about saying something stupid like she can’t do the job because she’s a woman.”

  Kate twisted her mouth tight, but the snicker still escaped. She knew that wasn’t what Liam meant, but it sure was fun watching him squirm a little. And this Jessie woman—if that was how she spoke to Liam all the time, then, oh yes, she and Kate were going to get along just fine.

  “That’s not what I was going to say,” Liam said, his voice a harsh whisper.

  “Good, then what’s the problem?”

  “She and I—” His broad shoulders heaved. “There’s history.”

  “Noooo! You don’t say.” Jessie’s mocking made it nearly impossible for Kate to keep a straight face. “News flash, buddy. We’re not in the eighth grade, so whatever history you have, get over it, because we need her.”

  A loud sigh, then Liam turned and took a couple of steps back toward Kate, indicating Jessie should follow.

  “Look, I know we had an agreement with Foster.” He stopped, cleared his throat, and inhaled slowly. “But I think Kate’ll agree with me that this isn’t going to work, am I right? Kate?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Kate said, blinking up at him with a straight shot of passive aggression. “Were you talking to me?”

  “Uh, yeah!”

  “Well, you can understand how that might be unclear, since you’ve pretty much done nothing but talk at me, about me, or around me until now. But if you’re asking me how I feel about working here with you, then my answer would be simple. I don’t have a problem with it, because even I made it out of the eighth grade.”

  Kate tipped her head a little to the left and waited him out. Given the financial state the Buoys was in, he’d be stupid to send her packing, and yet Kate wouldn’t blame him one bit if he did it anyway. She would if she were Liam. In fact, a tiny part of her kind of hoped he did send her away, because then there’d be absolutely no chance of her making the O’Donnell mistake again.

  The other part of her, the part that knew she needed to nail this job, was already kicking and screaming and begging her to keep her mouth shut before Liam got on the phone and called in a Helijet to pick her up.

  She wasn’t going to let him think she cared either way, though; better for him to believe she was indifferent to the whole thing and that by sending her packing he’d be the one losing out, not her, that he needed her more than she needed him.

  The moment dragged on until Jessie finally huffed out a sigh and moved so she stood between them, with her back to Kate.

  “Clearly I don’t know what the hell’s going on here,” she said. “What I do know is that we’re out of options. We’ll never get an operator’s permit with this place in the shape it’s in, and without that permit, we can’t open. If we can’t open, we can’t raise the money to pay the taxes, and if we don’t pay the taxes—”

  “I know,” he said, his voice hard and tight.

  “Good.” Jessie nodded. “Then you also know it’s just you, me, and Finn, unless Ronan can score some time off to come help, and with opening day a little over six weeks away, there’s no way the three of us’ll get everything done before the start of the season. Truth be told, we’ll be damn lucky to get everything done even with her helping. No offense, Kate.”

  “None taken.”

  “Jessie.” Her name came off Liam’s tongue in a long, low growl. He’d growled Kate’s name a couple of times back in Vegas, too, but there’d been none of that anger in those growls, just a low, sexy—oh, stop it!

  “Finn will be back from the mainland tomorrow,” Jessie said. “Should we call him and Ronan right now and tell them to forget all this because you want to turn away the free help we need?”

  She gave him almost a full second to answer, and when he didn’t, she kept right on going, and once she got rolling…wow.

  “We don’t have time to go ten rounds on this, Liam, because I just walked away from my paying job—which came with some pretty great benefits, I might add—to come back here on a freakin’ float plane to do this with you guys.”

  The way Jessie tipped her head at him made Kate think that must have meant something huge.

  “I don’t give a flying rip if you don’t like her or if she doesn’t like you; we need her help to avoid having this place go up for auction. Like it or not, all that matters right now is getting the work done, so unless she’s some kind of serial killer who’s going to hack us all up with a chain saw, she’s staying.”

  Jessie had him and they all knew it, but at least she gave him the courtesy of waiting for him to blink before she turned to Kate.

  “What do you say?”

  Kate took her time before answering.

  “Well, for starters, I’m sorry to say that in my rush to pack last night, I forgot to throw in my chain saw, so there’s no worry about me lopping off anyone’s appendages, though I will admit it was something I considered a few times back in the day.” Kate looked straight past Jessie and locked her accusing gaze on Liam. “And besides that, I committed to doing this job, and I, for one, don’t walk away from my commitments.”

  “Oh, for—” Liam stopped, ground his jaw tight, then shook his head. “Whatever.”

  “Great! Then let’s do this.” Jessie’s grin wasn’t all relief; there was a good dose of caution in it, too, as she started toward the lodge again, indicating for Kate to follow. “So do I want to know what the history is between you two?”

  Giving Liam a not-so-friendly clap on the shoulder, Kate laughed right out loud as she moved past him. “You want to field that one, Sporto?”

  The look he gave her was almost as comical as it was venomous.

  “According to the Clark County recorder’s office in Las Vegas,” he said, his voice tight, each word dragged from his tongue, “she’s my ex-wife.”

  Chapter 2

  It was all I lived for, to play baseball.

  —Mickey Mantle

  Ten years, that’s how long he’d gone without saying a word about Kate or what had happened in Vegas, so Liam didn’t wait around to hear what Jessie had to say about the bombshell he’d dropped. He and Kate had made a huge mistake back then and he’d corrected it.

  He’d been right to do what he did—he never doubted that; he’d just done it the wrong way, is all. And then he’d made it worse by never working up the balls to call her after it was all done. Not even once.

  The sound of Jessie’s too-big boots made him glance up from the rotting deck he’d been ripping apart on the front of the Orange cabin. This late in the day, the weak spring sun was already behind the mountain; he should have waited until tomorrow to start this job. But the indoor jobs all required more of a gentle hand, and all he wanted to do right then was smash things.

  “For the love of God, woman, are you ever going to get boots that fit you?”

  “What for?” Jessie frowned as if she didn’t understand why he’d even suggest such a thing. “These are fine.” />
  They weren’t fine—they were an old pair left behind by either a former guest or an employee—but Jessie had never been one to waste money on anything when she could make do with something else. Standing there in what used to be Da’s old black-and-gray wool sweater and a tight black toque, she looked a damn sight more at home than Kate did in that ridiculously thin raincoat and red dress. He hadn’t even seen the whole dress, just the hem poking out below the jacket, but going by the shoes she had clutched in her hand, he’d given his imagination free rein on what the dress looked like, and, well…whew.

  And as for those yellow gum boots…he should have thought they were as ridiculous as the raincoat, because they obviously weren’t built for work, and yet on her, shit, they added a huge layer of cute to a look he already knew was sexy as hell.

  Clearing his throat, Liam tossed one of the spindles from the railing into the growing pile to be burned. “Don’t suppose she had a change of heart and called in a Helijet?”

  “Nope, but she did opt to stay in one of the A-frames, I’m guessing so she won’t risk running into you every five minutes.” Her response didn’t overly surprise him, but he could have lived without the derisive snort that followed. “So are you going to fill me in here or what? I mean, jeez, Liam. Married? How did I not know this?”

  “It was a long time ago,” he said, suddenly tired. “We were young.”

  “I’m guessing stupid, too. Do Ro and Finn know?”

  “No.”

  “God help me.” Lifting her face skyward, Jessie gripped her head between her hands and sighed, long and loud. “Start talking, because I need to know what I’m working with here.”

  Liam swiped his sleeve across his cheek, a habit he’d picked up standing out on the mound when he needed a second to catch his breath. From the second he’d realized it was Kate walking toward the lodge, he’d been fighting to breathe normally, and it was getting harder by the minute.

  “It was like ten years ago,” he said slowly. “A couple guys on the team and I took a road trip to Vegas at the end of the season, and she was there with some friends.”