Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance

by Shaye Marlow

  I stared at the shining cord disappearing into the brush, watched it wave back and forth as he tried to yank it out—but only managed to yank it deeper—and I felt my shoulders tightening up. Now, I had a lot of experience fishing with newbs. I mean, a lot. What do you think I do for a living? I untangle lines, bait hooks while people are trying to spear them through my fingers, pretend it’s all right when they break my rod-tips, and generally keep myself from yelling at bumbling idiots for hours at a time.

  But this was Gary. Gary, the Devil who practically set my panties on fire along with my blueberry patch. Gary, who I wanted to strangle every day of the week. Gary… who wasn’t paying me to play nice.

  “I’ll get it,” he said. Wedging the rod in the canoe, he started to pull his end closer to shore.

  “No, I can get it,” I said. I just knew he’d yank so hard the hook would come back and puncture my eyeball, or he’d tip the canoe entirely clambering out of it. Or a lightning strike would come down out of the clear blue sky and fry me where I sat. It was safer all the way around if I got it.

  So I started paddling, trying to drag my end closer to the brush.

  “I said I’d get it,” he said, paddling harder.

  I matched his glare, and his paddling. The canoe rocked as we scudded sideways. Deciding to change my tack, I started paddling the other direction, swinging us around.

  He tried to adjust his stroke, failed, and slid on by his mark. Putting me in perfect position to retrieve his lure. I’d outmaneuvered him.

  Feeling smug, I reached out.

  With one hard pull of his paddle, he dragged us both out away from the shore. His bail sang as his line spooled out.

  “What the hell?” I demanded, trying to pull us back in. We needed to get his lure so we could get some real fishing done, so we could catch the biggest fish, so we could humiliate my brothers.

  Gary resisted.

  I swung around in my seat to glare at him. As usual, his expression was inscrutable. In that moment, it drove me just a little bit further than nuts.

  And then he did it. He pulled back his paddle, and he did it.

  He splashed me.

  I gasped as lake water spattered across my face and upper body. The lake water wasn’t really that cold, so it was just with surprise that I was doused. I think it was the Alaskan, uncivilized part of me, but I honestly didn’t mind being wet. I didn’t have any makeup to smear, and there was no one to care that my clothes were soaked. In fact, the cool water felt kinda nice.

  No, the problem was, he’d splashed me.

  I was a responsible, reasonable adult, so I did the only thing I could do. I splashed him back.

  I hauled back and let my paddle fly, hitting the surface broad-side, with just enough angle to send water spraying at him. I got just a glimpse of his face, his startled, dripping expression. I laughed.

  Then he splashed me again, and it was on. Facing forward already, he definitely had the advantage, but I had a wealth of experience to draw on. Water flew, sparkling in the bright sunshine as the canoe spun in drunken circles and his line spooled out.

  I laughed and when I looked around again, I got a big, direct splash to the face.

  “Had enough yet?” he asked.

  I blinked the water out of my eyes to see his grin. Oh, I’d gotten him good. His hair was plastered to his skull, his nose and chin were dripping… and that damn T-shirt was clinging to every dip and bulge in his ripped chest and abdomen.

  I realized that his gaze was similarly stuck to my chest, and followed it down to find that my white T-shirt had gone transparent over my flimsy bra.

  I jerked around to face forward and pulled the shirt away from my breasts. My face burned.

  He splashed me again. Cool water splattered over my back.

  The uncivilized, immature, crazy-ass… I took some nice, deep breaths. Then I said fuck it, and I splashed the hell out of him.

  We flailed around for several minutes as the canoe drifted. We splashed each other until there was at least an inch of water in the bottom of the boat, until my arms felt like lead and my face ached from grinning, and we’d proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither of us had even the thinnest shred of maturity.

  “I give! I give!” he finally cried.

  “Ha!” I shouted, holding my paddle overhead in victory.

  He laughed, long and loud, the deep, infectious sound carrying out across the lake. Damn but he had a gorgeous laugh.

  Still grinning, I picked a strand of lake weed out of my hair. I was facing forward again, being careful not to turn around.

  He sighed, and we listened to the water lap against the boat. It really was a beautiful day.

  “Truce?” he finally asked.

  I looked out over the lake, considering. “I don’t like you,” I said.

  “I don’t particularly like you,” he replied.

  I frowned, wondering what that emphasis was about, but I finally nodded. “Fine. Truce. We still need to catch that fish.”

  “Kinda hard to do when I’ve caught the shore,” he said.

  “Yup.”

  “And I don’t think ‘that fish’ is gonna be here anymore.”

  “Nope. Not anymore,” I agreed.

  We retrieved his lure and moved to a spot about fifty feet further along the shore. And we finally got to it.

  “So you do this for a living?” he asked.

  Ugh. This was the part where I told him what I did, and he told me what he did, and we communicated like normal people.

  That is, it would have been that part. And we would have. If I was normal. And him; I was definitely starting to have doubts about his normalcy, as well. Not sure if that was a good thing, or if it made me even more hesitant to get to know him. I knew all about Alaskan crazies—practically wrote the book—but Lower 48 crazies were a complete unknown.

  I cast out, and didn’t answer.

  Which was probably why he felt it would be okay to ask, “Or do you make your living writing erotica?”

  Damn him for reading my stuff. Invading my home, and reading my stuff.

  “I just make a little money on the side with the erotica,” I said, knowing I had to give him a little or be subjected to increasingly rude questions. Not sure how I knew this—maybe I was getting to know Gary just a little. Ick.

  “So you’re a fishing guide?” he asked.

  “I’m a fishing guide during the summer, yes, and I make enough with the writing to get me through the winter,” I admitted. I cast out again, irritated that I could hear the boys crowing with excitement as they pulled in fish after fish—even improperly placed as they were—and I hadn’t caught shit yet. Isn’t that just how it worked? The bumbling newb caught the record-breaker, while the most experienced person, the most knowledgeable, the most deserving, got the shaft.

  “What about you?” I asked after another unsuccessful cast. Pike weren’t like other fish. Pike were aggressive. If they were there, within a couple casts they’d attack your lure. They’d follow it, even lunge several inches out of the water to bite it.

  “I’m…into stocks,” he said.

  I cut my eyes back at him. That had sounded like a half-truth at best to my brother-tuned ears.

  Gary was giving me an innocent look.

  That fucker. In all my mental acrobatics on how I was going to avoid talking to him, avoid getting to know him and avoid giving him information, I’d never actually thought I’d have trouble getting information out of him. This was not normal. But then again, someone who didn’t turn around and run away as fast as they absolutely could when faced with my three wild brothers wasn’t normal. They’d actually been the ones to chase off all three of my boyfriends before Brett.

  The first, back in high school, had lasted a couple months. We’d flirted in class, and made out vigorously in his truck every chance we got. It had all ended when I brought him home for the first time. He’d come away with a black eye, bruised ribs, and a diagnosis of PTSD.
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br />   The second one hadn’t lasted even that long. Just days after Freddie and I had first slept together, Zack came across us in the college cafeteria, and had invited him out shooting. Despite my warnings, he’d gone. I’m not sure what Zack said to him, but Freddie had never talked to me again, even ran the other way when I approached him.

  The third one, I’d tried to keep a secret as long as possible. It was actually pretty easy, because we’d met on the internet and only communicated by email, text, and phone. It had been while I’d been living out here. But then my brothers had come to visit, and after that, my internet boyfriend went silent. I’d sent out dozens of emails and texts, and never gotten anything back. It was almost as if they’d killed him…

  I glanced at Gary again, almost feeling sorry for him. He wasn’t my boyfriend, but the brothers knew I was interested in him, obviously. It was a miracle he wasn’t maimed yet. But I just knew—it was coming. And I kinda hoped that when it did, they wouldn’t mess up his face.

  Gary yelped. “I have one!” he yelled, wrenching back on the rod. Miraculously, he didn’t topple backward into the water, and neither line nor rod broke.

  “Gently,” I said, reeling in my own line so they didn’t tangle. “Reel it in slowly, let him tire himself out.” I glanced around the bottom of the canoe and realized we hadn’t brought a net. No matter, it seemed like I always wound up out pike fishing without a net.

  When he brought the fish up to the boat, I asked him to hold it steady, and then I reached down, grabbed the steel leader, and hauled the fish into the boat. Gary’s first pike was medium-sized, about 18 inches long.

  If Gary had been a client, I would have made noises about how big it was, what a fighter it had been, how shiny its scales were, or some other tip-inflating crap. But he wasn’t, so I was all business as I asked him to let the tension off the line.

  “So that’s a Northern Pike?” he asked.

  “Yup.” I turned around in my seat and he watched with fascination as I got a grip on the slimy thing and used my Leatherman pliers to pry the hook out of its mouth. I released his lure away from my face, and he seemed conscientious enough to keep it there. He continued to watch as I pulled the knife out of the multi-tool and stabbed the fish through the brain and spinal column.

  Pike were insidious creatures. You could hit them upside the head with a bonker—the traditional method of killing fish—until you were red in the face, and they’d still be flailing around trying to swim in the bottom of the boat an hour later. By stabbing them, you guaranteed that they were dead and paralyzed while avoiding scaring off all of the other fish in a hundred-foot radius with the racket.

  I glanced up and realized that at some point Gary had transferred his gaze to my chest. Yeah—not dry yet. I gave him a dirty look.

  He gave me a slow, sexy wink.

  My body betrayed me, lower belly clenching with a sudden, unexpected twist of arousal. Shit shit shit. I turned back around in a hurry, trying to keep my breathing under control. Gary being an ass should come with a warning label. Gary being charming…well, there weren’t really words.

  And I couldn’t help but think he was some sort of weirdo. Here he was flirting with me over a canoe full of stinky fish I’d just stabbed to death, as I clutched a bloody knife in my fish-slimed hands. And I was unfashionable, and unornamented, and I had a tongue as sharp as my knife. So why was he flirting with me?

  We fished on into evening. As the shadows lengthened, we began pulling them in regularly. Gary and I each got upwards of half a dozen. The bottom of the boat filled up, and my sandaled feet got splashed with blood and slime and grit.

  At one point, I stood up in the bow to look down into the clear water and spot the fish.

  “You’re not supposed to stand up in a canoe,” Gary pointed out.

  I shrugged, dragging my gaze over the weedy bottom. Pike were territorial—they liked to stake out an area and they’d just lie there in the water. They were colored and mottled to be camouflaged, but I had a lot of experience spotting their slightly darker shapes.

  “You’ll tip the boat,” Gary continued.

  I pushed down with one foot, then the other, intentionally rocking the canoe, and then glanced back at him. “Does it look like the boat is tipping?” I mean, really, I was more likely to fall out than the boat was to tip. And even if it did tip, the water here at the edge was just two or three feet deep, so it wasn’t like we’d be sucked into a black hole or something. Tipped canoes sucked—mostly because people laughed at you and took pictures—but they weren’t the end of the world.

  His expression was somewhere between disgruntled and thoughtful. I half-expected him to splash me again. But he didn’t.

  Instead, Gary paddled us slowly, gently forward. I hadn’t thought ‘slowly, gently’ was in his repertoire—he seemed more a hard-and-fast kinda guy—but there it was. Depraved creature that I was, I shivered.

  “See anything?” he asked.

  “Noooo—Ah!” I stumbled, nearly falling backward into the boat, and then scrambled back into place, peering cautiously over the bow.

  “What? What is it?”

  It was…The Big One. It was huge, so big I’d thought it was a log. My brain whirred, trying to calculate how much that thing must weigh. Thirty pounds? At least. Holy hell… This one was way, way bigger than Ronnie’s. This one right here was the reason I didn’t swim in the lake. That thing had a maw big enough to latch onto my calf. And rows of teeth big and sharp enough to shred it. My heart started to race.

  “Cast,” I whispered. “Keep us right here—no sudden movements—and cast forward and slightly to the left.” I was frozen in place, terrified I’d scare it. I needed to keep an eye on it, needed to not let it out of my sight. We needed to catch it.

  I didn’t know if his lure was big enough, if his line would hold, if his rod would break. But it’s what we had. We had to try.

  “Cast!” My voice was a high, excited whisper-squeak.

  He cast.

  I held my breath as his lure arced through the air. Then it splashed down, and it was perfect. He began to reel, and his lure came into sight, in a perfect spin, headed right by the Beast. I held my breath, leaning forward. Yes. Yessss.

  The monstrous fish struck. I watched it swallow the lure whole. For a moment there, I thought I might actually die of excitement.

  Gary yanked on the rod, and then applied a constant pressure. We started to list toward the fish.

  The fish didn’t move. It just lay there in the water, its fins moving gently as it stabilized itself, completely unfazed. The fish didn’t know yet. The fish hadn’t started to fight.

  “I think I got a log again,” Gary said.

  “Keep tension on the line,” I instructed in a hushed tone. “And for the love of God, don’t jerk it.”

  He chuckled. “That’s what she said.”

  I glanced back at him with fascinated disbelief. I didn’t think I’d ever seen this before. Both he and the fish were clueless. Neither knew the fish was hooked. Neither knew the Big One was on the line. Yet another example of the Newb catching the Honker. Goddammit.

  “You have a fish on the line,” I said, slowly. “It’s the biggest pike I’ve ever seen.”

  “You’re funnin’ me.”

  “I am not ‘funnin’ you!” The fish chose that moment to shake its head, yanking the line and proving my point.

  Gary’s mouth opened in a stunned, satisfying O. He let the rod dip.

  “Tension!” I snapped. I sat up a little straighter, searching the bottom of the boat with my eyes. A fish this size was gonna require a net. I couldn’t pull this one into the boat by hand, no way. But we didn’t have a net.

  It was the biggest pike I’d ever seen, and we didn’t have a fucking net.

  The massive fish took off, line screeing out as it arrowed toward the middle of the lake. The canoe did an ominous spin, and we were dragged slowly but surely into deeper water.

  “Shit,” I whispered
.

  The only option I could see for us landing the monster was to paddle to shore and drag the fish up onto it. To this end, I started paddling, trying to drag us back toward shore even as the fish tried to pull us farther out.

  Gary was laughing, hooting and hollering as the fish executed an aerial dive, flinging water with a heavy splash that would have done a beaver proud.

  I paddled harder, trying to figure out how we were gonna get the beast ashore. The shore wasn’t a nice, gentle slope, and it was lined with a tangle of thigh-high brush right up to the very edge.

  The fish suddenly turned around, and I watched it swim lazily alongside the boat, allowing us to coast those last few feet. We were in three feet of water now, only a few feet from the shore.

  That was when I glanced down, and realized the lure had come mostly out of its mouth. The treble was hanging on by one hook—and that hook was bending.

  We were gonna lose it.

  “Fuck!” I threw the paddle away from me and shoved to my feet.

  And, with a battle cry, I jumped from the boat.

  I bitch about fishing a lot, but you gotta understand—I became a guide for a reason. I love to fish. I love to throw a perfect cast, pull the lure through the water at the perfect speed and depth, feel that yank as the fish strikes, and then fight it, tire it out, drag it to the boat, and bonk it to death. I love to carry those slimy fuckers up from the boat at the end of the day; I have a big, shit-eating grin plastered across my face every time. Half of my ceiling upstairs is filled with pictures of other people with big shit-eating grins, holding their dead fish—fish I helped them catch. I have a soul-deep feeling of satisfaction when I cut the perfect fillet, and I even love to eat them (weird, I know).

  So you’ve gotta understand, when I say I jumped into the lake after the biggest pike I’ve ever seen, it’s not an exaggeration. And no, I didn’t swan-dive, ‘cuz I’m not an idiot.

  I jumped in feet-first right next to the behemoth pike, and I scooped it up in my arms. I have no idea how I caught it before it darted away. It defies the laws of physics and fishing, but there it was. I scooped it up into my arms, held onto it for dear life as it started to thrash, and I waded toward the shore.