by V. K. Sykes
At that moment, Aiden clearly caught sight of Morgan coming toward them. His eyes had locked onto her drenched form. “Jesus,” he breathed.
“Down, boy,” Lily chided. She couldn’t really blame Aiden for practically freezing at the sight of her friend. Morgan was beautiful all the time, but in a wet T-shirt—well, her form could only be called spectacular. No wonder so many young and not-so-young guys had surrounded the dunk tank for her turn on the plank.
“Sorry,” Aiden said, his gaze swinging to Lily. “But I wasn’t really thinking about Morgan.”
Lily stopped and turned to him. “I find that hard to believe,” she said wryly.
“Don’t, because I was thinking how much I’d like to see Lily Doyle as soaked as Morgan is right now.”
He looked like he meant every word, making Lily’s breath catch in her throat. A bolt of delicious sensation shot through her body, curling a ribbon of heat around her insides. She fought it, arching her brows at him in mock disdain. She refused to let him see how badly she was still crushing on him.
“Good Lord, what I won’t do for charity,” Morgan sighed as she trudged up to them, pushing wet hanks of hair back from her face. A yellow towel was loosely draped over her shoulders. She wore a teal color T-shirt and tight khaki shorts that showed off her gorgeous legs.
“You’re such a trouper,” Lily said.
“Well, you are too,” Morgan said. “And since it’s your turn, you’d better get over there instead of jawing with Aiden Flynn.”
Aiden clamped a big hand on Lily’s shoulder. “Well, how about that for a wish coming true? Maybe I’ll even take a throw or two, since it’s for charity.”
Lily hadn’t seen that big a grin on his face for a long time.
“Forget it, buddy. No professionals allowed.”
“Hey, I’m not even a pitcher,” Aiden protested.
Lily wagged a finger at him as she backed away. “Throw one ball and you die,” she threatened.
When Aiden made a sad face, she couldn’t help laughing.
At the dunk tank, Jessie Jameson—the duty volunteer—helped her up the short flight of steps at the back, and Lily swung her body onto the white, vinyl-covered plank, gingerly taking her seat. Her toes barely touched the water, still cold despite the heat of the sun pounding down on it. Mesh in front and on the sides of the enclosure protected her from any badly aimed throws.
There were never any problems getting volunteers for the tank. At least a couple of dozen people every year signed up to take a turn getting soaked—some kids, more than a few men, but mostly the young women of the island. Yes, it was sexist, but it was all good fun too, and the women hooted as loudly at the guys as the men did at them.
The crowd around her was made up of mostly young guys in their twenties and thirties, along with a handful of small boys. Morgan had disappeared, no doubt to change back into the yellow sundress she’d worn earlier. Aiden stood alone, staring at Lily intently. She wagged her finger at him in warning again, even though she smiled.
“My turn,” Dylan O’Hanlon said as he picked up one the yellow balls off the grass.
From about fifteen feet away, Mike O’Hanlon’s seven-year-old son threw the ball hard at the yellow backstop, aiming for the small, round target in the middle—a mechanism that would release the seat and dump her into the water. Lily sucked in a deep breath, ready to be dunked, but Dylan’s throw missed by a couple of feet and bounced back off the plastic tarp surrounding the target.
Aiden flashed Lily an evil grin and stepped forward. “That was a good try, kid, but I could help you with some tips if you like.”
Lily rolled her eyes. She had to give Aiden credit. Maybe he wouldn’t try to dunk her himself, but he had no scruples helping a kid do it.
“Uh, okay, mister,” Dylan said tentatively. “I guess.” He handed Aiden the ball.
“That’s Aiden Flynn, dummy,” his older brother, Rory, hissed loudly, giving him a punch on the arm. “He plays for the Phillies.”
The kids might have missed Aiden’s little flinch, but Lily didn’t.
Forcing a smile, Aiden tossed the yellow ball between his hands like a juggler. “What’s your name?”
“Dylan O’Hanlon.”
“Your dad runs the boatyard?”
Dylan nodded.
“I know him.” Aiden wrapped an arm around the boy’s shoulder. “Okay, Dylan, it’s important to lock your eyes on the spot you want to hit and keep them there until the ball has left your hand. But let’s start by lining up your left shoulder with the target.”
Aiden gently rotated Dylan into the correct position. “Now, watch me, okay?”
He took up the same position, standing right beside Dylan. As he reared back, Lily flinched, wondering if he was going to throw the ball after all.
Aiden took a forward stride and followed through with his arm but didn’t release the ball.
“See, Dylan?” he said, handing it back to the boy. “You lead with your elbow, and you make sure you’re throwing over the top, not sidearm or anything like that. You were kind of slinging it just now.”
Dylan looked up at Aiden. “Will you help me more if I miss again? I really want to dunk Lily.”
Aiden patted his back. “Sure, but don’t worry. You’re going to nail it this time.”
Lily watched their easy interaction with both amusement and fascination. Aiden was good with kids, but then again, that shouldn’t have surprised her. He’d been great with Bram growing up and had always gotten along with kids in the lower grades too. Unlike some of the jerks she’d gone to school with, Aiden had never teased the little ones and had always been happy to toss a ball with them.
Dylan squeezed the ball hard and squinted at the target, tight-lipped.
“Relax, buddy,” Aiden said. “Don’t strangle the ball.”
Dylan nodded, easing his grip. The boy sucked in a deep breath, wound up like Aiden had instructed, and let fly. The ball thudded into the target, and with a shriek, Lily slid off the seat and splashed into the water as the crowd let out a loud cheer.
She’d pinched her eyes closed as she submerged but opened them again after her head dipped below the surface. A bunch of kids were rushing to stare at her through the clear plastic window in the front of the tank. Aiden, naturally, was right behind them.
Lily got her feet under her and thrust up out of the water.
“Thanks, Mr. Flynn,” Dylan enthused. “That was awesome!”
“No problem, kid,” Aiden said in a smug voice.
Lily laughed as she swiped water from her face. She scrambled out of the tank and waited until Jessie reset the seat. Aiden moved quickly to her side as she dripped water all over the already soaking grass.
“Way to rock the wet T-shirt, babe,” he said in a low voice, dramatically patting his chest as if his heart was thudding. Then he gently brushed back her wet hair and let his fingers drift down over her throat, coming to rest on her banging pulse. She shivered, and it wasn’t from the dunking.
“I gotta say you just made my week—maybe the whole damn month,” Aiden said. His gaze slid downward as his mouth curled up in a sexy, openly appreciative grin.
Instinctively, Lily crossed her arms over her chest as her nipples responded enthusiastically to his hot gaze. Now she knew for sure that she was in way more trouble than she’d thought.
Chapter 9
Bram, put the life jacket on,” Aiden barked. “You know the rules. They’re mandatory in the race.” Reversing, he guided Irish Lady away from O’Hanlon’s dock as his brother carelessly coiled the nylon mooring lines.
“It’s too hot and bulky,” Bram complained. “I’ll put it on later.”
Christ. His brother never encountered a rule he didn’t want to challenge. “Fine, but if you get us disqualified, I’ll feed you to the lobsters. I’m not losing this race because you’re acting terminally stupid.” Aiden swung the boat around so the bow pointed past the town landing to Paradise Point, where the
races would start. Ahead, a large cluster of boats of varying sizes cruised slowly or idled alongside the course.
Bram joined him in the pilothouse. “My life jacket isn’t the problem, bro, it’s me. You should have asked one of the little dudes in town to be your second man in the boat instead. You could have saved a lot of useless weight.”
Aiden had insisted Bram race with him, because he knew how much his brother wanted to be there, despite his protests. It was Aiden’s chance to partly make up for their father never letting them race.
“And deny you the opportunity to gloat at Lily as we smoke past her?” Aiden replied.
“I bet Lily’s going to have Morgan with her. Those two combined probably don’t weigh much more than one of us.”
Aiden pushed the throttle forward. Their boat class was scheduled to race in ten minutes, and he should have been in a waiting position before now. “If Roy’s magic works, we’ll kick their asses anyway.”
Bram reached forward to unlock one of the windows and push it open. “Remember Dad telling us stories about the old days before they came up with all these rules? Guys used to knock out all the windshield glass to reduce drag, or even rip up deck boards to cut weight. Then they’d have fights on the dock because one guy ran too close to another at some point in the race.”
“Ah, the good old days,” Aiden replied sarcastically. As a young, rough-and-ready lobsterman, Sean Flynn must have been in his element.
But there were no good old days in Aiden’s memories of Irish Lady. He still knew every square inch of the boat, especially the stern where he’d busted his ass day after day. In the summers, Sean had often let the sternman go and made Aiden work for pocket change, saving the 20 percent he would otherwise have paid the helper. Lots of times he’d make Aiden miss school to fill in, even on days when he should have been studying for exams. Aiden didn’t mind when he knew it was hard to find a substitute, but usually it was clear that his father didn’t even bother to try finding someone else.
Though Aiden had made sure that nobody had seen it today—not Bram, not Roy, not Mike O’Hanlon—just taking that first step onto the gunwale of Irish Lady had been hard. And it still felt lousy. She was a good old boat and had provided food for his family for a very long time, but if it were up to Aiden, he’d probably sink her.
“Dad loved it, didn’t he?” Bram said. “And speaking of the old man, the bastard is all over me, Aiden. He’s acting like it’s my fault that you’re not coming around on the land deal, and I’m fucking sick of the pressure. I just want you to make up your mind soon, okay?”
Aiden corrected his course by a few degrees to steer well away from the rocky coastline north of the town landing. He hated that Bram had to bear the brunt of their father’s impatience, but he wasn’t about to be pressured into anything. “Sorry, man, but you’ve got to deal with it. Dad is what he is.”
“Easy for you to say, dude. You can get out of here anytime you want. Me, I’ve got to live with the old man and put up with all his crap.”
“Really?” Aiden shot back, his patience with that attitude fraying. “I don’t see anybody holding a gun to your head, bro. You could move out tomorrow. What’s stopping you?” Unless you’ve already frittered away every last dime you inherited from Mom.
Bram glared silently for a moment before turning away. He reached down and flipped open the small cooler he’d stashed under the bulkhead. “How about a beer?”
“No thanks. I need to have 100 percent concentration if we’re going to have a hope of winning.”
Besides, it had taken Aiden all morning to shake off the hangover he’d inflicted on himself last night. The Blueberry Festival had been fun for a while, and he’d enjoyed seeing Lily again, even though she’d pulled a Houdini after he came on to her a bit at the dunk tank. So after chatting with a few of the locals and downing a blueberry muffin he’d picked up at the baked goods table—and the muffins were as good as he remembered—he decided he needed a break from the island. Needed a break from his father, from Bram, from everything in Seashell Bay. Since the best way to accomplish all that was to head into Portland, he’d called one of his high school teammates—a guy he’d kept sporadically in touch with over the years—and arranged to have a beer after dinner.
After a stroll around the Portland Harbor area and a leisurely meal at DeMillo’s floating restaurant, he’d met up with Adam Wicker at Bull Feeney’s pub on Fore Street. Wicker had been a star pitcher for Peninsula High when Aiden was a sophomore outfielder. After playing college ball at Florida State, he’d been drafted and signed by the Indians. But not long after he finally made it to the majors, he blew out his arm, had surgery, and never regained his velocity. By twenty-six, he’d retired and returned to Portland to coach baseball at Peninsula.
Aiden had long felt sorry for his old friend, but as one beer turned to three or four, he started to revise that opinion, because it was clear that Adam was totally content with his life. Married with a three-year-old son, he’d recently been hired as head coach of the University of Southern Maine baseball team. That was a very big step up from high school coaching.
Adam had listened sympathetically when Aiden filled him in on his lack of success in finding a new team. When Adam suggested he consider coaching at a university when he was ready to retire as a player, Aiden had quickly moved on to another subject. He’d thought that coaching might someday be in his future, but in college? That possibility had never once crossed his mind, maybe because he hadn’t gone to college. But Adam certainly seemed happy with where he’d ended up.
After midnight, the well-lubricated ex-teammates promised to keep in better touch and headed off in their different directions—Adam in a cab to his home in South Portland and Aiden on foot to the water taxi dock.
“The boat sure ran great on the test run this morning,” Bram said, uncapping his beer.
Aiden, Bram, and Roy had headed out far enough to avoid getting tangled up in heavily buoyed areas and opened Irish Lady’s throttle to full speed for almost two minutes, covering about the same distance as the three-quarter-mile racecourse. The old girl had really torn it up.
“Roy was happy,” Aiden said. The old guy had practically danced a jig.
“Man takes pride in his work,” Bram said.
Aiden caught sight of Miss Annie idling beside another boat. Morgan was talking to Boone Cleary in Foolish Pride while Lily stared forward as four boats in another class tore past on their way to the finish line.
It was all serious business for his girl.
Aiden got a little mental jolt at the way his girl had slipped so easily into his head, but he forced himself to shake it off and concentrate on the upcoming race.
The lobster boat races were more of a party than a fierce competition, from what he remembered. A dozen guys had rafted their boats on the side of the channel, lining them up with the buoys that marked the finish line. Most had food tables set up in the stern so the spectators could eat, drink, and watch the races, moving from boat to boat in a continual party. Onshore, islanders watched from flimsy cabanas or, slathered in sunblock, from beach chairs and loungers. Kids and dogs were everywhere, on boats, on the shore, and swimming in the channel. Farther away, about half a dozen of the older kids amused themselves by jumping off the public dock, cannonballing down into the chilly water with gleeful abandon.
When they were young, Aiden and Bram had watched the races with their mom from Paradise Point Beach, cheering their asses off for their father when he raced. Not because they’d wanted him to win, but out of mortal fear of what the old bastard would do when he got home after a loss. Aiden could still remember how his mother had plastered a cheerful look on her face to mask her frustration with her husband’s lousy moods, pretending to friends and neighbors that nothing was wrong.
As if everybody on the island hadn’t already formed a good idea of how Sean Flynn treated his wife and kids.
Blocking out the miserable memories, Aiden guided Irish Lady alon
gside Lily’s boat. “Let’s say hello,” he said to his brother.
“Let’s try to psych her out,” said Bram.
Aiden shot him a hard look. “Forget it. As if that would work with Lily anyway.”
Bram shook his head. “Shit, man, you can’t think straight when it comes to that woman. What are you trying to do, give the old man a coronary? You gotta steer clear of Lily. Even if you somehow got in her pants, it wouldn’t be worth the grief.”
“What I do is none of his business,” Aiden growled. “Or yours, for that matter.”
Bram grimaced. “Look, if you need to get laid, you can do it with just about any other babe on this island and Dad wouldn’t give a damn. Anybody but Lily Doyle. Hell, why don’t you check out Morgan? She’s hot, she’s unattached, and she’s not out of bounds.”
“Out of bounds?” Aiden said, incredulous. He suddenly felt like he and Bram were fifteen again, still under their father’s tyrannical thumb. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I gotta live with the guy. You don’t.”
“Unbelievable,” Aiden said. He turned to wave at Lily and Morgan.
Lily looked gorgeous and confident in a nautical blue-and-white-striped tank top, tiny white shorts, and white sneakers. Her hair was pulled back into a high, bouncy ponytail. She was in her natural element—in her lobster boat with the wind in her face as she gazed over the gunwale.
And the look on that lovely, determined face was as clear as the blue sky over their heads. Get ready for a beat-down, Aiden Flynn.
As Irish Lady approached and the other boat, Foolish Pride, moved away, Morgan leaned closer to Lily and whispered in her ear. “Aiden looks a little worried.”
Lily studied the object of Morgan’s analysis. Even though Aiden handled the boat with competence, his rather grim expression told her he was anything but relaxed. “Well, he should be. The guy’s never raced a boat in his life. It still amazes me that he agreed to do this.”