by Maria Luis
“Oh, the hardware store,” she drawled with a heavy dose of sarcasm, “how did you know that I’ve always wanted to—”
All words fled her brain the moment Chase turned to her with a wicked grin. “Now’s not the time to make sexual innuendos about the hardware store, Louisa.”
A furious blush warmed her cheeks. “I’m sticking to my rationalization that you have been secretly tossing back Guinness all day. There’s no other reason for your good mood.”
“It’s Winterfest.”
She stared at him. “You didn’t even put up a Christmas tree last year.”
The playful grin on his face faltered and then disappeared completely.
Louisa’s heart squeezed. Had she said something wrong? She racked her brain, trying to recall anything about Chase’s home life from her brother, but came up empty-handed. His parents were together after thirty-plus years of marriage—the same couldn’t be said for Louisa’s—and from what she knew, his younger sister was doing well and working at Fortune’s Bay’s amusement park in the administration offices.
With a bravery she often didn’t feel around men, Louisa slipped her hand around his arm, just below his elbow. “Chase?”
A tick started in his jaw. “A story for another day,” he said, voice low. “Today is for”—he drew in a sharp breath—“today is for something else, something I’ve been planning for a while now.”
Casting a dubious look around his big body to the line of businesses, she said, “You’ve been planning a trip to the hardware store . . . with me?”
“You’ll see.”
And with that, he stepped back from her grasp and motioned for her to follow him into the store.
For years, Louisa had hoped for more. A trip to the hardware store wasn’t more by any means, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t tag along and see what odd things Chase had up his sleeve for the day.
It wasn’t a proclamation of undying love, but Louisa didn’t expect that.
Nope, it was time to be “just friends” with Chase Trevor, and for a reason that eluded her in that moment, she was okay with that.
“So, what exactly do we need today?”
Chase paused in front of a display of twinkling Christmas lights, and turned to her. “Well, if you hadn’t avoided me . . .”
Louisa’s mouth twitched at the humor in his voice. “I told you, I wasn’t avoiding you. I just thought that I could handle the museum side, and you could handle the sailboats, and then we could combine our strengths for one amazing day for the kids.”
“Night.”
She blinked. “You just listened to everything I said, and that’s all you have to say?”
He shrugged, and then dropped a box of lights into the shopping cart, followed by another ten. “One of the officials for the festival contacted me. They’ve changed their minds, and would like for the event to take place at night.”
“Hence the lights?” She pointed to the shelves, which were nearly empty now, as all the Christmas lights sat in the cart.
“Hence the lights,” he confirmed.
Chase directed the shopping cart down the next aisle, and she trailed behind him, taking more than a little pleasure in watching the muscles of his back move beneath his thin sweater. He truly was something out of this world, but then again, he made a living off of building things.
“I wonder why they haven’t said anything to me?” she asked, as he cut over to the next aisle.
He shrugged casually. “No idea, but this is why you have me.”
Did he have to say it like that? All manly and secretly, like there was more to the words than reality suggested?
Louisa ignored the fluttering in her belly. “Any other changes that I should be aware of? I really hope they haven’t altered anything with the pirate costumes for the kids because it took me ages to coordinate everything with the seamstress and the board.”
A soft chuckle sounded in Chase’s chest, and without giving her warning, he ran a hand down the length of her arm, his fingers smoothing down her sleeves. “Tell me, are you supposed to be Pirate Anastasia?”
Supposed to be? Yes. But . . . “I think Anastasia would find fault with the fanny pack.”
“Mhmm.” Chase’s blue eyes fell to the fanny pack, and another raspy laugh greeted her ears. “That fanny pack—very historically accurate.”
Her biggest gripe about the Pirate Museum, and he’d caught on in seconds. Stifling the immature urge to stomp her foot in frustration, she said, “It’s horrible, a total disgrace to the history of Fortune’s Bay. Do you know how rare it is for a female pirate to have actually founded a town? The closest the United States has otherwise is Anne Bonny of Savannah, and she didn’t come close to founding the city.”
With a shake of his head, as though he found her love of history amusing, he murmured, “Both Anne and Destiny were kidnapped.”
Louisa shook her head. “You’re thinking of Destiny O’Hara, the maiden who’d been left on the mainland, waiting for her loved one to return. She’s the one who supposedly haunts us all and brings star-crossed lovers together.”
“Well, the kidnapping still happened, right?”
A little startled that he knew that much, Louisa bit her bottom lip. She loved history, thrived off it—no wonder, really, that the curator position was her calling—but she rarely found that other people wanted to listen to her blabber on about treatises and historical figures whose names were lost to the records. At his waiting glance, though, she went for it. “Kidnapping was par for the course for many women in the eighteenth-century, both here in Florida and elsewhere in the world. It was a power struggle and, unfortunately, women didn’t always emerge as the victor.”
“Destiny O’Hara did, in her own way.”
Louisa laughed. “You really think so?”
Chase tossed a box of who-knows-what into the shopping cart. “She didn’t die at the hands of pirates.”
She couldn’t stem the laughter spilling from her lips. “No, Chase,” she said with a there-there pat to his arm, “she didn’t die at the hand of pirates. She starved to death on the mainland, waiting for someone to come and save her.”
Blue eyes dropped to her hand on his arm. When she went to pull away, he clasped her to him, his fingers sliding between hers. “Semantics, Louisa.”
“Semantics?” She snorted, and then did her best not to stare at their intertwined fingers. “You’re such a guy, Chase.”
He grinned. “Was that ever in question?”
“Well, no.”
He squeezed her hand, and then went back to the shopping cart, pushing it along the aisle. “Not even when I half-missed your lips back in the fifth grade?”
Yup, that comment just about stopped her heart. She skipped ahead to catch up to him. “It was close enough to count.”
“I was nervous.”
Chase Trevor, nervous? But again, a ten-year-old Chase was much different than a twenty-eight-year-old Chase. “You didn’t seem nervous,” she said, as he pulled the cart up to the cash register.
“It was my first kiss.”
If she hadn’t already stopped moving, those five words would have rooted her feet to the floor like quicksand. “Really? I wouldn’t have thought . . .”
“That I wasn’t such a Casanova back in elementary school?” Chase pulled out his wallet from the back pocket of his pants, and thumbed through it for a credit card. “Surprise, surprise,” he murmured with a backward glance at her, “but you were my one and only kiss until I hit the eighth grade.”
“I . . .”
He smiled at her speechlessness, then passed the card over to the man behind the register. “I had hopes, you know.”
“Hopes?”
Another one of his husky laughs greeted her. “You’re starting to sound like a parrot again, Louisa.”
“I just . . . I guess I’m just having a hard time matching my idea of you to the reality.”
Chase waited to respond until they’d strolled
back outside, plastic bags hooked up their arms. The day had warmed significantly, and her clothes felt too tight and too hot against her skin.
With his face tipped up to the sun, he murmured, “I was holding out hope for someone for a while there, silly as it seems for that age.”
But it wasn’t that silly, was it? Louisa had held out hope for years that Chase would give her the time of day. And so she said just that, balancing the plastic bags with Christmas lights against her hips as she stood there in front of him. “Not silly,” she whispered. “I just wouldn’t have pegged you for a romantic.”
“I know.” He dipped his head toward the town center, where a statue of Anastasia “The Sparrow” Roberts stood, a testament to Fortune’s Bay love for its history. “Are you ready for the next bit of our adventure today?”
For the first time all morning, Louisa suspected that Chase had set the two of them on a path that only he could see. And for the first time all morning, she refused to question him or put up a struggle.
“Okay,” she said, “take me to where we’re going next.”
Chase brought her to Sea Dog Pier, right on the edge of town. For Winterfest, in lead up to the town’s annual treasure hunt next week, the pier had been decorated for the holidays. Christmas lights strung along the wooden balustrades, and it was so festive that it almost hurt.
Louisa had been so busy with work lately that she hadn’t even had the chance to come down to the pier before today.
She slowed down to a halt at the sight of a massive sailboat with pirate flags at the end of the pier. “Another addition by the board?” she asked, trying to keep the hurt out of her voice. As curator to the Pirate Museum, she should have been kept in the loop, and she wasn’t entirely sure what it meant that she’d been forgotten.
Chase brushed past her, giving her a gentle nudge to keep moving along. “It was an addition I suggested, actually.”
Now that she got a good view of the sailboat, she had to admit that it was excellently done—not that she would ever think Chase capable of anything else but the very best. “It’s amazing.” She pointed to the flags. “That’s a nice touch. You know the kids will love it.”
“I know. I’ve been, uh . . .” He made a move with his arms, as though he wanted to rub the back of his neck or scratch his head, but the plastic bags didn’t give him the opportunity. “I’ve been planning this one for a while. Last year, actually, but some stuff happened, and I didn’t get the chance.”
They neared the end of the pier, and Chase put down all of the bags. In a limber move that looked like something out of a movie, he leapt onto the sailboat and turned to face her. “Throw me the lights.”
She glanced down at her arms, where the plastic bags were strung up the length of her forearms like she was a Christmas tree herself. “You want me to just throw them at you?”
“To me, not at me.” He held up a hand, one finger lifted in the air like he was checking the wind direction. “One a time. If you overthrow or underthrow, I don’t want to be diving into the water for it. C’mon, sweetheart, toss it this way.”
Sweetheart.
The word curled into her chest, lingering like a lit flame.
“Louisa? The boxes?”
“Right!” Moving the bags down her arms so she could put them on the dock, she picked up one and football-tossed it to Chase in the boat. He caught it with ease, and then set it aside, before motioning to her for another.
For the next few minutes, she tossed box after box into the boat. They made good headway, and before she knew it, Chase was holding out a hand and encouraging her to take it. “Want to help me string them up?”
Louisa didn’t wait for him to tell her again.
She slipped her hand over his, and she took a leap of faith into the sailboat. He caught her around the waist, and then drew her up against his chest.
Oh.
Oh.
His strong arms enveloped her, and it was everything she’d ever wanted and nothing she could have ever imagined all at once. Broad fingers pressed into her lower back, and she bit back a whimper of joy.
“Thanks for catching me,” she murmured, striving for indifference, as her own fingers danced a trail to the balls of his shoulders. “I’d hate to think that I may have fallen into the water.”
“It was no problem.” His breath whispered across her forehead as he spoke, and crazy as it sounded, she could have sworn he leaned in to smell her. “You ready to help me light this bad boy up like a Christmas tree?”
It was safe to say that his nearness lit her up like a Christmas tree. Her stupid heart didn’t get the memo even when he disentangled himself and dropped to his haunches to start opening all the boxes. Her heart thump-thumped like a wild animal ready to break free from its cage, and didn’t do any better when Chase glanced up at her and winked.
Winked.
Had she walked into an alternate universe today, or what?
Stepping in next to him, she mimicked him. Opening boxes, removing the rainbow-colored lights from their plastic packages. “Do you plan to let the kids come onto the boat itself?” she asked.
“I’ll be bringing a plank.”
Louisa laughed. “You’re going to make the kids walk an honest-to-god plank? You’ve got no shame, Chase, no shame at all.”
Answering her laughter with his own, Chase stood, knees popping audibly as he straightened to his full height. He swiped his hands against his pant legs, and then grabbed a strand of multi-colored lights. “You better believe I will,” he said, and then began to wind the lights along the ledge of the sailboat. “Obviously, I’ll only be able to take them on a few at a time.”
“Unless we’re willing to capsize?” Louisa teased.
“Could be fun, but I can only imagine the number of angry parents storming down here to protest.”
She waited until Chase turned around to meet her gaze before making a slash motion across her neck. “They’d vote to have off with your neck, just like a true mutineer.”
Deep laughter rumbled in his chest. “This might come as a bit of a surprise, but I like my head exactly where it is.”
“I like your head where it is, too.”
Chase paused, watching her. “I could take that statement in so many different ways, but I’ll resist.”
The blush was back, even worse than before, and Louisa busied herself with handing Chase the next section of lights. Control yourself, girl. She needed to change the conversation before she said something else embarrassing.
“Tell me a story,” she announced, hoping to distract herself and him from her awkward faux pas. “Or maybe just tell me the one thing that’s happened since we graduated high school—one thing you think I should know.”
As his hands fit the lights over the ledge of the boat, he shook his head to get his hair out of his face. “And you’ll do the same?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.” His sweater stretched across his back as he leaned over the side to hook the lights in such a way that they looked like U’s. “Well, I remember the day you came back to Fortune’s Bay.” He didn’t look over to catch her reaction, which was possibly a good thing, since her mouth had dropped open unceremoniously. “Your brother and I were at the Wilde Pirate having a pint, and you’d strolled right in. Aaron forgot to pick you up from the bus station in Cape Coral.”
She recalled the day quite clearly. After living in Miami, she’d ditched her car and made the best with public transportation. Which would have been fine, if her brother hadn’t decided to grab a pint of Guinness over picking her up from the bus station in Cape Coral, the closest town to Fortune’s Bay. One hour had slipped into another, and Louisa had resigned herself to taking a cab home.
But Fortune’s Bay was small, small enough that when the cab dropped her off in front of her new apartment with all of her belongings, she’d recognized her next-door neighbor as a girl Aaron had dated after high school. Five minutes later, she’d learned her twin was down at the
Wilde Pirate, drinking beer and enjoying a guy’s night out.
Ten minutes later after that, she’d stormed into the pub to give her brother a piece of her mind.
“You looked so angry,” Chase went on, “but beautiful. I hadn’t seen you in years, since you rarely visited home except for the holidays.”
The words stuck in her throat. That day at the pub, she’d hardly realized Chase was there at all until the frustration had left her and she’d plopped onto the empty bar stool beside him.
“Might be one of my best memories,” Chase mused, “it was the first time in years that I’d seen you and you hadn’t been—”
“Nervous,” Louisa finished for him. “I know. I was too busy barking at Aaron to realize that you were even there.”
Chase set down the lights, and leaned his hip against the side of the boat. With his arms crossed over his burly chest, and his blue eyes unwavering, he didn’t look like a man willing to accept retreat from whatever this was.
And then he threw down the gauntlet with a softly uttered, “And why are you always nervous around me, Louisa?”
“I—” He’d caught her there, red-handed and with her hand stuck in the proverbial cookie jar. The serious expression on his face told her that he knew her little secret, and there was no use lying and pretending otherwise. “I like you.”
She cringed. Perhaps she should elaborate? Give a little information, make it a little more romantic?
She tried again. “What I meant to say is, I’ve, uh, liked you for a while.”
Ugh. That was definitely not any better.
Chase pushed away from the ledge and approached her, his stride slow and even, as though he had no concern whatsoever that she would stay exactly where she stood. “And how long is awhile, sweetheart?”
Again with the sweetheart.
Her heart raced in her chest, and she slicked her palms down the length of her skirt. “We’re talking a few years, maybe.”
“Just maybe?” He stopped before her. “Or definitely?”
“The latter,” she whispered.
With a small nod, his blond hair fell across his temple. “What would I have to do to show you that you don’t have to be nervous around me?” He met her gaze, and before she could gather her thoughts, he’d sent them spiraling once again by lifting his hand and brushing back her hair. He tucked the strands behind her ear, and then let his finger brush along the shell. “I’ve seen you with your friends, Louisa. I’ve seen you with the kids who come into the Pirate Museum, whenever you bring them out to Sea Dog Pier. But you aren’t that way with me, and that’s what I want. I want you, Louisa, but I don’t want you nervous and uncertain.”
