Catch of a Lifetime

by Andrew Grey

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  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

  Epilogue

  More from Andrew Grey

  About the Author

  By Andrew Grey

  Readers love Andrew Grey

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Catch of a Lifetime

  By Andrew Grey

  Some moments happen once in a lifetime, and you have to catch them and hold on tight.

  Arty Reynolds chased his dream to Broadway, but after his father is injured, he must return to the small fishing community where he grew up, at least until his dad is back on his feet.

  Jamie Wilson fled his family farm, but failed to achieve real independence. Arty is hiring for a trip on the gulf, and it’ll get Jamie one step closer to his goal.

  Neither man plans to stay in Florida long-term, neither is looking for love, and they’re both blown away by the passion that sparks between them. But on a fishing boat, there’s little privacy to see where their feelings might lead. Passion builds like a storm until they reach land, where they also learn they share a common dream. The lives they both long for could line up perfectly, as long as they can weather the strain on their new romance when only one of them may get a chance at their dream.

  To Lynn for her story help, to Mike G for the fishing expertise, and to the tour boat captain off Longboat Key who inspired the story in the first place. And a special thank-you to Karen Rose and Mr. R for the amazing day that started it all.

  Chapter 1

  “IS THERE any news on the sneaker commercial?” Ryan asked as he strode into the tiny living room, closing his bedroom door behind him. “You were talking about it like it was a sure thing three days ago.”

  Robert Todd Reynolds—aka Arty—sighed softly. “I was, and I thought I had nailed it. Even Margaret thought I had a real chance.” He pulled on his shoes for work and then checked himself in the mirror behind the single closet door. He and Ryan had to share a lot of things in this tiny place. It was little more than two rooms with a walk-in closet. Ryan, a working clothes designer, paid more of the rent than Arty, a currently out-of-work actor, so he slept in the bedroom while Arty used the converted closet, which barely held his bed. But with the prices of apartments in New York, it was all he could afford on the salary he brought in from his multiple day jobs.

  “But they gave it to someone else?” Ryan asked, sitting down on the futon, which creaked under his weight. The piece of furniture had come with the fourth-floor walk-up apartment, and Ryan had reworked the cover. It sounded like Arty needed to tighten up the frame again. He hoped the thing held together for a little longer.

  “Yeah.” Arty shook his head. “Margaret messaged me that they decided to give it to a fresh face.” He turned to the mirror once again. “I never realized that I had an old face.” He pulled at his cheeks and neck as though he were giving himself a face-lift.

  “You don’t and you know it,” Ryan told him. “That’s just silly. You did those two commercials last year, and you’ve booked other jobs regularly. That’s more than most other people do.” Ryan sat back. “What we do is fucking hard to break into. You want to get noticed by agents, scouts, and producers…. Me, I’d be thrilled if I could get anyone to look at my fashion designs.”

  “But at least you’re working in your industry,” Arty said. In the back of his mind, the idea nagged at him that the limited success he’d had was all there would be, and that he was never going to truly make it. “And it’s just a matter of time before someone notices the work you’re doing. After all, you’re a walking business card.” That was another reason Ryan had the larger room—so he could have a place to sew and create. He made all his own clothes and was the best-dressed person Arty knew. He had even made a few things for Arty.

  “And you will too. It takes time.” Ryan was right and wrong at the same time. Ryan knew there were no guarantees in this business. Yes, Arty needed to put in his time and always give his best, but he’d been doing that for five years. And after the commercials, he thought he’d broken through, especially after two more had followed in fairly rapid succession.

  “Well, time is the one thing I don’t have right now. I need to get to work.” Arty grabbed his coat out of the closet and closed the door. “I’ll be home really late.”

  Ryan nodded. “I have a date with Kirk tonight, so I don’t know how late I’ll be or if I’ll be home at all.” He grinned, and Arty groaned. Ryan was so danged lucky when it came to guys. He had been dating Kirk for nearly six months, and they were getting pretty serious. Arty was a little jealous of him, especially after his own prolonged dry spell. His own relationships rarely lasted longer than a few weeks, and then he’d have to break a date because of a work schedule change at one of his jobs, or he’d have an audition. His schedule and time were rarely his own, and Arty was constantly juggling his priorities. Still, it was better than being a fisherman on Florida’s Gulf Coast, like his dad.

  “Be safe,” Arty reminded him and hugged Ryan before putting on his long coat and hurrying out the door and down the stairs. Thankfully, he worked at Squires Steak House, just a block away from his building, so he didn’t have to spend much time in the wind and snow. The only thing he didn’t like about New York was the cold winters.

  Growing up in Florida, he suffered from thin blood, as his mother would say, and the cold went right through him. New York summers were a walk in the park for him when everyone else was sweltering, but these frigid temperatures, and all the snow… they were almost more than he could stand. Arty pulled his coat closer around him as soon as he stepped out of the building, turning into the wind and sloshing through the slushy sidewalk with its hidden patches of ice that he knew were there, even if he couldn’t see them.

  He hurried on down the sidewalk as quickly as he dared, passing curtained apartment windows that spilled light out onto the street, adding to the glow that was the city after dark, so different from the dots of light and darkness over the water that he’d grown up with. New York was about as far as he could imagine from what had been his home for most of his life, up until the last four years. Still, the city was his home of choice now, and he was happy here.

  “Hey, Arty,” Clark said as he approached the other direction on his way home. “You’d better hurry or you’re going to be late, and Monty is in a real mood. He’s feeling particularly imperial tonight.” He grinned, and Arty rolled his eyes.

  “I’ll hurry, and watch out for him.” Arty waved and hustled on so he wouldn’t be late. When Monty was in a bad mood, he could be as demanding as a drill sergeant. And since he was the person who managed all the servers and set up the various stations, Arty didn’t want to get on his bad side. Arty burst through the side entrance and into the kitchen area of the restaurant, hung up his coat in the employee area, and checked that he was presentable. Then he clocked in and found Monty to start his shift.

  It was a “run Arty off his feet” kind of night, or at least it seemed to be. Not that Arty didn’t always work hard and do his best to stay on task, but tonight, things just seemed off for some reason. His usual efficiency wasn’t in tune with his diners, and he ended up making a lot of extra trips. His phone vibrated in his pocket while he was at a table, but he ignored it, taking a customer order even as his heart beat a little faster in anticipation. His agent, Margaret, worked
weird hours and caught up on phone calls at unexpected times, so he never knew when he’d get important news.

  “Yes, ma’am, the beef is properly aged. It’s the only way we prepare it,” Arty answered the diner’s question. The vibrating stopped, and he finished taking the order for his table, answering questions he’d been asked a million times and somehow finding patience. “Thank you,” he said when they finally finished. Then he hurried to the server station to put the order in to the kitchen, then moved on to the prep area to arrange for their salads and bread.

  He peered around him and hazarded a look at his phone. It wasn’t a number he recognized, but the area code indicated it was from Florida, where his father still lived. Arty stepped into the kitchen and to the break area. If he was lucky, Monty wouldn’t see him. He pressed the button to return the call and waited.

  “Arty,” a familiar voice answered, but he had trouble putting a name to it at first. “Thank goodness you called back. I was going to keep trying. Sorry, this is Evelyn Marshall.”

  His back straightened until he remembered he wasn’t once again sitting at her piano, with her giving him instructions on the proper way to sit and approach the keys. “It’s good to hear your voice. What can I help you with, ma’am?” Manners had been drilled into him by his mother before she passed away.

  “I’m calling because of your father.” She whispered now, and he knew the signal. He may not have been there, but she had some “secret” information to impart. “He fell on the boat the last time he was out. His boot got caught in one of the lines, and there was a goliath grouper on the other end. It went up and cut his leg pretty badly. Not only that, but he broke his other leg when he fell on the deck. The cut got infected.” She fluttered and huffed for breath. Mrs. Marshall always did that when she got excited.

  Arty waited, glancing around, knowing he had to get back out front. “I only have a few seconds. I’m at work right now.”

  “Oh, of course, dear,” she breathed.

  “I get a break in a few hours. Can I call you then or is that too late?” He was concerned about her, his dad, and the fact that he was going to get his ass handed to him if he didn’t get back out to his tables.

  “I’m old—we never sleep. Call as soon as you can.” She hung up, and Arty put his phone back in his pocket and returned to the prep area, grabbed what he needed from the station, and headed out to his tables, double-time, serving salads and bread, refilling waters and drinks, and getting extra butter, salad dressing—everything his patrons needed.

  Finally he got a few minutes and went in the back, sat down, and slipped off his shoes so his feet could breathe a minute. He should try to eat something, but instead, he called Mrs. Marshall’s number, and once again she answered as though she’d just run a race.

  “Arty, sweetheart,” she said as soon as she picked up the phone. “Your father would hate me for saying anything, but I thought you needed to know.”

  “You said Dad got hurt?” Arty asked. His dad was tough as nails and came through everything just fine. He always had.

  “Yes. And he hasn’t been able to take the boat out. His crew has signed on to other boats because they need the work, and your father is sitting at home. I bring him food, so he isn’t starving, but….” She paused, and the whisper started. “I was there and saw a letter from the bank. He tried to hide it, but this old biddy can read fast.” She chuckled. “The loan on his boat is due, and….”

  Arty closed his eyes and his head pounded. He was well aware of the perils of what his father did for a living. “Jesus, Dad,” he groaned under his breath. Ruin was always just around the corner, waiting to snatch away everything a person had, just like that. “He’d never ask for help, even though everyone there would pitch in, if he asked.” Arty’s father was as stubborn as a mule and sometimes twice as thick.

  She didn’t argue. “Be that as it may, your dad needs you, and you know he’ll never ask.” “I’ll call him as soon as I can.”

  “You can’t, dear. They turned off his phone,” she said. “He’s in real trouble.” While Mrs. Marshall might be dramatic, she wasn’t prone to exaggeration. “You need to come down here and help him, Arty. You’re the only one who can. He isn’t letting the rest of us in. Please. I worry about him.” She started to sniffle, and that caught Arty’s attention.

  “I’ll see what I can do, I promise. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He had saved most of the money he had earned from his commercials and other small acting parts because his expenses were low enough that he was able to support himself on his other jobs. So maybe he could send his dad enough to get him through until he could get back to work.

  “Just tell me when your plane gets in and I’ll come meet you.” She sniffed again, and Arty slipped on his shoes, getting ready to face more hungry diners. Mrs. Marshall was right. There was no way Arty could leave his father hanging out on the Gulf winds. He’d have to go home, whether he wanted to or not.

  Chapter 2

  IT TOOK a few days to arrange things and find a flight that wasn’t going to cost him an arm and a leg, but before he knew it, he was stepping out of the Tampa airport and into January Florida sun. God, it felt good to be back in the warmth. Arty took a deep breath of the slightly salty air that told him he was home. He tried to push aside his nervousness about what he was going to do and find when he got to his father’s place. He had sent his dad an email, but he doubted his father looked at it. Mrs. Marshall had promised to tell his father that he was coming, but Arty wasn’t even sure of the reception he was going to get when he arrived, given that his father hadn’t called himself. He and his father had never seen eye to eye, and there was no reason for that to have changed. He sent a message to Mrs. Marshall to let her know that he had arrived and did the same with Ryan.

  His phone immediately rang. “You going to be okay?” Ryan asked. “You got out just in time. It started to snow an hour ago. God, I wish I could have gone with you.”

  “Me too.” He didn’t say anything about the fact that Ryan, with his fine clothes and cosmopolitan thinking, would be as out of place in his small fishing town as a red snapper at a chicken-eating contest. “I’m waiting for my ride, but I think they just showed up.”

  “Then call me later and let me know if it’s as bad as you think and if there’s anything I can do. I’m gonna miss you. I’ve gotten used to having you around.” He and Ryan had always gotten along pretty well since they’d been sort of thrown together as roommates years ago. Over that time, they had become real and close friends.

  “I’m going to miss you too. But I have to do this.” Still, Arty wished he were back in the city, living the life he’d built for himself. Instead, he’d come home, and would likely be stepping back into the way things had been. Life here seemed backward, stuck in a time that had passed by everywhere else. Arty had wanted a future where he didn’t have to spend his life and livelihood wondering whether the fish were biting. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said, pushing the End button on the phone as Mrs. Marshall pulled up in one of her pickup trucks. The Ford was huge and probably about five years old. Arty pulled open the passenger door and flipped open the side super cab door, hefting his luggage into the back. Then he closed it up and climbed inside.

  “Thank you for doing this,” Arty told Mrs. Marshall, pulling the passenger door closed. She nodded, then took off. They made their way out of the airport, heading south. Arty did his best not to grab the “oh shit” handle as Mrs. Marshall got on the freeway, but then she settled down and the ride got smoother. Thank God. “How is Dad?”

  “The doctor is worried about the infection. He refused to take his pills at first, but I’ve gone over to make sure he gets them down. He growls at me, but at least he takes his medication now and the leg is showing signs of healing. The problem is that he won’t stay still. He says he has to get to work, but he can’t do that with the broken leg, and the wound on his leg can’t heal if the infection doesn’t clear up.” She shook her head. “He
needs to take it easy and rest, but he doesn’t want to and keeps wheeling himself down to the docks. The break is bad enough that he can’t walk yet, but….” She sped up, as though his father was going to get into trouble if she was gone too long.

  “I don’t know what I can do for him now that I’m here other than….” Arty’s words trailed off as they crossed the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. The view always took his breath away, and as he turned to look out toward the Gulf, some part of his soul stirred slightly. It had been a long time since he’d seen the place that had been his home for the majority of his life.

  Once across the bridge, Mrs. Marshall continued south, and after the bridges were behind them, she pulled off and into a parking lot, leaving the engine running. “Arty.” Her usual casual joviality was gone in an instant.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.

  “You have to do something for your father. He’s going to lose the boat, the house, everything. He has enough debts that they’ll take it all, including his IFQ—the allocation that made up his fishing quota. When that happens, there’ll be no way for him to make a living. You know that. He’ll have nothing at all.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “And it’s going to be at least another six weeks before he’s up and about again.”

  “I see,” Arty said softly. “Then I’d appreciate it if you’d get me there quickly so I can talk to Dad and see how bad things really are.” Fishing, any kind of fishing, was a hard job that paid very little. Arty had learned that risk and reward usually went hand in hand—the higher the risk, the greater the reward. Not in fishing. The risks were huge and the rewards sucked. People who fished did it because it was the only way of life they knew, and most barely managed to make a living.

  “Do you need to eat?” she asked as she put the truck in gear.

  “No, thanks. Since we’re almost there, let me get home so I can figure some things out.” The sooner Arty got to the bottom of what was happening and came up with a plan, the sooner he could get back on a plane home. This wasn’t his life any longer. He’d worked like hell, keeping two jobs most of the time and putting himself in front of every casting agent he could with only one goal in mind—never returning to the life he’d left behind.