Hooked

by Ev Bishop

  Jo nodded and handed her rod back.

  “Nah, I’m good for now. You fish. I’ll watch.”

  “No, I’m good too.”

  They leaned their rods on a log and settled themselves on a huge white rock. Jo opened a thermos of hot chocolate and poured them each a small stainless steel mug full.

  Sam inhaled deeply. It was weird how she was never bored here—and with nary a shoe store in sight, ha ha.

  “Okay, I admit it,” she said breaking the soft green-gray silence. “You have something really good. I understand how a person could get hooked.”

  “Hooked on life here, or hooked on Charlie?”

  Sam sipped her cocoa, didn’t reply.

  “I thought so,” Jo said triumphantly. “So why not stay? You could rent Silver permanently for a reduced rate or buy a place in town—”

  “It’s tempting.”

  “So give in.”

  Sam closed her eyes briefly. She’d thought she and Jo would have this conversation with her computer nearby and notes in hand—the lovely, reliable numbers there to lean on and support her—but maybe this was better. It would be a different type of venture for Sam, so it might as well be set apart right from the start. She opened her eyes again. “I’d actually wanted to talk to you, well, to you and Callum, about bringing me in as a partner.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” Sam said, smiling—but then Aisha’s angry face flared in her memory and she faltered. “But, well, maybe if Aisha’s serious about staying on long-term I need to give it more thought.”

  Jo looked out across the river and her focus was on some unseen point in the distance when she spoke. “We’re doing fine, Sam. Totally fine. We don’t need—”

  “No,” Sam broke in. “You’re doing great, actually. My interest isn’t thinly veiled criticism. It’s a bit selfish as usual.” Her voice dropped so low it was difficult to hear, even for herself. “Let’s just say I’m starting to understand your obsession about building something tangible.”

  Jo’s eyes snapped to Sam’s face.

  Sam shrugged and nodded.

  Jo shook her head. “You do need to think about this more—not because we wouldn’t be grateful and couldn’t benefit from your help, but because it might be an anchor you don’t appreciate, whether Aisha’s on the scene or not. And about Aisha. She’s great, but I’m not choosing her over you. There will always be a place here for her and Mo, but there will always be one for you, too—and that’s something she’ll have to grow up about.”

  Sam harrumphed lightly.

  “And for what it’s worth, Sam, what you did back there was bullshit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t widen your eyes and play innocent with me. I always know that’s the furthest thing from what you are.”

  Sam laughed a little.

  “There’s no way you went behind Aisha’s back to Evan. None. And if she wasn’t awash in postpartum hormones and half insane with sleep deprivation, even though she doesn’t know you super well, she’d know that.”

  “Well—”

  “No, I’m serious. It was stupid and dishonest—two things you rarely are—for you to cover for Charlie.”

  Sam shrugged. “He’s her dad and he’s a good guy, motivated by good intentions.”

  “So not the point.”

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree. What I wanted to talk about was me fronting you the money to renovate those unfinished cabins in the back and to build more. I think you could run this place at full capacity, even if you had twenty cabins.”

  Jo yelped and held up her hands. “Beware of blessings that are actually curses.”

  “Too daunting a workload?”

  “Twenty yes, but twelve. . . .”

  “Well, we’ll talk more later. Run it by Callum. He might not want me involved. If he does, we can flesh out concrete details then.”

  Jo swallowed the rest of her cocoa. “So you’d be a silent partner.”

  Sam hesitated, and then straightened her shoulders. “Absolutely. Just a straight up loan, paid back with interest or maybe some deal with profit sharing down the road. It’s an investment, that’s all. That’s my way. You know.”

  Jo studied Sam’s face. “Wow.”

  Sam shrugged and gave her best cool gaze in return.

  “When you said you wanted to ‘build something tangible,’ you meant you were thinking of being involved-involved, weren’t you? Like taking part in the day-to-day running of River’s Sigh?” Jo stood, shoved her and Sam’s mugs into her backpack, and hefted the rods.

  “Maybe I was . . . just a little, in the high season.” Sam shimmied herself up to standing, too. “But recent developments—” She cleared her throat. “Well, let’s just say I’ve realized a simple cash injection might be best.”

  Jo walked the trail ahead of Sam, keeping a brisk pace and not babying Sam because of her injury. Sam appreciated it just as much as she did not appreciate the lecture she knew was coming.

  “Look, I know you don’t want to hear this, but I need to say it.”

  Could she call it or what?

  Jo continued. “People betray you. It’s the problem with having family—any loved ones at all, actually. They open you wide up for potential pain, and facing the truth that they could be lost can make you freakishly possessive and insecure. But the flipside is that nothing else in life offers the happiness, peace and deep joy that letting people in, letting them love you—and letting yourself love them back—does. You know it’s true from all the investing and trading you’ve done: reaping a reward always demands a level of risk.”

  “Yeah, well,” Sam said, panting a bit from the effort of speed walking and trying to talk while on crutches. “Plenty of people lose their shirts and end up in the poorhouse too—and that analogy works both ways just like yours does.”

  “Bah. There are smart risks and idiot risks. You know that and you know the difference.”

  “Wait a minute. What are you getting at? Are you talking about me partnering with you and Callum or do you mean Charlie?”

  Jo stopped so abruptly that Sam bumped into her. “Hey!” She tapped Jo’s calf with her crutch. “Don’t do that. I can’t make fast stops.”

  “Of course I was talking about Charlie.”

  “Well, Charlie’s off the table. But backing you isn’t. Ask Callum if he’s interested in a silent partner.”

  Jo resumed walking and gave no yea or nay.

  Chapter 28

  The light she and Jo had enjoyed at the river was disappearing, and the tree line zipping past was a moody black-green streak beneath the leaden sky.

  Her cell phone pulsed. She looked at the call display, sighed, and turned it facedown on the passenger seat. Charlie yet again.

  “You want to end up dead? Keep your eyes on the road, dummy,” she muttered aloud. Behind her, the desolate highway was empty as far as the eye could see—something she knew because she kept checking the rearview mirror again and again and again: obsessive even by her own high level of tolerance for such behavior.

  She took a turn too fast, saw a road sign announcing the distances to the next three towns, then hit the brakes so hard she practically did a brake stand. Shaken, she pulled over to the gravel shoulder. She’d been hit with a memory from the day she’d fallen into the canyon—and how she’d felt in those exhausted hours. All she’d wanted was to give up and wait to be rescued, but she hadn’t. She’d decided, as ever, that no, she needed to walk out on her own.

  She always wanted to be that lone cowboy, secure and safe and able to survive alone—and there was strength in that, absolutely. But there was loneliness too. And she didn’t want to be lonely anymore.

  Her vow from that night came back to her. She’d promised herself that she’d think how the lessons she’d learned there might apply to her and Charlie—but she’d only gone halfway, hadn’t she? She’d made a pretense of bravery when they’d talked on that log—only to back a
way from that resolve, let her nerve fail her, in the face of Aisha’s disapproval.

  She killed the engine, folded her arms over the steering wheel, and dropped her head.

  Finally, after a long time, when the air inside the vehicle had cooled around her, she lifted her face, restarted the SUV, did a three-point-turn and slowly drove back the way she had come.

  Charlie’s Toyota was nowhere to be seen when Sam pulled back into River’s Sigh, but that was just as well for now. She parked as close to Minnow cabin as she could, climbed out of the Mercedes and let Dog out to roam, then bolted toward Aisha’s door as quickly as her crutches would let her, determined not to lose her nerve.

  Sam knuckles had barely graced the door when it flew open. She took a step back as Aisha’s disembodied voice blurted crossly, “What do you want now? I said I was sorry already. I feel terrible, all right?”

  “All right with me,” Sam said breezily. “But who’d you say sorry to?”

  There was a split second of stony silence, then Aisha stepped into view from behind the door. “Sam,” she said.

  “In the flesh.”

  Aisha’s complexion was butter yellow and her hair looked unnaturally amber in golden glow of the lamp above the door—but for all that heightened, surreal color, her expression was pale and stressed. “I thought you were my dad.”

  “I figured.” There was another moment of strained silence. “May I come in?”

  Wordlessly, Aisha moved back and opened the door wider.

  Sam crutch-clomped into the tiny living room, smiled down at dozing Maureen and eased herself into an armchair. “That kid will sleep through anything, hey?”

  “Yeah.” Aisha’s face creased in a tentative smile, and she perched on the edge of a wooden stool near the island counter that served as the small area’s sole dining space. “Look,” she started. “About that stuff I said, about you, about Evan—”

  Sam waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. It’s forgotten.”

  Aisha shook her head. “Not good enough, but thank you. I have to apologize. I am sorry, for whatever it’s worth.”

  “It’s worth a lot.” Sam rubbed her hands together and looked around the cabin. “You talked to your dad, I take it.”

  “He talked to me, more like it . . . I still can’t, well—ugh. I just can’t believe he did that.”

  “If it helps any, he wasn’t trying to start problems. I don’t think he realized you hadn’t told the sperm donor where you were.”

  “Sperm donor. Good one. That’s what I call him too.”

  “You ever going to tell me the story there?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Okay.” It was funny. She’d come to Aisha’s first, before going to Charlie’s, to say one simple thing. Now that she was sitting across from her, however, it felt anything but. “So you’re probably wondering why I’m here.”

  “Not really.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow.

  “Probably for the same reason my dad was just here.”

  “No, I wasn’t planning to tell you he’d spoken to Evan. I just wanted—”

  “To tell me that you really care for my dad and you realize that might make me unhappy but you’re adults and I’m basically one too, and you’re going to pursue a relationship with each other and I just have to deal with it in a mature, self-controlled, supportive way—just as you have tried to deal with some of my choices that you’re less than happy with—although, really, that last bit can’t apply as much to you as it does to him.”

  Charlie had already covered the tough subject! Joy danced through Sam’s veins and made her heart spin a little, even as she smirked at Aisha’s sardonic tone. “You and I really are genetically related, aren’t we?”

  Aisha’s mouth quirked a little too. “So I’m told.”

  “Anyway, yes, that sort of was what I was going to say, but also . . .”

  “Also what?” Aisha asked when Sam paused for too long.

  “Well, I don’t expect us to be bosom buddies or to take your real mom’s place or anything, but, uh, if you didn’t hate me, that would be nice.”

  “I don’t . . . hate you. I was just angry, and I figured, since you were always planning to bolt first chance you got, I’d cut the cord first.”

  Sam looked down. Just say it, she told herself. Say it so it’s out there once and for all, so we can both move on to . . . whatever, if anything, comes next. “I also wanted to tell you that while it might seem to you like I’m only here because I’m interested in Charlie, that’s not the full story. Even if your dad and I had nothing between us, I would’ve turned around and come back tonight.”

  Aisha shrugged. “I know. You and Jo are tight. I was already schooling myself about how to deal with seeing you occasionally.”

  “No—that I’d still visit Jo is a given. I meant that I wouldn’t just drop out of your and Mo’s lives forever, or wouldn’t unless you wanted me to. And regardless of your dad, I wanted to come back to extend an invitation—and a hope—that you and I could keep in touch.” It was the truth, but Sam could see how it might seem self-serving.

  Aisha didn’t speak.

  Sam got to her feet, her sore leg stiff from the drive, the rest of her rigid with unease. She had tried at least. “So, yeah . . . well, that’s it. I’ll go track down your old man now.”

  Aisha nodded and still didn’t say anything—but she watched from the doorway to make sure Sam made it off the porch and down the stairs okay.

  Sam was on the gravel, ready to start toward Rainbow, when Aisha’s voice stopped her. “I just don’t get it. Why does love have to hurt so much? Why does everything always have to end?”

  Something in Sam’s heart cracked and she wished she had some deep, comforting truth to impart, but even coming up empty she turned back. Aisha’s crazy blond curls, backlit by the porch light, looked like a halo.

  “I don’t know, but I have learned something important recently.”

  Aisha crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

  “Sometimes not loving hurts more.”

  Aisha’s eyes locked on hers and Sam held her gaze steadily, without faltering.

  Finally Aisha nodded. “Hmpf. That’s something my mom would’ve said.”

  Sam shrugged and adjusted her crutches. “What can I say? She sounds like a fount of wisdom and insight.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Aisha’s dry tone held a hint of laughter, and she moved to shut the door.

  “Wait.” Sam raised her crutches. “Please, Aisha. I need to say what I actually came here to say. I’m sorry I keep avoiding it.”

  Aisha looked curious and kept the door open, but also didn’t move closer to Sam.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” Sam asked.

  Aisha shrugged and motioned at the porch’s solitary rocking chair. Sam reclimbed the stairs and sat.

  “Should I get us tea or something?” Aisha asked.

  “That’d be great.” And it was. Holding the hot mug was comforting and kept her rooted securely in the present as her mind fell to the insecure jumble of her past.

  “I appreciate how you haven’t pushed for information about your birth father. It’s a lame, predictable story, I’m afraid—not a lot of drama or intrigue at all.”

  “Stop stalling,” Aisha said, with a small grin.

  Sam nodded. “I was a precocious kid and a nightmare of a teenager, or I would’ve been had anyone cared or tried to rein me in. When I was thirteen I hung out with boys with cars. When I was in high school I dated men.”

  Aisha made a face.

  “Yeah,” Sam agreed. “But there were good times too—and a lot of it was an act. I was a big talker mostly. For all my carefully projected worldliness I was brutally naïve in other ways. All I wanted was to belong. To have polish and money. To be special.” Sam sipped her tea. “So, of course, I fell for a guy and a lie that gave me a false sense of those things.”

  “Close your eyes.” But the voi
ce wasn’t Sam’s. Wasn’t Aisha’s. It was his. Rick’s. Hearing it again, even just in her head, made Sam’s body burn with humiliation.

  Sam had complied. The flickering candle on the table made her see red and gold undulating waves against her closed lids. Even now she remembered how, with her eyes closed, all her other senses were heightened. The flame’s heat licked her face—then her hair lifted off her shoulders and a slightly damp mouth pressed against her exposed flesh. Rick’s Polo cologne filled her nose and his smooth hands gripped her neck and squeezed lightly.

  “Delicious,” he murmured. A second later, something slippery slid over her skin. Her hand flew up to the slick beads circling her throat in two cold strands.

  “Oh . . .”

  “Pearls,” Rick whispered.

  Pearls? That made her smile. Jewelry like that was the kind of present you bought a woman who meant something to you, like a wife, not just a piece of ass on the side. Which all went to show that Sam was right and her best friend Anna was wrong. And with a friend who said things like that about you, who needed enemies? Besides, she had Jo. She had Rick—and Rick’s friends would eventually be her friends, too. It might be a little awkward at first, but they had to know what a bitch Lara was. Surely they’d want him to be with someone who loved him, who made him happy—

  “Okay, open your eyes, babe.”

  Again, Sam did as she was told. Rick was holding a round silver mirror in front of her, gripping her hair in a loose topknot. Sam’s eyes widened at her reflection. She’d never noticed before, but in this light, in this smoky room, with her hair up, she looked a lot like her mother.

  Rick misunderstood her mild shock as delight, rested his chin on her shoulder, and grinned lasciviously at their double reflection. “Smoking,” he hissed.

  Sam felt a little ill. Looking at Rick head on, he was handsome and polished like some movie star or actor who played a lawyer on TV. In the mirror together, however, she not only looked like her mom, her boy toy of choice was old—too old—also like her mom’s.

  “They’re really nice, thank you,” she said.