Hook, Line & Sinker

by Ev Bishop

  “Not cool, Callum. I’ve got enough to deal with, without one of your lame jokes.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Callum spoke again, more calmly. Somehow his lower volume and steadier cadence were more stressful than his panic had been. A hot knife of fear stabbed at Brian’s guts.

  “I’m not joking. I wish I were. The building went up early this morning, but I only found out about it myself a few hours ago because Jo and I were out in the yard. I called you a billion times. I think Mom and Dad have too.”

  Brian heard all of Callum’s words, but he couldn’t comprehend them. He was suddenly acutely conscious of the hum of his tires on the empty highway, Sawyer’s heavy breathing in the back seat, and Katelyn’s nervous fidgeting beside him. It was as if his brain, unable—or unwilling—to digest the real news, was seeking respite in trivia.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone was hurt, maybe a few cases of smoke inhalation, but that’s pretty much it. We were pretty worried, though, in case you’d caught an earlier flight and were sleeping it off at home. You know how it is—how you’re pretty sure someone’s okay, but you’re not one hundred percent at ease until you touch base.”

  “Sorry, wait. Can you stop talking a minute? I can’t take it in. I have to think.”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  Brian noticed his speedometer and was shocked. He had decelerated to a crawl. Good thing there was no one around. He shoulder checked to confirm it, then signaled and pulled over to the side of the road. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel and he tried to relax his grip.

  “Why did we stop?” Lacey’s voice came again in the closest thing to a whine Brian had heard from her since they met.

  “Shush, love. Brian needs a second. We’ll be on our way again soon.”

  “Who’s with you?” Callum asked. “Is there someone in your jeep with you?”

  “It’s a long story.” Brian rubbed his face. “I . . . never mind. I’ll explain later. What am I going to do? I don’t want to stay at the house with Mom, and Dad probably wants to shoot me on sight—”

  Callum didn’t disagree. “It’s already settled. You’re staying at River’s Sigh in the main house with us. Jo and I have plenty of room.”

  “But what am I going to do?” Brian was aware he had already asked that and been answered, but for someone usually quick on the draw, he was having a hard time. The conversation felt more like a dream than reality.

  “We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry. Plan to stay with us for as long as you need.”

  “Okay, okay, thanks.” Brian put the jeep back into gear, but kept his foot on the brake.

  “When you get here, if we don’t come out to greet you right way, just let yourself in. We got a last-minute booking for Spring cabin, some woman in a bind who couldn’t get a place anywhere else.”

  Some woman in a bind. Right. Katelyn. Who, in the strangest of coincidences, was sitting right beside him. Brian shot her a look and she raised her eyebrows, her lips curving in the smallest of wry smiles.

  “I’ll see you in a bit,” he told Callum and ended the call.

  Brian sat, engine idling, for another minute. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose, took a deep breath, and slowly returned to the highway. He was homeless. Literally, figuratively, and in pretty much every way a guy possibly could be. Homeless. An iron band of sadness wrapped around his chest and squeezed.

  Chapter 4

  The kids and Monster, each completely wiped out by the past twenty-four hours, were still sleeping when Katelyn stepped out of Spring cabin. She left the door ajar so she would hear them if they stirred. A narrow deck wrapped the full perimeter of the skinny three-floored building. She looked up at the rows of tall narrow windows that filled the open concept kitchen and shared living room on the first floor, the bathroom on the middle floor, and the two tiny bedroom nooks on the top floor, with light. It was such an eccentric building, like whoever designed it had wanted his or her own lighthouse. She loved it.

  She strolled around the small deck and surveyed her surroundings, which had been invisible to her when they’d arrived after midnight. The early morning air was chilly, bordering on frigid, and the sky was such a pale blue it was almost white.

  Katelyn knew she was only a few minutes’ walk from other cabins because Jo had pointed them out in the shadows the night before, but she couldn’t see a single roofline from where she stood. It was like being alone in the wilderness.

  With winter trudging away, sullen and resentful, and spring still non-committal, the yard was pretty dismal. But then Katelyn noticed the sheen. Everything she looked at was silver, from the wooden bench near her cabin’s door, to the holly bushes beside the porch, to the bumpy carpet of yet to bloom pansy greenery at her feet.

  It was too late in the season for this frost to last long. It was just a pause, a magical moment. The inevitable heat of the day would transform it back into a between seasons wasteland, a place where everything except the massive evergreens appeared withered and dead, as if nothing would ever live or grow from the earth again.

  Katelyn descended the three steps from the porch to the ground, feeling, really feeling, the temperature. It was nippy against her skin, but no longer seemed frigid. Instead it felt invigorating and full of promise. Even if the barren earth around her didn’t know it, if it was patient—and she was too—spring would come again.

  A too-long unfamiliar emotion welled up within her. Hope. She walked a few more steps, still marveling at how private the world felt here. Massive cedar trees, most so wide it would take several people holding hands to form a circle around them, stood protecting her cabin, thoroughly sheltering her from any prying eyes.

  She lifted her arms out to her sides and spun in a slow wide circle. She just had to hold on. Just had to keep focusing on the new growth, not the hard ground.

  She had failed to get herself, Lacey and Sawyer away from Greenridge, away from Steve—but she had a secure place to stay, a bit of money from the sale of her car to hold them over for a few months, and no doubt that her old boss would hire her back. She would keep persevering. One day she would have a safe, permanent home for herself and her children, a place to live and grow and love that wasn’t threatened by—or dependent on—the whims of someone else. She would.

  Something damp and velvet soft nudged the back of Katelyn’s knee. She shrieked softly and jumped, instantly startled back to the present. A skinny, gentle-eyed German shepherd looked up at her, then nodded and ambled away, as if she had only wanted to say hello and acknowledge the special moment too.

  Katelyn stood stock-still as her breathing and heart rate returned to normal. Then she shook her head, smiling a bit, and headed back into the slumbering cabin to wake the kids and start her day. To her surprise, she found herself thinking the hippy-dippy thought she was always laughingly accusing Janet of: it really was the little things in life that got you through.

  She reached the cabin door and stepped inside. While she’d been out, the coffee maker had done its job. The snug cabin was filled with the aroma of freshly brewed dark roast.

  What would she do when Steve tracked her to this peaceful haven and had one of his moods? What? She’d enjoyed a brief respite while she was outside, but now her anxiety, never far off, attacked hard. She pushed against it just as hard.

  She’d had a good morning. And she’d have another soon. And then, eventually, another and another—until it was her actual life.

  On the tail of that thought, Lacey yelled from the top of the wrought iron staircase that spiraled up through every level of the cabin, “Mom? Mom! Where are you? Sawyer peed the bed again.”

  What could Katelyn do? She shook her head and had to laugh.

  Chapter 5

  The weak morning sun stretched through the window and cast faint shadows across the big oak dining room table. Callum refreshed their coffees and settled into a chair beside Brian. “Not a very kind welcome home, hey?”

  Brian grunted a
nd Callum hesitated, then pressed on. “I’m sorry about your condo on top of, well, everything else.” He waved an arm as if to say there weren’t enough words to convey his sympathy. “And about that . . . how are you? Have you come to terms with Mom and Dad now? Are you going to represent her?”

  The smell of frying bacon and fresh coffee that seemed so homey moments ago was smothering Brian now, heavy, greasy and laden with obligation to converse. But he didn’t want to talk. Callum had worried he was having an emotional breakdown when he’d decided to go walkabout, and he hadn’t been able to convince him otherwise.

  “I’m fine. We all saw it coming. It should’ve happened decades ago, saved us all a lot of grief.”

  Callum took a big swallow of coffee. “I don’t know. It was still a shock to me, a sad one. I guess I always hoped they’d figure things out one day and we’d be able to say, ‘Ah, so that’s why they stayed together, so we could learn this or see that.’”

  Brian set his mug down too hard, and it clanked against the wooden table. “Well, we did learn something, right?”

  “And what’s that?”

  “What we knew all along. That it’s unnatural, unhealthy even, for two people to pledge to stay together forever. It just creates collateral damage—or what some people call children.”

  Callum shook his head, looking sad. “If that’s what you truly think, that it’s so natural, so unavoidable, for people to go their separate ways, why are you so broken up about it? And don’t think I didn’t notice how you avoided answering my question about being Mom’s lawyer either.”

  Brian shoved his chair back from the table and wished he’d taken Jo’s offer to eat at the sunny yellow table in their small personal kitchen, not in this big hall where they hosted the B & B guests’ meals. He’d thought it would be easier for Jo though, and that there’d be other people around, thus saving him from the third degree. And maybe it did save Jo labor, but he’d been wrong about the last bit entirely.

  “Also, if you’re so anti-marriage and so vehemently opposed to ‘collateral damage,’ what on earth are you doing dating a woman with kids?”

  “I’m not dating Katelyn. There’s nothing going on.”

  “Yeah, right. I know your nothings,” Callum went on, disregarding Brian’s body language in the way only a sibling could. “You’re never at a shortage for single girls. This Katelyn person has children. What if there’s still a chance she and the dad could make it work, but you mess it up? Or even if that’s not a possibility, you can’t waltz in and out of a woman’s life when there are kids involved. It’s not fair.”

  No, what wasn’t fair was being subjected to Callum’s high horse bullshit. If this was what staying here was going to be like, Brian would rather live in the library park under a bench until he found a new place.

  “And deprive a pretty maiden in need of rescue of my significant white knight skills? Besides without a place to live, I need something, or someone, to keep me busy,” Brian joked, throwing Callum’s earlier accusation—that he was a sucker for women with problems—back in his face.

  A door clicked behind Brian. Ah, saved by food. He put on a big smile and turned, expecting to see Jo with plates of something delicious. Instead he looked dead into the flushed face of Katelyn Kellerman. She was trembling.

  “The kids and I were just coming for breakfast,” she said in a clipped tone, Lacey and Sawyer right on her heels. “Jo invited us.”

  Callum looked uncomfortable for a split second and Brian could almost hear his older brother’s thoughts, knowing they matched his own: Shit. She’d heard them.

  Then Callum’s host skills took over. He smiled warmly. “Of course, of course. Have a seat. What’ll it be? Waffles or pancakes?”

  Katelyn’s eyes narrowed.

  Sawyer tugged on Lacey’s purple shirtsleeve. She leaned her head toward him and he whispered in her ear. She grinned and nodded. “Waffles, please!”

  Katelyn looked at her children, then back at Callum, shaking her head the tiniest bit. “Waffles would be lovely,” she said.

  Brian felt himself nod in sync with Callum. Relief. If she’d heard the conversation, she wasn’t going to make a big deal of it.

  “And do you guys like strawberries and whipping cream?” Callum asked.

  “Yes, very much,” Lacey announced, and Sawyer nodded like his goal was to make his head fall off his skinny neck.

  Then Callum asked them if they liked dogs or swing sets and when he got affirmatives to both, he asked Katelyn’s permission to introduce them to the property’s pets after he let Jo know their breakfast requests.

  Katelyn looked unsure, while the kids beamed at her with excited, imploring eyes that suggested they were jumping up and down inside, though they kept still and remained quiet. Weirdly quiet or good kid quiet? It was hard for Brian to know. “I guess that’d be all right,” she finally said. “I’ll enjoy a cup of coffee before we eat.”

  They took off without waiting another second, following Callum closely, listening intently to his descriptions of the dogs and what they liked. Just before the door shut behind them, Brian heard Lacey ask if she could go get their dog so it could be friends with the other dogs. The second they were gone, Katelyn stabbed Brian with dagger-eyes.

  “Whatever you told your brother about me and my life or who I am to you, I want to be clear—”

  “I didn’t tell him anything. I said I just met you, randomly, out of the blue, and that you needed a ride so I gave you one. I explained that our showing up together was all a big coincidence.”

  “But he doesn’t believe you?”

  “No.” Brian tried to make light of it. “He feels it’s his duty to protect the fairer sex from me.”

  “I don’t need protecting. And while I’m grateful for the ride—the ride I know I asked for, after being kind of rude to you—I’m not looking for a ‘white knight.’ I don’t need to be rescued or helped. I don’t need or want a man in my life.”

  Brian nodded and cursed the humiliation burning in his cheeks. “Uh, that was a badly timed joke. I was poking fun at Callum, not saying anything serious about you.”

  Katelyn’s rosy lips flattened into a thin line, and Brian’s gut churned. Why on earth was he noticing her mouth of all things right now anyway? Maybe Callum’s lectures weren’t totally out to lunch—or maybe this was actually Callum’s fault. Brian hadn’t been thinking of Katelyn much at all, let alone as date potential, until Callum had planted the stupid idea.

  “And,” Katelyn continued in an icy whisper, after shooting a glance at the door to make sure they were still alone, “I’m not getting back with my ex, ever. Period. Not that it’s any of your or Callum’s business, but we’ve been legally separated for two years. So yeah, if you and your brother could butt out of my life, I’d really appreciate it.”

  Brian hated that something in his stomach dropped at the information that she was separated, not divorced—but he also felt of twinge of defensiveness on Callum’s behalf. “I know how it must seem, but please don’t hold it against me—or Callum. And don’t worry. It’s an older brother thing. If you weren’t around, he’d be giving me dire warnings about something else. He feels I’m incapable of managing my own affairs.”

  Katelyn shot him another sharp look.

  “Wrong choice of words. No pun intended.” Brian held his hands up as if in surrender—but then he winked. He couldn’t resist.

  She almost smiled, then picked up the ceramic pitcher of cream and poured a generous amount into an empty mug.

  “I know it sounded like he was being totally judgmental and making some massive assumptions about you, but I promise, he’s a good guy. He won’t bother you or meddle or pry.” Why Brian felt he had to reassure her of that, he wasn’t sure. Her smile deepened though, revealing a dimple, and he realized he’d made a good call.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “Sorry. You must think I’m a complete psycho, especially when yesterday would’ve turned into a nightmare in e
very way if not for your kindness.”

  Brian grabbed another generous helping of bacon. “Not at all. And I apologize for the misunderstanding. I know you’re not looking for a rescuer or whatever, and I promise I wasn’t coming on to you—and I won’t. Despite what my family always thinks about me, I’m not a huge womanizer. In fact, I’m thinking of taking a break from dating, period.”

  “Really? Why?”

  Yes, why? Good question, but perhaps an even better one would be why had he blurted details about his personal life to this stranger?

  The door clicked behind him again, and he was rescued.

  “Sorry that took me so long,” Jo said, reentering the room. “I was on phone duty—oh, good morning, Katelyn. Callum said you and the kids were ready for breakfast, but I didn’t know if you’d gone outside with them for a few minutes or not.”

  Jo set a coffee carafe and a bowl of sliced oranges down in front of them. Her gaze touched on Katelyn, then rested on Brian. A question creased her brow—then quickly smoothed. Not before Brian’s face heated, though. He realized the unspoken observation she’d made. There were almost twenty chairs scattered around the huge table, yet Katelyn had taken the chair next to him and was seated so close their thighs were practically touching. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. There was nothing to explain, but trying to say that would only make it seem like there was.

  Katelyn didn’t seem to notice Jo’s scrutiny. “No worries, Jo. I just walked in. In fact, the kids—”

  Whatever Katelyn had been about to say about the kids was cut off by their noisy return.

  “Mom, mom!” Lacey yelled. “Monster doesn’t totally hate Jo and Callum’s dog, Hoover. He even let him sniff him for a second. And Jo has a sister named Sam, who’s on a holiday, but her dog stays here when she’s away—and Sam’s dog is named Dog!”

  Both kids broke into hysterical giggles, showing they thought “Dog” was the most hilarious name for a dog ever—something Brian considered odd since their own couldn’t-hurt-a-flea, mouse-sized mutt went by the unlikely moniker of Monster. He’d never really understood dog people. While they were preoccupied by their mirth, Katelyn stretched her hand out toward Brian’s beneath the table. “Let’s start fresh,” she whispered. “I’ve been weird from the second you met me, but I’d like to be friends. Can we be?”