by Laura Drewry
There was nothing amusing about it, but Ro couldn’t help himself: He crouched there next to her, smiling like a big ol’ idiot, because she got it. She understood.
“Come on.” Taking her hand in his, he tugged her to her feet. “We haven’t limited out yet, but if it makes you feel better, anything else we catch today is strictly catch and release, deal?”
There it was: the smile.
“Deal.” Tipping her head to the side a little, she squeezed his hand and lifted her brow high. “Will you let me use your fancy rod?”
“Ha!” Finn, who’d wandered back their way, reeling as he moved, barked out a hard laugh. “Let me tell you about Ro’s fancy rod. The whole time he was married, Mandy wouldn’t let him buy anything but those cheap-ass ones from the sporting-goods department, so the first thing he did when she kicked his sorry ass out was order up that rod. He hand-picked everything on it, from the titanium frame to that handle there—see that? It’s burl cork. And no one—no one—except him is allowed to touch it.”
“But it’s just a fishing rod.”
“Just a—” Clutching his chest, Ronan staggered back a couple of steps. “This is not just a fishing rod, Hope. It’s a work of art; it’s like the Mona Lisa of rods.”
Her gaze darted to Finn, then rolled Ro’s way again.
“Well, sure, it’s pretty and all,” she said slowly. “But does it catch bigger or better fish because it’s pretty?”
“That’s not the point,” Ro said.
“Then what is the point?”
“Excellent question, Hope.” With his hand wrapped around his own fishing rod, Finn chuckled and bobbed his head toward Ro’s. “Exactly what is the point of having a rod like that? Is it your way of compensating for something?”
“Screw off,” Ro laughed. “The point is…”
“There is no point,” Hope said.
“Of course there is! Okay, think of it this way—your feet and a Ferrari will both get you where you’re going, but if given the choice, wouldn’t you choose the Ferrari?”
By the time Ronan had finished his pathetic analogy, both Finn and Hope were looking at him as if he’d lost his mind, and maybe he had, but that didn’t mean he was going to let either one of them use his rod. Not even when Hope smiled at him like that and he had to shake his head hard to remember what it was he wouldn’t let her do.
Chapter 7
“That mouse, he’s family.”
Walt Disney, Saving Mr. Banks
Hope had to admit Ronan was right: That salmon she caught made one hell of a good meal. He’d even let her help prepare it—nothing fancy, just steamed with a little lemon and garlic, but, damn, it was good. Even Kevin was impressed.
After supper, when everyone else went off to do their own thing, she followed Ronan back into the kitchen to watch him prep the rest of the fish for smoking.
He tied on a dark-blue bib apron, then pulled a white one out of the tall pantry cupboard, grinned a little, and tossed it at her.
“If you’re gonna hang around my kitchen, you’re going to have to work.”
“But I—” She caught the apron in midair, but instead of tying it on, she stared at it. “I don’t know anything about smoking fish.”
“It ain’t rocket science,” he said, soft and teasing. “Grab a bowl; you can mix the brine while I cut.”
And before she even had the apron tied, he started calling out ingredients.
“That’s it?” Hope stared down at the four items in front of her—water, salt, sugar, and syrup—and shrugged. “It really isn’t rocket science, is it?”
“Nope.” His voice was suddenly right behind her, tickling her ear and making her jump. “Watch yourself there.”
Hope turned as Ronan reached above her to the top shelf, bringing himself within a breath of her. He didn’t touch her—in fact, he seemed to make a point of leaning to the side just enough so he didn’t touch her—yet in those scant seconds, Hope’s hands twitched to wrap themselves around him, as they had earlier on the boat. But right as she started to move them, he found whatever he was looking for and stepped away.
Idiot. Giving herself a hard mental kick, she spun back to the counter, hoping he hadn’t caught how badly she was blushing or how she’d been ogling the broad expanse of his chest and wondering what it would feel like to slide her hands across it, skin-to-skin.
“It’s kosher.”
Hope scrambled to blink her mind clear again. “Uh, yeah, of course. I’m fine. It’s all good.”
Ronan laughed quietly as he reached over her shoulder and set a large box of coarse salt next to her bowl.
“Oh.” Closing her eyes for a second, Hope inhaled deeply, then nodded. “Right. That kosher.”
The brine couldn’t have been easier to make once she got him to give her exact measurements instead of telling her to “just pour some in the bowl,” but even so, she took her time stirring it, because she wasn’t ready to face him again.
She’d have to turn eventually, but not yet. The first thing she needed to do was tamp down the raging chaos inside her. That night out on the porch with him, it felt as if there were actual electric sparks shooting through the air, which would have made sense if they’d been standing in the middle of a summer storm, but they weren’t.
And then today out on the boat, when he’d pulled her up against his chest like that…Oh. My. God. Hope squeezed the mixing spoon tight as the still-fresh memory warmed her all over, sending tiny quakes to places deep inside her that were already vibrating from being near him.
There’d been a moment, both out on the porch and on the boat, when she thought he felt it, too, that snap, that crazy “holy shit” kind of moment, but then both times he backed off before anything happened. That could mean one of two things. Maybe he wasn’t ready for anything to happen. Or—and this was the one that worried her—maybe she’d imagined it and he hadn’t felt anything at all.
Blowing out a short, quiet breath, she gripped the bowl tight and carried it over to the table, where she poured the sweet mixture into the long plastic dish Ronan indicated. Together they lined up pieces of fish in the liquid, and even though his fingers brushed against hers so many times, she somehow managed to contain how much each touch made her shiver.
Okay, that was a lie. She didn’t manage it every time, but she only dropped a couple of pieces of fish, so that was good. In truth, it took until the following afternoon for her to calm all the shivers, and that was partly because she had something new to worry about: The first load of guests had arrived, and now it was game on.
Luka hadn’t been very happy when she found out Hope was going into the first day of shooting without any formal interviews, but Hope didn’t care. Once she found out that she was basically intruding on the guys’ only day off, there was no way she could bring herself to bombard them with questions about who they were and what they liked or disliked.
Besides, no answer they could have given her would have been as good as just being around them, watching them and listening to the way they spoke to one another. Or about one another.
They joked, they laughed, and God knew they gave one another a hard time, but not once did she ever doubt how they felt. It was heartwarming, it was sweet, and it was everything about family that she longed for in her own life.
Through their constant joking and teasing, she’d learned that Finn hated being called the fish whisperer, a nickname he rightly deserved and one Hope had been planning to use and exploit whenever she could. She learned Liam was the least temperamental of the three and that, for the first time in his life, he was happy to not be playing ball.
Then there was Ronan. She didn’t even know what to think about him. She’d been so nervous around him the first few days, so worried that he’d never warm to her, and now…now every time he so much as glanced her way, she was the one who warmed—all over, inside and out, and deep in places she’d begun to think had frosted over.
There was something in the way
he looked at her, the way his eyes softened when she got all worked up over catching that fish. And, yeah, she’d admit it, when the nerd in her saw the way his tackle box was organized so perfectly—that might have earned him a few points on the hotness scale, too.
Even now, watching him, Hope was fascinated by the way he hung back, letting his brothers and Kate and Jessie do all the talking. It wasn’t that Ronan was rude or standoffish to any of the guests, but clearly he was happier in the background, because he’d acted the same way down at the dock earlier. While Liam and Finn welcomed everyone as they stepped off the plane, Ro got straight to work unloading the bags.
Hope had made sure Kevin and Chuck were ready with the cameras before they even heard the Cessna circling around overhead, so they had both video and still shots of everything—starting with the plane easing down on the water and sliding over to the dock, right up to where they were now, sitting in the great room, listening to Liam give the welcome speech.
One of the great things about doing this type of show was that you never knew who you’d meet or what their story would be, which could make for fun television viewing, but one of the bad things was that you only got one shot to get everything down. Hope and her crew had already filmed every inch of the property inside and out, so now it was just a matter of learning who the guests were and giving the editors of Hooked enough footage to work with.
The first special guest on the show was Rusty Germain, a catcher Liam knew from his early days in the majors. All on its own, that was great, but it turned out to be a huge bonus for the woman who’d brought her son to the Buoys in the hope that she could hit Liam up for some pointers on breaking her boy into the big leagues.
It took Hope longer than she’d expected to get everyone’s story on camera, and, in fact, by the time they were done, it was coming up on midnight. The last group had barely cleared the door of the pub when Kevin pulled out the memory card on his camera and dropped it on the table in front of Hope.
“G’night.”
“ ’Night, Kevin. D’you have everything you need for tomorrow?”
“Yup.”
“Are you sure? I’ve got—”
She heard him grunt as he shifted his camera a little. “Relax, Blondie. I’m set.”
A second later she was alone in the pub, surrounded by nothing but the creaks of the building and…what was that whirring? She followed the noise halfway to the kitchen, at which point she ignored the noise and focused on the smell—that warm, sweet aroma that could only mean one thing: cookies.
Racks of them covered the kitchen table, and by the looks of the empty cookie sheets beside them, there’d be more coming. She waited until Ronan shut the mixer off, then moved farther into the room.
“Smells amazing in here.”
“Hey,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “All done?”
Nodding, Hope stepped a little closer. “Do you always make cookies in the middle of the night?”
“It’s not even midnight.” Ronan pulled the bowl off its stand and set it next to the cookie sheets. “I have to get these done; otherwise, Finn’ll throw a hissy fit if I send him out on the water tomorrow with nothing but oatmeal cookies.”
“But they’re not just oatmeal,” she said, eyeballing the cooling racks and hoping she wouldn’t drool while she spoke. “They’re oatmeal raisin.”
“Yeah, that’s worse. Finn thinks putting raisins in cookies is the reason so many people have trust issues. They bite into it thinking it’s going to be a chocolate chip and then…”
Ronan snorted softly as he started scooping blobs of chocolate chip batter onto the sheets. And it was hardly sexy at all watching him do it. It was just cookie dough, right? Millions of people—men included—made cookies all the time. Maybe not at midnight and maybe not because they were trying to appease their younger brother, but what difference did that make?
None. The difference was that not a single other man could possibly look that good standing there in a green HOOK ’EM & COOK ’EM apron, with his forearms dusted in flour and a barely there grin tugging at his mouth.
“Hmm.” Hope swallowed hard, then licked her suddenly dry lips. “Can I help?”
“Thanks, but this is the last of it. You can be my taste tester if you want.”
Hope didn’t care what Finn said, oatmeal raisin cookies were a gift from the gods, and she wasn’t about to pass them up, especially not fresh from the oven. Selecting the largest one she could find, she broke off a piece and placed it gently on her tongue.
“Oh my God,” she groaned, closing her eyes as she sank onto one of the chairs. “It’s like a little piece of sweet gooey heaven.”
She chewed slowly, savoring every morsel, before finally swallowing and opening her eyes again. Ronan stared at her from the other side of the table, one hand on the edge of the bowl, the other wrapped around the scoop, his right brow quirked and his lips twitching against a grin.
“You all right?” he asked. “Can I get you a cigarette?”
“Wha—Oh!” Hope slapped her hands over her mouth but couldn’t stop the bubble of laughter that burst out.
“No, please,” he said. “Carry on. It’s nice to know they’re appreciated. I’ve just never seen anyone appreciate them that much before.”
The heat from Hope’s blush blasted up her face and didn’t stop until she was sure her scalp had to be glowing. Funny thing was, Ronan was blushing, too, like he’d done that first day and then again out on the boat. But unlike Hope, whose face was no doubt blotchy and awful, he was even cuter when his cheeks got all pink like that.
And the only thing she could think to do was stuff another piece of the damn cookie in her mouth and then talk over it.
“They’re really good,” she mumbled.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was getting that impression.”
Still chuckling, he pulled a jug of milk out of the fridge and poured her a tall glass before going back to his cookie sheets. Hope had never been so mortified and so amused all at the same time, but instead of just leaving it alone, she had to go and make it worse.
“If that’s what you can do with oatmeal raisin, I can’t wait to taste your other stuff.”
He didn’t say a word, but his hand froze in mid-movement, with a full scoop of batter dangling a couple of inches above the sheet.
“Your cookies,” she choked. “Because these are so good…and…and they don’t even have chocolate in them, so the ones there must be amazing because…well, you know…chocolate. They say it’s better than—Oh. My. God. Shut up, Hope.”
Ronan set the scoop down and smirked just enough to taunt her.
“Better than what?” he teased. “Than oatmeal?”
Hope refused to answer; she shoved the rest of the cookie into her mouth, and when it was gone, she kept her mouth busy by drinking the entire glass of milk without stopping.
“Want some more?” he asked, but Hope was already shaking her head.
“No.” She kept one hand over her mouth, as if that would somehow filter the stuff coming out of it. “Thank you, but I think I better take what little dignity I have left and go to bed now. Good night.”
Head down, she headed for the door, barely managing to keep from sprinting out of the room.
“Hey, Hope?”
Crap. With one hand on the doorframe, she forced herself to turn, but that didn’t mean she had to look him in the eye, did it? At least not for more than a second or two.
“I, uh, I’m not sure who ‘they’ are, but if they say chocolate’s better than that, they’re obviously not doing it right.”
Hope couldn’t have been more mortified. Of all the things they could talk about, she’d somehow got them comparing chocolate to sex. And even though there’d been a couple of times in her life when chocolate had easily won that contest hands down, she wasn’t about to admit that to Ronan, because she’d probably follow that confession by daring him to prove his theory.
Instead, she forced
what she hoped sounded like an airy laugh.
“Of course,” she said. “I was totally kidding. ’Night, Ronan.”
If he said anything after that, she didn’t hear it, because she bolted from the kitchen so fast that she almost took a header down the stairs to her room. It was only later, as she lay in bed mulling the whole thing over for the twenty-fifth time, that she realized it would have been a brilliant piece to get on film. Not the part where she had her little cookiegasm, of course, but the rest of it, with him looking so freakin’ hot in that apron, making cookies for his brother in the middle of the night.
Oh yeah. If that didn’t attract the female viewers, Hope didn’t know what would.
—
Days later, the image of Hope eating that damn cookie still taunted Ro. If that was her reaction to a bit of oatmeal, he couldn’t wait to see what else he could do to make her eyes roll and her tongue slip out across her lip like it had.
Shit—in his entire life he’d never seen anyone look that sexy eating a cookie. Hell, he’d never seen anyone look that sexy doing anything. There was something in the way she moved, as if she were gliding rather than walking, something in the way she spoke, her voice soft and gentle, so completely opposite to his own, and something in the way she listened—really listened, instead of just sitting there waiting for the other person to stop talking.
Sure, part of it was for her show, but unless Ro was completely off the mark, it seemed to him that she was genuinely interested in people and their stories. And even though he had no idea why, for some reason she seemed genuinely interested in him, which was pretty damn strange considering the things he’d said the first couple of times he talked to her.
Problem was, he was interested in her, too. Too interested.
It was a good thing she and the crew had gone away for a few days after filming ended, because it gave him time to shake his brain clear again, to maybe figure out why he gave her that big bag of cookies for the flight home or why he stayed on the dock after the plane pulled away and took off.
