I pushed my sunglasses up on my forehead as I stopped next to the guy. He was in his forties, hair just starting to gray, with a very round face and big hands. “Hey, how’s the fishing?” I asked breezily. “It’s Hank, right?”
He looked around like he couldn’t quite believe I was talking to him, then cleared his throat. “Yeah. Good,” he said. “Fish are biting.” His hands were stalled baiting one of his clients’ hooks, but the client was watching me, too, and didn’t seem to notice.
They’d spotted the Alaskan woman, a specimen rarer on these river banks than an albino moose.
“Oh, good,” I cooed. I looked out over the river, where the fishermen had started thrashing the water again.
I caught sight of a familiar camouflage-painted boat on the far side of the river, motoring downstream. It had a single occupant wearing safety orange, his face and head swallowed by the darkness of his hair. Ed. Where is he off to, I wonder?
My eyes flicked back to Hank. “What have you been up to these past few days?” I asked.
“Fishin’,” Hank grunted.
D’oh. “Every day?” I asked.
“Yup,” he said, which wasn’t too surprising to me. The concept of ‘weekends’ didn’t really exist in the Alaskan bush. You worked when there was work, and you were off when… scratch that, you pretty much just worked all the time.
“What about your evenings?” I asked, leaning forward a bit to mesmerize him with my cleavage. I didn’t have a lot there, but I was wearing my skankiest push-up bra, and this tank top was damn sure showing what I did have to its best advantage.
“Just the usual,” he said.
I raised my brows, trying to look like I was hanging on his every word.
“Just watching TV, going to the bar, playing pool with the guys, that kind of thing. Why?” he asked, finally finishing fumbling with the bait.
Helly had said Hank was married, a veteran fishing guide who also guided big game hunting in the Lower 48 in the winter. He’d been guiding in these parts for at least ten years. And he didn’t seem, as far as I could tell, guilty.
I waved a hand. “Oh, just making conversation,” I said. “Any big plans for this winter?” I asked, listening for hints that he might be looking at spending a lot of money. Buying a car, a camper, a house…
“Nope,” he said.
He bent to close up his bag of fish eggs, and I saw his right forearm was smudged with bruises. “Ouch, that must have hurt,” I said.
“What?” He looked down at his arm. “Oh. Yeah.”
“What happened?”
He grunted again. “Fell.”
My eyebrows climbed up my forehead.
One of his charges hooked a salmon, and Hank scooped up the net and ran down into the water in his hip waders.
Okay… “Talk more later,” I hollered. He raised a shoulder.
I took a second to be slightly irritated that he found catching a stinking, slimy fish to be more important than talking to me—I swear, men running away from me was becoming an epidemic!—but I quashed it. He was a man, after all. His priorities were all screwed up.
I talked to each group there on the shore in a similar fashion, and got similar answers. The fishing guides didn’t seem to have much of a life outside of taking people fishing. Most guided every day, and by the end of their day, they were exhausted, and all they wanted to do was go to the bar and drink.
There were a few more bruises, and a few more brow-raising explanations, but I ultimately dismissed them. Injuries were pretty common in the Alaskan bush. Here, life is a contact sport.
But, I had been expecting something a lot more insidious from the guides. Cooking meth. A plot to take over the world. I dunno. Something.
I strode back to Helly and her boat. She was lying on the bow, her head on a float cushion, and her rubber-booted feet propped up on the edge. She’d pulled a hat down over her eyes, and was, apparently, taking a nap.
“Helly.”
She turned the hat slightly and peered up at me with one very blue eye. “Any luck?” she asked.
“No.”
“Next fishing hole?”
“Please.” I set the anchor in her boat—I wanted to toss it, but I knew from experience that was how you put holes in boats—and pushed us off.
She got the engine idling as we floated out into the creek. “Did that outfit of yours work?” she asked.
I shrugged back into my float coat and fell into my seat. “Yeah. But they didn’t have anything interesting to say.”
We motored downstream to the next spot, a popular fishing hole where the water flowed clearer because it was fed by a creek coming straight down off the mountains. Here, the fishing boats were wedged in like sardines. The breeze kicked up aqua blue waves, and the sun was sparkling and flashing off of each one. Overhead, a cloud of seagulls circled and screamed.
“This is a wild goose chase,” I said, looking out over the sea of people.
“Yup,” Helly agreed. She wedged us into a spot and had me drop the anchor. The current settled us in between two boats full of fishermen, all of them men.
I pulled the same move, getting all of their attention when I shucked off my float coat. “Morning!” I said with a little wave to the ones on our left. I recognized the big guy, Paul, as the guide. He was one of a pair of behemoth twins who’d been guiding on the river for a few years. “What have you guys been up to?”
While I giggled and crossed my legs and played with my hair and chatted the fishermen up, Helly stirred around the boat. Two minutes later, she shoved a fishing pole in my hand. I looked down at it with distaste, and then up at her. “What is this for?” I asked.
“Looks less suspicious if you actually fish,” she said.
I groaned, but cast anyway, glad that she’d given me bait. I fed out the line, letting it tumble to a spot where I hoped I wouldn’t catch a damn thing, and then I propped the rod in its little cup.
I did my best to forget my pole was even there as I flirted with and otherwise interrogated the fishermen. They were so blinded by my interest that they didn’t think anything of my nosy, pointed questions.
Glancing up at one point, Ed’s distinctive boat caught my eye again. I watched as he pulled in to shore at Nan and Rick’s place. Nan, a tall, dark-haired, clothes-hanger of a woman met him at his boat. They talked a bit, and she led him up toward the house.
I wondered, grumpily, what he was gonna fix for her. And then, what she was planning on giving him for payment.
Leaving my pole, I moved to the other side of the boat, and chatted up the fishermen on our right. They were a group of Swedes from a lodge downriver that catered to Swedish tourists. Except for their guide, they only spoke just a tiny bit of English. But damn, did I enjoy listening to them talk anyway…
“Suzy, you’ve got a fish on!”
“Aaa!” I said, and lunged over to gather up the pole. “Dammit,” I grumbled, fighting the fish.
The Swedes I’d been talking to got really excited, shouting as they watched my line cut through the water. The fish was making a run for it. Stupid, scaly, time-wasting thing.
“Do I have to do this?” I groused. “You’re a guide. Couldn’t you just pull it in for me? I’m not dressed for this,” I pointed out.
Helly rolled her eyes. “Listen, I know you’re fully capable. Just bring it to the boat and I’ll deal with it from there. And act like you’re excited, for godsakes!” she hissed into my ear.
I plastered a big grin on my face, and did my best to look like I really wanted that fish.
I finally got the bugger up to the boat, and watched as Helly maneuvered the net underneath it. She was lifting the fish over the side when it splashed suddenly. I jumped back with a gasp as icy water sprinkled across my shoulders.
Helly flinched. “Agh, son-of-a-bitch,” she cursed. She dumped the giant, scaly pain in the ass (better known as a king salmon) into the boat.
“What?”
She spun around
, and suddenly her hand was filling my vision. She waved it under my nose. Finally, my confused eyes locked onto the hook lodged in the flesh between her thumb and pointer finger.
She had a hook. In her hand. My hook. And it was starting to bleed.
Helly was still cussing, but it began to sound tinny and far away. My vision narrowed.
I swayed.
She’d stopped waving her injury around and was now staring at me. “Oh no,” she said. “Oh no, I forgot about the blood thing. I’m sorry. Here, sit down. You don’t look so…”
I lost the rest of what she was saying, and toppled. She lunged for me, but there wasn’t much to grab onto, what with my tiny clothes. I slipped from her grasp, the lip of her boat caught the backs of my legs, and I fell overboard.
Splash!
The cold water woke me up real fast. It was like being hit by a truck. A truck with a massive pair of devil horns, and a front grille coated in broken glass. I gasped, but half of what I inhaled was water. I started to flail.
The current caught me, and my head slammed into somebody’s boat. Then I was dragged underneath it. I was dazed, unsure of which way was up. The water was so… frickin’… cold.
My face popped up above the surface, more from luck than any effort on my part. I heard people shouting. I tried to lift my head, to look around, but my body didn’t seem to be accepting orders from my brain. I tried to swim, but my arms just did a weak flop. I drifted in the beautiful blue, sparkling chop. At least I was face-up, I thought as I gulped a breath mostly free of water. The seagulls were still wheeling overhead, and I had a sudden, inane thought: I hope they don’t shit on me.
Suddenly a familiar camouflage paint job slid into view. And then a beard I recognized, above which sat two ridiculously pretty eyes. Strong hands caught me under the arms, and Ed lifted me up out of the water.
I shivered in the cool breeze, wondering why the heck he’d pulled me out. The water had been warmer than this.
Ed set me on his boat’s bench, peeled out of his orange float coat, and tucked it around me. I stared down at my legs. They were very white, 100% gooseflesh. And I was missing a flip-flop. Damn it, that had been my favorite pair.
I almost fell forward when he throttled his engine. A few seconds later, we nosed up to the shore with a crunch of gravel.
He scooped me up as if I weighed nothing, ignored my weak protests, and hurried up toward the house with me. “Nan!” he called.
She poked her head out the door.
“Suzy fell in,” he said. “We need to get her warm. Do you have a first aid kit?”
She held the door open for him, and then disappeared into the dim interior as he set me down on a chair. He knelt in front of me, looking up into my eyes. “You okay?” he asked, pushing a limp strand of hair away from my face.
“Stupid fish,” I said.
A smile unfolded across his face, and then Helly broke in through the door.
“Suzy! Are you all right?” She shoved Ed aside, and put her hands on my knees. “You’re freezing!” she exclaimed. “We need to get you into some dry clothes.”
I barely heard her because that damn hook was still sticking out of her hand. I shoved the offending appendage away.
“Oh shit, sorry,” Helly said.
Then Nan hurried back into the room.
“Dry clothes,” Helly barked. “And blankets!”
Nan dropped the first aid kit and hurried back out.
I gave Helly the stink-eye for being rude, and shook my head. She rolled her eyes.
My gaze drifted past her, to Ed. He was rummaging in the first aid kit. Had I thought his beard unattractive? Maybe it was growing on me, because at the moment… I couldn’t find a single thing wrong with it.
He came at me leading with a square of gauze. He pressed it to my forehead, and my lip wobbled as I looked up at him. “I’m bleeding?” I asked, my voice very small.
He looked down into my eyes, hesitating. “Uh…”
“She faints at the sight of blood,” Helly said helpfully.
“Uh, no,” he said. “Er, it’s a tiny cut. Very small. Barely a scratch.”
Nan rushed back in with the clothes and blankets.
Helly pinned Ed with a look while she started to peel me out of his coat. “You. Step out a minute.”
He let go of the gauze, and it stuck to my forehead. That couldn’t be a good sign. Could it?
Helly looked back up at Nan, and unabashedly gave her more orders. “Do you have something hot to drink? Something with sugar? Hot chocolate, or tea with lots of honey?”
Nan ran off into the kitchen.
I was going to have to do something nice for that woman later. I also made a mental note to work on basic social skills with Helly again sometime.
Helly quickly peeled me out of what little I was wearing—I tried to help, but I was surprisingly weak and mostly just managed to complicate things. Then she pulled a sweater over my head, and a warm, dry pair of sweats up my legs.
She wrapped a blanket around me, a towel around my head, and plopped me into a big, cushy chair. As Helly pulled big wool socks over my feet, I looked down at the extra foot of pant leg gathered around my ankles.
I grimaced. “I’m such a midget.”
She sat back on her heels. “Oh, shush. I’d give anything to be as cute as you. And besides,” she said, patting the blanket-covered bulge that was my knees, “men like little women. They fantasize about lifting them up and into some pretty crazy positions—”
“Helly!”
“Oh, don’t gimme that. You’re just as dirty as I am,” she said. “You were planning on taking both of my brothers to bed. At the same time. And don’t even try to deny it.”
I blushed and shut my mouth.
Helly grinned. “You can come back in!” she hollered, making me wince.
Ed came in, and as he finished the bandage job on my forehead, I couldn’t help but appreciate how damn handsome he looked with that plaid shirt straining over his shoulders. And he really did smell good, some addictive mixture of laundry detergent, the great outdoors, and helpful man.
Then came the fun part.
“You need that out of your hand,” he said to Helly.
She practically hissed at him as she guarded her hand. She knew what hook removal involved, just as well as I did. The barb at the end of the hook caused ridiculous amounts of damage if it was pulled out the way it came in, if it would come out at all. No, the proper way to take out a hook was to get ahold of it with a pair of pliers, force it the rest of the way through whatever meat it was buried in, snip off one of the ends, and then pull it out. The shove-the-hook-the-rest-of-the-way-through stage was one you never explained to children before you did the deed. It was also the stage that usually caused screaming.
I watched with helpless fascination as she slapped her hand down on the table. Ed pulled out his multitool and folded it back to the pliers. Helly shifted around like she badly wanted to bail, as he got a grip on the hook.
“You ready?” he asked.
She made a sound that came out “Uh-huh,” but was the ‘no’-soundingest yes I’d ever heard. I looked away.
Helly screamed. And then she called Ed the most horrible names I’d ever heard her use on a man. And that was saying something.
Nan handed me a steaming cup of something brown. “I splashed some Irish Crème in there for you,” she said, watching the show taking place at her dining room table.
“Thank you,” I croaked.
Helly seemed to have run herself out of air, and was quiet except for a few pitiful whimpers as Ed bandaged her hand.
My eyes drifted up to the wall as I sipped my drink. There was Nan and Rick’s wedding picture, and beside it, a placard commemorating his years of service for BP. Right. Rick worked on the slope.
“I forgot Rick worked on the slope,” I said. “Does he do that two weeks on, two weeks off schedule?”
“Yep. Last ten years.” She looked up at the
pictures, her expression wistful.
“He go back out, then?” Because as far as I could tell, the man with a history of robbery wasn’t around.
“Oh, no. He’s out fishing. He’d only just gotten back the day of your parents’ potluck.”
“That morning?” I asked. If so, there was still the slim possibility he’d snuck in to take my nugget while I was weeding the garden, or—
“Naw, just before. I went and got him from the airport, and we came straight over. Rick loves Harv’s ribs, wouldn’t miss ‘em for the world.”
And there it was: Rick’s bullet-proof alibi. I sighed.
I was definitely feeling warmer as the combination of dry clothes and hot chocolate did its thing. By the time I reached the bottom of my mug, I was actually starting to feel a little drowsy.
Helly crossed back over to me while Ed loitered by the door, talking to Nan. He was casting little glances my way, and each one seemed to warm me up just a little bit more.
“How’re you doing?” Helly asked.
I smiled up at her. “Good. Feeling warm. Sorry for falling out of your boat.”
She smiled back down at me. “Sorry for forgetting about your problem with blood.”
I shrugged. I really was feeling quite warm and fuzzy.
“How much Irish Crème did she put in that?” Helly asked, eyeing my expression.
I shrugged again.
“Well… you ready to go?”
“Sure.” We got me dug out of the blankets and up on my feet. “If you don’t mind me borrowing your clothes,” I told Nan, “I’ll wash them, and get them back to you. Maybe at the Passion Party Sunday?”
“Sure, that’d work,” she said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
We were at the door when I realized I had a problem. I had only one flip-flop, and those didn’t go over wool socks worth a damn—and yes, I knew this from experience. So my choices were: Walk out there in socks that weren’t mine, in front of their owner, or take them off and go barefoot down to Helly’s boat.
I sighed and sat on the bench next to the door.
“What’s the problem?” Ed asked.
“No shoes.” I bent to start peeling the sock down my leg.
“I can carry you to the boat,” he said.
Two Captains, One Chair: An Alaskan Romantic Comedy Page 9
