Chapter 17
I won’t get to do that listening for a few more hours.
I have a boat show to help bring to a close first, and Calum has whatever he got called back across the river for.
He doesn’t need me to ferry him there in a speedboat.
Once we’re showered and dressed, he orders, “Stay. Submit your entry.” He’s firm.
His hold on my shoulder is way gentler. So is him poking fun at my urge to follow him with my camera even though I don’t need more footage of him.
“I promise you won’t miss any contract-breaking content. ”
“But—”
“But nothing.” His next guess scores a bullseye. “And no, I won’t push some random tourist off the bridge on the way across the river. The club won’t drop me. I’ve made my peace with it.”
I haven’t.
Calum isn’t done yet. “And no, I won’t do the same to any little kids. Not even if they all line up to make it nice and easy.”
I sniff like I wasn’t about to suggest it. “What about Lito Dixon? You’d push him off the bridge, right?”
“For Jack? Absolutely. But for me?” He shakes his head. “Forget about him.”
That’s easily done. His next order is much harder to follow. Impossible, to be honest.
“And you can forget about me.” At least he doesn’t mean forever. He points at my laptop. “Until you press your submit button.”
He heads out, and I don’t care if dragging on my jacket to fly after him with my shower-wet hair still dripping makes me look like a loser to anyone left in this marina.
“Wait!”
Ducks scatter at my dad-like bellow. Their quacks sound a lot like laughter, but I get to see Calum swing around, with Tower Bridge as a golden backdrop.
I won’t need a photo to remember how good he looks framed by it, or by a firework-lit sky like Lito once said would be a sure-fire moneymaker.
Calum carves that image into my soul by coming back to zip my jacket.
He does that to keep me warm, not to hide a camera, which is just as well—I left everything behind for this second goodbye of the morning.
“Stop making it so hard to leave.” His breath clouds while other boatyard crews unhitch their unsold vessels from moorings.
He eyes them, then takes a step back, which I hate even if I understand why he adds some distance.
It’s another reminder of one of our very first conversations.
Yes, I do want one more goodbye kiss, but not if that means he’d have to hurry stateside to finally use those press packets his media team have ready and waiting.
That’s the very last thing I want for him this December.
He takes another step away. “Will you be here when I get done?”
“Probably. You might need to wait for me to get back from the boatyard.”
“How far away is it?”
“An hour or so. Depends on the tide.” I dart back aboard for my keys. “I’ll leave them in here.” I hang them from a water pump valve and close the deck hatch. “There. If I’m not back, you can let yourself in.”
Calum has to leave then.
I’m so engrossed in watching that I don’t hear Harry join me.
“So the skipper was right. You two are a thing.”
“Skipper?” It takes far too long for that to compute. “Dad talked about me?”
“When doesn’t he?” We head for the test-drive station, where Harry fires up a boat.
His breath clouds like Calum’s did. The river breeze blows it away to show the wrong shade of blue eyes smiling at me.
Deep laugh lines crinkle around tropical turquoise, and I’ve never wished more for arctic blueness.
Harry shouts over the roar of a high-powered engine.
“The skipper was pretty sure your hockey player was interested in more than buying a boat.” His eyebrows waggle.
“He wasn’t so sure if you felt the same way.
Asked me to keep an eye out.” He shouts again.
“To protect your virtue. Didn’t have the heart to tell him that you’re actually saving yourself for a sexy event photographer. ”
“Ugh.”
Harry cracks up, and it’s good to spend the morning laughing with him as we work with the team from the yard who help us relay boats back to where they built them.
For once, I enjoy sharing each return journey with someone who shouts.
Unlike my father, Harry does that to crack jokes and share stories of broken hearts he’s sailed away from.
“I never mean for it to happen, but there’s at least one ex in every port.
” His grin is devilish. “Sometimes six or seven.”
“You don’t ever want to stay?”
“Nope. Apart from this year, but that’s to keep an eye on a friend going through a tough time. I don’t usually hang around. Might catch feelings.”
“You make it sound like a bad thing.”
“It was the one and only time I let it happen.” His smile fades, if only for a moment.
He’s soon back to grinning. “I won’t make the same mistake twice, because those feelings were almost as persistent as the one time I caught crabs.
Plus, I’m too busy for a repeat.” He’s on a mission, he confesses, to follow in his own father’s footsteps.
“Or in his flippers.” He grins at me again, laugh lines deeper than ever as he steers around river traffic.
“Got a list of dives he made. Of wrecks that he searched.”
“For treasure?”
“For something like that. Anyway, I’m searching those dive sites myself, one by one. Doing that between jobs is simpler if I stay single.”
That’s what I thought too. Now I’m not so certain.
Thoughts about a single future once this Christmas is over follow me along the Thames for a final journey until we moor the last boats at the yard, and Harry picks up from an earlier conversation.
“The latest scuttlebutt is that he’s come into a shit ton of money.”
“Who has?”
“Lito,” Harry shouts, even though he doesn’t need to.
No engines roar now. The only sound is water softly lapping against the hulls of luxury vessels.
That soft shush is broken by the sudden shriek of shearing metal coming from the yard.
Harry speaks up over the din of speedboat production.
“I heard he’s already at the next show, strutting around with a flashy new camera.
Maybe the rumours are true about him selling more coke than photos.
Either way, he’s still trying to talk deckhands into modelling for him. The younger the better.”
I wince at the thought of Lito pointing at mistletoe with that nicotine-stained finger of his. Harry guesses the wrong reason. He gets quieter in a hurry.
“Was I loud? Sorry, sorry. Got back into the habit of speaking up around the skipper. Got to admit, I will be sad to sail away from him.” His smile lines flatten. “He’s reminded me a lot of my own old man.”
“Because your father tried to make you follow in his footsteps?”
“No. Because Dad blew out his eardrums by surfacing too fast once too often. It impaired his hearing. Meant that I always had to check he was really listening before wasting my own breath.” More workshop shrieking drowns out whatever he says next.
Harry repeats himself once that roar fades.
“So we modified some of the hand signals us divers use underwater.” He cups hands around his mouth like I’ve seen him do at the marina.
“If I did this, Dad would know I had something to tell him.” Harry’s next signal is a double thumbs-up aimed at his chest. “This meant I was ready to listen.”
He catches a ride back to town, and I should go with him to press submit on my final contest entry. I find myself hunting down someone who has spoken over me so often. Who has yelled and shouted. Today, curiosity curls to hug a brand-new question.
What if Dad only did that because he couldn’t hear me?
I find out beside a lifeboat.
“Dad?”
He continues to paint a child’s name with precise strokes of a brush dipped in gold, no sign that he heard me.
I speak up louder.
“Papa?”
He turns fast then, and I don’t see someone who wants me to follow in his footsteps. It’s Père Noel who looks surprised at me turning the tables by paying him a Christmas visit.
I’d forgotten this slow smile.
The same one used to bloom whenever I hurled myself into his arms each December. Just like back then, his French is awful. “What is it, Valentin? Are you okay?”
Non.
I’m not even a little bit okay.
I’m choked, which does a number on my own English. I have to start over to speak clearly. “Did you disable my water pump on purpose?”
His mouth opens then closes, and I should be mad as hell at the slow nod he finally gives me.
Now I chase for even more truth.
“You don’t actually need any specialist parts to fix her, do you?”
His jaw clenches, but he shakes his head.
“The order Calum placed on the website. It registered before midnight?”
Dad doesn’t need to confirm it. His face tells me plenty, which should feel like a theft. The thing is, I keep being gifted with surprise presents when I least expect them, don’t I?
I didn’t ask for an incubator or a five-star reminder of past Christmas dinners. And I didn’t write a wish list asking for an egg candler or a long line of Cornish love hearts. Today, someone Dad once called a loser has given me the best gift yet.
Harry is the reason I can hold up two thumbs like he showed me. I dig them straight at my heart to tell Dad without words that I’ll listen to his reasons.
For the first time, floodgates open.
Dad takes me to his office and talks. Not over me, although I do sit in silence. The payoff is that I don’t just get to hear his motivator, I get to see it when he pokes through a desk drawer.
“Promised your grandmother to keep you safe. For her.” He comes out with a photo. It isn’t my grand-mère who smiles behind glass. It’s the woman who missed every single Christmas.
“Sylvie studied for years in London before our paths crossed. Her English was fluent. My French . . .” He flinches like I have so often when he’s raised his volume at me. “Her parents did their best to help you be bilingual so we could communicate, but I could have . . .”
Tried harder?