Chapter 11
Turning off the heat on the sausage, Dove sank to the floor. Back against the cupboard, she crossed her legs in the lotus position, let her arms fall, palms facing upwards at her knees, closed her eyes and breathed.
Deeply. Raggedly.
Tears fell.
She didn’t try to stop them. She sat with them. Living through them.
Being.
In the way back of her mind, an image lingered. Mitchell Colton had held her and gotten hard. Just as her breasts had become over sensitized against his chest.
She didn’t dwell there. If sex happened between them, it did. She wasn’t going to fight it. Didn’t have the strength to go up against nature’s call.
But only if he knew that sex didn’t mean a relationship. Or commitment.
And she had no idea if he knew that.
Just like he had no idea if her father was alive or dead.
Daddy.
The name of old came to her. Called out of her toward him. Pulling him out of an abyss and back to her. She was there. Present. Helping him save the business that he loved.
Hold on, Daddy.
The words came to her, and from her, followed by a flow of conviction, of strength, so powerful that the sorrow left her being. Only for a few seconds. But for that brief time, she’d felt peace.
Grasping hold of the memory, she opened her eyes.
Wiped her cheeks. And slowly stood. Holding on to that last impression she’d had, she finished putting together the breakfast casserole.
Took the salmon out of the air fryer, wrapping it tightly for future salad use.
Washed dishes while she waited for the lasagna to finish baking so the casserole could go in.
And heard Mitchell’s phone ring.
Snatching her hands from the soapy water, she grabbed a towel, dried them and grabbed up the phone. Saw Kansas’s name on the screen.
Just that. Kansas.
She pushed to answer. It wasn’t like she had time to run all the way upstairs before the call disconnected.
And he could be in the shower. She had no right to trespass there.
She said the first thing that came to mind. “Mitchell Colton’s phone. This is Dove St. James speaking.” She shivered, but remained otherwise calm.
“Dove? Where’s Mitchell? Is he okay?”
“He’s upstairs in the shower,” she said. At least that was her summation. She wasn’t going looking to find out.
“And he left his phone with you?”
“It’s my father you’re calling about, right?
If not, I’ll hang up and have Mitchell call you back.
” She’d just finished the sentence when she heard footsteps on the stairs.
“Oh, hold on, he’s coming down now,” she said and held out the phone, impatient to give it to Mitchell so that she could hear whatever it was Kansas had called to say.
Life was hanging in the balance, and protocols still mattered. There was something comforting about that.
Expecting to see Mitchell dressed, she stared when he came down wearing a towel with a robe over it. “I heard you talking to someone,” he said, his expression containing a question and a bit of alarm.
Warming at his concern—even if it was just because he was a good man caring about humankind in general—she handed him the phone. “It’s Kansas.”
His instant attention to detail, the way his gaze firmed and he grabbed the phone to his ear, warmed her more. A sensation she clung to as she heard him give a couple of affirmatives but nothing more.
Trying to read anything from him, she failed. The robe, the towel, his bent head, she just couldn’t tell what was going through him. Tension, no doubt about that. Having her there at all was causing some of that.
With a “Thank you. Keep in touch,” he hung up.
And Dove, while scared and shaky, also felt a bit of a smile start to emerge inside her. They wouldn’t be keeping in touch if they’d found a body.
She didn’t say a word. Just watched Mitchell. Giving him time to formulate whatever would be forthcoming. Because he needed that. She didn’t.
“They found evidence of a skirmish just over the side of the cliff, on a fairly substantial-sized ledge. A couple of footprints, which the forensics team are on now. We’ll need your father’s shoe size, and as much as you can tell us about the footwear he had on the last time you saw him.”
“But no body,” she said. No body meant there was still hope.
“No body,” he confirmed. Studying her so long she felt a squirm coming on. “A body could have gone over, Dove. It wasn’t visible from the top, but a search and rescue team has been dispatched to coordinates directly below.”
She’d already accepted that a body could have gone over.
Didn’t mean it was her father’s. It could be whoever he’d been fighting with.
“Signs of a skirmish are a good thing,” she said then.
“My dad’s one hell of a fighter. You might not think so, given the way he hasn’t been taking care of himself since Mom died, but prior to that, for his entire life, he’s been focused on keeping himself strong and in the best physical shape possible.
His freedom to do what he wanted depended on it.
He’s still stronger than a lot of guys half his age.
” She might be exaggerating a tad. She hadn’t actually seen her dad on a weight machine in over a year. But if she was off, it wasn’t by much.
“Then, we’ll continue forward with good thoughts for his return,” Mitchell said, still standing there, seemingly assessing her.
Whether he really believed Whaler was dead or alive didn’t much matter to Dove.
She needed him, his focus, on her, on St. James Boats, not on her father.
She—and she was certain her mother’s spirit—had that one covered.
But she was only human. She faltered and fell prey to humanity’s greatest evil: fear.
Mitchell’s presence was needed to cover her. To keep her afloat while she held her father up. She fully believed that. Had seen proof of why he was there over and over in the past few days.
“Uh, about that…what happened earlier…”
Pulling up an innocent look born of knowing neither of them did anything wrong, she said, “What happened?” He had absolutely nothing to castigate himself for. And she knew she’d done nothing requiring an apology.
At least not in the moment he was speaking about.
“I never should have hugged you. It was inappropriate. Something I’ve never done before. And I can assure you, it won’t happen again.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t possibly keep,” her mother’s words of old popped out of their own accord.
Frowning, Mitchell wrapped his dark blue robe about him further, tightening the knotted matching dark blue fabric belt holding it in place. “I keep my promises.”
“I fully believe you intend to, Mitchell, but how can you possibly see forty years into the future, which could be when you retire, and know that you’ll never have occasion to give a client a moment of comfort?”
He stared at her.
And she moved in a little closer. Not physically.
But with the softening of her gaze. And the words she let out.
“As for the rest…the perfectly normal bodily reactions that occurred when you reached out to offer me comfort…it’s not fair to yourself to guarantee that it won’t happen again.
What if I was falling, and you reached out to catch me, and we ended up in a kiss? ”
He scoffed. “You’ve watched too many Christmas movies.”
Aha! That had to mean he’d seen at least one, right? Maybe with his mom or sister?
Could be he even tuned in to one on his own at some point. Or with a girlfriend.
The last thought not as pleasing as the others, she let them go. And grew completely serious.
“Sex has a power of its own, Mitchell. When two consenting adults are both consumed by that force at the same time, there’s a good chance they’ll come together physically.” She was practically quoting her mother then—from her reaching-puberty talks—but with an experience Dove had gained on her own.
He leaned against the counter, suddenly seeming a little more amenable to staying a while, rather than hightailing it back up to his ablutions.
And getting himself all decently covered, tucked in and hidden away.
With a quirk of his head and narrowed blue eyes, he said, “You’re telling me that you’d be consenting?”
Delicious flames shot down between her legs. She knew to welcome the release from the dread that had been closing in on her as she pictured her father on a cliff ledge fighting for his life.
“I’m assuming we’ll have a talk about it first,” she told him.
Was that the time to have it? Right then? Did they schedule a time? She’d never actually done it that way before. Generally she was out socially with the guy and they’d already established that they were just friends.
“What kind of talk?”
“The kind where we establish guidelines. So no one gets hurt.”
His eyes narrowed again. Kind of deliciously. And she didn’t bother to camouflage her glance down to his crotch. A look that lingered as the robe moved, seeming of its own accord. “Do we make an appointment for this conversation?” he asked.
How the hell did she know? Mitchell Colton had a whole hell of a lot more experience than she did in the mingling-with-the-opposite-sex department.
But if he thought that was a good idea… “We can,” she said.
Then added, “But we better make it soon, just in case. The whole power thing—” she glanced down at his crotch again “—it seems to be gaining on us rather quickly.”
She’d grown wet. Without panties on. It was kind of intoxicating. And a bit uncomfortable, too, considering she’d probably have to wear her pajama pants again before she moved home and could wash them.