Chapter 11 #2
The way he was watching her…as though she was a slice of double chocolate cake with rich icing…
no man had ever looked at her like that before.
“Let’s say, over lunch,” she blurted. They’d be at the marina.
Or she would be, and he’d be on the phone.
All classes at Namaste had had to be canceled until the negativity bombarding her life had been resolved.
No way she could live with herself if her bad energy spilled over onto those who came to her for help with their inner healing.
She was pretty sure Mitchell was holding back a grin as he nodded. “Over lunch it is,” he told her and turned and walked away.
Right as the timer on the lasagna buzzed.
“Mitchell?” she called out. Saw him stop, start to turn, and she grabbed the hot pads, pulling open the oven as she said, “Breakfast casserole will be out in forty-five minutes. If that’s too long, we can finish it off at the marina.
Dad has a toaster oven there.” It wouldn’t be nearly as delicious that way, but she wasn’t the one who would be eating it.
“That’s fine,” he told her. “It’ll give you time to get showered. I can make a couple of calls here in my home office, and we can take it hot to share with Wes and the rest of the crew. It will be a good way to start what will be an unusual day for them.”
Bringing good to overshadow the bad. She smiled. Nodded.
And slid the casserole into the oven to the sound of Mitchell’s feet on the creaky stairs. Smiling. Thanking her stars for sending her the helpmate they had.
The man had a deeper understanding of life.
He just didn’t know he had it.
And she was okay with that.
The morning kept Mitchell busy. Dove, he noticed, not so much.
She tried engaging when something came up that could use her attention, or when someone directly approached her.
But for the most part, she sat on the floor of her father’s office—dressed in a long flowing burgundy, pink and white skirt, and a long-sleeved pink crop top—and made some phone calls.
She didn’t go out on the docks at all.
Or interact with customers.
Mitchell didn’t blame her. He actually admired her for being there at all. And appreciated her attention to detail when her focus was needed.
But while she didn’t go outside, he, on the other hand, spent a good bit of his time on the docks. He’d dressed accordingly, in jeans and a flannel shirt, rather than the suit he’d worn his first day of lawyering at St. James Boats. Hard to believe that only a few days had passed since then.
In some ways he felt like a completely different man. Freer. Which made absolutely no sense, so he pushed the unusual contemplation aside. Disregarding it as woo-woo, a result of the company he’d been keeping, not based in his own reality.
He spent a couple of hours taking a much deeper look at Whaler’s books—finding the accounting to be nothing like he’d seen before, but once he figured out the old sea captain’s process, he found the entries to be in fairly good order. Consistent.
The business was dying a slow death. But a clearly delineated one. So seeing, he was quickly able to ascertain weaknesses and formulate possible solutions.
If Whaler made it back and got sober, he could have the place running a profit in very little time. Two very big ifs.
Neither of which were looking to be likely possibilities.
The better bet would be to get the place in shape, to show its profitability and then put it up for sale. With the hope of finding a buyer who wouldn’t be intimidated by Brad Fletcher. A conversation he intended to have with Dove over lunch.
Because there was long-term good news in there. And he was particularly eager to give it to her. The woman took on so much. Tried so hard.
And was holding on by a thread—made clear to him by the conversation she’d instigated after his apology in the kitchen that morning. Capitalizing on the change of topic from threats and possible death to a topic that often resulted in extreme pleasure.
Could be she’d been messing with him to cover up her embarrassment.
Or, more likely, she had been using the momentary, very unfortunate lapse of protocol between them as a distraction from the terrifying disappearance of her father.
Either way, it was up to him to make certain that he was never again in a position where he was turned on by her.
And absolutely not when he was underdressed enough for her to pick up on that fact.
He was the lawyer. The man she was in the process of hiring to help straighten out a very grim situation.
She was the victim.
He’d rather go off the grid and never have contact with another human being for the rest of his life than take advantage of a woman who’d come to him for help.
To further victimize Dove St. James in any way.
Stepping outside the office just after eleven to take a call from Stuart, his loyal and hardworking paralegal, he walked up to the parking lot in front of the marina so he could discuss other clients without being overheard.
And was just in time to see a man getting out of an expensive-looking sedan and then, glancing in Mitchell’s direction, get right back in and pull off the lot. The man had been dressed in fishing gear.
It was possible he’d just forgotten something. Or suddenly taken ill.
Mitchell’s mind was heading loudly in another direction.
Telling Stuart he’d call him back, Mitchell pressed the contact icon on his screen for his brother and asked for an image of Brad Fletcher to be sent over to him.
It arrived almost immediately, with Eli still on the line, and Mitchell was almost certain Brad was the man he’d seen.
The car had been at a wrong angle for him to have gotten a look at the license plate. He hadn’t been thinking along those lines at the time, in any case.
“I’ll get with Welding, find out what’s going on with the team watching Fletcher,” Eli said and then, telling Mitchell to stick close to Dove in case Fletcher tried to contact her again, he quickly rang off.
Eli had problems of his own, Mitchell knew.
His cousin Spence and Hetty Amos, a sea pilot for the Colton family adventure business, had stumbled over a dead woman in the woods, only partially buried, with her hair and her left hand wearing a large diamond engagement ring still visible.
Eli had been assigned the case, and so far, other than being certain the woman’s death had been no accident, he had nothing substantial to help him solve the murder.
A mirror to Whaler’s disappearance—no viable leads—which Mitchell knew would be eating at his brother. Cases with no solid clues made investigators uneasy. Two of them happening around the same time—especially in their relatively quiet remote town—raised cause for alarm.
Mitchell kept an eye on the marina and watched the road as well while he completed his business with Stuart as expediently as possible, and then he headed straight for the small office not far from the docks.
Lunch in a neighboring town sounded like a good idea to him.
Get Dove away from Shelby and all the heartache, intimidation and fear she’d been suffering over the weekend.
Yet they’d still be within easy range in the event that Whaler was found alive.
In a restaurant, conversation would more easily stay focused on the business he had to discuss with her, even with someone as intent on living through her inner voices as Dove was.
So yeah, his reasoning was partly to ward off his own discomfort.
More than that, though, Brad Fletcher, or anyone he hired to keep digging at Dove, would not be looking for her in a dockside restaurant twenty miles down the road.
Calling ahead to the place—one of his regular eateries for business lunches with clients—Mitchell made the reservation. And walked into the office to see…
A card table set with a red-and-white checkered tablecloth, two big bowls from his kitchen, cutlery, napkins and glasses—and Dove on the floor behind it all.
She stood as he came in, saying nothing, and moved to the refrigerator Whaler kept stocked with beer.
No alcohol was his first thought. He’d made a list of guidelines to prevent him from repeating the morning’s debacle with his body in the kitchen.
Feeling attraction, as he had in the studio the other day was one thing: normal reaction.
That morning in the kitchen…he’d made a wrong move and had caused himself to cross a line.
“I’m assuming there’s been no word from Kansas?” she asked the same question she’d greeted him with every time he’d entered the small structure that morning.
Shaking his head, more at the table than anything, he said, “No.” He wanted to tell her he was sorry but was too focused on the food she was pulling from the refrigerator.
Freshly roasted salmon. Greens. Dressing.
Not beer.
With tension filling him, Mitchell sent a quick text to cancel the lunch reservation he’d just made and went into the small bathroom to wash up. The sink, floors, stool and towels were all clean.
There’d been no cleaning service on the St. James Boat books.
Nor did Whaler seem to deal in cash. All transactions that he’d reviewed, both private and personal, had been completed by card. Even his bar tab.
Which had been astronomical.
Dove. He wasn’t going to ask, but he knew the cleaning most likely had been done by her. The bucket of cleaning supplies on the corner bottom shelf—right next to extra toilet paper rolls—looked a lot like the one she’d pulled supplies out of to hand to him Sunday morning in her studio.
It had become pretty clear to Mitchell that Dove had been taking care of her father in all the ways she knew how—and could get away with.
She’d only come to him when she’d done all she could herself.
Some of the things she’d said to him over the past few days lined up in a row, replaying in his mind.
“How do you know I even like lasagna?”
“My spirits told me.” The tone of voice she’d used—she’d been playing with him. Letting him know that she knew that he’d branded her as a bit out there, along with much of the rest of the town. Just as they’d done her mother.
And then… “No, Mitchell, I’m not calling you a liar.
I’m just paying attention to your posture, your tone of voice.
You’re uncomfortable, which tells me that you know more than you’re saying.
” He could clearly picture the smile that had teased the corners of her mouth on that one.
As though she’d known he’d been uncomfortable—because he’d been taken in by the rumors that she and her mother thought they could read minds.
There were others.
In less than four days’ time, he’d come to know her better than people he’d been acquainted with for years.
He could almost feel how difficult that had to have been for her. To have to beg for help from someone she hardly knew but was acquainted with enough to understand that he’d judged her without having actually spent time in her presence.
She’d walked into his office, head held high, knowing that he thought her flighty.
The realization held him hostage there in that tiny space, as his mind tried to unravel the implications. Leaving him with the certainty that no matter what happened between them, he couldn’t turn his back on her and live with himself.
“Mitchell, you okay in there?”
He jerked as her voice came to him through the thin walls and he was mentally transported back to that morning in his kitchen.
The room was closing in on him.
Pulling the door open he said, “Fine. Just had some boat grease to get out from under my fingernails.” True. But a task he’d completed minutes before.
Standing between him and the beyond, she glanced at his hands, while he took in her flat pink leather sandals with laces that climbed up her legs and under the hem of her skirt. When his gaze made it up to her eyes, he found her staring at him.
Without hesitation, she said, “And here I was thinking you were avoiding our prearranged lunchtime conversation.”
About to start believing that her fates had it in for him, Mitchell would have bolted then and there, if she hadn’t been blocking his way.
Instead, confident that what he had to discuss with her would override their earlier agreement, he said, “I’m eager for the upcoming conversation” and followed her to the table.
He couldn’t walk away from her. But he could play her at her own game.
And win.