Chapter 11
S adie
She wasn’t ready to leave Polar Creek yet; she needed more time to make good on her bet with Kreston.
Lucky came up behind them. “So, you replaced me as your fish buddy?” he teased.
“I’m showing Sadie the ropes,” said Kreston. “There’s only room for two, as you know.”
“Fine. I know when I’m not wanted.” Lucky pretended it hurt his feelings.
Kreston gave him a dour look. “You’re only twenty feet away in the next shack. Ten Second Tess will be your fish buddy if you don’t mind her forgetting why she’s in there with you.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” countered Jessie, walking up to them. “I have a hard enough time keeping track of that girl. I don’t want to go pounding on ice fishing shacks looking for her. Besides, it would scare the fish away and tick everyone off.”
“Let’s get started, folks.” Kreston motioned Sadie to follow him to a shack in the middle. He opened the rickety door. “Welcome to Collin’s Fish House, where we sit in a tiny box, freezing our buns off, waiting for fish. When the aliens land and abduct us, they’ll be mystified. Have a seat, Miss Sadie.” He swept his arm in a come-on-in gesture.
The six-by-six shack was surprisingly cozy, with a portable battery-operated heater to warm the space enough to shed their jackets. Sadie sat on one of the two folding chairs, watching Kreston methodically prepare the 24-inch diameter fishing hole with the same precision she’d observed when he organized other tasks.
Kreston baited two hooks and handed Sadie a fishing rod. “When you get a strike, let the fish take the hook. If you yank it, you’ll lose the fish. Got it?”
Sadie made a face. “I’ve fished, you know. We have fish in Seattle.”
He lowered his chin and looked at her. “Let me guess. You get yours at Pike’s Market.”
Her eyes flicked to his, and she narrowed them. “How did you know that?”
He ignored her question with a quiet smile and powered up his phone. “Alarm goes off in thirty minutes.”
“Let’s get this fish bet started, then.” She moved her rod up and down to lure in an unsuspecting fish. “Tell me something. I want to know what you did before you came to Polar Creek. Where are you from originally?” Sadie glanced up to see a shift in Kreston.
He stiffened, staring into the dark water in the ice hole. “Miami Beach.”
She spluttered. “Excuse me? You’re from...Florida?”
Kreston raised and lowered his fishing rod. “Left at eighteen. Went to Harvard, got a degree in investment banking, then got offered a job in New York City. Lived the American dream, complete with a house in the Hamptons and a smart, attractive woman who wanted to marry me. Then the meteoric rise and the crash and burn when the bottom fell out of the stock market.” He went on to explain the gory details.
Sadie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This was the absolute last thing she expected him to say. He talked about the market crash like someone describing a car accident in slow motion, each detail crystal clear as if it happened yesterday.
“I was focused on success, wanted it at any cost. It’s what my parents wanted and what everyone else told me I wanted.” Kreston stared at the fishing hole as if gazing into the past. “I was hellbent on the perfect life. I didn’t realize how empty it was until the dominoes fell and I lost everything...even the girl.”
Sadie was on the edge of her seat, mesmerized. “What happened next?”
“Lucky happened.” He chuckled. “He found me in an Irish pub in Manhattan, drowning in cheap scotch and self-pity. He was planning to fly to Alaska and invited me to go along. I was drunk enough to think getting a pilot’s license was the next logical thing.”
“You learned to fly just to come to Alaska?”
“Wanted to earn a living as a bush pilot.” He chuckled. “Lucky showed me there was more to life than spreadsheets and stock options. Sometimes the best things happen when your carefully planned life falls apart.”
“Boy, isn’t that the truth?” Tears prickled Sadie’s eyes, understanding all too well.
“It’s no secret why you wound up here in Polar Creek,” he drawled. “Lucky told me your ex cheated on you?” He reeled in his bait, checked it, then let out his line again.
“Yeah.” She told him the whole story—about Clayton’s betrayal with the misdirected text, her disillusionment with her job, and the hollow victory of reaching the top .
“I wanted to help people create positive public images,” she confessed, her voice thick. “Now, my job has devolved into hiding their embarrassing mistakes. And I’m good at it. Really good. But now? When I look in the mirror, I don’t recognize myself.” A tear fell on her cheek.
“Hey,” Kreston’s voice was soft. “You’re being too hard on yourself. It sounds like you needed this break.” He offered her a tissue, and she knew by his faint smile he understood.
She dabbed at her eyes, grateful for his support. It helped to know he’d survived the same jaded corporate wasteland she’d been drowning in.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
He thought for a minute. “Hm, girlfriends. Not that I can think of. I’ve dated a few, but none of them panned out to be anything serious. There was one woman named Rochelle I dated for the better part of four months, but she got a job offer and left Polar Creek.”
“Did she break your heart?” asked Sadie.
He guffawed. “Not really. We were more like good friends than anything. I wasn’t gutted or anything when she left.”
Sadie’s fishing line suddenly went taut, then her rod jerked like someone was under the ice, yanking it.
“Fish on!” Kreston was instantly in motion. “Reel it in—steady—easy does it—”
Sadie jerked to stand, knocking over her chair. She gripped the rod with her left hand and reeled with her right.
Kreston peered into the hole. “I see him! He’s a big one!” He reached for a net. “You must lift the fish out before I can net it.”
Sadie lifted the line with her hand, and an Arctic char burst from the hole like a silver missile. Sadie jumped back and screamed as the fish flipped off the hook. Slushy water splashed them as the massive fish flopped around the shack like it was searching for the door.
Kreston grabbed a baseball bat and shouted, “Grab hold of it so I can smack it on the head!”
“You can’t beat a fish with a freaking baseball bat! That’s animal cruelty!” Sadie flailed around, trying to catch the wildly flopping fish.
He shot her an astonished look. “How do you expect to kill it?”
“Doesn’t it just lay there and die?” She gave him an exasperated shrug.
Kreston rolled his eyes, then hopped around with the bat like he was dancing on home plate at Wrigley Field. His feet slipped from under him, and down he went, sprawling on the ice, still gripping the bat.
The slimy fish executed a backflip and sailed across the shack. Sadie tossed her jacket over the hole in case the little bugger made a break for freedom. Only he wasn’t so little. “Oh, no you don’t, Bubbles McGraw!”
Kreston scrambled to his feet. He made a grab for the elusive fish but slid straight into the wall instead. He spun around to see the wild-assed fish knock over their bait bucket, sending dead minnows skidding across the ice like tiny silver pucks.
“You suck at catching fish!” Giving chase, Sadie’s boots skidded on the bait, and she crashed into Kreston’s chest like a defensive tackle. His arms encircled her, and they froze, their lips inches apart.
“You should play for the Seattle Sea Hawks,” he murmured.
“I could use a new job.” She gripped his sweater, staring into his baby blues.
He leaned in close until there was barely a centimeter between their lips. He slid one hand into her hair, the other firmly gripping her waist.
Sadie’s heart already raced from chasing the fish, and now it cruised up to light speed. She closed her eyes, anticipating a kiss to rock her world.
Tucker burst through the door. “Heard hollering and screaming. Did you catch a fish?” With a hung jaw, he took in their intimate stance, the scattered bait, and the train wreck of an ice shack. His gaze rested on the Arctic char, which had given up the fight and lay defeated in the corner.
Lucky peeked in. “At least you have the fish on ice.” He glanced around. “Did a sharknado blow through here? What the heck were you two doing?”
Kreston pulled off his glove and bent to pick the fish, holding it up by the gills. “We’ve got ourselves a winner, unless someone else caught a bigger fish.”
The whole ice fishing contingent had gathered, peeking in. Tucker weaseled his way to the front. He squinted one eye, making an ‘L’ with his thumb and forefinger to do an air measure. “It’s a winner. You won by default. No one else caught a fish.”
“Let’s put Christmas lights on that lady’s fish. What’s her name?” Ten Second Tess held up a blinking string.
“My name is Sadie, and I caught the biggest fish!” she shouted from inside the shack.
“Step outside for our winner’s trophy!” Tucker waved them out.
When Kreston and Sadie stepped outside, Tucker presented her with a plastic bass wearing a Santa hat that flopped its tail on a wooden plaque and lifted its head to sing “Santa Baby” when you squeezed its nose. In reality, it was Eartha Kitt’s voice, but the fish lip-synched it perfectly.
“We had a proper trophy, but a grizzly stole it last year and ate it,” explained Jessie, sipping a hot toddy from a steaming mug. “This was all we could find on the Trophies-R-Us website.”
“Want to know the best part?” chirped Sadie. “I won a bet with Kreston! He has to cook my fish at the Crooked Spoon and serve it to customers for dinner tomorrow. And the best part?”
Everyone looked at her expectantly.
“Kreston must serenade the dinner crowd with a song of my choice!” Sadie squeezed the bass nose, and the fish sang its own “Santa Baby” congratulations.
“Ha ha, funny,” said Kreston, but Sadie saw his eyes sparkle.
Whoops and hollers broke out with applause.
“Congratulations, Sadie! We’ll all show up for dinner with bells on,” hollered Lucky. “Hey Tucker, it’s time for an ode to fishing poem.”
“Don’t you dare, or we’ll never get back to town,” warned Kreston.
Undeterred, Tucker launched into a verse. “There once was a fish in a shack, whose catching required quite a knack. Two people went in, and came out with a grin, and a fish that got them on track!”
Everyone laughed and applauded while Tucker took a bow. “Now go do your mayor stuff.” He shooed Kreston off like a stray mutt.
“Remind me to get new friends,” joked Kreston as he took Sadie’s hand and led her to his snowmachine for the ride back to town. As they trudged through the drifts, she squeezed the fish nose, and strains of “Santa Baby” echoed across the lake.
Kreston twisted to look at her as they climbed onto his snowmachine. “We have a holiday party tomorrow night. I’m officially inviting you to go.”
“Like on a date?” Her little heart went pitty-pat.
“You want it to be a date?”
“If you want it to be a date.”
“Okay then. It’s a date.”
Sadie caught his eye and smiled as they put on their helmets. Losing control of a wild-assed flopping fish situation wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened. Maybe it was exactly what a person needed...like getting stranded in Polar Creek.
The puzzle pieces were falling into place for her.
The weird part was, it made perfect sense.