Book 24 Temptation After Dark #5
“Thanks for having us, Mr. McCarthy,” Jordan says. Her sister, Nikki, is engaged to Big Mac’s nephew Riley.
“Call me Big Mac, honey. Everyone does. Come on in and have a bite of one of our famous sugar doughnuts.”
Gigi’s mouth waters at the words sugar doughnuts. She can’t recall the last time she’s eaten anything in the doughnut or sugar families. The marina is well-kept and chock-full of boats. On the long wooden pier that extends into the Salt Pond, people are enjoying the late summer day on the water.
“Will your doughnuts sweeten up my partner in crime?” Jordan asks. “She’s not feeling enthusiastic about the day’s activity.”
Gigi sends her a foul look that makes Jordan smile like the blissed-out fool she is these days.
“Our doughnuts make everything better,” Big Mac says.
When Gigi takes the smallest possible bite of doughnut, just to be polite, the greasy sweetness explodes in her mouth. Holy mother of God, that’s good. “You gotta try this.” She breaks off a piece of hers and hands it to Jordan, who pops it into her mouth.
“Damn, that’s delicious. Gimme more.”
They’ve each eaten a full doughnut by the time Matilda, the showrunner, comes looking for them.
“We’re ready for you, ladies.”
“Duty calls,” Jordan says.
“I’ve been hired to teach you how to fish for crabs,” Big Mac says. “Let’s have some fun.”
“Can hardly wait,” Gigi mutters, earning an elbow to the gut from her BFF. “Ow.”
They follow Big Mac down a ramp to a floating dock that has smaller docks attached to it.
“Be nice,” Jordan whispers. “My sister is marrying into his family.”
“Duh. Thanks for reminding me. I might’ve forgotten that if you hadn’t.”
“I’m going to hire Cooper to sweeten you up.”
“Stay away from Cooper. He’s off-limits.”
“Hmmm,” Jordan says, flashing a mysterious grin that isn’t so mysterious.
Maybe Gigi shouldn’t bring him to the dinner party if Jordan is in the mood to meddle. Before she can share that thought with Jordan, their attention is required to learn how to bait rusty hooks with raw, slimy hot dogs.
Disgusting. With the camera rolling, Gigi has to pretend she’s deeply invested in this activity when she’d rather be anywhere else.
She has no idea why she’s in such a state today, but the dark moods come on her without warning and never for any good reason.
Sometimes, they’re short-lived. Other times, they stick around for a while.
“Crabs really like hot dogs?” Jordan asks Big Mac.
Is it Gigi’s imagination, or does Jordan suddenly look a little green as the smells of diesel fuel and rotting seaweed fill the air? Huh, wonder what that’s about, Gigi wonders.
“They love them. We’ve tried all kinds of other bait, but nothing gets their attention like a hot dog does.” He makes sure the piece of hot dog is firmly attached to the hook. “Now, the secret to catching crabs is patience.”
Great. Gigi is fresh out of patience on a good day. But since she doesn’t want to have to reshoot the segment, she feigns interest and goes along as she and Jordan bait the hooks with hot dogs while trying not to retch at the gross feel of the raw meat.
“Okay, now drop your lines into the water,” Big Mac says.
Gigi looks down and is surprised to realize she can clearly see the bottom—and the crabs that are scurrying around like they’re out doing their morning errands or something.
As one of them approaches her baited hook, she holds her breath, waiting to see if he—or she, how did one know such things with crabs, anyway?
—decides whether the bite of hot dog is worth the risk.
“I’ve got one,” Jordan says with a screech of excitement.
“Raise it up slowly,” Big Mac says. “Nice and easy. That’s it.”
Jordan’s line clears the water with a gigantic crab attached to it.
Gigi instinctively takes a step back, and only Big Mac’s hand on her back keeps her from toppling off the other side of the skinny dock. “Keep that thing away from me!”
Big Mac takes the crab by one of its claws and holds it up for inspection. “That’s a good one, Jordan. He’ll be a competitor.”
“A competitor in what?” Gigi asks.
“The crab race we’ll have at the end.”
“We’re going to race crabs?” Gigi has never heard of anything crazier than that.
“Yep.” Big Mac puts Jordan’s crab in a bucket of water. “That’s the best part.”
Gigi will have to take his word for that. As she looks down to check her hook, she sees a crab bigger than the one Jordan caught taking an interest in her bait.
“Bring him up,” Big Mac says. “That’s a good one.”
Gigi slowly wraps her line around the spool, barely breathing as she waits to see if the ginormous crab would hang on long enough to break the surface. He does! Big Mac grabs him and holds him up.
“That’s the granddaddy of crabs,” he declares.
Gigi is inordinately proud to have caught the granddaddy. “I want another one,” she says, tossing her baited hook back in the water.
“I’ve got one!” Jordan says.
“This time, you have to take it off the hook,” Big Mac says.
“I don’t know about that,” Jordan says hesitantly.
“You can do it. They don’t eat much.”
“Don’t they figure out what’s going to happen when they see a hot dog suddenly appear down there?”
“They haven’t gotten wise to us yet,” Big Mac says.
“It’s safe to say that crabs aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed,” Jordan says.
Big Mac laughs. “Their pincers are pretty sharp, but their smarts? Not so much.”
Over the next half hour, they fill the bucket with crabs.
“Wouldn’t you think the word would get out down there?” Gigi asks. “They’re kidnapping our friends. If it smells like processed pork food, don’t bite!”
Jordan cracks up. “Or maybe it’s a badge of honor, like the Olympics. I bit the hot dog and got to run in the race today! And everyone gathers around them and treats them like a returning hero.”
“Do you think they give out prizes or medals?”
“They get extra algae for dinner for making the community proud,” Gigi says.
“It’s like a spaghetti dinner for the crab crowd.”
Before they film the crab races, they take a break.
Gigi asks to get something to eat, because she’s famished.
Jordan teases her that she’s always famished, and she doesn’t understand how Gigi stays so thin when she eats like a linebacker.
Jordan says everything she eats goes straight to her butt, which prompts Gigi to ask if she’s pregnant.
To her dismay, Jordan begins to cry. “I can’t be pregnant. We’re not ready for that.”
When Gigi realizes the cameras are capturing their conversation, she puts her arm around Jordan and leads her into the bathroom.
At the door, she turns to the cameraman and says, “Back off. And I’d better not see any of that on the show or anywhere else.
I mean it.” She slams the door and slides the lock into place.
“They were filming that?”
“I’ll talk to Matilda. Don’t worry. It won’t get out.”
“Ugh, I’d better talk to Mason before someone on the crew talks.”
“They won’t say anything. They’re under NDAs. I made sure of it.”
“Sometimes having a best friend who’s also a lawyer is very convenient.”
Gigi pulls some paper towels from the dispenser, wets them and then wipes the tears and mascara from under Jordan’s eyes. “If you’re pregnant, Mason will be thrilled.”
“What if he isn’t? We’ve never even talked about having babies.”
“Not once?”
“Just vaguely. It’s not something that comes up on the regular. What am I going to do, Geeg?”
“The second we finish today, we’re going to buy a test and figure out if it’s true.”
“I can’t walk into the pharmacy on this island and buy a pregnancy test. It’ll be online in ten minutes.”
“Then we’ll get someone else to do it.”
“Who?”
“Nikki?”
“She can’t do it either, or the entire McCarthy family will think she and Riley are the pregnant ones.”
“I’ve got it. We’ll send your grandmother.”
“Stop it! I can’t send her.”
“Why not? She’d do it for you.” In Gigi’s experience, there’s nothing Evelyn Hopper wouldn’t do for her granddaughters.
“Just ask her.” Gigi hands Jordan her cell phone.
“Call her.” Jordan never has her phone on her when they’re filming, whereas Gigi refuses to be separated from hers since she has clients other than Jordan who need her from time to time.
Jordan takes the phone from her and holds it for a full minute before she punches in Gigi’s code and calls her grandmother, putting it on speaker so Gigi can hear.
“Hi, Gigi,” Evelyn says. “How’s the filming going?”
“It’s me, Gram. Jordan.”
“Oh, hi, honey. Are you okay?”
“I, um…”
“She might be pregnant and needs you to pick up a test for her in town,” Gigi says. “Would you mind doing it? If she does it, it’ll be all over the internet.”
“No worries,” Evelyn says, laughing. “I’ll take care of it right away. Imagine the scandal that’ll set off when I buy a pregnancy test.”
They tell Evelyn that they’ll come to her house after filming and head out to finish up at work.
“Needless to say, we’ve got to get this in one take unless you guys want to catch another bucket of crabs.” The director gives them pointers about where he wants them positioned in the scene so they can capture the action. “Everyone ready?”
“Ready.” Gigi glances at Jordan, who’s a million miles away and going through the motions. “Get your head in the game, girl. We don’t want to have to redo this.”
Jordan nods. “I’m good.”
When the director calls for action, they slip into character, squealing predictably at the buckets of crabs as they dump them onto the ramp and then scream at them to go faster.
Gigi is more engaged in the race than she’d expected to be as the crabs scurry down the ramp and jump in the water. “I win!”
“No way! Mine got there first!”
“You can’t prove that.”
“Let’s go to the film.”
“And cut,” the director says. “That was perfect. We can do a slow-motion roll of the race—that’ll be funny.”
“Are we good?” Gigi senses that Jordan is on the verge of a complete meltdown.
“We’re good,” Matilda says. “See you tonight.”