Chapter 2
Mac
“What in the goddamned hell!”
I scowl at the shout coming from outside, my floured hands going still on my bread dough.
More muffled yelling sounds from outside my bar, though it’s lower now so I can’t make out the words.
“Goddammit, Stu,” I grumble.
There are two sets of doors between me and the beach, but I recognize our local town asshole’s voice.
Stu getting into it with a tourist wouldn’t be breaking any records.
He’s retired and spends all his time at the beach just outside my bar, rain or shine, doing annoyingly good watercolor landscapes.
Last summer he got into it with a tourist going for a jog earlier than this.
Shoved him into the water when he let his dog shit on the beach without cleaning it up.
Can’t say I blamed him for that one.
I’m in too foul a mood for this.
But the shouts seem to have stopped. I keep still a moment, listening just in case. Blissful silence continues. I turn back to my bread making, kneading my big-ass fists into the puffy white dough maybe a little more vigorously than necessary.
I’d blame Stu, but I was already pissed off.
I could easily attribute my mood to the bread, since hardly any of my regular patrons order it.
I sell most of it in loaves to the natural food store in town.
I’m a bar owner, not a bread maker. I should quit making it.
But I don’t want the starter to die. Plus, I like making bread.
It’s like fishing, or backcountry hiking. It’s simple. Honest. Therapeutic.
But it’s not just the bread.
“Mac!”
God dammit. It was wishful thinking to think anything around here could take care of itself. I wash the flour and bits of dough off my hands and head for the door of the Rusty Dinghy, drying my hands off on a bar towel just as the barking starts.
My stomach twists.
That’s my dog.
I sprint the last few steps to the door. My fourteen-year-old son, Nate, is in charge of Tink when I’m at the Dinghy.
Normally, thinking about Nate makes my stomach ache. Things haven’t been good between us.
But Tink only barks like that when there’s trouble.
Panic seizes my chest as I flip the deadbolt and fling the heavy wooden door open like it’s a flimsy curtain. “Nate?” I yell.
Stu screws up his gray-bearded mug, sticking a finger in his ear. “Dammit, Mac, my hearing’s already going!”
“Where’s Nate?” If something happened to him…
“He’s fine,” Stu says, pointing his chin down to the water.
He’s right. Nate’s upright and walking. But my relief is short-lived, because Nate’s not alone. There’s a sopping-wet woman draped over his shoulder.
I take off down the beach. Tink bounds up the sand toward me, her leash trailing behind her. She barks as she reaches me, jumping in big leaps and spraying me with sand.
“I know, girl. I got it,” I say to my dog as I sprint past her.
An ancient, familiar panic has my whole body on a knife-edge by the time I reach them.
“Where are the rest of them?” I demand.
“She needs a towel!” Nate says, his prepubescent voice cracking.
I rip off my flannel shirt, throwing it around the woman’s shoulders. She’s pale as a ghost, her wet hair hanging stringy, obscuring most of her face.
“Nate! Is there anyone else?” I scan the water for a boat. I’m tense as a bowstring, ready to run in.
“I don’t think so,” Nate says.
“Think’s not good enough.”
Nate cringes at my yelling. Guilt springs up, but I can deal with that later.
But the woman speaks then. “It’s j-j-just me,” she says from behind her hair. Her voice is tangled up in her shivering, but still, relief hits me hard for the second time in as many minutes.
“I don’t think she was in a boat,” Nate says.
I let out a long breath, my shoulders sagging. There’s no one else. It’s okay.
It’s not happening again.
“Walked right out of the water,” Stu confirms from behind me. He’s breathing hard. I’m impressed. Stu doesn’t run for anything. “Thought she was one of your tourist groupies, but it’s the wrong time of year.”
“Jesus, Stu,” I breathe out, resting my hands on my knees. Not because I’m tired, but because I’m goddamned shaking. Images flash in my mind of a face in the water. A hand reaching for me.
I swallow hard, willing myself not to retch.
“Hell, guess she still could be,” Stu continues, looking suddenly suspicious. “Remember that time that girl faked drowning so you would—”
“Stu, shut the hell up!” I say.
Everyone’s eyes are wide on me. Including the woman’s.
The hair’s fallen away from her face, so I can see it for the first time.
The moment I do, it’s like lightning’s struck me right in the chest. It’s almost painful. For a moment, I can’t think. I can’t do anything except stare.
She’s beautiful. Her face is heart-shaped, with a button nose and bow-lips. Freckles spattered over pale cheeks. A mole on her forehead and another by her ear. It’s unassuming, so you don’t notice until it slaps you in the face. Like it just did.
But it’s the eyes that give me trouble breathing.
They’re hazel edging on green, like the color of the ocean when you peer in off a boat on a clear day.
They’re ostensibly very pretty, but it’s more than that.
They make me feel like I could look at them a thousand times and they’d never quite look the same.
She blinks, and I remember myself. The woman’s fancy pantsuit, drenched and gritty with sand and bits of seaweed, is soaked from her swim in the frigid water; it’s suctioned to her curves like cling-wrap.
Her abundant curves. Jesus, if she weren’t shaking like a leaf, I might quickly forget myself again.
But she is, and her knees look like they could give at any moment.
I’m an asshole.
“Here,” I say, relieving Nate of her weight.
I pull one of her freezing wet arms over my shoulder and wrap the other one around her back.
She’s so much shorter than me that with my body tipped toward hers and my elbow bent to support her, my hand comes to rest right at her waist. I try not to notice how my broad hand spans the space from her ribs to her soft hip.
How the soft indent there feels like it was made to fit my palm.
How every part of her pressed against me feels like a different variation of soft.
I start half walking, half carrying her up the beach.
“We need to get you warmed up.”
She stumbles, leaning into me, and I have to grit my teeth to stay focused.
The woman mumbles something I can’t hear.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“R-r-rice,” the woman says. “I need r-r-rice.”
Nate, who’s jogging alongside us holding Tink’s leash, meets my eyes. His are like dinner plates.
“Rice?” he whispers.
“Call Fred,” I say. “Tell her we found a woman in the water, and I’m bringing her to the Dinghy to warm up.”
“Who’s F-F-Fred?” the woman asks.
“Chief of police—”
“What?” She pushes away from me. “I don’t need the p-p-pol-l-l.”
She can’t even finish a sentence.
“We need to focus on keeping you from getting hypothermic,” I say.
I reach for her to help her again, but she takes an unsteady step back. “I said I’m f-f-fine.”
Despite my worry, a flicker of irritation hits me. “Really? Fine people jump into the ocean in April fully dressed?” The ocean here is cold but swimmable in the summer, but in April, it’s still frigid.
She narrows her eyes. “I’ll b-b-be f-f-fine,” she corrects. Then a shudder goes through her. “I just need to get to t-t-town.” She tries to walk, but her knees give way.
I catch her, holding her up. Thankfully, she lets me hang on.
“Are you in trouble with the law, lady?”
Reality claps back. For both of us, apparently, because the woman grits her chattering teeth. “No. I just d-d-don’t need you to make a big d-d-deal.”
“Okay,” I say, steadying her back on her feet. “I won’t call Fred. On the condition that I take you inside to warm up.”
When she doesn’t say anything, a thought occurs to me. She’s dressed in one of those pantsuit things. The only people who dress like that over here are the corporate types over on Business Island—what the locals call the island off the beach with the retreat center.
If she didn’t fall in, she had to have jumped in and swum over here.
There are very few reasons someone would do that any time of year, let alone in April, when it’s still mostly cool, the water frigid.
“Did someone hurt you?” I ask, my voice steely.
My arm is still against her back to keep her upright, and she must feel me tense, because she quickly shakes her head. “I came here of my own v-v-volition.”
She says it with enough conviction that I relax slightly. Still, I tread carefully.
I point to the Rusty Dinghy. “That’s my bar.
Everyone in town knows me. That’s my son.
” I point my chin at Nate. “And that’s Stu.
He’s an asshole, but he’s harmless. Just like me, I guess.
I’d take you into town right away, but I’m worried as hell about you.
Your lips are blue, and hypothermia’s a real threat in that water outside the summer months.
Please, let me bring you inside. After we warm you up, I can personally drive you wherever you need to go. ”
She looks up at me, and suddenly, her lips curve into a tiny smile. “You’re the hot b-b-bartender.”
I’m so distracted it takes me a moment to register her words. “What?”
“I told you she was a groupie!” Stu says.
I grit my teeth. “Stu, me telling you to shut the hell up a minute ago was me being nice. Don’t be an asshole.”
“Mac!” Nate says.
When I look at him, he points his eyes in the direction of the woman.
She’s shaking hard now. “Okay,” she whispers. “W-w-warm.”
I don’t wait. I swing her up into my arms and carry her the rest of the way to the bar.
I swear I hear her stuttering something about being too heavy, but I don’t dignify that with an answer.
“Get the door,” I tell Nate.
“I got it,” Stu says, overtaking Nate and pulling open the door.
Nate looks wounded.
“We’ve got it, Stu,” I bark out.