Chapter 2 #2
“Hey! Look out!” a deep voice shouted, immediately followed by a deafening metallic crash that echoed across the entire marina. The percussive, rolling thunder of a heavy cylinder bounced across the wooden dock. The cheerful noise of busy people turned to marked silence.
In a moment of perfect clarity, I registered three facts. One: I was the cause of this disaster. Two: Everyone around me had stopped to watch the spectacle. And three: This was not how I wanted to start my morning.
Turning around, I prepared to face the music.
A man was frozen mid-stride behind a hand truck that was now one keg lighter.
The escaped silver cylinder of stainless steel had finally come to rest inches from the dock’s edge, a monument to my carelessness.
A hot, sickening wave of mortification flooded my body.
I was supposed to be the serious, lead scientist from Scripps, not the clumsy fool who caused a public disturbance before 9:00 a.m. I faced the man, my mouth forming an apology, but the words died in my throat.
Time warped, thickened like the humid air. The background noise of the marina faded to a dull, distant roar.
Braden Coleridge stood in front of me.
My brain struggled to reconcile the image in front of me with the one I held in my memory.
The boy I left behind had been a lanky, sun-streaked teenager with a rebellious grin and an easy, almost lazy charm.
The man before me was solid. Broad-shouldered in a dark blue T-shirt that stretched across his chest. His arms were defined, roped with muscle that spoke of hard work.
His light brown hair was cut shorter, neater, but his eyes were the same—a startling, brilliant blue that now held the same utter stupefaction that had to be in mine.
Twelve years of academic achievements and professional distance crumbled to dust. Braden stared at me, his shock evident in the slight parting of his lips, in the way his gaze swept over my face as if he were trying to solve a complex puzzle.
It was too much.
The horrifying astonishment.
The gut-wrenching awareness of years of unspoken history hanging in the air between us. My body reacted before my mind could. I took a huge, involuntary step backward, anything to put distance between us.
My foot found nothing but air.
For a split second, I felt weightless surprise, and then the world tilted violently.
The murky, green-brown water of the marina rushed up to surround me in a shocking, full-body slap that stole my breath.
I flailed, my head breaking the surface as I sputtered, my hair plastered to my face.
The salt and bilge-filled water filled my ears.
I could hear muffled, startled shouts from the dock above as I treaded water.
A large, strong hand clamped around my forearm.
“Gotcha,” Braden said from somewhere above me.
His voice was deeper than I remembered, filled with an unmistakable thread of amusement.
He hauled me out of the water with an ease that was almost insulting.
I landed on the dock in a dripping, undignified heap on my hands and knees, my capris soaked and heavy, my hair streaming saltwater down my back.
I pushed a wet strand of hair from my eyes as I lifted my gaze to stare up at him. Yeah, he was taller too. A slow grin spread across his face, crinkling the corners of those impossibly blue eyes. He wasn’t laughing, not out loud, but his body shook with the effort of holding it in.
“Well, that’s one way to make an entrance.” His voice was rough with suppressed humor.
Despite the humiliation, a small, traitorous laugh escaped me. “Not my most professional moment, I’ll admit.”
“Dr. Donovan! Are you okay?” Kaia’s panicked voice cut through the moment. She and Zane rushed toward us, their faces a mixture of alarm and confusion.
“I’m fine,” I managed as I pushed to my feet.
Braden’s smile tightened at the edges. His gaze flicked from Kaia back to me, and the humor in his eyes was replaced by something cooler. Something guarded.
“Doctor,” he repeated, the word sounding strange and formal coming from him. “Right. That tracks.”
I squeezed some water from the hem of my shirt, trying to regain some semblance of composure. I was the lead on this project, the authority figure, and here I was, dripping marina water at the feet of the guy whose heart I’d broken over a decade ago.
I cleared my throat, forcing my voice to be steady. “These are my colleagues, Kaia Marsden and Zane Peterson.”
They exchanged cautious, awkward greetings before Braden bent to right the hand truck, his movements economical. Then he swept his gaze over the equipment and Seahorse. “Marine biology. Following the plan.”
The plan. As if it were a flight itinerary with every stop for my life predetermined. He wasn’t wrong. I had followed it, right down to this assignment meant to add another line to my CV.
“Something like that,” I said, immediately feeling foolish.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “So you’re part of the Scripps team?”
“You know about it?” I couldn’t hide my surprise.
“Eli told me the resort was providing dive support, though he thought someone else was in charge.”
I straightened, trying to salvage some dignity as Kaia handed me a towel. “That was the plan until Dr. Albright was called away at the last moment to present at a conference in Singapore. Now it’s my project.”
His eyes were hooded, assessing. “Congratulations.”
As I dried my hair, I noticed the logo on Braden’s shirt. Two stylized hop cones crossed over a setting sun, with the words Tidal Hops Brewpub in a clean, modern font beneath it.
“Oh. You work at a restaurant?” The question slipped out before I could stop it, a reflexive attempt to place him back in the box I’d mentally constructed for him—the charming, small-town guy with no real ambition.
Braden’s posture shifted. He straightened to his full height. The amusement vanished completely, replaced by a cool, almost challenging stillness. “No. I own it. I’m the brewmaster.”
His words hung in the air, each one landing like a stone, shattering the narrative my parents had carefully crafted. The one I had believed. The charming but dead-end distraction. The boy with no future plan.
Braden Coleridge hadn’t just stayed in Dove Key. He had built something real and successful enough to have its own logo on a T-shirt.
Kaia and Zane were chattering, asking if I needed to change, if the equipment was okay, but their voices were a meaningless buzz in my ears.
I could only stare at Braden, at the stranger he’d become, at the chasm that had opened between the past I thought I knew and the present I had just fallen into.
He gave a curt nod, his eyes holding mine a moment longer. The look wasn’t angry. It was worse. It was dismissive. He turned his attention to the wayward keg. He righted the hand truck, secured the keg with bulging arms, and walked down the dock without a backward glance.
Soaked to the skin, I stood there watching him until he disappeared behind a stack of lobster traps. With Herculean effort, I tore my gaze back to Seahorse. This was why I was here.
Project. Reef.
Success. Then onward to the Great Barrier Reef.
I had three months to complete this research. Three months to gather enough data to make a difference. Three months on an island where Braden Coleridge owned a brewpub and greeted me like a mistake from his distant past.
An hour ago, I’d had a precise, elegant plan.
And Braden Coleridge had just knocked it off the dock.