Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Dean
I watch her from the dock, this woman with the snapping blue eyes and the too-bright smile, and I tell myself that I’m not going to think about the way she felt against my chest.
She’d been light. That’s the thing that keeps catching me wrong—she’d been so goddamn light. When I grabbed her, I’d braced for weight, for the solidity you expect from a woman her height, and instead my hands had nearly met around her waist. Like catching something hollow.
I don’t like it.
I don’t like any of it.
I remember the clip of her that went viral a couple years ago.
It showed a different woman. Polished, perfect, screaming at a barista over a wrong coffee order until security dragged her out.
A morning show host having a public meltdown, the kind of entitled breakdown that makes for good internet content.
I remember thinking at the time that she was out of touch with the real world and had no clue what real hardship looked like.
But now I can’t reconcile that version of her with the one I just met.
Nothing about that woman in the clip suggested she could stand on a dock in salt-stiffened clothes and smile at a stranger who’d just been an asshole to her.
She disappears around the bend in the road, and I exhale a long, slow breath. My jaw aches. I’ve been clenching it since she stepped onto my ferry, and I roll my shoulders to try and loosen the knot between them.
“Fuck me sideways,” Captain announces from the dock piling where he’s perched, feathers ruffled from the morning chill.
“Shut up, Captain.” I glare at the bird, but he just tilts his head and stares back with that infuriatingly knowing look.
“Son of a bitch,” he squawks, then adds, “Rude!”
I turn away from the bird and scrub a hand over my face. Captain is the pet I never wanted, passed to me in my father’s will as his final practical joke. It outlived him. It will probably outlive me. Dad is definitely laughing about that somewhere.
The thought sends a pang through my chest. A year since he’s been gone, and sometimes the grief still catches me like a rogue wave.
As a surprise late-in-life baby, I didn’t get enough time with either of my parents.
Not like my brother Henry, who is twenty-one years older than me and has always been more like a second father than an older brother.
I need to talk to Bodhi.
But first I need to change out of these wet clothes.
I walk back to the office, ducking under the low door frame.
Doug hasn’t moved from his throne of life jackets.
His paws still paddle the air, and a thin line of drool has connected his jowl to the floor.
Abel is behind the counter, typing something.
The kid is one of the few good Merricks.
He’s kind to everyone and a hard worker, which is why I had no problem hiring him, despite Bodhi’s concerns over inviting a Merrick into a Haven business.
“You have a tour booked at two,” Abel says without looking up.
I pause halfway to the back room where I keep a change of clothes. “You didn’t.”
Abel blinks innocently. “Didn’t what?”
“You know damn well what.”
“Boss, she wanted a tour.”
“Reschedule her. Put her on tomorrow.”
“Can’t. Tomorrow’s full. You know that.”
I do know that. I also know Abel is enjoying this a little too much.
“Fuck,” I grumble and continue to the back room. “If she asks about the family, about the feud, about anything that isn’t the goddamn tide charts, I’m dropping her off on No Name and leaving her there.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
I shut the door on his laugh. The small space contains a cot that I only use when weather makes sleeping on my boat impossible, a small fridge, hot plate, and coffee maker, Doug’s food dish, Captain’s cage, and a locker full of pretty much my entire wardrobe.
It smells like diesel and old coffee. I yank my wet shirt over my head and toss it into the corner with the rest of my laundry pile.
My reflection in the dented mirror on the locker looks exactly how I feel—tired, pissed off, and thoroughly inconvenienced by a woman I’ve known for an hour.
I pull on a dry Henley and a worn flannel and step into jeans that have seen better days. My boots are still damp, so I change into an old pair of running shoes that have seen better days. I hang my baseball cap on a hook, run a hand through my hair, and decide that’s as good as it’s going to get.
When I come back out, Captain has migrated to the top of the filing cabinet. He’s watching me with a tilt of his head that means he’s about to say something inconvenient.
“Don’t,” I tell him.
“Abort, abort!” he says anyway.
I grab his flight harness. “I’m going out to the farm,” I tell Abel as I hook the bird into it. “I’ll be back before two.”
The phone rings, and Abel gives a thumbs-up as he answers.
I turn to my dog. “Doug, want to go for a ride?”
He snores on, completely unbothered and uninterested.
Dean
The road to the farm is a narrow strip of asphalt that winds up through second-growth forest, past the turn-off to the resort, and finally opens to twenty acres of rolling green.
My truck handles it like the old beast it is—engine growling, tires finding every pothole with unerring accuracy.
Captain perches on the dashboard, swaying with each turn and occasionally squawking commentary I ignore.
“Rude,” he announces as we hit a particularly vicious dip.
“You want to walk?” I ask him.
He shuts up. Smart bird.
The Haven farm gate comes into view—wrought iron with the family name welded across the top.
I turn in and follow the gravel driveway.
The farm appears around the bend, red barn and white farmhouse, fields rolling down to the water.
Haven land. Our land. The only piece of this island Malcolm hasn’t managed to get his hands on, and he’s tried.
I pull into the gravel drive and cut the engine, but before I can get my door open, something white and furious launches itself at the truck.
Noodle.
The goose believes every vehicle is a personal insult and hits my door with enough force to rock the truck, wings spread, neck extended, beak hammering the glass. This is why all of our vehicles have a permanent dent in the side, but my brother loves the demon fowl and refuses to get rid of him.
I think he reminds Henry of Lana.
She brought Noodle home as a gosling shortly before her death. And Henry’s kept the ornery beast fed and sheltered eighteen years.
I wait. Noodle will wear himself out. He always does. Eventually.
But today he seems especially insulted. I roll my window down an inch. “Fuck off, feather duster. It’s me.”
“Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off feather duster,” Captain sings.
Great. I’ll be hearing that song every night this week now.
Noodle pauses mid-beak-strike, one beady eye fixed on me through the glass. Then he goes right back to it.
Of course he does.
I open the door slowly, using it as a shield.
“Henry!” I call toward the house. “Call off your damn goose!”
No answer from the house. The front door’s open, screen swinging in the breeze, which means someone’s home. Henry’s probably out back with the sheep or down at the lower pasture. Or he’s inside ignoring me, which is equally possible.
I slide out of the truck, keeping the door between Noodle and me, and Captain takes the opportunity to launch himself out the open window and flap toward the barn with a triumphant “Fuck me sideways!” that echoes across the field.
“Thanks for the help,” I mutter.
I edge around the door, and Noodle tracks my movement. His neck is fully extended now, wings half-raised, making himself as big and terrifying as a fifteen-pound ball of feathers and rage can get.
“You and I have an understanding,” I tell him. “I don’t bother you, you don’t bother me.”
He hisses.
“Fair enough.”
I take a step toward the house. Noodle takes a step toward me.
I take another step. So does he. We’re locked in this ridiculous standoff when the barn’s side door swings open, and Colter steps out, a feed bucket in one hand, Radar the German Shepherd at his heels.
His sandy hair is sun-bleached at the tips, and he’s got dirt on his jeans.
He takes one look at Noodle and me locked in our standoff and grins.
“Need a hand?” he calls, setting the bucket down.
“Call him off,” I say, not taking my eyes off the goose.
Colter whistles two short notes and Noodle’s head swivels toward the sound. The goose considers me for one more long, menacing moment, then waddles toward Colter like a monarch returning to court.
“You’re welcome,” Colter says, scratching Noodle’s neck. The goose closes his eyes in bliss.”If you’re looking for Dad, he’s out back with the sheep. Hazel’s with him.”
Colter’s five-year-old daughter is adorable, with her father’s sandy hair and those big blue-gray eyes that see right through you.
She has every single one of the Haven men wrapped around her little finger, but my brother is especially enamored with his only grandchild.
Henry would give that kid all moons in the solar system if she asked for them.
“No, I’m not looking for Henry. I need to talk to Bodhi.”
Colter’s eyebrows go up. “Something wrong?”
“Nothing urgent.” I don’t want to get into it with Colter first. He means well, but he’s the nosiest Haven, and if I tell him about the reporter now, it’ll be all over the island by lunch. “Just business stuff.”
“Uh huh.” He eyes me for a second, then gives that easy grin of his that makes women stupid and men comfortable. “Heard you went swimming this morning. In your clothes. For a stranger.”
The island rumor mill works fast.
“She dropped her suitcase and nearly fell in with it.”
“Sure, sure. And you, being the hero you are, couldn’t let that happen.” His grin widens. “Uncle Dean to the rescue.”
I grit my teeth. “Don’t call me that.”
“What? Uncle?” He looks genuinely confused for a second, then laughs. “But you are my uncle. You’re my dad’s brother.”
“I’m not that much older than you.”