After he’d dropped out of college and joined the Coast Guard, the uniform had only seemed to add to the attraction. Unfortunately, it had been too late to do him much good. The woman he’d been in love with at the time had preferred Alex’s money to Kurt’s good looks or Gus’s rough charm.
Dina. All three of them had been in love with her. She’d chosen Alex, and eventually, Kurt and Gus had gotten over her.
At least, Kurt had. Since then he’d gotten over a number of lesser attractions before getting involved seriously again. Then, ironically, it had been his lack of looks that had done him in. He’d still been pretty much of a physical wreck when Evelyn had left him leaning on his crutch at the altar.
Idly, he wondered what Dina and Evelyn would have made of a dinky little no-stoplight fishing village like Swan Inlet.
What would they have made of Frog? A homely kid who was all long, skinny limbs, big feet and tough talk.
He couldn’t picture either one of them being content to live aboard a reconstituted commercial fishing boat with no Jacuzzi, no maid service—not even a CD player. The whole idea struck him as amusing and just a bit sad.
So, okay. Maybe he would go ahead and start the process of buying that house. He had a family now—or as much of a family as he was ever apt to have. After nearly twenty years of pulling up stakes every three years, moving from base to base—from Carolina to California, from Hawaii to Alaska to the U.S. Virgin Islands—he was more than ready to settle down.
“Captain Stryker? I’m pretty much at loose ends almost every evening,” the woman in the loose halter said, her voice a husky invitation.
Kurt shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Yes, ma’am. The thing is, I’m…uh, booked up pretty solid.”
Frog smirked.
The woman sniffed.
Kurt pretended an intense interest in the rumpled statement from Pierce’s Electronic Service.
Overhead, a gull flapped past with a finger mullet in his bill. Something hit the water not two feet abaft the port beam. It wasn’t the finger mullet.
“Splotch alert,” Frog quipped.
Kurt decided the boy’s vocabulary had improved, even if his grammar hadn’t. “Thanks, mate. We’re covered, but maybe you’d better pass the word.”
Kurt glanced up at the overhang from the flying bridge that covered a portion of the cockpit. They grinned at each other. Frog nodded toward the woman in the white shorts and halter, who was stroking her legs with after-sun lotion, her gaze straying frequently toward Kurt.
“Bet that stuff she’s rubbin’ on ‘er ain’t gullproof.”
When Kurt didn’t reply, Frog noisily finished his drink and dumped the ice overboard. “Know why she keeps looking at you?”
“No, but I expect you’re going to tell me.”
“It’s that eye patch. Makes you look like a pirate. Women like pirates.”
“Oh, yeah? How would you know what women like?” They’d talked about women before. Mostly warnings on Kurt’s part and bragging on Frog’s.
The boy shrugged. “I notice stuff like that. What about tomorrow, you gonna let me go out?”
“That’s a negative.” They had talked about this subject, too. No weekday charters during school months. It was still a sore spot between them, because in season, Frog’s tips could run anywhere from twenty-five to a hundred dollars a trip, depending on the length of the charter, the number of fish caught and the size and generosity of the party. Kurt had insisted on starting a savings account for him, much to the boy’s disgust.
“How you gonna run the boat and wait on fishermen? You need me, man.”
“What I need is a partner who can read a chart, lay out a course and follow it. What I need—”
“Awright, awright! So maybe I’ll just shove off and try my luck somewheres else where I don’t have to learn all that crap.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d threatened to leave. Kurt could only hope he didn’t mean it. He had no hold on the boy. No legal hold. “Anyhow,” Kurt said, “this Kiley fellow’s not a fisherman, he’s a photographer. No hooks to be baited.”
“So who’s gonna put film in his camera and hand over his fancy bottled water when he wants a swig?”
“Nice try, kid.” Kurt chuckled. Another crisis avoided. “Now go below and get started on your homework. I’ll be down directly to check you out.”
It had taken two years, but Debranne Eliza Ellen Kingsly Kiley, called Deke by most of her friends, was on her way. Finally!
“Funeral, here I come,” she muttered, and was mildly shocked by her own irreverence.
Her husband’s first funeral had been a circus. His brother had planned it with no input at all from her. Not that she’d been up to it at the time. She’d still been in shock.
Once she’d been able to think again, she had thought about having her own private memorial on the first anniversary of the occasion, but when the time had come she’d been sick with stomach flu that had dragged on for weeks, so she’d postponed her plans for another year. A year and six weeks wouldn’t do. Deke was cursed with an orderly mind, which meant that anniversaries came annually, not any old time it was convenient.
So now it was the second anniversary, and she was in perfect health. This time, she was determined to see it through. The champagne alone had cost nearly a week’s rent, but it was Mark’s favorite kind. While she was at it she had splurged on a pair of beautiful, brand-new crystal champagne glasses, too, because Mark had also appreciated fine crystal.
The leis had been even harder to find than the champagne, but as they had honeymooned in Hawaii, leis had seemed a fitting floral tribute.
So now she was on her way. She refused to think about those nasty whispers she had overheard a few weeks after Mark’s death, about his wandering eye. He’d been too busy building an empire for any extracurricular hanky-panky.
Goodness, he’d hardly had time for his own wife, and they’d still been in the honeymoon stage.
To clear her mind of unworthy thoughts, Deke went over her checklist. She had been taught early and well that orderliness was right up there alongside cleanliness, which was right next door to godliness. “Camera case, notebook, overnight bag—check! Champagne, glasses, leis—check!”
And then she moved on to her next list. Lights off, stove off, windows locked, door locked. Done, done, done and done.
Orphaned at the age of thirteen, Deke Kingsly Kiley could barely remember her father, who had died when she was five, but she’d never felt a lack of love. She’d been brought up by a mother who found life rather overwhelming, and by three elderly women whose notion of propriety had been formed during the Coolidge administration. She had loved them all dearly, and they had loved her right back. Although she had to admit that none of them had left her particularly well prepared for life as a single woman in the nineties. The nineteen nineties, that is.
Still, she’d made it. She was doing just fine, thank you. She had two published books to her credit, another one under contract, a part-time job at a day-care center and another one at Biddy’s Birdery, feeding baby birds and cleaning cages.
Not to mention one brief marriage.
Three and a half years ago she had married a handsome, highly successful businessman from nearby Norfolk. Mark Kiley had owned the shopping mall where she’d been signing her first book. He’d seen her there and stopped by to ask how it was going, and one thing had led to another. A week later, on their third date, he told her that her serenity and her quaint,