Page 16 of The Anchor Holds

I saw my brother and Kip’s work in the place. It looked great. Simple, clean, unique and unassuming yet comfortable. Enough for the locals to feel like they were coming to a familiar hauntwhile also drawing in tourists who would inevitably pose in front of the décor for whatever vapid social media reasons people had.

The walls were adorned with various ocean and boat paraphernalia along with an entire wall of photos—all black and white with mismatched frames. I walked through the empty space, heels clicking on the floor to get a closer look. Most of the photos looked to be taken inside the restaurant, with various iterations of it. One was a middle-aged man with his arms around two gangly teenage boys standing in front of the sign, all of them grinning.

So fucking wholesome it should’ve made me gag.

Except it didn’t.

“You’re here.”

I jumped, so engrossed in the picture—in particular the boy on the left, younger, thinner and obscured slightly in black and white but still with the same smile and piercing eyes as the man from yesterday—that I hadn’t even realized I wasn’t alone in the room.

Sloppy. My brother might’ve been trained by Uncle Sam to establish all threats in any room, but I was a woman trained in New York City in a man’s industry which meant I was always aware of other people, most especially of the opposite sex entering my personal space.

I turned, schooling my features as Elliot walked from some back room, arms full of boxes which he set on the bar before turning back to me.

His arms were exposed in a sleeveless shirt that was worn and readShaw Shackin vintage, red script.

I immediately wanted that tee. Not from the section in the corner of the restaurant where crisp new ones were hanging, but that one, clinging to Elliot’s body, worn countless times that meant it definitely smelled like him.

His biceps were bulging from the exertion, healthy sized. He was much more muscular than I’d pegged him to be in his sweater yesterday. His skin was tanned from what I guessed was life underneath the coastal sun, his muscles sculpted from manual labor instead of lifting weights. There was a scruff of beard on his jaw, making him look more rugged. No hat on, his blond curls framed his face perfectly, jeans encasing powerful thighs, and the Birkenstocks on his feet revealing somehow attractive toes. Men didn’t have attractive toes. Men didn’t pull off Birkenstocks and make my pulse spike at the same time.

Yet Elliot Shaw did.

In short, Elliot Shaw was hot as fuck.

My eyes shot up to his warm blue ones, remembering that I shouldn’t have been checking him out. This was not a trip to find a fuck buddy. It was an expedition to swallow my pride, deliver a check, then get the fuck away from Elliot Shaw.

“I knew I’d be seeing you again,” he said warmly, again taking stock of my body in that simple gaze of male appreciation that lit up my synapses. “But color me shocked that you willingly set foot in here.”

I bit my lip, surprised and unnerved that he seemed perceptive enough to correctly make a statement like that. “I wouldn’t saywillingly.” I recovered quickly. “I would say I was bullied into it.”

He tilted his head, making no effort to hide that he was trying to figure me out, cataloguing every inch of me. “Something tells me a woman like you couldn’t be bullied by Lucifer himself.”

I wanted to smile, since it was a rather astute observation, but nothing in me found it humorous that this mild-mannered fisherman seemed to be able to read me so easily.

“Lucifer himself would rightly walk the other way if he saw me coming,” I told him with a bite in my tone. “You know, ifhe existed, which he doesn’t since he was invented to subdue women and anyone else who wasn’t an old white man in power.”

I walked forward, purposefully, wondering if Elliot’s expression would change under my blasphemy.

We were in a small town, which wasn’t overtly religious, but the steepled church always had a full parking lot every Sunday.

It wouldn’t surprise me that this blond-haired, powerfully built, all-American man would be God fearing too.

But his smile only widened at my words and at my approach.

I’d never paused when advancing on a man before, and I wasn’t going to start then, but it took more effort than it ever had to walk up to that grinning fisherman than it had any lecherous CEO.

He leaned back casually against the bar, lazily eyeing me with that relaxed air about him that should’ve set my teeth on edge—as a rule, I hated laid-back people. But instead, it sent electricity across my skin, my body alive and aware.

“I doubt anyone can subdue you,” he drawled, never taking his eyes off me.

Something deep inside—buried down and ugly where it was rotting—climbed up, making my mouth taste of bile and the tingles of my skin turn into knives.

I kept everything about my expression schooled, but my body no longer felt warm; I was freezing, covered in long-cooled blood covering my naked body. The flashback was quick, a mere second, then I blinked it away without a tremble.

Even though I was sure nothing had outwardly changed, I noted the slight flicker in his eyes, the tilt to his head, the more penetrating gaze as if he’d spotted something in me.

Impossible.

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