Page 9 of Saltwater Promises
Chapter 4
It was hard for Lynn to focus on the rest of her exhibition. The entire time, she kept catching herself looking around the room, trying to see what the hastily-disguised Mike was doing.
It had been far too long since she’d seen him. When she retired from the FBI five years ago, he didn’t even know about it. He’d been undercover, as usual, and seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth.
She thought she’d never see him again. Mike was a complicated man. An enigma, made up of smoke or…no, not quite like that. He was more than that, as was the effect that he had on her.
When he was around, it was like she couldn’t resist being pulled in. Smoke appeared and disappeared, but it only clouded her vision. Mike was worse. He was entrancing, multidimensional, like the force that pulled flowers to the sun.
Her retirement came and went, and to her surprise, she received a card from him at her new address three months later. It was odd, because no one at the Bureau even knew about the new place. Yet, somehow, he’d found her.
She never responded. It was a choice, because she couldn’t deal with it – or with him. She always ended up getting crazy about him. She didn’t know why. It was everything – from the look he got in his eye when he talked about a case, to his razor-sharp wit, to the big, bellowing laugh that made her feel safe.
When Mike was around, he was a force. And when he left, it only made his absence worse. She was there the first time he went undercover, when he was gone for nine months. Walking into the office in those days, it was like all of the light had gone out of the building. It made her feel silly, like a schoolgirl with a crush, but she couldn’t help it. Her heart ached for him whenever he was away, and during all of the years that they worked together, she could never control it. The best she could do was hide it.
And now he had appeared out of thin air. The urge to talk to him was far too tempting. The more she thought about it, the worse it got.
She managed to keep her cool until the end of the night when it was time to leave. Lynn lingered outside of the gallery for a bit, but there was no sign of him. She checked her phone. Perhaps he’d found her number somehow? But there were no messages either.
After chatting with the other artists for half an hour, she gave up and went to her car. She was a quarter-mile down the road when a figure popped up in her backseat and said, “Hey!”
Lynn screamed and jerked the wheel, but quickly regained her composure. “Mike! You almost gave me a heart attack.”
He laughed. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist. And I’d been waiting for so long that it seemed a shame to spoil it early.”
She shook her head, trying not to smile. “I should’ve known you’d do something like that.”
“I figured that you’d want to talk in private.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re safe,” she said.
“I agree. Would you like to get dinner or something? Catch up on old times?”
The exhibition was the only thing she had planned for the weekend. She’d even booked a hotel room on Orcas Island so that she could enjoy her stay. There was no reason why she couldn’t catch up with him. She was hardly in danger of being sucked in by him again. That was all in the past. “Sure. We could head into Eastsound. There are a lot of places to eat there.”
“We could.” He paused. “But if you’re interested in an evening sail first, I have a boat waiting.”
“A boat?” That sounded fancy. “All right.”
She followed his directions until they arrived at a small dock at the end of a dirt road. As she watched him untie the boat and remove bits of his disguise, she couldn’t help it. She laughed at him.
“You should really invest in some better wigs,” she said.
He looked at the mass of hair in his hand. “What, you’re not a fan? I thought this one was pretty good.”
“It isn’t.” She shook her head. “I see that you still have a tendency to overestimate some of your abilities.”
Mike laughed. “You might be right. My years in the Bureau humbled me quite a bit, but I still have farther to fall.”
He motioned for her to take a seat, and she settled in.
“If only you hadn’t retired so early,” she said.
“I know. I still had a lot to learn.”
Mike started the engine and Lynn took a moment to look around. It wasn’t a grand ship by any means, but it was cute. Mike seemed to know what he was doing.
“I thought you’d never retire,” she said over the sound of the engine.
