Page 2 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
Thumps raced overhead. A squeal of a door. Slam.
Her heart lurched. She stumbled back to the main floor; her back hit the wall with a thud.
A shadow blew past the back doors. “Dad!”
She bolted down the hall, through the salon, out the doors and vaulted through the side opening, tripping over her suitcase. Her knees slammed against hard wood, but her body kept moving. She pitched over the side of the dock. Cold surged against her scalp. She fought for purchase to keep the lower half of her body from joining her head in the murky water. A hand clamped around her leg and yanked her back onto the dock.
Isobel whirled, shoving wet hair from her eyes. A broad-shouldered man loomed over her, shadowed face, storm-gray eyes.
Not her father.
She kicked. Hard.
He doubled over with a grunt. “What. That. For?” he wheezed.
“You grabbed me,” she gasped, scrambling upright against a piling.
He stood upright and rolled his shoulders back. “Instead of kicking me, maybe thank me for keeping you out of the bay.” His gaze drifted to the water. “Things disappear in that water,” he said, his voice rumbling low and rough as a muffler.
A bark exploded through the fog. Isobel startled. A German shepherd bounded to the man’s side, teeth bared at the water.Her suitcase bobbed past, spinning slowly toward the channel. The dog lunged, barking louder, hackles bristling.
Isobel’s chest squeezed. “That’s everything I have left.” She darted to the edge, but the man’s arm locked around her waist, hauling her back.
“Let it go,” he growled in her ear. “Not worth dying over.”
She stiffened, caught between fury and the surprising solidity of his grip. He released her slowly, stepping beneath a dock light that carved his features into sharp planes. A deep scar ran down his right temple, but he was handsome in a dangerous way. The kind of man her mother always warned her about.
A break in the fog allowed a sliver of silver light to reach the docks, and a hint of orange spread in the distant sky.
“Best get out of here. This area’s for owners only.”
“That’s my father’s boat,” she snapped, jabbing a finger at the trawler. “I inherited it.”
The man’s jaw flexed. “No.”
“No, what?”
“Just… no.” His gaze lingered on her one beat too long. “Leave.” He turned and strode into the fog, the dog trotting at his side, barking once more as the suitcase drifted further away.
Isobel wrung water from her hair with a sharp huff. She didn’t need him. She didn’t needanyman to rescue her, not after a lifetime of learning she couldn’t rely on one. Her gaze tracked the suitcase as it bobbed once, twice, then disappeared into the outgoing tide. Just like everything else she’d ever counted on. Hopefully, her father had left behind more than spare parts, maybe even clothes and a way to wash the brackish stink out of her hair.
Squaring her shoulders, she climbed back aboard. The deck groaned under her boots, but this time she didn’t hesitate. She marched up the narrow staircase to the pilothouse, each step a silent dare to whatever secrets this boat held.
At the top, there was a glass-ringed space with a view of the marina lights glowing through the mist. A massive wooden helm stood at its center, polished by years of use. For one breathless moment, nostalgia swept her back to summer afternoons on the lake, her father’s hands over hers as she steered. But the ache that followed reminded her this wasn’t a memory. This was reality, and he’d chosen a trawler over her.
Something glinted at the wheel. She stepped closer.
A Christmas ornament dangled from the top spoke, catching the glow of the lights outside. Her breath hitched. Slowly, she reached out, fingertips brushing the cool red ball trimmed in gold as if the touch might summon a connection to the man she had once believed would love and protect her always.
She’d known someone had been up here. It hadn’t been her imagination. With trembling fingers, she turned the ornament around. Carved into the back, one word stared up at her, jagged and deliberate.
Leave.
The morning chillgave way to sweltering heat under the afternoon sun but then waned to cool by evening tide. The dangerously distracting female two slips down had gone from shivering to slipping off her shirt to work in nothing more than a sports bra and leggings in the afternoon, wiping sweat from her forehead, to putting the shirt back on by evening and wrapping her arms around herself for warmth or comfort.
Rone Archer stood two slips down from the woman proclaiming to now own Shade’s boat, in the long shadow of a piling, Echo pressed to his leg the way he had since Shade’sdeath. They watched Isobel make war with a white shore-power pedestal instead of working to fix his own engine.
She held a yellow 50-amp cord in both hands, twist-lock plug misaligned. She jiggled, frowned, tried again. Sparks didn’t fly, but the way she shoved at the connector made his palm itch to fix it.
