Page 14 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
“Echo insisted. Don’t read into it,” Rone muttered when her eyes lingered too long on his collar. He tugged at the cuff like he’d ratherbe in anything else.
Isobel bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The dinghy ride was quiet but not strained. She watched the lights scatter across the water like broken glass while Rone kept one hand steady on the tiller, Echo wedged happily at their feet. By the time they tied up at the little waterside place, she’d almost convinced herself this wasn’t dangerous—just two people getting food.
“I never thought Christmas in Florida would have any charm, but I was wrong. The way the red and green lights reflect off the water has an inviting, holiday feel.”
He offered her his hand like an actual gentleman to help her out of the dinghy. “Most people like the guarantee of snow; I prefer the unpredictable season. One year we’re bundled up by a furnace, the next year Santa waterskis by the boat on Christmas Day.
“The weather is so unpredictable. One day is frigid cold, and I’m in my father’s old jacket, the next I’m in shorts and a tank top.”
They waltzed to the host stand since there was no door. The entire restaurant looked like a gigantic tiki hut. The clatter of cutlery and low hum of conversation wove around them. Rone took the seat with his back to the wall, habit or paranoia, she couldn’t tell. Echo curled under the table with a sigh heavy enough to ruffle the napkin at her knee.
The thatch-roofed, oceanside restaurant smelled of charred fish and garlic butter, sharp enough to make her mouth water even before the menus hit the table. The ceiling fans spun lazy circles overhead, pushing warm air that smelled of sea and spice against her skin. Fairy lights dangled over the deck railings, their reflections shivering on the water below.
They didn’t speak beyond ordering their food. Rone sat across from her, shoulders squared, button-up straining slightlyacross his chest like he wasn’t used to clothes with starch in them. He hadn’t touched the silverware. Just leaned back in his chair, one elbow hooked over the slat, the kind of posture that said he was still measuring exits.
A man with a guitar strummed and then broke into Mele Kailkimaka with a pretty good Jimmy Buffett imitation. Outside, a motorized Tiki island hut strung with more lights than the Times Square Christmas tree filled with rowdy partiers hummed by.
When the waitress delivered their food and shot away to another table, Isobel opened her mouth but then realized she couldn’t voice her thoughts or questions, so she traced the rim of her water glass with her finger, watching condensation bead and run down the side. The man who sat across from her was the first clue she’d had to her childhood questions that had infected her life for so long. But what if she didn’t like his answers?
The silence stretched, filled only by the scrape of forks from the next table, the bark of laughter from the bar. Echo lay under the table with his chin on her sandal, heavy warmth pressing against her foot like an anchor. “I think you know even more about my father.” She tried not to sound accusatory, but her tone had bite.
Rone leaned closer, elbows on the table. “Shade didn’t keep friends for long. He kept debts. Kept enemies. Sometimes kept both in the same man.”
Her stomach knotted. “That wasn’t the father I knew—the father with a grin too wide for his face and pockets always full of mints.” She swallowed hard and forced herself to move past the memories. “Enemies?”
Rone’s gaze flicked to the dark water outside the railing, then back to her, cautious. “You cross men on the docks, you buy trouble. Shade bought more than most.” He shifted, thechair creaking under his weight. “Sometimes he paid it back. Sometimes… not.”
Isobel’s fork stilled in her hand. The grilled snapper cooled on her plate, the citrus steam fading. She searched his face, needing something to catch hold of. “There had to be more than that. He wasn’t just—” She broke off, her throat tight, then tried again softer. “Didn’t he ever do something because it was right?”
Rone’s jaw worked, a muscle ticking there. He didn’t answer right away, and that hesitation told her more than the words that finally came. “Shade did what he thought was right. Even if it burned someone else.”
The air pressed heavier against her skin. Isobel dropped her gaze to Echo, who blinked up at her with steady, uncomplicated eyes. She dragged in a breath, the scent of lemon and smoke sharp enough to sting. The man Rone described was all edges and shadows. And she wasn’t sure anymore which version of Shade belonged to her—the one she remembered, or the one who sat like a stranger across this table in Rone’s voice.
Isobel curled her fingers around her water glass. She searched for something good in it, some story that matched the father who’d made her feel like she was the only one that existed in the world. “The man you describe…” She shook her head.
“Tell me about the man you once knew.”
She swallowed the lump rising in her throat, but for some strange reason, even after all these years, she still wanted to defend her father, or cling to the man she thought he’d been. “He was honest and loving; he taught me that my word would matter in this world and truth would always win. Doing the right thing was more important than being popular or noticed. Listening to you… It’s like trying to match two photographs that should have been of the same person but aren’t.”
Echo curled closer to her, his soft, warm fur soothing. Rone leaned forward, and for a moment, she thought he’d breakthrough that gruff exterior to reach out and offer her comfort, but she was wrong about this man, too.
The meal blurred around her—grilled fish, citrus, the bite of vinegar in the slaw. He changed the subject, noting the dolphins that came for a visit near them. “Tell me more about the Shade you knew.”
He rambled on about little moments in time that were meaningless, as if avoiding the bad stuff for her sake, and she didn’t mind for a few minutes embracing the normal, mundane daily activities of his life on the docks. She nodded in the right places, let Rone carry the talk. But the weight pressed heavier with every story, pulling her between memory and truth, between loyalty and disappointment.
She nodded in the right places, let Rone carry the talk. But with each harmless detail—how Shade whistled to the dolphins, how he’d fix nets before dawn—something inside her started to twist. Those stories should have comforted her, but instead they scraped at old memories she’d buried. If Rone had seen Shade that often, known his habits so well, then how could her father have stayed away so easily? The more Rone spoke, the more the edges of her childhood blurred, truth and fantasy bleeding together until she couldn’t tell which belonged to the man she loved and which to the man he really was.
Isobel pushed her fork away; her throat ached as if she’d swallowed glass. The laughter and clink of cutlery around them blurred until it was just Rone across the table, steady, unflinching, every word he’d spoken peeling away pieces of her past.
Her hands trembled in her lap, hidden from him.All those years… all those little-girl prayers that her father would come back, that he cared.She drew a ragged breath, but it cracked anyway when she whispered, “So my whole childhood was a lie. He never loved me. Couldn’t have, if he tried so hard to make me vanish.”
She expected silence—Rone wasn’t a man who rushed words—but not the look that softened his face. The lines of suspicion eased, the guarded set of his mouth loosening. Slowly, like she might spook, he reached across the table. His hand dwarfed hers, calloused thumb brushing the inside of her wrist.
“Isobel.” His voice was gravel turned gentle, almost reverent. “I saw him once… talking about a girl. Called her his niece. But it wasn’t the word that gave him away. It was the look.”
Her breath caught. She lifted her gaze, afraid to believe.
