Kisses in the Rain (20 page)

Once, off the starboard bow, a geyser of steam erupted and a black-and-white killer whale rolled cumbersomely out of the water and back again. Martha laughed, treating him to the golden, rippling sounds of mirth that he loved so much. He wished he'd had his camera in hand at that moment, not to catch the surfacing of the whale on film but to capture Martha in her laughter.

Eventually Nick throttled the engine so that its noise sank from a roar to a rhythmic
pocketa-pocketa.
"Time to set out the lines," he told her.

The
Tabor
was equipped with two long poles that swung the fishing lines into the ocean away from the boat. When cruising, the poles were fixed in an upright position, but for trolling they were lowered and steel fishing line was paid out and weighted with a fifty-pound lead weight called a cannonball. From the fishing line dangled as many as eighteen "spreads," each with bait and hooks.

Nick went outside into the chilly half-light and methodically began to lower the poles and attach and bait the spread lines. It was quiet, and there wasn't another boat in sight. A stiff breeze blew from the west, scuffing the surface of the sea into peaks of foam.

"What can I do to help?" asked Martha as she appeared suddenly at his elbow.

He hadn't expected her to come out of the wheelhouse into the cold and damp, and he eyed her speculatively. "Think you could check the hooks for me? Make sure the eyes are strong and that they're sharp?" He had to shout so that his words wouldn't be flung away by the wind.

"Sure," she shouted back, ready to prove herself a fast learner.

He gestured with his head. "Go put on those spare oilskins in the wheelhouse. Then come back."

When they finished their work on deck, it was a mere seven-thirty in the morning. They retreated across the rolling deck to the galley and held their red hands over the warm stove to thaw. Martha's teeth chattered.

"You sound frozen," Nick said. "Maybe this is too much for you. Are you sure you don't want to only chug around out here for a couple of days watching the other boats troll?"

"I want to know what your life was like when you were a fisherman," Martha said firmly. "I want to know how other people in Alaska live."

"You're finding out right now," Nick said with a chuckle before carefully refilling their coffee mugs.

Nick turned the radio to the marine weather forecast. He listened soberly as a voice delivered a notice to mariners. When Martha, heedless of the radio's importance, started to speak, Nick held up a hand to silence her.

"Sorry," he said afterward. "I had to hear that."

"Was it important?"

Nick's eyes were hard, his expression grim. "Weather is
always
important here. For pilots and for fishermen." His attitude as he turned the radio's volume knob did not invite further questions or comment.

Suddenly one of the trolling lines began to shake. Nick set his mug down with a clatter and ran outside. As the line was reeled up out of the water, the leaders attached to it appeared, and he slid them out of the way.

"It's a salmon!" he hollered, knowing from the jump of the line, but when the hook appeared above the surface of the water, the bait was gone and the hook was empty.

Martha had run out behind him. The wind whipped her hair in her eyes, and she brushed it away.

"What happened?" she asked at the sight of the empty line.

"Somehow he got away," Nick said.

Despite the disappointment, they kept their spirits up. Nick rebaited the hook and dropped the line into the water again.

Martha volunteered to cook breakfast. She fried potatoes and heated up moose liver that Hallie had cooked last night. She wasn't accustomed to cooking in a frying pan that rocked back and forth, and she wasn't quite used to Nick's hearty notion of breakfast yet. Right now she longed for a bagel, preferably one sopping with lots of butter and honey. Or even a chocolate-chip cookie. But Nick gulped his breakfast down rapidly. So did she. Something about the sea air whetted her already hearty appetite.

After breakfast they relaxed and listened to other people talking on the shortwave radio. Today the catch wasn't good. No one was catching anything much on this fishing ground, and Martha sensed the painful uncertainty in the fishermen's voices.

"I can't imagine what it would be like to earn a living in so haphazard a fashion—waiting for fish to bite, never knowing what kind of fish are out there, dependent on the radio for company and weather information," she said.

"Sometimes it's really a good life, especially when we're hauling fish in one after the other. No one knows what makes the fish bite one day and not bite the next. If we don't get fish one day, we simply go back and try again the next day. It's not as lonely as it seems. There are all those long winter months when fishermen have to stay in port. A lot of socializing gets done then."

"What a business," Martha said, calculating in her head like the good businesswoman she was. "You must never know if the number of fish you catch is going to pay for your fuel or your time."

Nick shrugged. "There are a lot of intangible things to make up for that. A fisherman is entirely his own person. He doesn't depend on a boss or the whims of a big company. He's independent. That's why fishermen do it, in spite of the cold and the storms and the dangers."

Later Nick hauled in some of the lines because he suspected some activity, but they had caught only three cod—unwelcome, since they were trolling for salmon. Nick iced the fish down in the hold anyway; Hallie could put them to good use.

When Nick put the
Tabor
on automatic pilot, there were lots of quiet moments in the galley, waiting. They sat at the tiny table that served for dining, facing each other, occasionally glancing out the window to watch seabirds searching the waves for their supper. Sitting across from Nick, his attention focused on her, Martha felt like the center of his universe. Out here there was no Davey, no Faye, no rumors and no unexplained photos in the family album. Here it was only the two of them on the
Tabor,
suspended between the endless sea and sky.

Had she been a fool ever to have doubted that Nick loved her? Was she a fool for loving him when she knew she'd eventually leave him? Or maybe she was only a fool for telling him that she loved him. Without that particular knowledge, Nick Novak wouldn't know where he stood with her. He'd work harder to please her. He wouldn't disappear from her life for days at a time if he wasn't sure that he'd won her heart.

Now, with Nick sitting across from her and studying her, she didn't doubt that he loved her. The picture of Davey's mother in his photo album didn't matter. Or was she lying to herself, telling herself what she wanted to hear?

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and Nick misread her restlessness.

"Bored?" he asked.

Martha forced a smile. She wanted to talk about what was bothering her, about the gossip and rumors and innuendos and about her own suspicions about Davey's origins. But she was afraid of what she might learn. She didn't want to ruin these few days alone with him. She reminded herself to continue to heed Faye's counsel. Only if she knew him better would Nick open up to her; only then would she learn what she wanted to know.

So she hid her feelings and answered his question. "I could never be bored on the ocean. It changes all the time. There's always something to watch."

She had apparently smoothed things over well, because Nick only grinned approvingly, and Martha resolved to let things go at that.

It wasn't hard to do with the ship's radio chattering, muted by the engine noise. The radio ran continuously, a fisherman's link to the rest of the world. In this case, it was also a valuable ally. They didn't have to talk so much if the radio did most of the talking.

Martha found the overheard topics of conversation on the radio fascinating. Art's wife reminded him via radio to take his pills. Everett's friend Bud communicated in code, telling Everett how many fish he'd caught and where. A message was relayed to Karl Vandergrift that he was the father of a baby girl. The
Vanguard II
reported a man overboard, almost setting in motion a complicated search-and-rescue operation, but only a few minutes later the relieved captain reported the man rescued.

The danger of a man overboard alarmed Martha, but Nick reassured her. "He wasn't in the water long enough to be in danger. What's bad is when a man's overboard in cold water without a survival suit. He can't survive long then. I've fallen into the water on days like this many times. Sometimes I was baiting the lines and the boat rocked so much that I fell. Other times I was just careless."

"Careless!"

Nick shrugged. "It happens. You get to thinking you're invincible, and no man is invincible where the sea is concerned. The worst tragedies arise from situations that could have been prevented."

He stood up abruptly, his expression dark. She couldn't see his face as he began to wipe the cups he had washed earlier. This was one of those times when Nick retreated into himself and became prickly and aloof.

Nick didn't stay that way for long, but then he never did. In a moment he seemed to gain control of his emotions, turning to her and saying, "Come on, let's check the lines. Maybe we've caught something."

There was nothing to do but to follow him outside and watch as he hauled in the lines. The port side yielded several cod and a halibut.

"That's our dinner," declared Nick, tossing the halibut to one side.

When Nick pulled up the starboard lines, there were two big king salmon, one a twenty-five pounder, the other weighing at least thirty. Nick let out a cry of triumph.

"At least these two salmon are a positive sign. There are salmon down there, all right. All we have to do now is get them to bite."

Cleaning the fish was messy work, but Martha didn't mind. Nick cleaned them in a trough with his trusty old knife as a bevy of gulls gathered for the free meal. Martha tossed the unusable parts of the fish overboard and watched as the gulls dived headlong into the water after them.

"I've never known a woman who could stand to watch me clean fish," commented Nick as he sluiced down the trough afterward.

"It's part of fishing," said Martha. "I have many happy memories of going fishing with my father when I was a kid. I guess it's because I'd always try things that my sisters wouldn't, and my father was desperate for a fishing companion. Anyway, I learned to clean fish then. I could still do it if I had to."

"Is there anything you can't do?" Nick teased, his arm around her shoulders.

I can't get you to tell me your secrets,
she thought, but she didn't say it. She only pulled him close and felt for a moment the steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath his clothes, and then she pulled away.

Nick cut the halibut into cubes, and Martha fried them in batter. They ate dinner at dusk while the
Tabor
proceeded under automatic pilot to a sheltered cove near a small, rocky island. Martha cleaned up the small galley while Nick lowered the anchor and made things fast on deck. Then Nick went below to ice down the fish they'd caught.

Here in the cove, where they were protected by arms of land, a sense of calm settled over the
Tabor.
Little wavelets slapped against the hull, rolling the boat gently up and down.

Martha was waiting for Nick on the foredeck when he emerged from the hold. Her eyes were a sea gray now, glimmering in the moonlight. Nick went to her and slid his arm around her narrow waist.

"Look," she whispered, pointing toward the shore.

A moose picked its way across the sandy, rock-strewn beach. It lifted its head and appeared to sniff the air. Perhaps it had caught their scent. The big antlers seemed tipped with silver in the faint moonlight filtering through the clouds. They watched for a few minutes more until the moose disappeared into the forest.

Nick's hand tightened around her waist. "Are you ready to go inside now?" he asked gently. It had begun to mist lightly, softening the outlines of the island.

Martha lifted her eyes to his. She had known all along that this moment was coming, and she'd prepared for it. When Nick had asked her to go for a trip of several days' duration on the
Tabor,
she had known that he expected them to sleep together. She had already decided that it was okay, that she was ready. She hadn't known that, faced with the fact of it, she would suddenly feel so shy with him.

He took her by the hand and led her across the deck into the wheelhouse and aft to the galley, where he pulled down a bed that fit neatly over the dinette. Somewhere outside she heard the muted clang of a warning buoy, but it seemed far away and of another world. Nick turned to look at her, and the love and expectation shining from his eyes was unmistakable.

Slowly, her eyes never leaving his, she began to unsnap her windbreaker, but then he took over and did it for her. Her knees went slack, but not from the rolling of the boat. She sensed her heart thumping wildly underneath the jersey she wore; surely he heard it, too? From the look of him, though, he was listening to his own heart and what it told him.

He threw their outerwear in a corner and touched her cheek. A wisp of her hair fell forward against his fingers. He bent forward and kissed it.