Two Captains, One Chair: An Alaskan Romantic Comedy (8 page)

I almost choked as she got ahold of the waistband of his underwear, and tugged until his shrieks rose a couple octaves.  I turned in my chair, still eating the cake—it was really freaking good—as I watched my goat terrorize a grown man.

The show they were putting on was
almost
as good as a
Firefly
rerun.

Chapt
er Seven

“Y
ou’re going fishing in that?” Helly asked.

I looked down at myself.  I wore flip-flops, my tiniest shorts, and a tank-top.  “Well…yeah.  It’s hot out,” I said.  I wasn’t working today, which meant I got a break from dirt-crusted overalls and leather boots.

Helly shook her head.  Her long blonde hair was pulled back in a severe braid, and she was wearing her fisherwoman duds, which meant she was sporting more snaps and mesh and zippers than a goth kid.

“Hey,” I said.  “It’s been who-knows-how-long since I got some sun.  And I’m not really going to fish.  I’m going to ask questions.  Guys talk more to a skimpily-clad woman, dontcha know?”

Helly and I had talked last night about our next step in the gold nugget investigation.  I’d explained about Ed’s sister’s claim on the nugget, and Helly had recommended questioning the guides.  She’d suggested approaching them in their natural habitat:  On the river.

Helly grunted, eyeing my freckled shoulders.  “I try to avoid having men talk to me.”

As I shrugged into my float coat, I looked up at my goat.  She was nibbling the wild geraniums along the bank.  “You think we should bring Mimi?” I asked.  “She’s quite the conversation-piece.”

“No!” Helly fairly yelled.  She shoved us off, and we motored down to the first fishing hole.

“The shore,” I said, seeing three groups of fishermen and their guides.  “Take us in to shore.  I’ll start there.”

She obediently pulled in, and I stepped daintily off the boat.  I pretended not to notice the dozen sets of eyes on me as I peeled out of my float coat, revealing my red polka-dot tank and Daisy Duke cutoffs.  Zeroing in on the closest group, I picked my way across the damp, firm sand to the fishing guide.

I pushed my sunglasses up on my forehead as I stopped next to the guy.  He was in his forties, hair just starting to gray, with a very round face and big hands.  “Hey, how’s the fishing?” I asked breezily.  “It’s Hank, right?”

He looked around like he couldn’t quite believe I was talking to him, then cleared his throat.  “Yeah.  Good,” he said.  “Fish are biting.”  His hands were stalled baiting one of his clients’ hooks, but the client was watching me, too, and didn’t seem to notice.

They’d spotted the Alaskan woman, a specimen rarer on these river banks than an albino moose.

“Oh, good,” I cooed.  I looked out over the river, where the fishermen had started thrashing the water again.

I caught sight of a familiar camouflage-painted boat on the far side of the river, motoring downstream.  It had a single occupant wearing safety orange, his face and head swallowed by the darkness of his hair.  Ed. 
Where is he off to, I wonder?

My eyes flicked back to Hank.  “What have you been up to these past few days?” I asked.

“Fishin’,” Hank grunted.

D’oh
.  “Every day?” I asked.

“Yup,” he said, which wasn’t too surprising to me.  The concept of ‘weekends’ didn’t really exist in the Alaskan bush.  You worked when there was work, and you were off when… scratch that, you pretty much just worked all the time.

“What about your evenings?” I asked, leaning forward a bit to mesmerize him with my cleavage.  I didn’t have a lot there, but I was wearing my skankiest push-up bra, and this tank top was damn sure showing what I did have to its best advantage.

“Just the usual,” he said.

I raised my brows, trying to look like I was hanging on his every word.

“Just watching TV, going to the bar, playing pool with the guys, that kind of thing.  Why?” he asked, finally finishing fumbling with the bait.

Helly had said Hank was married, a veteran fishing guide who also guided big game hunting in the Lower 48 in the winter.  He’d been guiding in these parts for at least ten years.  And he didn’t seem, as far as I could tell, guilty.

I waved a hand.  “Oh, just making conversation,” I said.  “Any big plans for this winter?” I asked, listening for hints that he might be looking at spending a lot of money.  Buying a car, a camper, a house…

“Nope,” he said.

He bent to close up his bag of fish eggs, and I saw his right forearm was smudged with bruises.  “Ouch, that must have hurt,” I said.

“What?”  He looked down at his arm.  “Oh.  Yeah.”

“What happened?”

He grunted again.  “Fell.”

My eyebrows climbed up my forehead.

One of his charges hooked a salmon, and Hank scooped up the net and ran down into the water in his hip waders.

Okay…
“Talk more later,” I hollered.  He raised a shoulder.

I took a second to be slightly irritated that he found catching a stinking, slimy fish to be more important than talking to me—I swear, men running away from me was becoming an epidemic!—but I quashed it.  He was a man, after all.  His priorities were all screwed up.

I talked to each group there on the shore in a similar fashion, and got similar answers.  The fishing guides didn’t seem to have much of a life outside of taking people fishing.  Most guided every day, and by the end of their day, they were exhausted, and all they wanted to do was go to the bar and drink.

There were a few more bruises, and a few more brow-raising explanations, but I ultimately dismissed them.  Injuries were pretty common in the Alaskan bush.  Here,
life
is a contact sport.

But, I
had
been expecting something a lot more insidious from the guides.  Cooking meth.  A plot to take over the world.  I dunno.  Something.

I strode back to Helly and her boat.  She was lying on the bow, her head on a float cushion, and her rubber-booted feet propped up on the edge.  She’d pulled a hat down over her eyes, and was, apparently, taking a nap. 

“Helly.”

She turned the hat slightly and peered up at me with one very blue eye.  “Any luck?” she asked.

“No.”

“Next fishing hole?”

“Please.”  I set the anchor in her boat—I wanted to toss it, but I knew from experience that was how you put holes in boats—and pushed us off.

She got the engine idling as we floated out into the creek.  “Did that outfit of yours work?” she asked.

I shrugged back into my float coat and fell into my seat.  “Yeah.  But they didn’t have anything interesting to say.”

We motored downstream to the next spot, a popular fishing hole where the water flowed clearer because it was fed by a creek coming straight down off the mountains.  Here, the fishing boats were wedged in like sardines.  The breeze kicked up aqua blue waves, and the sun was sparkling and flashing off of each one.  Overhead, a cloud of seagulls circled and screamed.

“This is a wild goose chase,” I said, looking out over the sea of people.

“Yup,” Helly agreed.  She wedged us into a spot and had me drop the anchor.  The current settled us in between two boats full of fishermen, all of them men.

I pulled the same move, getting all of their attention when I shucked off my float coat.  “Morning!” I said with a little wave to the ones on our left.  I recognized the big guy, Paul, as the guide.  He was one of a pair of behemoth twins who’d been guiding on the river for a few years.  “What have you guys been up to?” 

While I giggled and crossed my legs and played with my hair and chatted the fishermen up, Helly stirred around the boat.  Two minutes later, she shoved a fishing pole in my hand.  I looked down at it with distaste, and then up at her.  “What is this for?” I asked.

“Looks less suspicious if you actually fish,” she said.

I groaned, but cast anyway, glad that she’d given me bait.  I fed out the line, letting it tumble to a spot where I hoped I wouldn’t catch a damn thing, and then I propped the rod in its little cup.

I did my best to forget my pole was even there as I flirted with and otherwise interrogated the fishermen.  They were so blinded by my interest that they didn’t think anything of my nosy, pointed questions.

Glancing up at one point, Ed’s distinctive boat caught my eye again.  I watched as he pulled in to shore at Nan and Rick’s place.  Nan, a tall, dark-haired, clothes-hanger of a woman met him at his boat.  They talked a bit, and she led him up toward the house.

I wondered, grumpily, what he was gonna fix for her.  And then, what she was planning on giving him for payment.

Leaving my pole, I moved to the other side of the boat, and chatted up the fishermen on our right.  They were a group of Swedes from a lodge downriver that catered to Swedish tourists.  Except for their guide, they only spoke just a tiny bit of English.  But damn, did I enjoy listening to them talk anyway…

“Suzy, you’ve got a fish on!”

“Aaa!” I said, and lunged over to gather up the pole.  “Dammit,” I grumbled, fighting the fish.

The Swedes I’d been talking to got really excited, shouting as they watched my line cut through the water.  The fish was making a run for it. 
Stupid, scaly, time-wasting thing.

“Do I have to do this?” I groused.  “You’re a guide.  Couldn’t you just pull it in for me?  I’m not dressed for this,” I pointed out.

Helly rolled her eyes.  “Listen, I know you’re fully capable.  Just bring it to the boat and I’ll deal with it from there.  And act like you’re excited, for godsakes!” she hissed into my ear.

I plastered a big grin on my face, and did my best to look like I really wanted that fish.

I finally got the bugger up to the boat, and watched as Helly maneuvered the net underneath it.  She was lifting the fish over the side when it splashed suddenly.  I jumped back with a gasp as icy water sprinkled across my shoulders.

Helly flinched.  “Agh, son-of-a-bitch,” she cursed.  She dumped the giant, scaly pain in the ass (better known as a king salmon) into the boat.

“What?”

She spun around, and suddenly her hand was filling my vision.  She waved it under my nose.  Finally, my confused eyes locked onto the hook lodged in the flesh between her thumb and pointer finger.

She had a hook.  In her hand.  My hook.  And it was starting to bleed.

Helly was still cussing, but it began to sound tinny and far away.  My vision narrowed.

I swayed.

She’d stopped waving her injury around and was now staring at me.  “Oh no,” she said.  “Oh no, I forgot about the blood thing.  I’m sorry.  Here, sit down.  You don’t look so…”

I lost the rest of what she was saying, and toppled.  She lunged for me, but there wasn’t much to grab onto, what with my tiny clothes.  I slipped from her grasp, the lip of her boat caught the backs of my legs, and I fell overboard.

Splash!

The cold water woke me up real fast.  It was like being hit by a truck.  A truck with a massive pair of devil horns, and a front grille coated in broken glass.  I gasped, but half of what I inhaled was water.  I started to flail.

The current caught me, and my head slammed into somebody’s boat.  Then I was dragged underneath it.  I was dazed, unsure of which way was up.  The water was so… frickin’…
cold
.

My face popped up above the surface, more from luck than any effort on my part.  I heard people shouting.  I tried to lift my head, to look around, but my body didn’t seem to be accepting orders from my brain.  I tried to swim, but my arms just did a weak flop.  I drifted in the beautiful blue, sparkling chop.  At least I was face-up, I thought as I gulped a breath mostly free of water.  The seagulls were still wheeling overhead, and I had a sudden, inane thought: 
I hope they don’t shit on me.

Suddenly a familiar camouflage paint job slid into view.  And then a beard I recognized, above which sat two ridiculously pretty eyes.  Strong hands caught me under the arms, and Ed lifted me up out of the water.

I shivered in the cool breeze, wondering why the heck he’d pulled me out. 
The water had been warmer than this.

Ed set me on his boat’s bench, peeled out of his orange float coat, and tucked it around me.  I stared down at my legs.  They were very white, 100% gooseflesh.  And I was missing a flip-flop.  Damn it, that had been my favorite pair.

I almost fell forward when he throttled his engine.  A few seconds later, we nosed up to the shore with a crunch of gravel.

He scooped me up as if I weighed nothing, ignored my weak protests, and hurried up toward the house with me.  “Nan!” he called.

She poked her head out the door.

“Suzy fell in,” he said.  “We need to get her warm.  Do you have a first aid kit?”

She held the door open for him, and then disappeared into the dim interior as he set me down on a chair.  He knelt in front of me, looking up into my eyes.  “You okay?” he asked, pushing a limp strand of hair away from my face.

“Stupid fish,” I said.

A smile unfolded across his face, and then Helly broke in through the door.

“Suzy!  Are you all right?”  She shoved Ed aside, and put her hands on my knees.  “You’re freezing!” she exclaimed.  “We need to get you into some dry clothes.”

I barely heard her because that damn hook was still sticking out of her hand.  I shoved the offending appendage away.