Two Captains, One Chair: An Alaskan Romantic Comedy (9 page)

“Oh shit, sorry,” Helly said.

Then Nan hurried back into the room.

“Dry clothes,” Helly barked.  “And blankets!”

Nan dropped the first aid kit and hurried back out.

I gave Helly the stink-eye for being rude, and shook my head.  She rolled her eyes.

My gaze drifted past her, to Ed.  He was rummaging in the first aid kit.  Had I thought his beard unattractive?  Maybe it was growing on me, because at the moment… I couldn’t find a single thing wrong with it.

He came at me leading with a square of gauze.  He pressed it to my forehead, and my lip wobbled as I looked up at him.  “I’m bleeding?” I asked, my voice very small.

He looked down into my eyes, hesitating.  “Uh…”

“She faints at the sight of blood,” Helly said helpfully.

“Uh, no,” he said.  “Er, it’s a tiny cut.  Very small.  Barely a scratch.”

Nan rushed back in with the clothes and blankets.

Helly pinned Ed with a look while she started to peel me out of his coat.  “You.  Step out a minute.”

He let go of the gauze, and it stuck to my forehead. That couldn’t be a good sign. 
Could it?

Helly looked back up at Nan, and unabashedly gave her more orders.  “Do you have something hot to drink?  Something with sugar?  Hot chocolate, or tea with lots of honey?”

Nan ran off into the kitchen.

I was going to have to do something nice for that woman later.  I also made a mental note to work on basic social skills with Helly again sometime.

Helly quickly peeled me out of what little I was wearing—I tried to help, but I was surprisingly weak and mostly just managed to complicate things.  Then she pulled a sweater over my head, and a warm, dry pair of sweats up my legs.

She wrapped a blanket around me, a towel around my head, and plopped me into a big, cushy chair.  As Helly pulled big wool socks over my feet, I looked down at the extra foot of pant leg gathered around my ankles.

I grimaced.  “I’m such a midget.”

She sat back on her heels.  “Oh, shush.  I’d give anything to be as cute as you.  And besides,” she said, patting the blanket-covered bulge that was my knees, “men like little women.  They fantasize about lifting them up and into some pretty crazy positions—”

“Helly!”

“Oh, don’t gimme that.  You’re just as dirty as I am,” she said.  “You were planning on taking both of my brothers to bed.  At the same time.  And don’t even try to deny it.”

I blushed and shut my mouth.

Helly grinned.  “You can come back in!” she hollered, making me wince.

Ed came in, and as he finished the bandage job on my forehead, I couldn’t help but appreciate how damn handsome he looked with that plaid shirt straining over his shoulders.  And he really
did
smell good, some addictive mixture of laundry detergent, the great outdoors, and helpful man.

Then came the fun part.

“You need that out of your hand,” he said to Helly.

She practically hissed at him as she guarded her hand.  She knew what hook removal involved, just as well as I did.  The barb at the end of the hook caused ridiculous amounts of damage if it was pulled out the way it came in, if it would come out at all.  No, the proper way to take out a hook was to get ahold of it with a pair of pliers, force it the rest of the way through whatever meat it was buried in, snip off one of the ends, and
then
pull it out.  The shove-the-hook-the-rest-of-the-way-through stage was one you never explained to children before you did the deed.  It was also the stage that usually caused screaming.

I watched with helpless fascination as she slapped her hand down on the table. Ed pulled out his multitool and folded it back to the pliers.  Helly shifted around like she badly wanted to bail, as he got a grip on the hook.

“You ready?” he asked.

She made a sound that came out “Uh-huh,” but was the ‘no’-soundingest yes I’d ever heard.  I looked away.

Helly screamed.  And then she called Ed the most horrible names I’d ever heard her use on a man.  And that was saying something.

Nan handed me a steaming cup of something brown.  “I splashed some Irish Crème in there for you,” she said, watching the show taking place at her dining room table.

“Thank you,” I croaked.

Helly seemed to have run herself out of air, and was quiet except for a few pitiful whimpers as Ed bandaged her hand.

My eyes drifted up to the wall as I sipped my drink.  There was Nan and Rick’s wedding picture, and beside it, a placard commemorating his years of service for BP. 
Right.
  Rick worked on the slope.

“I forgot Rick worked on the slope,” I said.  “Does he do that two weeks on, two weeks off schedule?”

“Yep.  Last ten years.”  She looked up at the pictures, her expression wistful.

“He go back out, then?”  Because as far as I could tell, the man with a history of robbery wasn’t around.

“Oh, no.  He’s out fishing.  He’d only just gotten back the day of your parents’ potluck.”

“That morning?” I asked.  If so, there was still the slim possibility he’d snuck in to take my nugget while I was weeding the garden, or—

“Naw, just before.  I went and got him from the airport, and we came straight over.  Rick loves Harv’s ribs, wouldn’t miss ‘em for the world.”

And there it was:  Rick’s bullet-proof alibi.  I sighed.

I was definitely feeling warmer as the combination of dry clothes and hot chocolate did its thing.  By the time I reached the bottom of my mug, I was actually starting to feel a little drowsy.

Helly crossed back over to me while Ed loitered by the door, talking to Nan.  He was casting little glances my way, and each one seemed to warm me up just a little bit more.

“How’re you doing?” Helly asked.

I smiled up at her.  “Good.  Feeling warm.  Sorry for falling out of your boat.”

She smiled back down at me.  “Sorry for forgetting about your problem with blood.”

I shrugged.  I really was feeling quite warm and fuzzy.

“How much Irish Crème did she put in that?” Helly asked, eyeing my expression.

I shrugged again.

“Well… you ready to go?”

“Sure.”  We got me dug out of the blankets and up on my feet.  “If you don’t mind me borrowing your clothes,” I told Nan, “I’ll wash them, and get them back to you.  Maybe at the Passion Party Sunday?”

“Sure, that’d work,” she said.  “I’m glad you’re okay.”

We were at the door when I realized I had a problem.  I had only one flip-flop, and those didn’t go over wool socks worth a damn—and yes, I knew this from experience.  So my choices were:  Walk out there in socks that weren’t mine, in front of their owner, or take them off and go barefoot down to Helly’s boat.

I sighed and sat on the bench next to the door.

“What’s the problem?” Ed asked.

“No shoes.”  I bent to start peeling the sock down my leg.

“I can carry you to the boat,” he said.

“That’s all right.  I’ll just take my socks off—”

“No, really,” he said.  “It’s not a problem.  Let me help.”

I looked up at him.  What was his deal?  Is that all he did, help people?  And is that what was driving him right now, or did he actually want to touch me?  The romantic in me wanted him to pick me up again, when I was more than halfway conscious.  I thought maybe I’d pay attention this time.

He looked at me with a question in his eyes even as he made ‘come here’ motions with his hands. 
To heck with it
.  Call it a moment of weakness, or whatever you please, but I wanted to feel Ed’s arms around me again.

“All right,” I said.

He scooped me up easily, one arm under my knees, the other supporting my back. He looked down into my eyes—and awareness zinged down my spine.  “Ready to go?”

I nodded, and he maneuvered me through the doorway feet-first.  He hitched me up a little higher against his chest, and I tentatively laid an arm across his shoulders.  My thumb brushed the warm skin at the back of his neck, and I could have pulled away, could have put the material of his collar between us—but I didn’t.

I liked how he carried me.  He did it with gentleness and respect, two things that had often been lacking in the guys that had picked me up in the past. The young idiots I’d hung out with in high school had tended to toss me around while drunk and laughing—which didn’t usually end well for me.

This man carried me like I was precious.  It made me think that maybe I’d been getting drunk and partying with the wrong guys.

Drunken… parties.
  Just like that, an idea began to form.

People talked when their tongues were loose.  Alcohol loosened tongues.

And there was still a big, fat, juicy mystery surrounding Ed.  At this point, I didn’t really think he’d taken my nugget, but I was still damn curious about him.

He’d given me hints of personality here and there, but underneath his shyness, what was he really
like
?  Why was he so helpful?  And,
was
he a virgin?

He carried me down to the dock.  I was expecting him to set me down there—the wood planking was clean enough—but instead he stepped carefully down into Helly’s boat, and set me gently in one of the seats.

“Hey,” I said before he straightened up.  “We’re having ribs for dinner this evening.  After saving me like that, I’d like to feed you.  Would you come?”

Helly handed him his float coat even as she gave me the questioning brow.  I gave her a tiny head-shake, basically saying ‘Just go with it, I’ll explain later’.

Ed nodded his thanks to her as he accepted his coat.  Looking back at me, he hesitated.

“Please?”  I knew I made a pathetic picture in a chunky pink sweater with a fluffy kitten on it, shoeless, my hair a half-dried bedraggle.  I made big eyes at him, shamelessly playing it for all it was worth.

“Sure, I’d love to,” he said.  “Ribs are my favorite.”

I know.
  I smiled at him.  “Six o’clock okay?”

“Your place?”

I nodded.

He stepped up out of the boat.  “I’ll be there,” he said.  He hesitated a moment, gazing at me, before he turned and walked away.

“What was that about?” Helly asked as she hunkered down to untie us from the dock.

“Your brothers bought caseloads of booze with the building materials to fix my cabin.  I just thought… maybe Ed would be a little more willing to talk—”

“—if he was liquored up,” Helly said with a grin.  “You sneaky wench.  And the brothers are gonna hate you feeding their ribs and booze to another man.”

“Bonus.”  I pushed my arms into my own float coat as she hopped down into the boat.

“I like ribs,” she said.

I smiled.  “Of course you’re invited,” I said.  “Bring Gary, too; I think they have enough.  Any sort of buffer between Ed and the brothers would probably be a good idea.”

Helly had the pull-starter in her hand, but hesitated.  “Why do they need a buffer?” she asked.

I studiously looked elsewhere, and shrugged.

She pointed a finger at me.  “You’re going to explain.”

I cracked a grin.

Helly started the engine and drove me home.

Chapte
r Eight

“W
hat.  The ever-loving.  Hell.  Is that?” I stared up at my yard, at the slim wooden structure that had sprung up on my grass.

“
That
… looks like a catapult,” Helly offered.

I had an instant flashback to the fate of my childhood bicycle.  It’d been a pretty pink with glittery handlebar streamers, and it had gone as fast as the wind.  Had, that is, until the brothers got ahold of it.  They’d turned it into a bent wreck lying in the ditch between highway lanes.  They’d catapulted it into the road, and someone had run it over.  Multiple someones.  And the brothers had thought that was
hilarious
.

“But… why?”

Helly shrugged as I climbed from her boat.  “Why not?”

I shot her a glance.

“Hey, I’m not justifying their behavior. I’m just giving you an insight into how they think.  Most likely, they thought it’d be fun.  And now,” she said, as she idled away from the dock, “I’m gonna go get Gary.  Good luck.  I’ll be back for dinner.”  She throttled the engine and roared away upstream.

I stood there in wool socks, single flip-flop hanging from my hand, playful kitten enjoying the fuck outta a ball of yarn on the front of my borrowed shirt, and stared at the thing the brothers had built on my lawn.  My eyes narrowed suddenly as I realized… those were my building materials they’d used.  So, not only had they not been repairing my cabin, but they’d also used my cabin-repair supplies on a different project.  A silly, ridiculous, unjustifiable project.

I started up from the dock, this time not caring about walking in the socks.

The brothers were at the side of the house, both looking at a phone with big, goofy grins on their faces.

I stopped next to the offending device.  “What is this?” I asked, each word carefully enunciated.

“A catapult!”  Zack and Rory hurried toward me, practically bouncing with excitement.

“You said don’t shoot them,” Zack explained, “so we knew we had to come up with another method.”

“Whoa, nice kitty,” Rory said.  His eyes were on my shirt, and he was smirking.

Were they
insane
?  “This is for squirrels?”  My voice was somewhere between incredulous and dangerously quiet.

“Here, check this out,” Rory said, completely missing my verbal cues.  He held the cell phone up in front of me, screen angled so I could watch.  He tapped the screen, and a picture of the catapult appeared.  No, not a picture.  A video, I realized, as a squirrel shimmied up the neck of the catapult like some ninja warrior contestant.  It got to the top, and happily started nibbling on the suet block mounted there.

Suddenly, its head rose and tail stiffened.  It turned one eye directly to the camera as if sensing—

The catapult flung it too fast for the camera to follow.  There was just a sweep of light brown, and then the scene swung to the right.  My cabin came into view. 

The video had caught the brothers’ shouts of triumphant glee when the squirrel became airborne, but now it was ‘whoa!’, ‘look at that!’, and a chorus of male guffaws.  The camera zoomed in on the siding up near the second story window.  Focused.

And there, embedded in my siding, flat as a pancake, was the squirrel.

I swung around, staring up at my cabin.  Yep.  It was still there.

Helly’s brothers.  Had shot my cabin.  With a squirrel.

“We’ve already got a hundred thousand views!” Rory exclaimed.

“In only an hour!” Zack agreed.

My temple pounded.

“They’ve been asking for catapult specs.  Though, and I told them, the secret is the small explosive charge—”

“They’ve also been making requests.  Somebody asked us to fling a rabbit.  Another, a goat!”

That
got my attention.  “Wait, wait, wait,” I said, swinging back around.  “What the heck are you talking about?”

“We posted the video on YouTube!  Look, they love us,” Rory said, sidling close again so he could hold the screen out while scrolling through what appeared to be an avalanche of YouTube comments.

“One guy offered fifty bucks for the catapult design,” said Zack.  “We were just getting a PayPal account when you pulled up.”

They were continuing their excited chatter, but I held up my hands.  “Boys.  Boys!” I yelled, finally getting their attention.  “You are
supposed
to be fixing my cabin,” I pointed out.

“But, the squirrels—”

“I don’t care about the squirrels!  Actually, yes I do!  I happen to think that they’re cute, and I’d appreciate it if you’d quit blowing them up and smashing them!  But that’s beside the point!

“The point,” I yelled as they finally,
finally
brought out the harridan in me, “is that, a couple days ago, you dropped a three foot diameter tree, on my cabin!  That means, there’s a three foot by fourteen foot
hole
, in my roof!  In my ceiling, that
leaks
, into my
house
!  The weather’s calling for rain again early next week, and—”

“But, the tarp—”

“Doesn’t work!!!”  Wow, I’d surprised even myself with that screech.  I paused for a second, rubbed my hands over my face, and regrouped.  “The tarp,” I said, more quietly after my medicinal deep breath, “leaks.  The tarp, is not good enough.”

Did they look contrite?  Unlikely.

“Now,” I continued, maintaining my level tone, “you’ve got everything you need; the lumber, the roofing, even the nails.  If you’d just focus for two seconds, you could get this done.  Then Helly will come get you, and whisk you away from here, and you’ll be free to do whatever you want, spend the rest of your vacation flinging squirrels, or salmon, or bears, for all I care.”

Their eyes took on an unhealthy gleam as I mentioned the salmon and bears.

I threw up my hands.  “You know what?  Fine.  If you don’t want to build anything right now, you can cook instead.  We’re having those ribs you bought for dinner.  I like them smoked.  Make enough for six,” I called, already having turned to head toward my house.  I was taking myself away from this situation, for the good of everyone involved.

“Six?  Why six?” called Zack.

I flashed a wicked grin over my shoulder, and my parting shot:  “Because I invited Ed to dinner.”

“T
here’s a squirrel stuck to your house.”

I was bustling around, just starting to get the side dishes around—I was thinking potato salad and watermelon, with peach cobbler for desert—when I heard his voice.

I turned around to find Ed standing in the doorway.  I blinked.  He was early; dinner didn’t start for another hour.

Then what he’d said registered.  I shook my head.  “Don’t even get me started on that.”  But then, of course I couldn’t stop myself from bitching just a little bit.  “Yesterday, those two Neanderthals were shooting squirrels.  Today, they shot my cabin
with
a squirrel.  Did you see what they built?”

“Looks like a catapult,” Ed said.

“A friggin’ catapult, with
my
building materials.  While they should have been fixing my roof.”  I shook my head.

Ed was still standing in my doorway. “I know I’m early,” he said, “but I didn’t have much else going on.  Do you need any help with dinner?” His eyes crinkled as he watched me, while his lips curved into an expression that had an odd effect on my breathing. 

His… lips.
 
Holy shit,
I could see Ed’s lips.  Ed had trimmed his beard!  He’d left it an inch or two long, a perfectly respectable, but still perfectly grab-able, sexy-as-hell beard.  He looked like a pirate.

“Uh…”  My girly parts were suddenly rioting.  His lips were prettier than I’d expected, the bottom full, the top with an intriguing little bow I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze from.

His brows lifted as he waited for my answer.

Yes!  Yes!  Whatever you want, yes!

“… if you want to.  There’s just the—” I fumbled my paring knife, almost flinging it across the room.  “I’ve just started putting together the potato salad.”

“I can scrub the potatoes,” he said, stepping into the kitchen.  He seemed calm, a study in contrast to the heat blasting through my veins.

I was panting.  When had I started panting?

He washed his hands, frowning slightly at the sink as he did so.  He folded up his sleeves, and took the metal bowl of potatoes from my trembling fingers.  He set the bowl in the sink, and began filling it with water.

Ed was… fucking awesome.  I hated scrubbing potatoes.

And this evening, he also
looked
fucking awesome.  Besides trimming his beard, he’d put on a dark blue shirt that was a little dressier than his usual.  It made the lighter tips of his hair and the blue in his hazel eyes pop.  It also actually fit him for a change, highlighting his body.  Broad shoulders, a flat belly, and slim waist.  A nice tight butt underneath those jeans, and long, yummy legs.

And,
oh my gosh
, the way he scrubbed that potato.  Somehow the sound scraped its way down my nerve endings and made me shiver as it seemed to tickle my clit.  What would he do if I wrapped my arms around him from behind, cupped those strong, sexy hands, and whispered, ‘No, like this’?

I loitered next to the table, tempted to find out.  I did decide one thing:  Scrubbing potatoes definitely made the cut in the Ed kitchen calendar I was working on.  It’d have to be a summer month…

“How long has this faucet been like this?” he asked.

Looking up, I realized he’d caught me checking him out.  “Um.” 
He’s talking about the faucet.  Your low-flow, but not by design, faucet.  Focus!
  “It was bad when I bought the place, and it’s just been getting worse.  I’ve been meaning to get a new one.”

Ed grunted and turned off the water.  He fiddled with it, and I saw he was unscrewing something where the water came out.  When he had it off, he turned the water back on, and it gushed forth like a garden hose.

My jaw dropped.  “How…?”

“It has a little screen on it that was all gummed up.”  He took a butter knife from the counter, scraped at the thing in his hand, rinsed it, and then screwed it back on.  When he turned the faucet on again, it worked like new.

I wanted to cry.  I felt like I’d witnessed a miracle, and at the same time, I wished I’d been able to figure that out sooner.  Ed had been in my house five minutes, and he’d already fixed my sink.  It sounded like a little thing, but it was a thing that had been irritating me for
years
.

“Can I keep you?” I asked.  He fixed sinks, and generators, and freezers, tractors, boat motors, and hornet infestations.  He was actually a pretty damn fine specimen of a man, he had eyes I felt like I could stare into for hours at a time if only he’d let me, he was gentle, respectful, and polite, he smelled good, and it seemed like his favorite word might be yes.

I didn’t know much, but I
did
know it didn’t get much better than that.

He flashed a grin at me over his shoulder. 
He thought I was kidding…

He got the potatoes scrubbed, and I hunted down the other ingredients he’d need for the potato salad.  As he started dicing potatoes, I got out all of my ingredients for the peach crisp.

All except the honey, which I found on the top shelf.  The damn, stupid, unattainable top shelf.  For the vertically challenged, it was a complete ‘Why bother?’.  I usually didn’t even use it, but the day I used the honey last, I must have been wearing platform wedges.  Or Nan had been visiting.  I glanced around for my kitchen stool.

“Can I help?” Ed asked from directly over my shoulder.

I froze.  Well, ‘froze’ was too strong a word.  I went achingly still as his arm reached up alongside mine.  His shadow had fallen across me, and his scent filled my nostrils. I closed my eyes, fairly sure I could feel his aura pressing up against mine.  At the apex of his reach, a fold of his shirt whispered against my back, and I almost squeaked.

I curled my fingers and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to resist… but I just plain couldn’t help myself.  I turned around.

He looked straight down into my eyes, and went just as still as I had a few moments ago.  I watched his pupils adjust as his gaze shifted down my face.  I licked my lips, watching him watch me do it.  He sucked in a breath, and his shirt brushed my breasts.  That tiny touch set off a thrill that echoed clear down to my toes.

Ed stepped back, instantly breaking the moment.  He held the jar of honey out to me, and I automatically took it.

I eyed him, wondering if he’d been as strongly affected as I had.  Or affected at all—because if he had, how on earth could he just walk away?

When he took another step back, he stumbled into a chair.  It almost overturned, but he grabbed it, stabilizing it just in time.

My lips curved.

He hustled back to his cutting board, his cheeks stained pink.  I loved—I absolutely loved—that I could make him blush.  What would he do if I stripped off my shirt, right here and now?  I could toss it playfully at his face, so when he peeled it away from his eyes, all he’d see was me…