The Darkest Joy (19 page)

“This little girl is going to be what?” he asks, his eyes roaming my hidden figure.

I’m suddenly thankful for the bulbous clown bibs.

“Deckhand,” Chance answers dismissively and I feel my face heat up as he concentrates on easing out of the slip, making his way out of the crowded harbor.

The client makes a humphing sound in the back of his throat and I scoot a little closer to Chance, who is treating me like the employee I am.

Like I want.

Fishing is unfamiliar to me, but as Chance patiently shows me how to bait the hooks, where all the supplies are located a second time, and how to run the electric reels, I begin to feel more confident.

Until the swells begin.

The water rises, lapping the sides, begging for entrance into Chance’s boat. The square deep back deck holds integral chairs with pole holders, and the two clients, Sam and Lucas, are holding their poles so hard, their knuckles blanch.

Chance gives a small smile, checking the lines, his legs spread, feet planted as the wind moves his short ebony hair around his head, his knees dipping slightly as the swell of the waves increases.

“Can’t stay at anchor much longer, guys,” Chance says, his serious eyes, a match for the churning waves around us, peg first on the water, then move to the sky, a deep, roiling pewter.

“Why? Damn, man! We’re from Arizona, we shelled out the moolah for this deep-sea shit.”

Chance frowns as Sam gives him a look. “I appreciate your perspective, believe me, I do . . . but better safe than dead. Just sayin’,” Chance explains as the guy glowers at him.

Asshole
, I think as a hit from a bottom feeder smacks the line and I yell, “ ’But on the line!”

Chance guffaws at my quip and we race to the line together. So much for going back and safety first.

Fish on.

I try to be careful, but the seawater slicks the deck and even the grippy soles of my Xtratufs can’t stabilize my uncertain land legs. I go to my knees, sliding across the deck in an ungainly rolling tumble that brings me into the client’s chair. It spins his fishing perch, putting him facing the interior of the boat instead of the sea.

“Holy fuck!” Lucas shouts, making a mad scramble for the rod.

But Chance is suddenly there, jerking me up by my elbow and dropping me on top of the large cooler on deck at the same time he grabs the reel and slaps Lucas’s hand away.

“Hey!” Lucas shouts, pissed.

I’m a slack jaw with scraped knees, an interior rug burn by denim stinging . . . along with my pride.

“Don’t want to queer the bite, Lucas.”

“Fuck,” Sam says in awe.

I watch Chance battle the fish, the swell rising like a small tidal wave across the bow.

We’re taking water.

I’m scared, the boat’s rocking side to side as sweat beads on Chance’s upper lip, his audience of two clutching the sides of the boat.

Chance’s face changes and I know from his expression the fish has arrived. He flicks the sweat from his eyes as he whips to face me. “Gaff!” he barks at me and I stumble to get it. It looks like a barbed grim reaper’s hook.

Chance gives me the reel and says, “Hip.”

I put the ass end of the reel against my hip bone and pray.

His muscles bunch in readiness as a great mottled fish of many shades of brown and gray rises toward the surface of the water. One second the water is a vast nothingness of blue shot through with green, then the fish rises like a speckled pancake with a creepy bulging eye.

Chance’s bicep balls up as he swings the gaff upward. “Heads!”

Lucas and Sam back up. The gaff strikes the fish with a meaty
thwack
and he jerks it against the boat.

“Not real big,” Chance comments casually as my heart races.

Big enough
, I think, my hands shaking from exertion.

Sam smirks at my obvious fatigue and doesn’t offer to take the reel.
Dick
.

“Lucas, take the reel from Brooke,” Chance says. And he’s not asking.

Lucas gingerly takes the reel and my tired limbs fall to my sides in a grateful slump.

Chance’s arm wings around like crazy, the fish at the other end treating it like a living noodle. “Brooke,” he says softly. “You trust me?”

Yeah . . . I realize I do and for some reason, the realization makes me want to cry. I don’t know why.

I step forward.

“Get the small gaff.”
Girl gaff
, I translate.

I pick it out of the interior stern pocket of the boat. “Hit the other end and on three let’s bring this ’but in together.”

“One . . . two,” his low voice vibrates through my body like an instrument. “Three!”

He flashes a grin as I hit the fish, setting the barbed end, and Lucas grunts in the background. I ignore him.

We bring the fish in. Actually, Chance brings the fish in and I balance his effort, hefting it in using my body weight.

“Brooke! Step back,” Chance says, his face tight, as a baseball bat covered in brown stains rises, and with the fierce grace of long practice, Chance swings it in an arc and lands on the head of the halibut.

The tail flops, then slows . . . finally it stops.

It’s like a combat zone.

Lucas and Sam look at each other warily.

Clearly, they’re not in Arizona anymore.

I sit down again on the cooler. Actually, it’s more like a graceless fall.

Chance slides the halibut into the hold, a fiberglass trapdoor in the middle of the deck, and the stainless ring pull rattles as it slams shut, the huge fish filling the hold. His eyes sweep the horizon and the turbulent waters, tightening imperceptibly.

He nods, almost to himself, and says, “Let’s make our way back.”

Sam just looks at Chance. “Yeah, man, this fishing trip was like a war.”

Chance grins suddenly, seawater clinging to the blackness of his hair, the orange bibs making his eyes bluer, the green retreating. The backdrop of the gray sky makes him look alive, on fire.

“It’s sure not high desert,” he comments.

Chance winks and I cover my mouth when a giggle threatens.

I ride the waves home, the route back from Flat Island as familiar as walking to the bathroom in my dark house as the two-hour journey stretches before me. The swells get worse as I move into the open water. Usually, they don’t bother me, but now there’s Brooke. I can’t stand the idea of anything happening to her.

And as a special bonus, I don’t like the way the clients treat her.

Look at her.

I sigh roughly and lift my hand from the wheel, plowing it through my sticky hair.

It’s different when Matt worked for me last season. He’s a guy and can trade insults, swear like the sailor he wants to be, and act generally borderline derelict and it’s all part of the colorful experience the clients expect from their paid Alaskan fishing adventure.

Brooke’s different. Her eyes haunt me, her inexperience moves me. Her existence is distracting as hell. Then there’s that comment Tuck made.

Googling Brooke would be hard-core. I still haven’t mentally committed to what is almost a stalker move. But I can’t leave it alone. The suggestion pings around in my head like an escaped pinball.

“Chance?” Brooke says, and I turn from the wheel, taking stock of my two clients, slightly green around the edges, and I smirk. Two full-ride scholarship seniors from Arizona University . . . wrestlers. Who can barely move their wrists after five hours of fishing. It’s amusing as hell.

“Yes?” I ask, taking in her bright cheeks, windswept by the day and the sea, her light eyes, somewhere between blue and true violet. Tendrils escape from her plaited black hair and curl around her jaw. Looks like her hair would be wavy in the right conditions.

I notice Lucas and Sam looking at Brooke, their eyes trying to dive beneath the unisex bibs that sport tiny droplets of fish blood mixed with seawater.

I tramp down on the jealousy that swells higher than the waves that hit my boat.

“I have everything stowed,” she says.

God, Chance, get a grip
, I tell myself. “ ’Kay, take a load off, we’ll be in Homer in about ten minutes.”

“All right,” Brooke says, and I watch her face, her eyes sifting through the enclosed cabin. It’s called an Alaskan Bulkhead for a reason. A small kitchenette and a not very private bathroom are accommodating to clients, though I’d been raised without it and thought it was for sissies.

We cruise in semisilence, the guys talking between themselves, and Brooke is quiet, in her own head. I wonder what she’s thinking about. I’m irritated I don’t know.

I’m pissed I care.

My eyes take in the harbor as I round the bend, avoiding the state ferry easily. I hate ferry days, they’re always a pain in the ass. I put the boat in reverse as I go to park, sliding her in close to my slip.

“Hey . . . Brooke,” Sam says and I don’t turn but I’m listening pretty hard, keeping my focus on the park job.

Forward . . . tiny throttle. Reverse . . 
.

“Yeah?” she asks, but even I hear the reservation in her voice.

I know what’s going to happen before she does. After all, I’m a guy.
Almost there . . 
. I see the dock buoys and maneuver the boat close.

“Why don’t you meet Lucas and me at that tavern on the spit?”

There’s a beat of silence. Except for the creaking of the wheel under the grip of my hand.

“Oh . . . the Salty Dawg?” I hear her ask slowly. I can almost feel her eyes on my back. I maneuver the boat into the slip and the sides bounce against the buoys.

“You know it?” Sam asks and I can’t stand how eager he sounds.

Bastard
.

“I do . . . but,” she flounders and I step in. “Brooke’s gotta work at 4 a.m. Every day . . .” I let my sentence linger and then almost thrust the boat into reverse, plowing into the dock when Brooke says, her voice tight. “Chance is right . . . but I can meet you there early and leave early.”

“Awesome,” Sam says and I want to hit him.

How can Brooke say yes to having a beer with these yahoos when she said no to me?

How the fuck does
that
work?

Short answer: it doesn’t. But I know she’s just trying to shove me away. She already told me as much.

I grit my teeth as Brooke and I walk out to secure the cleats. I toss the rope to her and she catches it deftly. My gaze locks with hers and I want to kiss her . . . mark my territory, show these dipshits that she’s
my
girl. I want to shake her because she’s agreeing to meet with these guys to spite me.

But Brooke is not my girl. She’s her own person and I have to watch her from afar.

When I’ve wanted so much more. I almost wish we’d never kissed. Wish we’d never spent that night together. It’s like having the best thing ever then being denied after you’ve had a taste of it. Better to never know.

Almost.

This isn’t done—not by a long shot.

W
e clean up in awkward silence. I quietly show Brooke how to master each step. She’s clumsy with the fillet knife and it’s a challenge not to just land my hand over hers and guide her through the meat. Instead I show her and she painstakingly goes through each step. The water at the fish-cleaning table is colder than hell and I watch her bite her lip to keep her teeth from chattering.

I want to warm her.

I don’t.

My clients who want to bone Brooke hang at her elbow like the fish lice that still cling to my catch. Makes me want to do a less thorough job of cleaning.

I wash them all off anyway.

Like Bob the puker, I give them the same set of instructions as we push the fish cart up the gangplank, the wheels making music over the louvered and sharp metal grating.

“So . . .” Sam looks around and catches sight of Brooke beginning to rinse down the boat. “Where’d you get that nice little honey?”

Client, client, client
my mind chants as my arms strain to make the last five feet of the sloping platform above the sea.

“First . . .
Sam
,” I begin sarcastically, which beats feeding him my knuckles, “she’s not a ‘little honey’ . . . she’s my deckhand.”

“Right,” Lucas says with clear disbelief. “Don’t tell me you haven’t tapped that?”

I step right into his space, our noses almost meeting. I don’t give a shit if he’s ranked first in the nation for wrestling. “Like you want to . . . Lucas?” I say with soft menace coating each syllable.

We stare at each other, taking the measure of the other. The age-old question is: if we go in with fists flying, who will come out the victor?

“Lotta heat for a
deckhand
,” Sam comments from behind us. Then he says, real quiet so only I hear, “You act like she’s doing more than your deck, pal. Just sayin’.”

“Yeah,” Lucas says with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “We can go”—his eyes lock with mine in a combative stare—“but don’t lay claim to some piece of tail if she’s not your girlfriend. If she’s just an employee, why do you care who bangs her?”

I see red and have his shirt in my fist before I know I move.