Under the Boardwalk: A Dazzling Collection of All New Summertime Love Stories (15 page)

"My mistake." Drew shrugged. "Sometimes I get fantasy mixed up with reality."

She cut him a suspicious look.

He smiled blandly and said, "How about we get the stew on first? I'm working up a powerful hunger, and we'll have better luck hooking them later in the day. Besides, if you're interested in using my E. F. Meek reel, I've a whole selection of lures to show you."

"Lures?" she replied. "I don't use lures. I've always used live bait."

For a moment he watched her as if debating a question with himself. Then he wrapped his fingers around the handle of the stewpot and shrugged. "Be daring, Hannah. Try something a little different. I promise you you'll be glad you did." Tossing her a wink, he turned and headed off into the trees.

Hannah frowned as she watched him go. What a strange exchange that was. In fact, nothing had made much sense to her since he'd dropped her in the water this morning. That she understood. The rest of it… well… she might as well be a rowboat missing its oars, and Drew the strong current carrying her toward an unknown destination.

"Oh, quit being a fool and just fish," she muttered.

With hoop net in hand, she waded out into the briny water. Ten years having passed since she'd last handled the bulky contraption, Hannah found it difficult to maneuver at first. It took a few attempts to get a feel again for the motion, but once she did she was able to give the hoop a good throw.

Drew was correct about the abundance of sea life at this spot. The first throw netted a red drum and a sand trout. The second, a croaker, a flounder, and three blue crabs. The third toss captured so many fish that Hannah had a devil of a time pulling it up. But she laughed with delight when she finally landed her haul, and by the time Drew returned she had seafood to fill three kettles and a pair of tired arms. She was having the best time she'd had in years.

"Uh, Hannah," he said when she drew back her arm to let fly another toss. "Don't you think you have enough already? We'll be cleaning fish until dark as it is."

Glancing at her catch, Hannah grinned ruefully. "I'd forgotten, Drew. It's like a treasure hunt. You never know what bounty you'll pull from the sea."

"Well, it looks like you have about a galleon of oysters, there."

She groaned at the joke and set the hoop net aside. Despite the wit—or lack thereof—he was right. It would take some time to clean all this fish. And she still wanted to try out that reel. She eyed her catch, then judged the size of the stewpot. Before Drew had a chance to stop her, she'd dumped two thirds of her haul back into water. Shrimp sank and flounder fled. Drew let loose a groan. "Why in the world did you do that? No, wait. Let me guess. You're still Love-to-catch-'em-but-hate-to-clean-'em Hannah, aren't you?"

Hannah flashed him a smile and spoke without thinking. "That's why I fell in love with you, Drew. You always cleaned my catch for me."

"Love? If that's what it was it lasted about as long as a fish in the summer sunshine."

Her smile faltered. How did she reply to that?

Thankfully, he didn't appear to need a response. Instead he picked up a trout and went about the task of cleaning. "There's another knife in my knapsack if you want to peel the potatoes."

Soon the fish were cleaned, the oysters shucked, and the shrimp and potatoes peeled. Hannah added ripe tomatoes and a pound of rice to the stewpot hung from a steel hook off an oak limb. As Drew knelt on one knee and set about starting a fire, Hannah excused herself to change into her stiff but dry dress. She'd felt the need for the protection. Traditionally, after they hung the pot was when Drew and Hannah got to "stewing".

She suspected that was why she nearly jumped from her skin when he rose, turned to her, waggled his brows and said, "So, Hannah. You ready for me to show you my Musky Wriggler?"

Drew chewed the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. Hannah's eyes bugged out and her mouth moved silently open and shut like a fish out of water. Yep, he was going to have a lot of fun with this plan he'd concocted.

The trout slap had given him the idea of how to go about getting what he wanted from Hannah Mayfield. The longer he considered the notion, the more he wanned to it. After all, fishing was his business. He'd made a fortune from knowing how to lure his quarry onto a line.

Only this particular Catch of the Day he intended to lure into his bed.

He removed a small container from his tackle box and opened it. Removing the three-inch, copper-bodied lure, he held it up for Hannah to see. "The Musky Wriggler. It's one of my favorites. Do you want it, Hannah?"

"A lure? You're talking about a fishing lure?"

Innocently, he nodded. "Of course. What did you think I was talking about?"

She sputtered a moment before scoffing. "I told you before I don't like fishing lures. They're so… false. Besides, why bother? It's not like you ve a shortage of live bait here on the island." She slowly shook her head.

"And to think you accused me of developing an aversion to baiting my hooks."

"Oh, I'm not afraid to get my hands slimy. In fact, at times, that can be downright fun. But there's a lot to be said for bait casting. It can be so… sporting."

Hannah sniffed. "Well, you'll never convince me."

"Don't be so closed-minded. Try it. I guarantee you'll be wishing you'd made this choice years ago." He held the lure out, swinging it gently in front of her face.

She studied the bait with a skeptical expression. Still, Drew could tell she was tempted. "Come on, Hannah. Let me take you out in the boat. We don't have to go for long. Just while we're… stewing."

Before she jerked her head up, he had schooled his expression into its most guileless form. "Tell you what, I'll fish with shrimp, and you use the Musky Wriggler. I'll bet you catch more than me."

In the old days Hannah never once backed down from a challenge—at least, not a fishing challenge. Now she hesitated, and Drew could tell she needed a little more prodding. He knew just the thing. "After that, over supper we can talk about my copy of the declaration."

With that, the woman literally took the bait.

Holding the lure by its single-pronged hook, she said, "I do want to try out that Meek reel."

"Of course." It was all Drew could do not to rub his hands together in glee. He'd bet his top-selling scalloped spoon that she hadn't changed
that
much over the years. Put a fishing pole in the woman's hands and she got so wrapped up in the moment she forgot to think. Catch her when she had an eight-pound fighter on the end of her line and she'd agree to damned near anything. After all, she'd agreed to marry him while landing a snapper, had she not?

Drew watched her eye the Wriggler with veiled interest. That particular lure had always been lucky for specs.
Yep, I'll have her in my bed by sunset
.

But Hannah surprised him.

"I'm no green girl anymore, Drew Coryell." She lobbed the bait toward him, and despite the unexpectedness of her actions, he caught it softly in his hand. "I know what you're about."

"You do?"

"You think if you take me fishing and I get caught up in the excitement, you'll be able to convince me to do any wicked thing you wish."

Hell, the woman hit it right on the head
. "Why, Hannah, that's not a very nice thing to say."

"It's not a very nice thing to attempt."

"You wound me."

"Not yet, but I think I'll carry the fillet knife with me just in case I need it."

"Hannah!" he protested. Frowning and scowling and acting extremely put out, he returned the Musky Wriggler to its small wooden box, careful to shield the instruction flier inside from Hannah's gaze. The message printed there would expose him, and he didn't want her linking him with the Castaway Bait Company just yet. "I was trying to be nice here, you know."

"Uh-huh,' she dryly replied. "Nice and seductive."

He laughed. "Honey, seduction is candlelight and romance. I asked you to go fishing."

"You think I don't remember all those hours on the fishing pier at Galveston? You think I don't recall what happened the first time we made hoop stew? You think I don't remember how you proposed marriage to me?"

"You got awfully worked up over that snapper."

"No, not the snapper." She canted her head and studied him, her mood growing serious. "You never saw it, did you? It was never the fishing. It was always you, Drew. You were the attraction."

He blinked. What was she saying?

But before it could all soak in, she continued. "I didn't figure it out myself until years later. I started falling in love with you the first day we met. If alligator baiting had been your hobby, I'd undoubtedly have developed an affinity for it, too."

Drew was having trouble getting past the shock of all this. Nothing was going as he had planned. With a few short sentences, she'd up and changed everything. "Wait just a minute. You're not standing there telling me you don't like to fish."

"No, I love to fish. I've always enjoyed it. But I enjoyed you more. I wanted to be with you, Drew."

The words slipped out before he thought to stop them. "Then why did you leave me?"

A bittersweet smile spread across her face. "Because I was young. Because you were my first love and I didn't know to trust my feelings. Because I listened to my father when he told me I wouldn't be happy married to a ne'er-do-well with sun-bleached hair and beach sand between his toes."

Drew looked down at his bare, sand-encrusted feet and asked, "And was he right?"

"Partially, perhaps," she replied, following the path of his gaze. "I think for myself I could have been happy here forever. The two of us living here together like we'd planned—it would have been paradise. But my father was right in some ways. It would not have been just the two of us forever, and this…" She made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the fishing cabin, beach, and bay. "This is no place to raise a family."

Never mind that he agreed with her, Drew bristled at the criticism. "Wild Horse Island is a fine, safe place."

She shrugged. "Wild Horse Island has no schools or neighbors or other children. This is eighteen eighty-three. Texas is no longer the frontier. I want my children to have the benefits of a settled, established society. They'll need a good education to help them fulfill their destiny in the new century."

Drew's blood chilled. She spoke as if those children existed. "You said you weren't married. I assumed you had no children."

She took a step back and turned away. Quietly, she said, "I'm not married and I have no children. I was simply trying to explain…"

"How you would feel if you and I had had children." Hot anger and a fair share of hurt replaced the cold pulsing through his veins. "This life wouldn't be good enough for you.
I
wouldn't be good enough for you."

"No, Drew. That's not what I—"

Suddenly, he had to get away from her. He didn't give her a chance to finish, but turned on his bare heel and stormed away, emotion seething inside him. He'd check the snares he'd set earlier that day thinking rabbit would be a nice change from fish. Not that he had an appetite now. If he so much as tried to eat he thought he'd gag.