Kitabı oku: «Coast Guard Sweetheart»

Chapter One

“What are you doing here, Sawyer Kole?”

Honey Duer’s heart stuttered. Irrational gladness surged through her nerve endings until she tamped her feelings down to that secret place where she contained everything concerning the Coast Guard petty officer. Perched on a stool at the Sandpiper Cafe counter, he stiffened at the sound of her voice.

Kiptohanock life ebbed and flowed around them. The hearty scent of eggs and bacon permeated the diner. Weather-beaten watermen packed the green vinyl booths and sopped their buttermilk biscuits in redeye gravy while trading fish stories.

Placing his palms flat against the counter, Sawyer rose and faced her. He let his arms drop to his side.

Much against her will, Honey’s gaze locked onto Sawyer’s hands—strong, work-roughened and capable. A distant memory flashed of those hands cupping one of Blackie’s pups.

The clinking of glasses and murmur of voices in the crowded diner faded into a distant, droning buzz as the image of Sawyer’s face that long ago Kiptohanock spring welled in her mind. He’d cradled the black Labrador puppies, the lines fanning out from his eyes as he smiled. At her.

Her stomach knotted. And with her reverie broken, she found his crystal blue gaze fixed on her. In his eyes, she beheld pain, regret, sadness. And a question?

She recalled her crusty waterman father’s oft-quoted saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Honey quelled the traitorous feelings Sawyer’s presence evoked. She’d believed—hoped—after three long years, she’d be immune. But apparently not.

She’d learned the hard way not to trust a Coastie. Especially not this one. So with deliberate effort, she schooled her features and reined in her pulse.

The summer tourist season remained at fever pitch with the upcoming Labor Day weekend and Duck Decoy Festival. And with the Duer family’s century-old lodge booked to the rafters, she didn’t need this—or him—distracting her.

“Why are you here, Kole?”

Eyelids drooping, he put the stool between them. “Reassigned back to the Shore. Thought the chief would’ve warned you.”

Honey propped her hands on her hips—mainly to give her hands something to do. Anything but allow her hands to shake and betray their utter unreliability. “The chief? Braeden Scott knew you were here?”

Of course as Officer in Charge her brother-in-law knew. Which meant her big sister Amelia knew, too. She growled low in her throat. “How long, Kole? How long have you been skulking around Kiptohanock without me knowing?”

“A week.”

Sawyer’s eyes, the blue of a winter sky over the blue-green waters of the Delmarva Peninsula, darted toward her again. “I was told you didn’t work at the cafe anymore. That you wouldn’t be hard to...” His gaze slid away to the diner’s plate glass window overlooking the cupola-topped gazebo on the square.

And she extinguished the tiny spark of hope that had surfaced upon spotting his broad uniformed shoulders hunched over a cup of coffee and a plate of Long Johns. As if time had rewound back to that spring when she’d dared to dream, to hope...

She grimaced.

When he left her looking like a fool in front of the fishing hamlet of Kiptohanock, Virginia.

And the startling fact that hope somehow persisted—despite her best efforts to eradicate it—angered Honey. Angered her more than the gall of this here-today, gone-tomorrow Coastie, who had the nerve to show up in her town at her cafe again.

The anger, with three long years to simmer, boiled in her veins. ’Cause Sawyer Kole hadn’t come looking for her. He’d come thinking to avoid her.

Eating Long Johns and drinking coffee at her counter as if nothing had changed. Some things never did change. Some men never did, either.

Like how you couldn’t trust a Coastie as far as you could throw him.

“Honey, I—” His mouth pulled downward.

The anger percolated in her gut, rising. Someone tugged at her hand.

She glanced down to find her eight-year-old nephew, Max. With whom she’d come searching for a midmorning treat once the inn’s guests cleared out after breakfast. Max—whom she’d completely forgotten in her sudden awareness of Sawyer.

“Is that the Coastie who made you cry, Aunt Honey?”

She flinched at the foghorn decibel of Max’s voice.

Conversation ground to an abrupt silence.

Sawyer’s face constricted and he swallowed. Hard.

“I’m sorry, Honey.” Sawyer pivoted on his heel toward the exit.

Her nostrils flared. That was it? After all this time, that was all he had to say for himself?

If he thought he was going to walk away from her again, Sawyer Kole had another thought coming. No longer able to contain the molten lava of three years of unanswered questions, her anger erupted and exploded.

“That’d be Beatrice Duer to you, Coastie.”

She reached across the counter and seized the uneaten Long John on his plate. She hurled the cinnamon donut across the room where it collided with a shower of powdery sugar against the back of Sawyer Kole’s hard head.

The dozen or so cafe patrons, including Max, gave a collective gasp.

Sawyer whipped around. The disbelief on his features almost made her laugh.

Almost. ’Cause laughing wasn’t something she’d done much since that bittersweet spring.

“Honey...” Her waitress friend, Dixie, lowered a platter of fresh baked Long Johns to the countertop. “Before you go off half-cocked...”

Sawyer just...stared at her. Which only made Honey crazier. She snatched another Long John off Dixie’s tray.

This time, he made a gesture with his hand like a stop sign. “Honey...” His mouth tightened.

Honey raised her arm in an arc over her head. “I told you to call me Beatrice. Be-a-trice. Better yet, don’t call me anything at all.” She drew back.

Sawyer’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t...”

Honey lobbed the donut at him.

Zapping him square between the eyes, the Long John bounced and landed at his regulation black shoes on the cafe’s linoleum floor.

“Hah!” She jutted her chin. “I just did.”

Max nudged her with his elbow. “Mimi says it’s not nice to throw things, Aunt Honey.”

“He deserves it.” She palpitated another Long John. “This one, too.”

And she flung the donut in Sawyer’s direction again. But her aim was a trifle off. The Long John only grazed his tropical blue Coastie uniform, leaving a trail of sugar across his chest.

His rugged profile remained stoic. The arctic blue of his eyes smoldered. But otherwise, no reaction.

Maddened, she palmed another pastry, which she let fly in a curveball worthy of the Kiptohanock church league champions. “And another. And—”

It ricocheted off his jaw.

A muscle ticked in his cheek. But he said nothing. Only opened his stance to hip’s width and folded his hands behind his back. He lifted his face as if bracing for the next onslaught. Preparing to take whatever she pitched his way.

“Tough guy, huh? I’ll show you—”

Max laughed. “This looks like a fun game, Aunt Honey.”

Grabbing a Long John for himself, he propelled it across the length of the cafe. It landed with a plop into the cereal bowl of a redheaded girl from his Sunday school class. She screamed as the milk cascaded over the rim and onto her Girl Scout uniform.

Honey made a futile grab for her nephew as he appropriated two fistfuls of fried dough. “Max! Don’t—”

But too late.

The little girl yanked a Long John off a fellow scout’s plate and chucked it toward Max. But instead of Max, it hit a grungy waterman in the nose.

“Hey!” The boat captain jumped to his feet. His reactionary winged donut walloped the troop leader, Mrs. Francis, upside the head.

Mrs. Francis rose with battle fury in her eyes. “How dare you, you crazy ole—”

“Boys against girls!” Max scrambled atop Sawyer’s vacated stool. Using the stool as a shield, with machine-gun rapid fire, he launched the doughy projectiles at the rest of the Girl Scouts.

Who returned fire with targeted accuracy.

Max retreated toward a table of his granddad’s contemporaries. Who, when the barrage sailed their way, responded with a volley of catapulted sugar and cinnamon. Ducking behind the padded booths, Mrs. Francis, the Kiptohanock postmistress and the town librarian, directed the Girl Scouts’ cannon assault.

“Score!” Max fist-pumped as another donut grenade connected with the little redheaded girl.

Her answering shot left Max with a mouthful of pastry. Spitting and coughing, Max retreated behind the counter.

Donuts a-flying, Sawyer and Honey gaped at the ensuing melee taking place around them. An island of calm in the midst of mayhem.

“Your turn, Aunt Honey.”

She dodged too late as the Long John smacked her in the forehead.

Max clenched another pastry in his right hand. “Bull’s—”

“Don’t do it, Max... Drop it...” Sawyer stepped in front of her and scooped a mangled Long John off the floor. “Don’t you dare hit your aunt Honey again, Max.”

Max chuckled and took aim. As did Sawyer. Peeping through her fingers, she covered her face with her hands.

The bells jingled as the door whooshed open.

“Executive Petty Officer Kole! What is going on in here? You will cease and desist immediately.”

Sawyer groaned at the sight of his boss, Senior Chief Braeden Scott, framed in the doorway of the cafe.

“Max Duer Scott! Honey!”

Honey lowered her hands. Her older sister, Amelia, glared. Max dropped the donut and shuffled his feet.

The surreptitious thud of twenty other donuts hit the floor as the townspeople came to their senses and surveyed the sugary wreckage of Kiptohanock’s favorite hangout.

“Storm’s a-coming.” Seth Duer, her father, crossed his arms across his flannel plaid shirt. “But what in the name of fried oysters is going on in here?”

* * *

“What were you thinking, Kole?” Sawyer’s superior—and Honey’s brother-in-law—stared at him. “We’ve got a tropical depression barreling up the East Coast and you’ve started a war in Kiptohanock?”

“I’m sorry, Chief.” Sawyer scanned the deserted and wrecked diner. “I accidentally ran into Honey and we sort of...collided.”

“Do you think this is a laughing matter, Executive Petty Officer Kole? Do you think this is any way for the second in command at Station Kiptohanock to treat the local populace? Represent the United States Coast Guard? Provide an example to the station crew?”

Sawyer wiped the emerging smile off his face. He went into a rigid salute, feet clamped together. “No. Not at all, Chief Scott.”

Braeden glowered. “I should hope not, BMC Kole. Or I might have to rethink requesting your reassignment here on the Delmarva Peninsula.”

“Permission to speak freely, Chief?”

Braeden narrowed his eyes. “Ankle deep in powdered sugar, I’d speak carefully if I were you, Kole.”

Sawyer cut his eyes around his thirtysomething commander toward the kitchen where the chief’s pregnant wife, Amelia, reamed out a much-subdued Honey. A firm hand clamped on her orphaned nephew and adopted son, Amelia kept Max affixed in place. Fixed like a bug on a pin until his turn for her strawberry blonde wrath.

“This was a bad idea, me being reassigned to the Eastern Shore again, Chief.”

Braeden’s eyebrow arched. “Oh, really?”

Sawyer nodded. “I thought after what happened three years ago...after our last conversation that night...” He slumped. “That you understood... It was better for everyone, especially Honey, for me to never—”

“What I understand, XPO, is that you acquitted yourself extremely well at your last duty station in California. You are an asset to any boat station, especially this one.” Braeden skewered him with a look. “And let me remind you the Coast Guard does not exist for the benefit of the Coastie but the other way around.”

Sawyer went into regulation stance again. “Yes, Chief.”

Braeden took a deep breath. “However in this case... In the weird—albeit endearing—way of southern families, when Amelia and I got married, the Duers adopted everyone on my side of the marriage, too. Including my father’s best friend, Master Chief Davis. And I promise you the Master Chief no more enjoyed watching Honey go from depressed Honey to angry Honey to cynical Honey—”

“I’m guessing we’re back at the angry Honey phase.” Frowning, Sawyer took a quick, surreptitious look across the cafe.

“Exactly. So one word in the Master Chief’s ear and it was no problem getting you reassigned here. Time to work out the unresolved issues chaining the both of you to the past. Nothing worse than might-have-beens. This way—barring a few damaged donuts—better for both of you in the end. Get each other out of your systems.”

Braeden’s clipped voice gouged at Sawyer’s heart. “Or not, as the case may be. Time to let nature—or donuts—take their course.”

“So now we know.” Sawyer gulped. “She hates me.”

“That what you took from this?” Braeden gestured. “Don’t know if I’d agree.” Braeden’s lips twitched as he surveyed the culinary disaster zone. “I already hear this skirmish is going down in the annals of Kiptohanock lore as The Battle of the Long Johns.”

Sawyer smothered a groan. “I’m sorry, Chief. Really sorry. I promise you it won’t happen again. I’ll perform my duty watches and otherwise keep my distance.”

In the corner, the hitherto silent Seth Duer cleared his throat. “That strategy kind of defeats the purpose, don’t you think?” The man’s bristly mustache twitched.

Sawyer cast his eyes toward the snowy floor.

Honey’s dad had never been one of his biggest fans. And rightly so as subsequent events that spring proved. Sawyer was nothing, as his own father routinely declared twenty-odd years ago, if not a self-fulfilling screw-up.

Worthless. Good for nothing. Ruined everyone’s life.

Amelia—one hand around the back of Max’s scrawny neck and the other squeezing the tender underflesh of Honey’s arm—hauled the pair of miscreants toward them.

“Ow, ’Melia.” Honey wrested free. “Let go. You’re—” Her forward momentum carried her to within an arm’s reach of Sawyer.

Honey teetered in her powder-slathered heels. Her eyes flicked toward Sawyer and then to her toes. She clenched and unclenched her hands at her sides.

Sawyer’s heart pounded at her proximity.

Beatrice “Honey” Duer was the loveliest woman he’d ever known. As beautiful in her kindness and generosity as her beautiful honey-colored hair and chestnut brown eyes. Seeing her again, despite the circumstances, was both a pleasure and a stabbing ache he’d never quite managed to rid himself of.

He’d never understood until face-to-face now with Honey how one person could inspire within him—all at the same moment—such joy and pain.

This newly embittered, enraged Honey was entirely Sawyer’s own fault. A product of his previous misjudgment in allowing the twentysomething Shore girl to get close to him that spring. His father’s words—though the man was long dead in a state penitentiary—reverberated in his mind.

Whatever—and whomever—Sawyer touched, he ruined.

Sawyer straightened. “I take full responsibility for what happened here, Chief. My mess. I’ll clean it up.”

Honey’s eyes flickered to his.

Sawyer looked away and focused over her shoulder to the mounted wall map. With his eye, he mentally traced the outline of the Delmarva Peninsula. Delaware. Maryland. Virginia.

His Coast Guard family and his career were the only things he’d ever succeeded at.

Sawyer kept his posture tall and his feet pointed toward Braeden. “I also want to compensate the Sandpiper owner for lost revenue and supplies, Chief.”

Honey bristled.

Sawyer sneaked a glance her way before resuming his perusal of the framed map.

The Atlantic Ocean. The Chesapeake Bay. Highway 13. Chincoteague. Onley. Nassawadox. Willis Wharf. Kiptohanock nestling on the Great Machipongo Inlet.

His Coast Guard family and career were also the only things in his life he’d not ruined or self-sabotaged. Until now.

Sawyer steeled himself. “I understand you’ll have to file an official reprimand in my service record. And if I’m demoted and transferred—”

Honey’s breath hitched. “Wait. This wasn’t his fault.” She caught hold of Braeden’s sleeve. “I started it. Not him. I’m to blame. He shouldn’t be punished for defending himself.”

Sawyer angled. “You don’t have to...”

Her face clouded. “Actually, he was defending me. I’ll reimburse Dixie and the owner for lost wages. I’ll clean—”

“You’re all going to clean up this mess, baby girl.” The jean-clad Seth unwound from where he leaned against a booth. “You, Guardsman Kole here and—” He harpooned Max with his hand and reeled him closer. “And my grandson, Max, too.”

Mutiny written across his features, Max squirmed. “But I’m s’posed to go with Mimi and Dad for Mimi’s doctor visit.”

The very pregnant Amelia sidled next to her husband, Braeden. “Granddad’s right, Max. Every action has consequences. Time for you to own yours.”

“But—but...”

“No buts.” Braeden bent to Max’s level. “A good Coastie learns to accept responsibility for his actions.”

He speared Sawyer with a look. “You’ve got major damage control to take care of here, Kole. Not to mention prepare for a late season storm threatening landfall anywhere between Delaware and Charleston, South Carolina, over the next few days.”

Sawyer nodded. “Affirmative, Chief. The cafe will be shipshape by the time you and the missus return this afternoon.”

“I’m counting on it.” Braeden straightened to his full height. “I know I can also count on you and Honey to supervise my boy, Max, until I return. Giving him an example of what integrity looks like.”

Seth moved toward the door. “I’ve got a short charter this morning, but I expect a full report from you, XPO Kole, when I return midday. Me and you are going to have a chat. Long overdue, in fact. You roger that?”

“Daddy... This has nothing to do with you.” Honey frowned. “Why are you always trying to ruin my life?”

Sawyer went ramrod stiff at the echo of his own thoughts. “Roger, Mr. Duer. I’ll be waiting for you on the harbor dock.”

Honey’s father exchanged glances with Braeden and Amelia. “I’m not trying to ruin your life, baby girl. Can’t nobody do that to you but you.”

Flushing, Honey drew a circle in the confectioner’s sugar with the toe of her shoe.

Heading out, Seth settled his ball cap firmly about his graying head and adjusted the brim. “Something you ought to ponder as you’re cleaning up this mess the two of you made.”