Coast Guard Sweetheart. Lisa Carter
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took a deep, steadying breath.
Because this conversation promised to be about as fun as sitting on a desert cactus. Unpleasant, but a necessary part of Sawyer’s self-prescribed penance. He’d hurt this man’s daughter. Sawyer prepared himself to be slugged in the jaw and dropped in the Machipongo drink. All of which he deserved.
And more.
“Mr. Duer, sir.”
His hand hard with calluses, Seth passed him one of the now empty bait buckets. Sweat broke out on Sawyer’s forehead at the older man’s unnerving silence. He stepped back as Honey’s father hoisted the other bucket onto the pier. And with a light-footedness that denied his fifty-odd years, the rugged Shoreman bridged the gap between the Now I Sea and the dock.
The wiry waterman brushed his hand over the top of the mounted iron bell on the end of the pier. A bell, Sawyer remembered, used only for the annual blessing of the fleet at the start of the fishing season in spring. And to summon the villagers in times of maritime disaster.
“I’m assuming the Sandpiper has been restored to proper working order.”
Sawyer nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You starting your two days on or two days off, son?” Seth squinted at him, his eyes a variation of the blue-green teal many of the Shore residents sported. “May I call you, son?”
Sawyer swallowed past the large boulder lodged in his throat. If only his own father had been a tenth of the man Seth Duer was.
How often that spring he spent with Honey he’d envied her strong, loving family. Envied the faith that bound the community together. Wished he had somewhere and someone to call home.
A seagull’s cry broke the silence. Sawyer realized that Seth Duer still awaited his response, the old waterman’s head cocked at an angle.
“I’d—I’d be honored, sir. It’s my two days off.”
Honey’s father studied him. Sawyer remained still under his gristly-browed scrutiny, ready to take whatever blow Seth dealt him. Something Sawyer had learned from his no-good drunken excuse for a father.
The older man blew a breath out between his lips. “Braeden’s right,” he declared in that gravelly smoker voice of his. “You’re not the same brash boy who left here three years ago.”
Oh, how Sawyer prayed he wasn’t.
Sawyer trained his eyes on the inlet that meandered past the barrier islands until emptying into the Atlantic. A cormorant dive-bombed for fish in the marina. With the wind picking up, seagulls wheeled aloft in graceful figure eights.
“I know what you did for my daughter.”
His gaze swung to Honey’s father. “For your daughter, sir? Don’t you mean to your daughter?”
“The sacrifice you made.” The waterman scrubbed his hand over his stubbly jawline. “Reckon you believed you were doing her a favor. Saving her future heartache. Didn’t turn out that way, though. That’s why I put a word into Braeden’s ear. Why I asked, if possible, you receive a temporary posting to settle things once and for all.”
“You were the one?” Sawyer jammed his hands in his pockets. “I figured you’d be the one meeting me at the Bridge with a shotgun.”
The old man grinned. “Don’t think that idea didn’t cross my mind three years ago.”
Sawyer inserted his finger between his neck and his collar. And tugged. Despite the bracing sea breeze keeping the marina flags aflutter, the air had grown a bit too close for comfort.
“You’ve got your current chief, Braeden Scott, to thank for saving your life once upon a spring night.”
“Chief’s been a good friend. Better than I deserved. The brother I always wished I had.”
Tenacious about staying in touch the past three years wherever Sawyer found himself assigned. Three long years when all he could do was lick his wounds and work hard to make his CG mentor proud.
“Braeden also told me about your past, son.”
Sawyer reddened. “He shouldn’t have done that, sir. I—I—” He dropped his eyes to the gray-weathered planks unable to face Seth Duer.
The old man heaved a sigh. “I understand better than you could ever know.”
He darted a glance at the waterman’s face as a faraway look crossed Seth Duer’s stern countenance. “I’m not the kind of man Honey deserved. Wouldn’t have been a welcome addition to the Duer clan like Braeden.”
Seth gave him a faint smile. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that or Honey if I were you.”
He opened his palms. “I promise you, Mr. Duer, I’ll stay far away from Honey till my permanent reassignment comes through. Braeden—I mean Chief Scott—promised if I’d give it through Labor Day, he’d arrange a transfer.”
“Well, here’s the thing, son.” Seth removed his Nandua Warriors ball cap and resettled it upon his head. “Honey ain’t that sweetly naive girly-girl you remember. In fact, she’s become a highly driven, successful entrepreneur with more sharp edges than a barracuda.”
Sawyer clamped his lips together.
“The Martha Stewart wannabe has become the Hostess with the Mostest on our fair Eastern Shore.” Seth ground his teeth. “She’s about to drive us crazy with her doilies and tea cakes and dressed-to-impress agenda. She’s about driven me out of house and home.”
Seth drew his brows together in a frown. “Not to mention every man within a Shore-wide radius, including the ever-faithful Charlie Pruitt—”
Bracing himself, Sawyer squared his jaw.
“—Driven us stark raving insane with her prickly, self-imposed perfectionism.”
Something tightened in Sawyer’s chest.
“After pondering long and hard on the situation,” Honey’s father took a cleansing breath. “We—the Duer clan—need your help.”
“Need my help? How?”
“The girl,” Seth rolled his tongue over his teeth. “I’m speaking plainly to you now, son. The girl needs a course direction. She needs to be reeled in and brought to her senses before it’s too late. Before she drives away everyone who tries to love her. The hurt’s festering in her soul. She won’t let it heal. No time for life. No time for love. No house, no career can fill the emptiness inside that girl.”
Guilt for his part in Honey’s pain ate Sawyer alive.
“There’s nothing I’d like more than to make things right for her.” Sawyer gave a hopeless shrug. “But she hates me, Mr. Duer. Flat out can’t stand the sight of me, not that I blame her.”
Honey’s dad eyed him. “Thought you Coastie boys were perceptive.” Seth stroked his bristly mustache with his index finger. “Hatred, I assure you, son, is not what that girl of mine feels for you. Quite the opposite, I imagine.”
Sawyer shuffled his feet. “I’ll apologize to her again—in a less dangerous setting than the Sandpiper—”
Old Man Duer grinned, rearranging the wrinkles on his face.
“—So she and—” This part made Sawyer want to puke right into the tidal marsh. “So Honey and that—that Charlie Pruitt can find their happily-ever-after.”
“Pruitt, huh?” Seth grunted. “Love is so wasted on the young.” His mouth contorted. “The both of you make me tired. After the work that went into getting ’Melia and Braeden together, I hoped I was done with the hard cases. I’m too old for this romantic nonsense.”
The waterman squelched in his Wellingtons a few feet toward the parking zone until turning. “You got till Labor Day to clean