Love, Unexpected. Virginia McCullough
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keep it...her?”
Zeke waved her off. “Oh, no, I’m not married. I should have explained. My dad and I own the boat. Well, not exactly. It really belongs to him.” Zeke shook his head, frustrated by the way he tripped over his words, sounding like a goofy teenager. “If you can believe it, a guy who owed Dad money left it to him in his will. We haven’t decided what to do with it, but the guy settled, sort of, a twenty-year-old debt.”
“Twenty years? Wow. That’s an incredible story.”
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and took a sip of her coffee, showing no sign she was ready to leave.
Maybe the boat really did intrigue her. “Uh, would you like to go aboard and take a look inside?”
The bright smile was back. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Really?”
“Of course.” Her blue eyes flashed flirtatiously. “Curiosity is killing me.”
“Sorry, I’m just sort of shocked.”
She exaggerated a look of wide-eyed innocence. “You mean because the boat doesn’t look so good?”
Another laugh rose from deep inside. “No kidding.”
“Okay, confession time.” She gestured to the boat. “I don’t know the first thing about boats. But I’ve restored a house over a century old and badly maintained for at least thirty of those one-hundred-plus years. I know very well how old, neglected things can be brought back.”
She’d restored an old house? Hmm...intriguing. “Old and neglected. That about sums it up.” He stared at Drifting Dreamer for a few seconds. “You go on aboard. I’ll go get the key to open her up.”
She nodded and, after only a couple of seconds of hesitation, climbed from the dock to the deck.
Taking the dog with him, Zeke hurried back inside the store, and found his dad sealing up a carton. As he unhooked Teddy’s leash, he eyed the box with suspicion, memories of fixing yesterday’s order mix-up intruding into his otherwise pleasant thoughts. He’d have a look at the cartons later before they had a chance to go out. He opened the top desk drawer in the office and grabbed the keys. “Hey, Dad, the woman with the long hair? Her name is Andi and she’s curious about Drifting Dreamer. I thought I’d show her around.”
“That so? Maybe she wants to buy it?”
Zeke frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that, but she said she restored an old house. So, who knows? Maybe she won’t be able to resist the challenge.”
Art looked over his bifocals and frowned. “Don’t be long, son. We’ve got orders to fill.”
“Got it, Dad.” Zeke told Teddy to stay and let the screen door close. Teddy immediately started whining and Zeke stopped. “Andi’s right, buddy, you are spoiled.” Relenting, as Teddy surely knew he would, he said, “You stay close by. No running off.”
Teddy trotted to the boat, beating Zeke there. He wasted no time jumping from the dock to the deck.
“I bet Mr. Theodore follows you everywhere,” Andi joked.
“More or less,” Zeke said. “I think of him more as my dad’s dog, but we’re both responsible for keeping the little stray.”
“The dog apparently has good instincts.” She flashed a beaming smile that once again showed her pretty white teeth.
He opened the padlock to the cabin doors and went down the wooden companionway into the saloon, or what he thought of as the main cabin. Andi followed close behind.
“What do you think? First...no, second impressions.” He was aware that being aboard Drifting Dreamer wouldn’t do much to alter an initial impression. It would probably only make reality hit home harder.
“I think this boat has a past,” she said, following him into the center main saloon, “and I’d sure like to know what it is. Simple curiosity, I guess.”
A past? Had she read his mind? That question had turned over and over in his mind last night. It had kept him wide-awake and thinking hard. From the moment he’d secured the dock lines, he’d wondered what this boat had been up to during her better days. It was a mystery he wanted to solve.
“I get it. I’ve been asking myself that, too. Unfortunately, we know very little, except what the spec sheet told us. She was built in 1939 in Duluth at the Metzger Boat Works. Pretty famous builders, those Metzgers. The listed owner is C. Peterson. We think the boat has been in the Great Lakes since her launch, but we can’t say for sure. Somehow, she ended up in the hands of Terrance Smyth—he’s the guy who owed my dad money.”
Andi gestured around the all-mahogany interior. “Someone named her Drifting Dreamer for a reason.”
He’d thought of that, too. “Not that long ago, someone bought the diesel engine and new pumps and other gear, including a propane stove, so that person must have intended to do something with her. The galley is ready to go. And the boat is seaworthy. Made it up here from Kenosha, anyway.”
“Maybe the plan was to get her running and then fix her up,” Andi said. “Kind of like the way we lived in the house while I worked on it.”
We? Who did that include?
“I’m guessing the deterioration and damage started decades ago.”
Andi wrinkled her nose as she continued looking around.
“The stale smell of a closed-up boat.” He led the way to the large wheelhouse, where the engine controls, the compass set in its bronze housing, the old-fashioned depth sounder and the newer radar were in place and ready to go.
“His new frontier,” Zeke said, pointing to Teddy, who’d wasted no time in sniffing the corners and wagging his tail in excitement. “Now that the dog has discovered the boat has an inside, he’ll want to make it part of his regular rounds.”
They went back into the main cabin and she continued studying the boat with a dreamy look in her big, dark blue eyes.
“Some people still call these areas of a boat the saloon,” he said, standing in the middle of what was the boat’s equivalent of a combination kitchen-dining area and living room. “Although that term only applies to high-end yachts. So maybe main cabin is more like it.” He noted that she was deep in thought, her full lips pursed in concentration.
“This certainly was a high-end yacht,” Andi said. “You could seat eight or ten people around the table.” She moved inside the largest stateroom. “And this is almost like a regular bedroom.”
“So is the other cabin in the bow. It has two single bunks,” Zeke said. “I was surprised to find bunk cushions still packed in the canvas covers they were delivered in.”
“Whoever had this boat built must have had quite a vision,” she said, running her hand down the once smooth wood of the hanging locker. She tugged on the handle of one of the double doors and it broke free. “This is more like an antique armoire than an ordinary closet. It’s as big as some of the closets I’ve seen in older houses. All this mahogany in a house would boost the price a notch or two.”
Only yesterday, he’d seen mostly the boat’s decay, but now, watching her study the fixtures, assessing everything, possibilities started clicking through his brain. He knew a thing or two about restoring buildings, and that’s what fixing up this boat would be about. Restoration. Drifting Dreamer could be more than presentable. She could be a classic gem again.
“You’re right about the quality of workmanship, and about vision, too. I wish we had better records. I know one thing for certain. No one builds this kind of yacht on a whim—or on a shoestring. And back in the hard times of the 1930s, any boat builder would have been happy for the business.”
Andi nodded in agreement. “My grandpa talked