covered a snort of laughter with a grimy hand. Ignoring him, Kurt concentrated on not staring at the woman’s sagging halter. What was inside it wasn’t sagging. Not at all.
“Er, ah…” He cleared his throat.
“I’ve heard it can be awfully nice offshore on a calm night.”
“Long’s you wear plenny o’ clothes. Them vampire skeeters’ll be all over you the minute the wind drops off,” Frog put in with a knowing snicker.
“Stow it,” Kurt growled quietly. He had no intention of taking the woman up on whatever it was she was hinting at. Nevertheless, it was the captain’s decision to make, not his mate’s.
And the captain was single, dammit. He was male. He might be an aging, one-eyed gimp with a lousy track record where women were concerned, but that didn’t mean he was out of the race. Not by a long shot. If he wanted a woman, he would damn well have one. And regardless of what he’d said earlier, he didn’t need any smart-mouth kid to run interference for him.
She kept looking at him. Kurt was used to having women look at him. His nickname in college had been Handsome. Which had embarrassed the hell out of him, even more than the stuttering that had made his life miserable all through grade school.
Which was one of the reasons he was still somewhat socially retarded. His two best friends back in high school, Gus and Alex, had teased him about being shy. Their girlfriends had thought he was cute.
Cute! Judas priest. That was even worse than being shy!
He’d been a damn good football player in his high school and college days, though, which had probably accounted for his popularity with women. There was sure as hell nothing out of the ordinary about dark blond hair, gray eyes and his father’s square jaw and blunt nose.
After he’d dropped out of college and joined the Coast Guard, the uniform had only seemed to add to the attraction. Unfortunately, it had been too late to do him much good. The woman he’d been in love with at the time had preferred Alex’s money to Kurt’s good looks or Gus’s rough charm.
Dina. All three of them had been in love with her. She’d chosen Alex, and eventually, Kurt and Gus had gotten over her.
At least, Kurt had. Since then he’d gotten over a number of lesser attractions before getting involved seriously again. Then, ironically, it had been his lack of looks that had done him in. He’d still been pretty much of a physical wreck when Evelyn had left him leaning on his crutch at the altar.
Idly, he wondered what Dina and Evelyn would have made of a dinky little no-stoplight fishing village like Swan Inlet.
What would they have made of Frog? A homely kid who was all long, skinny limbs, big feet and tough talk.
He couldn’t picture either one of them being content to live aboard a reconstituted commercial fishing boat with no Jacuzzi, no maid service—not even a CD player. The whole idea struck him as amusing and just a bit sad.
So, okay. Maybe he would go ahead and start the process of buying that house. He had a family now—or as much of a family as he was ever apt to have. After nearly twenty years of pulling up stakes every three years, moving from base to base—from Carolina to California, from Hawaii to Alaska to the U.S. Virgin Islands—he was more than ready to settle down.
“Captain Stryker? I’m pretty much at loose ends almost every evening,” the woman in the loose halter said, her voice a husky invitation.
Kurt shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Yes, ma’am. The thing is, I’m…uh, booked up pretty solid.”
Frog smirked.
The woman sniffed.
Kurt pretended an intense interest in the rumpled statement from Pierce’s Electronic Service.
Overhead, a gull flapped past with a finger mullet in his bill. Something hit the water not two feet abaft the port beam. It wasn’t the finger mullet.
“Splotch alert,” Frog quipped.
Kurt decided the boy’s vocabulary had improved, even if his grammar hadn’t. “Thanks, mate. We’re covered, but maybe you’d better pass the word.”
Kurt glanced up at the overhang from the flying bridge that covered a portion of the cockpit. They grinned at each other. Frog nodded toward the woman in the white shorts and halter, who was stroking her legs with after-sun lotion, her gaze straying frequently toward Kurt.
“Bet that stuff she’s rubbin’ on ‘er ain’t gullproof.”
When Kurt didn’t reply, Frog noisily finished his drink and dumped the ice overboard. “Know why she keeps looking at you?”
“No, but I expect you’re going to tell me.”
“It’s that eye patch. Makes you look like a pirate. Women like pirates.”
“Oh, yeah? How would you know what women like?” They’d talked about women before. Mostly warnings on Kurt’s part and bragging on Frog’s.
The boy shrugged. “I notice stuff like that. What about tomorrow, you gonna let me go out?”
“That’s a negative.” They had talked about this subject, too. No weekday charters during school months. It was still a sore spot between them, because in season, Frog’s tips could run anywhere from twenty-five to a hundred dollars a trip, depending on the length of the charter, the number of fish caught and the size and generosity of the party. Kurt had insisted on starting a savings account for him, much to the boy’s disgust.
“How you gonna run the boat and wait on fishermen? You need me, man.”
“What I need is a partner who can read a chart, lay out a course and follow it. What I need—”
“Awright, awright! So maybe I’ll just shove off and try my luck somewheres else where I don’t have to learn all that crap.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d threatened to leave. Kurt could only hope he didn’t mean it. He had no hold on the boy. No legal hold. “Anyhow,” Kurt said, “this Kiley fellow’s not a fisherman, he’s a photographer. No hooks to be baited.”
“So who’s gonna put film in his camera and hand over his fancy bottled water when he wants a swig?”
“Nice try, kid.” Kurt chuckled. Another crisis avoided. “Now go below and get started on your homework. I’ll be down directly to check you out.”
It had taken two years, but Debranne Eliza Ellen Kingsly Kiley, called Deke by most of her friends, was on her way. Finally!
“Funeral, here I come,” she muttered, and was mildly shocked by her own irreverence.
Her husband’s first funeral had been a circus. His brother had planned it with no input at all from her. Not that she’d been up to it at the time. She’d still been in shock.
Once she’d been able to think again, she had thought about having her own private memorial on the first anniversary of the occasion, but when the time had come she’d been
