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“No, you’re not.” Alissa smiled. “I just got lost in thought for a minute there.”
Dane came in and pressed a lingering kiss to Alissa’s forehead. Alissa leaned into his touch, especially when he went behind her and gently massaged her shoulders. As much as she tried to relax, she still held a little tension there, even when she wasn’t stressed.
“How are you?” Dane asked.
“Great. Even better now that you’re working the knots out of my shoulders.” Alissa laughed, closing her eyes behind her glasses.
“You have quite a few of them.” He massaged her neck next. “Are you stressed out? Do you need fewer articles?”
“No, I just sit at my desk with my shoulders hunched forward all day. I should really fix my posture.” Alissa looked up at him. Her shoulders were already so much looser. “I’m completely fine with my workload right now.”
“Good.” Dane came back around to her front and leaned against the edge of her desk. “Either way, I need you to write one less article this week.”
“Oh? For what?” Alissa asked.
“I need to leave some space for some information about a special at The Crab. Willis asked me to since it’s a new item.”
“A special? A whole article on one?” Alissa chuckled. “All of the specials at The Crab are amazing, but this one must be ridiculously good to warrant a whole article. We’ve never done something like this, have we?”
“Yeah, it must be good. We’ve never done it before but Willis floated the idea to me,” Dane said with a casual shrug, messing with the Rubik’s Cube she kept on the corner of her desk. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Okay.” Alissa lifted her face and he softly kissed her lips.
Once he left, Alissa looked over her list of articles to work on and crossed off the one that she felt was the weakest. Plus, the article could wait for another issue.
Instead of going back to her article, Alissa thought through the list of single men she knew on the island again. One of them had to be the perfect fit for Caitlin.
CHAPTER FIVE
Caitlin walked along the docks, the midday sun hot on her face. Boats were anchored, bobbing in the tides, and people were walking along just like she was. Some were in groups while others were by themselves.
Despite the bustling activity around her, she felt alone and unsure of what to do with her time. She had dropped Pearl off at Little Clams earlier. At least Pearl had taken to it right away so she wasn’t worried about how her daughter was doing. Pearl needed comfort and friends here, but still, they only had each other.
Caitlin felt the absence of everything. It had been a long time since she’d had this much time to herself. If she wasn’t rushing around working for the restaurant, she was taking care of Pearl or everything at home. She rarely even had a moment alone, much less in the middle of the day. In her biggest moments of stress, she would have loved to have a full afternoon with nothing else to do. But now that she had it, the loneliness threatened to drown her.
She sighed, looking out at the boats. And she still had to figure out what to do for a living here. She knew she wasn’t going to make a drastic change into an entirely different field. That kind of upheaval was way too much and she truly loved food. While Blueberry Bay had a lot of new businesses and tourist traffic and they didn’t have many upscale dining options, Caitlin wasn’t sure if going back into the restaurant business was a good idea. Property was expensive, then the cost of renovating it to how she needed it to be… it was a lot to think about.
A food truck, maybe? She had a few colleagues who went into that business, but they were a difficult sector of the industry to get into—they took up a lot of time and effort. And Blueberry Bay was small, so she would have had to travel to the surrounding areas. That gave her less time with Pearl.
Catering was another option, but how many events happened in the area? Plus she had direct competition with places she loved like The Crab, which catered events around town all the time. Plus, the events that her and James’s restaurants had catered had been a headache. It was a completely different beast than running a restaurant.
Most of the boats along the docks were different, but the same—well-maintained, but different sizes. So the huge, somewhat dilapidated cruise ship toward the end of the docks stood out to her.
Caitlin stopped and stared. She didn’t know much about boats, but even she knew this one was in rough shape. The rust, the faded paint, and the broken windows on top were obvious even to her inexperienced eye. At one point, probably decades ago, it had been an impressive ship, but those days were long since passed.
Michael appeared from the other side of the boat, wearing a paint-splattered t-shirt and shorts. As always, he looked right at home near the water, his tanned skin glowing from a little sun exposure. Her heart fluttered at the sight of him, which took her aback for a moment. But he radiated warmth, the kind of person you couldn’t help but be drawn to.
“Hey there,” Michael said with a wave.
“Hi.” Caitlin waved back, taking a few steps closer.
“What do you think?” Michael asked, gesturing to the boat.
“I don’t know, honestly. If I had to talk about it the way you talk about an old house, I’d say it has good bones but needs some work.” Caitlin shrugged. “Is it yours?”
“No, my boat’s down on the other side of the dock.” He pointed the tool he was holding in the direction that Caitlin came from. “This is Daniel’s. He’s looking to sell it and asked me to help since I know a few things about boats.”
“How much do you think it’ll go for?” Caitlin asked. “A lot, right? Aren’t ships super expensive?”
