CHAPTER FIVE
London
“Look, Trav, new meat.” One of the fishermen coming down the dock elbows the younger man next to him. “She looks like Pippi Longstocking.” He gives me a slow once-over, and I swear I can feel every inch of my body that his eyes touch.
I inwardly cringe but keep my expression neutral.
“Who the hell is Pippi Longstocking?” the younger one asks, his assessment of me a little easier to swallow.
“Shit. I forgot you’re a baby.” He elbows him in the side. “Well, except for the hair color,” he says as they approach me. “Pippi has red hair.” He looks me up and down a second time. “Nice overalls.” He grins and I have to resist the urge to knock his teeth down his throat. Then again, he’s already missing a few, so perhaps someone beat me to it. “And the pigtails...” He reaches for the end of one of my braids, but I quickly step back out of his reach.
“One, Pippi Longstocking doesn’t wear overalls; she wears a patchwork dress. Two, she wears bright, mismatched colors, and as you can see, I have on denim and white. And while yes, she does wear her hair in two pigtail braids, they’re not only bright red, but they stand straight out. So, I think your assessment might be a little lacking,” I fire off.
Trav, or at least that’s what the older man called him, tips his head back and lets out a full-belly laugh, the sound so contagious it brings a smile to my lips despite my irritation with the older man.
“She got you there, Lou.” It’s his turn to elbow the older man.
“Name of your ship?” I ask, holding the open ledger in front of myself.
“Independence.” The younger man is quick to answer.
I turn back to the previous page to verify the amount of catch they weighed in at the weigh station this morning.
“You were nearly a hundred pounds below quota,” I point out.
“Lookie here, Trav. She’s been here all of five minutes and already she’s talking about quota like she has a single functioning brain cell in that pretty little head of hers.”
“We had a line snap, lost an entire catch,” the younger man answers, keeping me from spitting out the less-than-professional retort forming on my tongue.
“I’ll make a note of it.” I nod, swallowing back the words I think better of saying as I check my watch. “Marking you out at eight fifty-seven a.m. Names?”
“Travis Richards.”
“Lou Hastings.”
“Times noted,” I say with a nod. “Have a good day, gentlemen.”
“Give me ten minutes and I’ll make sureyouhave a good day,” Lou says in the sleaziest way you can imagine.
“Somehow, I doubt you could make me have a good day even if I gave you a lifetime.” I pin him with a glare.
“You know, around here, we don’t take too kindly to outsiders who think they’re better than us.”
“Oh yeah? I guess it’s a good thing I was born and raised in Wren Cove then, isn’t it?” I tilt my head in challenge. “In fact, perhaps you’d like to verify that information with my father.” I point at my dad, who just happens to be boarding one of the ships docked in the harbor at that very moment.
“You’re Rand’s girl?”
“The one and only.”
“Apologies. I didn’t realize.”
“You’ll have to forgive Lou here. His manners are oftentimes lacking.” The younger one steps in to rescue his much older coworker. “I’m Travis, by the way. Which I guess I already told you. Most people call me Trav.” He smiles and I’m immediately drawn to his eyes, which are the most unique yellowish color. Almost like cat eyes.
Not going to lie, if Travis were in regular clothes and not covered in dirt and what I can only assume is fish guts, he’d definitely be someone I would give a double take to on the streets. He really is quite good-looking, in a rugged fisherman way. Not that I’m interested. I’m not. I mean, in different circumstances, I would be, but alas, my life isn’t quite that simple.
And by not quite that simple, I mean that I’m stuck working for my ex, who hasn’t so much as looked at me in two days and has said as little to me as humanly possible. His training, if you want to call it that, was basically just to throw a laptop at me and give me a stack of ledgers and wish me luck. Luckily for me, my dad works in the industry and stayed up well into the late night hours last night, trying to help me figure it all out.
Under normal circumstances, I would have just asked my boss, but as I think we’ve established, these arenotnormal circumstances.
