“What are you doing?”
He shoves the boat away from the cleats and takes his post behind the wheel, starting up the engine. “Got to go check on something,” he says over his shoulder.
I blink. “You know I’m still here, right?”
“Boston, you talk too much for anyone to forget your presence.”
I hope he can feel my glare through the back of his head. “Where are you taking me?”
“Over to the new intertidal system,” he answers, as if that terminology is common knowledge.
“How long will we be there for?”
“Not long.”
Boat time might be a precious commodity to me, but his deliberately obtuse approach is quickly getting old. “You realize this is basically kidnapping.”
He glances over his shoulder, his expression dry as a desert. “No way in hell I’d kidnap you. I’m not a masochist.”He turns back, pressing the throttle forward. Shouting over the engine, he asks, “Can’t you just go with things?”
No.
Especially with someone who probably wants to strand me on a remote island.
My silence must give away my answer, because Grayson offers a real explanation. “We’ll be back at the dock in thirty minutes. It’s a new farming system I’m testing out, and I made a repair two days ago that I need to check in on. Think of it as a tour extension.”
The warm breeze coasts across my face as I silently digest that, despite his nonchalant wording, Grayson is helping me for the second time in a single afternoon. Completely unprovoked. He isn’t exactly going out of his way, but he’s not leaving me out, either.
He’s being…thoughtful.
Though he seems determined not to make a big deal out of it. So I shouldn’t, either. After all, it’s just aninklingof decency.
He slows the skiff to a crawl as we approach a shallow sand bank tucked close to shore. Sitting on it are three long rows made of short posts, with oyster baskets suspended between them. The bottoms of the baskets are barely submerged.
Grayson cuts the engine, and the machine whirs as he lifts the propeller from the water. Momentum carries the skiff forward, until the water’s so shallow I can make out the white shells scattered on the dark, muddy bottom. The hull gently scrapes the sand, and Grayson hops out, drawing us to a stop. The water only reaches halfway up his rubber boots as he walks to the hull, pulls out an anchor, and tosses it several yards away.
“The boat doesn’t get stuck here?” I ask as he situates the anchor’s line around a cleat.
“Tide’s coming up,” he explains. “And I can shove us off easily enough.” With that, he makes his way over to a post halfway down one of the lines.
He seems completely intent on leaving me in the skiff, like a child in a shopping cart at a grocery store, allowed to look at all the yummy snacks but not touch.
Okay, buddy.
I take off my sandals, roll my jeans to my knees, secure my phone in my back pocket, and gingerly scoot over the boat’s side.
Grayson must hear the tiny splash of my landing, because he pivots. The disgruntled groove between his brows is so deep I can see it from here.
“Get back on the skiff.”
In lieu of a response, I wade toward him. Soft mud oozes between my toes, cool water lapping around my calves, little shell fragments pressing into my feet, just shy of painful.
“There are crabs hiding in the mud,” he threatens.
The statement almost makes me pause.Almost.But I wouldn’t put it past Grayson to scare me with a white lie, just to get his way.His waybeing me out of his hair, stranded on a little boat while he does his rough-tough manly work.
When I continue my advance, he puts his hands on his hips. “You’re gonna cut your feet on a shell, and I’ll have to carry your ass back to the boat.”
“As if I’d let you.”
