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“You’re still a kid to me,” he muttered.
Cassius and Romeo had basically raised me after my mom died when I was eleven. They were my uncles, but also father figures, and best friends, a sometimes strange mix of roles that had leaned heavily in one direction or another and then swayed back the other way over the years.
Cassius, being the elder of my mom’s brothers, leaned more toward being a father figure, whereas Romeo, as the baby of the family, was more of a protective older brother. And my confidante. I told Romeo almost everything, within reason of course.
There was also the small matter of Cassius naturally being a grumbly bear of a dude, and so he’d happily taken it upon himself to scare the bejesus out of any males who looked at me the wrong—or according to me, right—way over the years. And Romeo. Well, Romeo tended to stay mostly out of my love life, likely in part because his own was already quite the time commitment. They were both so different, even if we were all similar in that we had the same black hair and blue eyes of the Casteel clan.
The bottom line was that I loved them both and because of them, I had survived the wreckage of my mother’s unexpected death. Because of them, I had family, and stability, and love.
The squeak of the door sounded, and I looked up as Romeo entered as if my thoughts had summoned him. Cassius turned his way and Romeo stared at us over a box in his arms, his expression registering surprise. “What are you two doing here?”
My mind scrambled to come up with a decent excuse for the reason I was in the bar this early, but before I could concoct a plausible story, Cassius said, “My boat got caught up in a squall from that storm last night. It’s a total wreck.”
I blinked, sucking in a breath. “What?” I practically dropped the mug I’d just picked up, the bang startling me even though I’d been the one to make it. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’ve been here jabbering and brewing coffee and your boat wrecked? Are you okay?”
Romeo set the box of what I now saw was a case of whiskey on the bar, and then took a seat at the barstool next to Cash. “Shit, man, how much damage?”
“I’m okay,” he said, rubbing at his eye. I gently moved his hand away so he wouldn’t make it worse, because now that I was closer, it looked like he’d scratched his cornea pretty bad, though that was obviously the least of his problems. As for me? I felt awful. I’d been here sexing up a customer while my uncle was braving a storm at sea that might have killed him. No wonder he looked exhausted. I’d assumed he’d just had a late night, but no, he’d been battling Mother Nature. “But my boat is not okay. The damage is pretty severe.”
“Fixable?” Romeo asked.
Cash grunted. “Yeah. But it’ll take about eight weeks. At least we’ll be back up in time to set the traps.”
I nodded. The fall lobster season brought in the most money, so that was good.
Romeo put his hand on Cash’s shoulder. “I’d suggest you wait tables around here, but I’m afraid you’d scare off the customers,” he said, his lip quirking.
“Funny,” Cash muttered.
I huffed out a laugh as I pictured Cash lumbering between the tables as he balanced trays of drinks. No, Cash had been formed to plant his feet solidly on the deck of a ship and shout orders at his crew of fishermen. I knew I could speak for Romeo when I said that neither of us would foist him on the clientele at Cakes and Ale.
I picked up the mug still sitting on the bar and poured a cup of coffee and placed it in front of Cash who wrapped his beefy hands around it so that it looked like a child’s teacup. Then I poured a second cup for myself and looked at Romeo and inclined my head in question. “No, thanks,” he said.
Romeo picked up the box of liquor and brought it behind the bar and began unpacking it as Cash and I sipped our coffee. My gaze caught on the photo of my mom hung on the wall behind the bar. She was standing at the edge of the docks, the sea shimmering behind her, smile as bright as the sun. I took another sip of coffee, my eyes drifting over her shoulder where the sky kissed the water. Beyond the dock my mother stood on, beyond the water behind her, somewhere under that wide-open sky, there was something drawing me. Even now, looking at a photograph, I felt the smallest twinge of that pull that had plagued me for as long as I could remember.
I looked up to see Romeo watching me as he unpacked the bottles and placed them on the shelf. “I know that look,” he said.
“What look is that?”
“The one that makes you seem as if you’re a million miles away even though you’re standing right beside me.” He set another bottle down. “That pull?” he asked.
I didn’t deny it, conceding with a nod. I’d told Romeo about the feeling I couldn’t describe. I’d asked him if he remembered my mother talking about something similar since she’d spent some time away in a small town several hours from here, before she had me. Had she felt a pull too? Toward an unknown something that she couldn’t name? I sighed. Whether she’d found a form of it or not, I couldn’t say. All I knew was that she’d gotten pregnant and returned to Mud Gulch to live out the remainder of her days, far too short though they had turned out to be.
My gaze moved back to the photograph of my mother’s beautiful face. If you can, send me a sign? I asked her in my mind. Because suddenly, I had this feeling that time was slipping through some fateful hourglass. Or maybe it was just the despondence of watching Ivy League walk away, even though I’d known very well that we were only meant to experience a few brief hours.
I brought the mug to my lips and took a sip, my eyes moving away from my mother’s photograph to look out the window, picturing Gage Buchanan as he’d disappeared down the docks and feeling strangely that he’d taken more with him than I knew how to explain.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gage
I shifted restlessly in the lounge chair and then raised an arm and put it behind my head as I stared out at the shimmering pool in front of me. The water rippled under the patio lights, and my gaze moved from the turquoise of the deep end to the clear water covering the pool stairs. The varying blues were all…wrong.
They were nothing like her eyes.
I let my head fall back on the lounge chair as I stared up at the star-studded sky. Damn it, stop thinking about her and her eyes. What is wrong with you? I was already restless, and thinking of a woman I’d had a one-night stand with who lived in a town hours away was totally unproductive.
And completely confounding.
