Fiona's Flame Read online

  ‘Let me help,’ said a voice above her.

  Abe bent to help her pick up the errant boxes.

  Only one word escaped her lips.

  ‘Yawwmmp.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I thought once that when I became a master knitter, I’d quit being surprised by my stitches. Now I know the surprise is the best part. – E. C.

  The woman wasn’t speaking English, as far as Abe could tell.

  ‘’Scuse me?’ he said.

  ‘Flamminjol.’

  ‘Couldn’t have said it better myself.’ Abe was still worried. Had she had a stroke? He examined her face. Neither side gave the droop he would expect of a stroke victim. She straightened, and all her limbs seemed to be working. For a second, his glance got hung up on her rack – nicer than he would have predicted. Maybe he should have been a little less antisocial all these years instead of buying his gas outside. But – he could admit it – when she’d bought the filling station and body-shop, making it over into this … whatever it was, with all the flowers and candles and crap, he’d been a little bent out of shape. He’d liked the old station, with Roy who was deaf as a post and didn’t give a crap that the Twinkies on his shelf were seven years old and hard as rocks.

  Roy hadn’t said words that didn’t make any sense, either.

  The girl with the tangled hair said something like, ‘Phmlump,’ under her breath.

  ‘I’m sorry, but could you repeat that, Felicity?’ Didn’t hurt to be polite.

  Her eyes widened. ‘Did you just call me Felicity?’

  ‘Crap. Fiona, I mean …’

  She stared at him and then blew out a breath and spun on her heel, making her way behind the counter.

  ‘I know your name,’ he said hurriedly.

  ‘Now you’re just covering your ass because you think I have a shotgun back here.’

  Abe’s spine jolted. ‘Do you?’

  ‘No. I’ve been robbed twice, and both times the robbers were very polite. I’d rather give my money to a dumb kid than shoot one.’ She narrowed her eyes again. ‘Though I don’t know why I’m telling you that. I like people to think I’m armed.’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Okay. Thank you.’ Her cheeks colored prettily and Abe wondered again why he’d been stubborn about not coming inside the store.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m Abe Atwell.’

  Fiona of Fee’s Fill laughed.

  Jesus, the woman laughed. What the hell did she know about him that would make her do that?

  ‘Is everything all right?’ He didn’t like this feeling, this not knowing which direction their exchange would take next.

  ‘Fine,’ she giggled. ‘Fine. Yeah, I know who you are. I’m Fiona Lynde. Not Felicity.’ She stuck out her hand. ‘You can call me Wrench.’

  Her small hand was cold in his. ‘Do people really call you that?’

  ‘No one. Not one single person. I’ve been trying to get it to catch on for years, but somehow it hasn’t yet.’

  ‘You don’t look like a Wrench.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she agreed with a sigh.

  Still feeling off-kilter, Abe said, ‘So. I just came in to say hello.’

  Another giggle greeted this. ‘You did?’

  He nodded. ‘And to invite you out for a whale-watching trip.’

  She stopped laughing. ‘Excuse me?’

  Oh! Did she think … Hurriedly, he said, ‘Not like a date, not like that.’

  Fiona grabbed for a broom that stood behind the register and started jabbing at the floor with it. ‘Of course. I knew that.’

  ‘Just a trip out on my boat. I run tours, you know.’

  She met his eyes and something strange lurched under Abe’s feet, as if she’d jabbed his boots with her broom. Which she hadn’t.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘Thought maybe you’d want to watch the whales. Maybe talk about the lighthouse proposal. You know, since we both have ideas.’

  She tilted her head, and for the first time was still.

  ‘Just to talk.’

  ‘About the lighthouse?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He glanced down at his boots, noticing for the first time how dirty they were.

  ‘Not to state the blindingly obvious, but we have different ideas,’ Fiona said.

  ‘We do. Guess I just thought it might be worth speakin’ about.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Okay,’ Fiona said.

  ‘Yeah?’ Relief coursed through him. ‘Okay, then. Great. That’ll be great. I think you’ll like it. We’ll have a good time. Most of the tourists do. Not that you’re a tourist.’ What, did he suddenly talk too much when he was nervous, also? ‘I’ll go now, I guess. Before you shoot me or something.’

  She had a great dimple when she smiled.

  As Abe left, he noticed he was smiling, too.

  Fiona Lynde didn’t look one little bit like Roy who used to own the filling station. Not one little bit. Abe was categorically opposed to unnecessary change, but this one might be okay. Might be just fine.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Wool is our water. – E. C.

  Whale-watching was such a tourist thing that Fiona had never considered doing it, not even once. For that reason, and the fact that she couldn’t trust herself not to fall overboard while anywhere near Abe from sheer nerves alone. Plus, she just wasn’t that great on boats. Once she’d spent four hours hurling over the wooden edge of a rowboat on a clear, flat day at the lake. That had been a pretty terrible first and last date with a doctor, who surprisingly turned out to be not so great with vomit.

  But she was going on this trip today, seasickness be damned. Boy howdy, how embarrassing would getting sick be? And in front of Abe. But the last time she’d tried taking a seasickness pill, she’d had a reaction and practically passed out on her friend’s dinghy, and Fiona didn’t want to miss this trip. She’d only ever seen whale spouts from shore, the faraway plumes of water that signaled their migration. In Tillie’s Diner, Fiona had often heard the tourists talking about the trips they’d just been on. ‘Oh, John, did you see it when it flipped?’

  ‘Breached, Martha.’

  ‘Whatever. I thought we were going to die. It was amazing.’

  They always looked electrically excited, eyes still bright, their hair and jackets blown askew. Fiona wanted to be one of them.

  She stood on the dock, reading Abe’s sign over and over, trying to get up the nerve to move forward. Instead of boarding, she pulled her black cowboy hat lower and stuck her hands into her jean pockets. She should have worn gloves, probably. It was a pretty day, clear and sunny after the rain that squalled itself out last night. But it was cold. Usually the fog that socked in the cove warmed the air just inland, but with the day’s clarity also came the chill. It had been freezing overnight, and when Fiona had pulled up her bay door at work this morning, she’d had to crack ice on the metal. She’d started the small space heaters and when Stephen arrived she’d instructed him to stay inside the store as much as possible. They had no body-work scheduled, just two interior details which he could do between customers, so Fiona had been able to leave him in charge. He was a good kid. Fiona was glad every day she’d listened to her gut three years before when a skinny eighteen-year-old boy barely taller than her shoulders had turned up with a black eye, needing a job. ‘I can do anything with my hands,’ he’d said, and he’d said it exactly the same way Fiona always had. ‘And I’m trustworthy.’ Anyone who had to say that out loud hadn’t been thought so at one point.

  Fiona, using his deep-set dark eyes to judge by, had chosen to believe him. She’d given him the job – and the keys for the bank drop – on the first day. Those same dark eyes had telegraphed the gratitude he’d never found words for. He’d never needed to. She knew.

  Stephen had crashed on the couch in the garage for the first six months, always telling her he’d just worked too late on his sculptures the night before and hadn’t had time to go ‘home�
�. He wore one shirt while the other one hung drying in the bathroom. He was incredible with his hands, an ironworker from a family of giant men who hadn’t trusted the runt to work with them. The enormous items he made in the back – chickens with body armour and robots with microwaves for hands – sold so well on commission at the shop that they paid for his apartment now. He was saving for arts school. Fiona force-fed him tuna salad sandwiches and he always thanked her, even though he knew he didn’t have to anymore. Stephen felt more like family than an employee. And it was nice that she didn’t have to worry about the shop when she wasn’t there.

  Now, as Fiona stood on the dock reading Abe’s sign one more time as though it might have changed, waves smashed underneath her. The dock itself didn’t sway – the town had rebuilt it five years ago, so it was sturdier than the old pier Fiona had grown up fishing from – but each wave still thudded with a force that Fiona felt through her boots.

  ‘You going on this trip, too?’ The male voice behind her was cheerful.

  Fiona turned, nodding.

  The tourist was short and stout, firmly in the latter part of his middle-aged years. He wore nothing but a brilliant blue and red Hawaiian shirt, a pair of long shorts and flip-flops. His belly was round and his short white hair stuck straight out from his head. Inwardly, Fiona groaned. He’d be the talkative kind. She could tell by the way he was already bouncing on his toes. He’d also be the frozen kind in about one minute. Tourist popsicle.

  ‘Us, too.’ He gestured at the woman and young man behind him. ‘We’re going. Been waiting years for this. Junior here, he’s got a thing about whales.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘Did you have to wait a long time for reservations? Man, we were on the wait list for ages. This is the best ride, if you read the Yelp reviews. The captain’s supposed to be a hoot.’

  Abe? A hoot? With difficulty, Fiona kept her eyes from straying to the boat’s deck. Abe was so sexy it should be illegal, to protect the innocent. Tall. Oh, so broad. He had sadness lurking in the depths of his clear blue eyes.

  But a hoot? Abe Atwell didn’t seem the comedic type.

  ‘Bob,’ the man said, sticking his hand out. His handshake was surprisingly emphatic. ‘This is my wife, Robin. And that’s the Beast.’ He gestured at the teenager.

  ‘The Beast?’ Fiona smiled in the boy’s direction, but he didn’t meet her gaze. Instead, he shuffled his feet in place, rocking slightly, keeping his eyes up and to the right.

  ‘His name’s Robert, but he answers to Junior, too. I call him the Beast because he’s horrible. A worse son, a man never had. Plagues me half to death. I might just chuck him overboard, I’m thinking. Go home without him.’

  His words were harsh, but Bob’s voice was warm and he chucked his son on the shoulder, earning a fierce smile that blazed across the boy’s face.

  ‘He’s developmentally disabled,’ said the woman, slight and stoop-shouldered. There was no apology in her voice.

  Bob said, ‘I like to say he’s touched! It’s a much more useful term, don’t know why they won’t let us say it anymore.’ He grinned at Fiona. ‘He’s touched by angels, that’s what I like to think. He sees and hears things that we don’t, that’s for sure, and what he sees seems pretty great.’

  Junior, who was as wide as his father but at least three inches taller, watched a seagull land on a light post overhead. As Fiona followed his gaze, she noticed for the first time how very white-blue a gull’s wing was. She’d always thought of them as dirty white, but the bird practically reflected the sky.

  ‘Look, there he is – the captain. I met him yesterday,’ Bob said proudly.

  Fiona gripped the railing.

  Abe Atwell threw a length of rope around a post and drew the boat up more snugly against the dock. Zeke Hawkins was on his heels, skidding a long metal ramp onto the pier.

  A few more clusters of people joined the group waiting on the dock – most of them tourists carrying binoculars and cameras with telephoto lenses.

  ‘Welcome aboard the Rising Hope,’ called Abe and unlocked the gate, swinging it open.

  Was it Fiona’s imagination or did his gaze linger a little longer on her than it did on the others?

  No. She was seeing things now.

  She would be cool today. Collected. Smart. Lightly humorous, but not obnoxiously so. Not like this was a date, duh. Abe Atwell, according to town gossip, hadn’t really dated anyone since Rayna Viera jilted him at the altar eleven years ago. Everyone knew that Rayna had moved on and that Abe hadn’t. It was part of town lore. While Abe waited at the top of the aisle, Rayna had already been on the back of hardware store owner Tommy Viera’s motorcycle, racing to Vegas for a quickie wedding.

  ‘Okay, y’all. Listen up.’ Abe gave a short safety spiel. To Fiona’s surprise, he was funny. ‘When you put your life vest on, don’t forget to do up this clip on the side, see this right here?’ He looked around the small group. ‘Pull it nice and tight. If you fall into the drink, you’ll look thinner in the water that way. See, compression can be a good thing.’ He showed them where the life preservers were and how to hold on to the rail without falling over if the boat suddenly pitched.

  Junior was the only one with a comment. ‘I don’t want to wear this.’ He plucked at the webbing that went across his chest.

  ‘You have to, honey,’ said Robin.

  With a tug on the strap, Bob said to his son, ‘Hey, Beast, you fall in the water and you’re done for. I can’t swim and I didn’t buy the rescue package from the man. Can’t afford to get you back, so keep your vest on.’

  Junior continued clicking and unclicking the clasps.

  ‘Come on, Junior. You can do it.’ His mother nervously patted the vest and pushed his hands down to his sides.

  Abe stepped forward and said, ‘Hey, buddy, who’s your favorite superhero?’

  Junior’s hands stilled and he said without hesitation, ‘Spiderman.’

  ‘Nice. I like him too. So your favorite colors are red and black, I bet.’

  Junior nodded hard.

  ‘Beast!’ boomed Bob. ‘He’s got your number!’

  ‘Okay, hang on.’ Abe lifted a seat and moved a life preserver, digging under it. ‘Here it is. Go ahead and take off that one you’re wearing, okay?’

  Robin unclipped Junior’s vest and handed it to Zeke.

  ‘Check this out.’ Abe held up a red one with black webbing. ‘This is the most special one I have, and it makes you into an honorary Spiderman while you’re on board.’

  ‘Wow. Okay. Okay.’ Junior reached for it and put it on without assistance.

  ‘That doesn’t mean you can climb anything, though,’ Abe said.

  Fiona watched Robin’s face relax.

  Abe continued, ‘When Spiderman is on a boat, his web powers are deactivated because of all the water underneath. So you can’t climb, but that’s no biggee, right? You’re still protecting us?’

  Junior nodded again, that hard, certain nod.

  ‘Excellent.’ Abe looked around. ‘Everyone ready to spot some whales?’

  Fiona liked the sound of his voice.

  Damn it, she liked it so much.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Knit outside. Let people watch you being so interesting and so clever. – E. C.

  The water was smooth on their way out of the bay, for which Fiona was grateful. She hadn’t been on many boats, but she’d been on enough to know she hated the lurching of her stomach and the sick hollow feeling at the base of her skull when the waves were set too close together. The farther apart the swells rolled in, the better she usually felt, and today the boat moved leisurely through the water.

  What was she actually doing out here, anyway? Abe had lured her with the promise they’d talk about the lighthouse – hell, he obviously didn’t know she’d have come on his boat if he’d asked her to swab the decks – but he’d been busy ever since they pulled out of the dock.

  Until now. ‘How you doing, Fiona?’

  S
he turned her head and felt her stomach swim up to her gullet. ‘Fine.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Just fine.’

  ‘Zeke, let me take that for a minute. Fiona, come stand with me?’

  Abe took the wheel and Fiona had to wonder if there was a sexier thing for a man still wearing clothes to do. His hands were huge, his fingers long and strong around the wood. He stood with his legs apart on the deck, the wheel looking like an extension of his body, as though he were a tree and it was a limb.

  Fiona smiled and pushed her hat down more tightly onto her head.

  ‘Scared it’s going to fly away?’

  ‘That’s not what I’m scared of.’

  Abe gave her another of those looks. One hand on the wheel, he dug his other hand into his pocket and pulled out a strip of pills. ‘You’re green. Take a Dramamine.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  He quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘I recognize that look. You wanna know where the barf bags are?’

  No. She did not. ‘Oh, all right, give it to me.’ She swallowed the pill dry.

  ‘That should kick in quickly. Just breathe deeply through your nose till then, okay?’

  Abe didn’t make speeches as they moved farther out, he was just doing his job, steering the boat. His legs seemed to absorb the motion so that he was standing perfectly still as the boat moved around him, letting the group ooh and ahh over the view of the land behind them.

  ‘You used to live there, right?’ He pointed at the lighthouse.

  ‘How did you know that?’ He’d barely known her name the other day.

  ‘It looks good from out here,’ he said, not answering the question.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Fiona.

  ‘You don’t agree?’

  To her, it looked the same as it always had. A leaning, hazardous pile of wood that would eventually collapse, probably hurting someone on the way down. ‘It looks dangerous.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Abe, the wind whipping back his thick, coal-black hair. ‘Looks solid to me. Looks safe.’