I suppose so. Good luck, Jess.”
Dan had a feeling the Rodeo committee would have made him retire even if he hadn’t voluntarily backed out of the official competition; he’d won the last four years in a row.
Champion. Yeah, that’s what he was. The Snook Rodeo champion. The fishing god.
“Dan, you look like an ant,” his father Hal said as he paused by the boat. Not many people remembered that Hal was Dan’s dad. Not even Hal and Dan. Hal had only been seventeen when his girlfriend took off for Las Vegas—and left their baby with him. Even when Dan was just a kid, they were more like friends than father and son. So much so that Hal preferred to be called by his name than “Dad.” “I just don’t feel like a dad,” he’d said when Dan was six. Dan had agreed. Even Hal’s mom, Granny, hadn’t been the typical grandma.
As usual, Hal looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. “You’ve checked that cooler five times. Are you brewing your own beer in there, or what? I haven’t seen you this edgy in a long time, and you ain’t even competing.”
“I’ll still catch more fish than you, even if they don’t count.” Better to divert the conversation than admit he was restless.
Hal wagged his finger and laughed that deep laugh of his. “Put your fish where your mouth is, buddy. See you on the water.”
He gave Hal a halfhearted wave, and then caught himself checking the poles again. He didn’t like this restlessness. It had started a few weeks ago, when he’d seen Cassie’s picture in the paper. His ex-wife, the woman he’d woken up next to for seven whole months, and there was her picture, as though she were a virtual stranger.
He didn’t know she’d gotten into marketing, but she’d won some kind of award for one of her campaigns. He’d started thinking about her, wondering what else she’d been doing in the last five years, like getting married, and whether she still had Sammy.
Whether she thought about him.
Her beautiful face smiled at him from the refrigerator door every morning when he fixed his egg sandwich, and every evening when he checked to see what leftovers were waiting within.
Those seven months had been crazy, full of stormy seas and lightning. Now his life was on an even keel, no waves, nice and calm just the way he liked it. Or the way he should like it. They’d had little more to their name than a marriage license, yet he’d been happy. In love for the first time. For the only time. He hadn’t realized it until he’d seen her picture. The damned of it was, he was still in love with her. And so he’d put his plan into motion….
IT WASN’T A DECENT HOUR for any human being to be up and about, and already the Southwest Florida summer heat and mugginess drenched the air. Cassie and Pam stepped out of the one status symbol in Cassie’s life, if you didn’t count its ancient age: her buttercup-yellow Mercedes-Benz. A banner over the Naples City Dock’s entrance rippled in the breeze as pink light seeped across the eastern sky like a wine stain.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Pam said, taking in the men carting fishing gear and cases of beer.
“It’s the only idea I have. Besides—”
“I know, I know, you’re no quitter. I’ll bet that’s your bedtime mantra.”
“So what if it is?” Cassie lifted her chin. “It’s better than living your life on the wind.”
“Have you heard from Andromeda lately, speaking of?”
Cassie laughed. “Last I heard, she was living on a boat with some young scuba diving instructor down in the Dry Tortugas.” Her mother had legally changed her name from Bernadette to Andromeda, after the wife of Perseus. Oddly enough, she’d named her daughter after Cassiopeia, Andromeda’s mother.
Cassie tucked her curls over her ears and leaned in the car. “Come on, Sammy. Hope you’re up for a day on the boat.” She scooped her Yorkshire Terrier into her large bag. His little bell jingled pleasantly as he settled in. “I wonder if he remembers when Dan and I used to take him out on the boat.” She nudged away the annoying softness in her voice. “You liked that, didn’t you, boy?” She touched her nose to Sammy’s little wet one, then tapped him down into the bag. “Stay hidden. Don’t want to turn off any potential boaters.”
“And speaking of that, I can’t believe you’re actually wearing shorts.”
“I decided to take my chances.” She glanced down at her skinny legs. “Men, be afraid. Be very afraid,” she intoned, making Pam giggle. “All right, let’s go fishing for a fisherman.”
Once they walked through the entrance, they found the tournament sign-in area. So had fifty other men who were standing in line, not to mention many others milling around. Voices and laughter rivaled footsteps echoing on the wood planks of the pier. Everyone was trading jokes and patting backs, all that manly kind of thing. She tried to dredge up all that fury she’d felt yesterday to stave off the nervousness.
“Having second thoughts?”
Cassie lifted her chin. “No way, uh-uh.” They both knew she was lying and left it at that. She popped a butter rum in her mouth and slipped her hand in the bag to scratch Sammy’s head.
“You are nervous, aren’t you?” Pam said a few minutes later.
“Why?” She peered over the rim of her sunglasses. “I’m making noises, aren’t I?”
“Sucking furiously on those things is a dead giveaway.”
Cassie anchored the candy ring against the roof of her mouth and scanned the boats, the crowds and the fishing poles spearing the air.
Pam leaned closer. “It occurs to me that despite your claims of sensibility, this whole thing is extremely impulsive. Might I remind you of the last time you did something really impulsive and what trouble that got you into. And I’m not talking about the limbo contest that sent you to the chiropractor. Or dyeing your hair black. Or…”
Cassie’s gaze skipped to the next boat, and that’s when she saw him. “Dan,” she said on a breath.
“Exactly. Look at these men. You don’t even know them. Once they have you alone on their boat, they could take you out to the horizon and ravage you and…good heavens, why are you smiling?”
Dan McDermott, with his brown hair lit reddish by the sun, white T-shirt moving in the breeze and muscular, tan legs. Her canvas tote dropped to the wooden planks, and she leaned to the side when Pam darted in front of her so as not to let Dan out of her view for a second. She even heard bells! A couple of men stopped to talk to him, and Dan ran his fingers through his hair and laughed. Lordy, when had he gotten so gorgeous?
She blindly reached for Pam’s arm, unable to utter anything other than a sound vaguely resembling a whimper. She tried again to reach Pam, and then had to wrench her gaze away to find that Pam wasn’t even standing there. Then she remembered Pam darting in front of her, and as her gaze sought Dan again she felt annoyed that her friend wasn’t there when Cassie really, really needed to verify that she wasn’t imagining Dan, that he was really there, that—
“Good grief, woman, didn’t you notice that you dropped your tote bag and your little fuzzball led me on a merry chase between twenty pairs of hairy legs?”
Cassie blinked, taking in a breathless Pam holding a panting Sammy. So that’s where the bells came from! She opened her mouth, but her voice still wasn’t cooperating. Dan was waving goodbye to the men and resuming whatever it was he was doing that required him to bend over and show off that cute little butt of his.
“Hello-o-o?” Pam waved her hand in front of Cassie’s face. “What are you grinning like a she-devil for?”
Was she grinning? She couldn’t even feel her face, just her heart pounding louder than a rock and roll drummer. It’s only Dan, she tried to tell herself, that guy you were married to, but some other part of her was making her feel the way she had the first