Two Captains, One Chair: An Alaskan Romantic Comedy (5 page)

I stared at him. 
What?

Ed smiled at me.  “You’ve got another trip in three days, right?  Saturday?”

“Yeah, but—”

He nodded, already starting to back away.  “I’ll see you then.  In the meantime, let me know if I can help in any way with—” he waved his hand at the carnage “—this.”

I was still staring at him, dumbstruck.  I simply didn’t know what to say, so I nodded.

With one last smile, he was gone.

I turned back to the brothers.  Glared at them.

I was still pissed.  Still.  Fucking.  Pissed.  As long as that tree jutted from my collapsed roof, I’d be mad.  And then probably for a long while after.  In fact… it was probably going to take me
years
to get over this.

I stalked toward the two blond idiots, feeling some satisfaction when they scattered like game hens.  “Follow me,” I growled at them.  I led them to my shed, the single unmolested structure on my property, and let the door swing open wide.  “Ladder,” I said, pointing to it.  “Rope.”

I turned on them.  “I want that tree out of my roof, and the hole covered by a tarp, and plastic over all of my windows, by tonight.”  Before they could ask, I pointed in the shed again.  “Tarp,” up on a shelf.  “Visqueen,” a roll of heavy-duty, semi-clear plastic leaning in a corner.  Standard Alaskan equipment.

The skinnier one spoke, tentatively.  “Staple gun?  Duct tape?”

“Yes.”  I pulled two drawers out of the workbench along the left wall, and slapped the items in their hands.  “Get to work,” I ordered.

Then I went inside to assess the damage.

Broken glass.  That’s what caught my eye first.  Glittering sprays across the window sills, the floor, the couch cushions.

I stuck my head back out.  “And I want this glass up by tonight, too!”

“Yes, ma’am,” I thought I heard one of them murmur.

I set out a broom and dustpan while thinking vile thoughts about their ancestors.  But, Helly shared those bloodlines, so…  Well, I had no real idea what’d happened there.  She was a halfway decent human being while those two—

Out one of my broken windows, I glimpsed them standing in the yard, gawking at what they’d done.  Discussing how to approach this mess?

If only I were so lucky.  Hell, they were probably congratulating each other.

Steeling myself, I walked up the stairs and looked into my bedroom.

There was a tree trunk crashed through the ceiling right above my bed.  A tree.  A friggin three-foot-wide cottonwood penetrated a couple feet through the sheetrock, angled from where it had splintered my headboard all the way up to punch through the ceiling on the other side.  I could see daylight through the swath it had cut in my bedroom ceiling.  I could feel a breeze.

Staring at the tree trunk, feeling like I might know the secrets of the universe if only I stared at it long enough, I slipped my phone from my pocket.  Barely looking, still absorbing the surreal scene, I dialed Helly and put the phone up to my ear.

Helly answered on the second ring.  “You make it back to your place yet?”

Still staring at the tree.  “Yeah.”

A long silence filled the phone.  “Suzy?” she finally asked.

I took a ragged breath.

“Oh, shit, Suzy, what did they do?”

“They blew out all my windows, crushed my generator shack, and… crashed a tree through my roof.”

Helly gave that the moment of silence it deserved, then, “You’re not kidding, are you?  How did they even—you know what, never mind, don’t tell me.  What are we going to do to them?  Have them drawn and quartered?  Chinese water torture?  Break something of theirs?  I’m up for it, and I know Gary’d help.”

“No,” I said.  I sat on the edge of the bed, finally turning away from the spectacle.  The far end of my room actually looked soothingly normal.  “I’ve told them they’re going to stay, and they’re going to fix what they broke.  They’re carpenters, right?  They’re the perfect men for the job.”

“Um… the notion’s sound, but… are you sure you want to keep them for another several days?  Every day, every hour, every
minute
, is an opportunity for them to pull more shit like this.  They could sink your boat.  Or set your woods on fire.  Or… shoot something.”

“I’ll take their guns,” I said.  “And I’ll kill them if they go anywhere near my boats.  Seriously.  Kill them.  I’m sorry, Helly, but I’ll do it.  I’ll make you an only child.”

“You’d be doing the world a favor,” she said.  “But you’re forgetting about J.D.”

I shrugged, dismissing her third brother.  “Speaking of boats, you need to come get yours.  I don’t want them to escape before the job’s done.”

I heard her moving around, as if she were already getting up.  “Understandable, and I can’t afford to leave my boat there for a week anyway. Gary and I’ll be down within the hour to get it.  We’ve got some spare building materials—we’ll bring those, too.”

I sighed, and dropped my head forward to pinch the bridge of my nose.  “Thank you,” I said.

What a shitty couple days this was turning into.  Jimmie bails on me, then my gold nugget goes missing, and then my cabin gets partially destroyed while I’m left high and dry without a single orgasm in sight.  I suppose I could demand orgasms as part of the brothers’ penance, but… they’d enjoy it too much.

“You find anything out about Ed?” Helly asked.

I half-laughed and shook my head.  “He’s a nice guy,” I said.  “Ridiculously so, and handy at fixing just about anything.  And he refuses to take payment, ever.”

“Mm-hm,” said Helly.

“If you knew he was this way,” I said, feeling crotchety, “why
ever
would you think he took my nugget?”

“Do you ever get the sense that he’s
too
nice?” Helly asked.

“Yes, actually, I did have that thought.”

“I feel like he’s hiding something.  Or if not that, there’s something plain wrong with him.  No one’s that nice.”

“Hmm.”  She had a point.

“I had a thought,” Helly said.  “What about the airport?  You could ask Dotty if there’s been any unusual traffic.  Heck, you could even call the air services, see what they know.  Only way in and out of here in summer is boat or plane.”

I glanced at the clock on my wall.  8:30.  Which meant two things.  One:  Dotty and Harv were probably in bed by now, and Two: It was going to be a long night for me.  I’d heard some scuffling against the siding I guessed might be the ladder, but the brothers hadn’t even fired up the chainsaw yet.

“I’m getting the mail in the morning,” I said.  “I’ll ask her then.  And ask her about Ed.”

“Good idea.  What about the guides?  They’re always up to something.  Are you going to follow up on them?”

“Helly,” I said, trying very hard not to yell.  “One thing at a time.  It’s supposed to rain tonight, and I’m just hoping your brothers get that tree down and the tarp over the hole in my roof in time to keep it from raining on
me
.  I just want to sleep tonight, and I want them to fix what they broke.”

“I am very sorry that they did that,” she said, her voice tentative.

“It’s all right,” I said with a heavy sigh.  Same bloodlines, but, “Not your fault.  I’ll drop your mail by after I talk to Dotty tomorrow morning, ‘kay?”

As it turned out, the brothers
were
able to get the tree down and a tarp over the hole before it rained.  But did it stop the roof from leaking?  No.

I lay in bed, trying to sleep, as the gaping hole in my roof began to drip.  As the rain continued, the center of the tarp sagged inward.  Water pooled.  Then, began to trickle.

I dashed downstairs to get the tub I kept under the sink.  Feeling miserable, I curled around that tub as water pissed into it from the ceiling.

I couldn’t sleep like this.

I got up, grabbed a bedpost, and tugged.  As expected, it didn’t move.  It’d taken two men to wrestle this bed into place, and that was before the box springs and mattress had been applied.

I stood there for a second, staring at my bed in the wee-hour gloom.  I’d put on new sheets, but they were now spotted with water.  My headboard was splintered, and that blue tarp sagged dangerously through the jagged hole in my ceiling.  For about the dozenth time tonight, I felt like crying.

But crying wouldn’t get me anywhere, so instead, I tugged on the mattress.  I moved the tub onto the box springs, and dragged my mattress over into a dry corner of the room.

I curled up in my damp blankets again, on my side facing toward the wreckage.  After several minutes, I decided I probably was not going to be able to sleep at all.  I had trouble sleeping at the best of times—which
this
was not.

My usual trick was masturbation.  One or two orgasms would relax me to the point where I could drift off.

But now?  Staring at the wreckage that was my bedroom?  I really wasn’t in the mood.

I was tired, and angry, and damp.  Hell, the brothers were probably dryer, out in their borrowed tent, than I was.

That last thought was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  I threw back my blankets, grabbed the mostly-full tub, quickly slid an empty into its place, and stomped down the stairs.  I pushed out my screen door, and stepped into the rain, in nothing but a night shirt.

Between the rain and the heavy fog creeping off the river, I could barely see their tent, which they’d set up in a shady nook at the edge of the trees.  Not that I needed to see it—I’d locate those bastards by
smell
if that’s what it took to exact a little Helly-style revenge.

I didn’t try to move quietly as I crossed my yard.  The rain was loud, covering any sounds I might have made as it slapped against leaves, spattered in mud puddles, and pinged off my roof.

It was a little surreal, really.  I was out at two a.m., in the rain.  I never stayed up till two a.m., and I wasn’t a real fan of being wet, either.

I set the tub down, and unzipped their tent flap.  Inside, they were sleeping, snug as a couple bugs in a rug.  I picked up the tub, swung it back.

And, with a joyous heave, I threw a couple gallons of cold rainwater on them.

One shrieked.  The other howled.  There was instant, flailing, mostly-naked confusion.

I watched for a split second.  Took a mental snapshot.  Then, wearing an evil grin, I faded into the mist.

They’d figure out who’d done it—they’d have to be brain-dead not to—but there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it.  I should say, quite simply, that if they tried, I’d shoot them.  That’s how mad I was.

I curled back up in bed.  And—what do ya know?—I was finally able to fall asleep, rather quickly too, lulled by the memory of their screams.

Chap
ter Four

O
ur little community had mail flown in once a week.  That day or the day after, residents would go and fetch it, usually for themselves as well as their close friends and neighbors.  Mail day had been yesterday.

I left my cabin just before eight in the morning.  I knew traditional post offices didn’t open until nine-ish, but ours was run by a sweet old couple, both of whom were early risers.  Dotty and Harv had been living in that spot, and running that post office, for over forty years.

The post office was upstream, a few minutes past Helly’s slough, and on the left.  I pulled my little boat in along the shore, and noticed the sound of a lawnmower the moment my engine cut out.  I tossed out my anchor, and as I climbed up to the post office—it was a little log affair, technically one room though it had been divided into a front and back—I saw that Harv was out mowing the yard.

He dropped the push mower to an idle as I stopped next to him along the trail.  “G’morning,” he said.  “Here for your mail?”

“Good morning!  Yes, but I was hoping to visit with Dotty a bit.  She around?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, she was baking some something or other.  Scones?”  He scratched his head.

I smiled at him.

“You want Helly’s and your parents’ too?” he asked.

“That’d be great.”

Harv nodded.  “Go on up to the house,” he said, waving his hand.  “I’ll have the mail bagged up and on the porch for ya when you come back through.”

“Thank you,” I called, even as I started toward their cabin.

I rapped on the screen, and Dotty appeared in the dim interior.  She was in a yellow summer dress dotted with rosebuds, her white hair still in curlers.  “Suzy!  You’re a sight for sore eyes, c’mon in dear.  I just made scones.  Oh!  And I have something for you.”  She ushered me inside, and toward a sunny little breakfast nook at the back of the house.  “Sit, sit.  Tea?”

“Yes, please.”

“You like that blackberry sage, right?”  She was already moving toward the kitchen.

“Yes, thank you,” I called.

She bustled into the kitchen, and I heard the click of the stove lighting, the hiss of water in the kettle, and the clink of mugs.  She came back out with a plate of triangular white pastries, which she set on the table, and a flat carton of fruit, which she held out to me.

“What’s this?” I asked, taking it from her.  I could see perfectly well it was peaches—big, round, fuzzy peaches.

She smiled.  “We went to town yesterday evening for a shopping trip to Costco.  They had those on sale, and a little table set up offering samples.  The one I tried was amazing, almost as good as I remember from back home.  Anyway, I bought a flat for myself, and one for you, and a couple more to give out.”

“Thank you, Dotty, this is great.  But maybe I should just take a few…”

“No, no,” she said, pushing the box firmly back into my hands.  “Cook something nice.  I
heard
Helly’s brothers are staying at your place for a few days.”  She tossed a little grin over her shoulder as she disappeared back into the kitchen.  The kettle quit whistling, there was the sound of pouring water, and then she reemerged with steaming tea for both of us.

“How did you know?” I asked as she sat across from me.  I set my peaches on the empty chair between us.

She smiled, her blue eyes glimmering.  “You didn’t think word would get around when they put a tree through your roof?”

“Did Ed—?”

She waved her hand.  “No, but… Ed was at your place?  Tell me about that.”

I settled in with a grin.  If there was a more accomplished gossip on the river than me, it was Dotty.  Which meant, she had information I could use.  I just had to manage to get more out of her than I put in, while at the same time proving I knew more…  It was complicated, and it was a game we played almost every week.

“Ed was helping me on the barge,” I said, “because Jimmie broke his arm.”

Her eyes got wide.  “He did?  Oh dear.  I knew he’d shipped to town, but I thought he was visiting a friend.”

“Nope,” I said, inwardly preening that I knew something she didn’t.  “He rolled his four-wheeler.”

“Well, I’ll have to call and see how he’s doing.  Do you know what kind of break it was?”

I shook my head, now disappointed I didn’t have any of the juicy details.  I hadn’t asked Jimmie questions because I’d been too busy panicking about what I was going to do for help on my barge runs the rest of the season.

“So he didn’t fly out from here?” I asked.  There were few places for small planes on wheels to land in these parts, and the 2000’ runway adjoining Dotty and Harv’s back yard was the most popular of them.

She shook her head.

“Has there been anybody unusual in or out in the last week?” I asked.  Either my gold nugget had been transported via wheel-plane, float plane, or boated in to the landing.  Or it was still here.

“No,” she said.  “Just the mail plane.  Why do you ask?”

I waved my hand, trying to act casual.  “Oh, no reason.”

She snorted.

I drowned my smile in a hearty sip of tea, and then fished out my teabag.  “So, Ed,” I said.  “What do you know about him?”  I knew just asking the question was telling, but I needed any information Dotty had.

She dipped a spoonful of sugar and poured it into her teacup, eyeing me as she stirred it like a lady.  “So, Helly’s brothers,” she countered.  “What’s going on there?”

Uh-oh, my less-than-full-disclosure was biting me on the ass.  I had to give her something.  “I invited them over to take down that tree,” I said.

She continued just to look at me.

“I’d been considering… dating them,” I added.

Her lips twitched.  “‘Dating’…
both
of them?”

Shit, my face was turning red.  I frickin’ hated when it did that.  I prayed for Harv to walk in the door demanding pastries, or a plane to crash outside the window, or just about anything to distract Dotty’s shrewd blue gaze from my telling blush.

A distraction did not come.  “Well… yeah,” I admitted.

She held up her hand.  “Gimme some skin.”

“What?”

“High-five.  Now,” she ordered.

I slapped her arthritic hand.

She chuckled and sipped at her tea.  “If I were forty years younger…”

“And unmarried,” I added.

She shrugged, making me choke on my next sip.

“Anyway, none of that’s happening now,” I said after I’d recovered from my coughing fit.  “That ship sailed when they broke my cabin.”

Dotty nodded.

“Tell me about Ed.”

“Well, he’s much more likely to fix your cabin than to break it,” she said.

“Dotty…”

She sighed.  “All right, all right.  Ed.  Where would you like me to start?”

“Start with Ralph.”

Her brows shot up.  “All right,” she said slowly.  “Ralph was living out here before we built our house.  He moved here running from the law in Texas—”

I knew this story well.  He’d poached some land baron’s steer, and one of his buddies had tattled on him.  When he’d first told me, I’d been surprised that one dead cow could drive someone four thousand miles to a place without indoor plumbing.  He’d said first, that steers are not ‘cows’, second, he’d been young and dumb, and third, he really didn’t want to go to jail.

But apparently he’d really wanted steak.

“—and he was a fishing guide even before most of the lodges existed.  He was a partner in the first, helped open the bar.  He did his thing out here for twenty years before he knocked up a guest’s wife.”

“He…?”

She nodded.  “Yup.  It was a bad scene.  She was gorgeous, but she was crazy as hell.  She had Ed down in Colorado.  She sued for child support.  Ralph counter-sued for custody.  They settled on an arrangement where Ralph had Ed summers, and his crazy mom had him during the winter.”

See, now this was something Ralph had never told me about.  I had no idea why, but in all of our little riverside gossip sessions, he’d never really talked about his son.

“You mean Ed’s been out here since before me?”  How on earth could I not have noticed a shy, dark-haired boy with gorgeous eyes?

“Yup.  Since the very beginning.  Ralph took him everywhere.  He used to go fishing with a baby strapped to his chest.  His clients loved it.”

I shook my head.

“Ed could clean a fish practically before he learned to walk,” she mused.  “Anyway, when he was twelve, his crazy mom decided she didn’t want him after all.  Was getting remarried, and thought it’d be easier without a kid in tow.  It had to’ve been hard on him.”

My mouth was still hanging open when she continued.

“Ralph had a place in town, too, and he put him the rest of the way through public school.  Sometimes Ed was at the house in Anchorage by himself, and when he came back out here those first few years, we didn’t see a lot of him.  I think he’s a quiet sort by nature, but when his mom rejected him, he withdrew a little more.

“When he was seventeen, he went to work for your parents, as you probably remember.”

I shrugged, not wanting to explain that I most certainly had
not
remembered that.  No wonder he’d approached Maria and started washing dishes like he worked there.  Because he
had
.  Wow.

And, yep, my mind went there:  Ed was shy, he was hesitant around women, and he’d been raised out here, where he hadn’t had much exposure to them.

Oh my god
… Could he be a virgin?

Oblivious to my musings, Dotty took another sip of her tea.  “He’s a good boy,” she said.  “Not quite so much a hell-raiser as his father.”

I snorted at the idea of Ed as any sort of hell-raiser.

Dotty gave me a little smile.

“What about the guides?  They been up to anything that you’ve heard?”

Dotty shook her head.  “I don’t know much about the guides, except that most of them are dishonest.”

I nodded.  “Grasping.”

“Money-hungry.  Rob you blind.”

“Worse than car salesmen.”

“Indeed.”

We sat in companionable silence for a few moments.  I cleaned up the crumbs on my plate.  “Thank you for the scone.  It was excellent,” I said.

Dotty was nodding when her husband mowed past the window.  “Oh!  I almost forgot.  I need you to haul something for me.”

“Next trip I’ve got room on is in five days, the twenty-first,” I said.  “Depending on what you need moved, of course.”

She smiled wide.  “A new lawnmower!  My kids got me one of those newfangled riding mowers.”

I nodded.  “I think I’ll have room, but I’ll let you know if not.  Just have it to the landing by then.”

Looking excited, Dotty jumped to her feet and picked up both our plates.  “You still having that party?” she tossed over her shoulder as she took the dishes to the kitchen.

“Yep!”  I chugged my tea and picked up my peaches.

She swept back out, wiping her hands on her apron.  “Harvey hook you up with your mail?”

“He said he’d have it waiting for me.”

“All right then.  You have a good week, Suzy.  Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she said with a wink.

I returned her smile.  “Thank you for the peaches.”

She followed me to the door.  “And I don’t know what you’re planning,” she called after me as I started toward the post office, “but you be nice to Ed.”

I waved an acknowledgement, and scooped up the bag of mail on my way by.  Before climbing into my boat, I called Helly.

“You off?” I asked without any sort of hello.

“Yep,” she said, unfazed.

“Meet me down at the river, I have your mail.”

“Will do!”

I closed the call, zipped myself into my float coat, and motored to her place.  She met me on the beach, hands held out for her mail.

“Back it up,” I said.  “I’m visiting.  I need to use your internet.”

Her lips quirked as she stepped back, giving me room to jump ashore.  “I feel so dirty.  So used.”

“You should.  I have some idea what you and Gary get up to here day after day, all alone.  I’ve heard tell people can hear the orgasmic screams and—I think they said spanking sounds?—clear out on the river.  Sound travels real well over water, you know.”

She blushed even as she helped me with my anchor.  I pulled her little bundle of mail out of the bag and handed it to her, shucked the float coat, and climbed up onto the back of her four-wheeler.  “C’mon,” I said, patting the ripped seat in front of me.

She was leafing through the envelopes.  “No packages?”

“Nope.”

“Damn it.”  She mounted up and dropped the mail into the wooden box that’d been built onto the front rack.

“You expecting something interesting?” I asked as she started us up the trail to her place.