Chapter 5

“My crew is my family, Kirk. Is there anything you would not do for your family?”

Khan, Star Trek Into Darkness

Hope only lasted a couple of hands before escaping the god-awful fog that filled Kevin and Chuck’s room. She’d done what Ronan told her and opened the window, but if she’d known what kinds of smells she was going to be subjected to, she never would have gone down there in the first place.

In an attempt to get as far away from the smell as possible, she headed back outside, where her lungs heaved in gulps of the freshest air they’d ever breathed. It wasn’t that she was hoping to find Ronan still out on the porch, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t a little disappointed to find nothing but his empty mug.

She wasn’t sure what to expect from him when she’d come out earlier, because up to that point the day had been a bit of a roller coaster, but just when she’d started to think he was going to be gruff and brusque, he surprised her by opening up a little.

He’d actually been friendly, and when he laughed…yeah, that threw her for a bit of a loop. Partly because of the way it came out of him so easily, but mostly because of the way it rumbled through her and cranked her pulse up a few notches.

And when they’d both stood up—well, she didn’t know what the hell happened there. She’d be the first to admit that she hadn’t exactly looked him in the eye a lot since stepping off the plane earlier, but that was because every time their eyes did meet, something happened to her.

No, not just something; it wasn’t as if she’d never been attracted to a guy before. It was no surprise to her that Ronan was so good-looking; she’d known it from the first time she’d seen those pictures in the file. But his attractiveness multiplied tenfold when his eyes softened, which was why she made a point of avoiding direct eye contact with him whenever possible.

The last thing she needed was to let any of them know that every time those green eyes locked on hers, she had to fight back a nervous giggle, as if she were sixteen again.

You’re a professional, for the love of God. Get a grip.

Right. In this business, good-looking actors were a dime a dozen, and she’d never had trouble with any of them, had never wondered what it would feel like to have any of them kiss her, and had never come so close to reaching her hand out and smoothing her fingers over any of their frowns.

And she sure as hell hadn’t spouted so many stupid things at any of them.

Sighing, Hope leaned her hip against the railing. She didn’t mean to keep spewing stupid facts at Ronan and had in fact managed to keep most of them at bay the whole time she’d been out there on the step with him, but when he’d turned to leave, the whole canary thing erupted out of her.

And given the way her own canary-like pulse had been pounding then, she couldn’t have possibly picked anything worse to say at that moment. Thankfully, all evidence of her own condition stayed hidden behind her scarf.

Yeah, real smooth, Hope.

It was a good thing he wasn’t out on the porch now, because God only knew what else she’d say. That didn’t stop her from peering through the darkness, though, just in case he was out there somewhere, because if he was, she wanted to be ready; she wanted to have at least a couple of normal things to say to him. Things like how the rain was supposed to pick up again during the night or how beautiful the flowers in the porch baskets were. Or, instead of forcing them through painful small talk like that, maybe she could strike up a conversation about the state of the economy or how, even after reading it three times, she still couldn’t figure out why so many people loved The Catcher in the Rye.

Yeah, she mused. Pick one of the most beloved novels of all time and expound on how much you hate it. Great idea.

A better idea was to take herself back inside before Ronan showed up at all. After a couple of more lung-cleansing breaths, she picked up his mug and took it through to the kitchen, but as she set it in the sink, an odd thought hit her.

Besides the glass of water he had with dinner, the only thing he’d drunk all day was coffee. When Hope and the crew first arrived, Jessie welcomed them with tall glasses of Guinness, which they’d used to toast with, but Ronan headed straight to the coffeepot instead.

Even during dessert, after all the work he must have put into the crêpes Suzette, lighting it up and then extinguishing it, he didn’t take so much as nibble, and that was just crazy because, without question, that dish was the best damn thing Hope had ever tasted.

So, unlike his brothers, Ronan O’Donnell didn’t drink. That was interesting. And curious, only because there hadn’t been any mention of it in the notes Luka had given Hope. Granted, when Hooked filmed here last fall, the entire focus of the show had been out on the boats with Finn and Liam, so it was entirely possible the crew hadn’t noticed. But Hope did, and as much as she wanted to simply dismiss it, she couldn’t, because when she’d sat down next to Ronan on the stairs, he’d tucked something into his pocket—something that looked like a bronze-colored coin.

She hadn’t given it a second thought at the time, but now…

Now she couldn’t help but think it looked an awful lot like the one Luka carried, the one she’d received a couple of months back to mark her tenth year of sobriety. Hope didn’t get a good look at the one Ronan was holding, so maybe it was nothing, but if he was in recovery, that would explain why he wasn’t drinking and it would also explain why he had the coin.

But if that’s what it was, he should have noted it on the medical papers they all filled out. As general and nonspecific as those forms were, for insurance purposes they did require people to list all medical conditions, and Ronan hadn’t written a single thing.

Did that mean he didn’t actually have any health issues, or did it mean he just didn’t want anyone to know?

Shit.

If she didn’t ask him about it and something happened, she’d be in crap up to her eyeballs with Luka, but if she did ask, she risked damaging the fragile peace she’d only begun to build with Ronan—and if she did that, there’d be no way in hell he’d agree to sign on for the second half of the season. Wouldn’t that be a dandy thing to have stamped on her résumé?

Hooked Accomplishments: Pissed off the entire cast in the first twenty-four hours, ensuring unemployment for all. Score!

Blinking her mind clear (sort of), she left the mug and headed straight down to her room, where she flopped on the bed and stared up at the ceiling until, just before drifting off, she made her decision.

She’d keep an eye on things and reassess in a week or so.

In the meantime, she needed to focus on the job at hand, and over the next few days, that’s what she did. There were always technical glitches that needed to be figured out, like faulty connections that refused to be fixed and memory cards that were full of formatting problems, but she’d allotted plenty of time for those issues and made sure she’d come prepared. Everything from zap straps to Krazy Glue and more—whatever her crew needed, she had, and it didn’t take long for Kevin and Chuck to come to appreciate her handy bag of tricks.

And one of the perks of being über-prepared was that it freed up her evenings to enjoy the quiet out on the front porch. She was used to quiet nights in her apartment, but this kind of quiet was a whole different thing because…well, it wasn’t actually quiet.

Soft swells rocked the boats gently against their moorings before lapping the shore, and from somewhere near the north trail, an owl hooted, short and quiet, barely noticeable over the steady low-pitched drones of what had to be four or five different frogs croaking through the darkness.

And all around the Buoys, a light evening breeze turned every tree, every bush, into nature’s wind chimes. So, no, it wasn’t exactly quiet. But it was unbelievably peaceful, and that was so much better.

It was the perfect way to spend her Friday night.

The door whooshed open behind her a second before Jessie’s voice sounded.

“I think I saw—found her!”

“Hey.” Hope twisted around and smiled as Kate followed Jessie outside. “Did you need me for something?”

They both joined her on the steps, moving to the lower ones so Hope didn’t have to crane her neck.

“No—” Kate stopped, laughed quietly. “Well, yeah, I guess so, since this is going to affect you.”

“Affect me how?” There wasn’t even a fraction of a hint on either of their faces, so why did Hope’s nerves start twitching?

“Olivia’s accident sort of threw us all into a bit of a tizzy,” Jessie said, “so we haven’t exactly made ourselves available to do any one-on-one time with you, like we were supposed to.”

“It’s okay, I’ll figure it out.” Hope had originally planned on spending a couple of hours with each of them, learning more about their histories, what made them tick, that kind of thing. But when things went sideways, she’d resigned herself to the fact that she was just going to have to get her interview time with them whenever she could, even if that meant following them around for the next two days or doing it discreetly while guests were milling around the lodge.

“We already did,” Kate said. “Figure it out, I mean. Well, sort of anyway.”

“How’s that?”

“We’re going to give you uninterrupted access to Liam, Finn, and Ro all day tomorrow.”

“All day?” Hope didn’t mean to sound so doubtful, but who were they kidding? It was hard enough getting five minutes with one of them over a meal; the idea that all three of them would sit still for a whole day at the same time—yeah, Kate was dreaming in color.

“All day.” Jessie nodded. “They’re going out fishing together, and you’re going to go with them.”

“What?” Surely to God they had to be kidding. Hope might be in charge of the show, but the only fishing she’d ever done was at the carnival, where the hooks were all magnets and everyone “caught” something.

“It’ll be perfect,” Jessie said. “I mean, it’s not one-on-one, but it’s the best we’re going to be able to offer you at this point.”

“Exactly.” Shivering, Kate tugged the collar of her sweater a little tighter around her neck. “You’ll have the three of them together all day, so you’ll not only be able to ask them all sorts of questions, but you’ll get to see them in their natural habitat.”

That made Jessie laugh. “Like monkeys in the rain forest.”

It was great they could laugh about it, but this was not what Hope had banked on.

“What about you two? Will you be coming with us?”

“No.” Jessie started shaking her head before Hope even finished her question. “We can’t afford to be away from the phone that long; you know how it is. If someone leaves a message and we don’t get back to them right away, we risk losing their business to one of the other lodges that did answer the phone. And Kate has to run over to Port Hardy to pick up supplies.”

“What about Chuck and Kevin?”

“They can go if they want to, sure, but the guys won’t want them filming anything.”

For a fraction of a second Hope wanted to say no, that she’d need at least one camera rolling, but clearly that was just her nerves talking, so she shoved that sliver of jittery panic back down where it belonged and nodded, but not before she confessed.

“I don’t know how to fish.”

Of all the reactions she expected, laughing snorting groans wasn’t one of them.

“God help us,” Jessie chuckled. “A fishing virgin—the three of them’ll think they died and went to heaven.”

“Excuse me?”

Kate’s grin pretty much negated the effect of her rolling eyes. “Nothing makes those guys happier than when they get to show off their Jedi fishing skills to someone who’s never done it before, which means that you, my friend, are in for a long day tomorrow.”

“Despite what the guys think,” Jessie said, glancing around slowly, as if she expected one of them to pop up, “there are perfectly sane people in the world who don’t actually like fishing, so if it turns out that you are one of those people, I’m begging you, for the love of all that is holy, do not tell them that.”

“God no,” Kate groaned. “Don’t even whisper it.”

Hope couldn’t help but laugh at the way they both spoke, as if the whole thing both annoyed and amused them at the same time.

“Okaaay.” Hope dragged the word out a little. “Why?”

“Because they’ll keep you out there until you do like it,” Jessie said. “And ain’t no one got time for that.”

“Exactly.” Kate nodded. “We need to get to work on the kitchen inventory, but the guys’ll pull out of here about seven, so just be down at the boat before then.”

“Do you have a fishing license?” Jessie asked as she started up the stairs again. “No? Come on, I have the link saved on my computer.”

And a few clicks later, Hope was the proud yet somewhat hesitant owner of her very first fishing license.

Kate handed her a paper-filled clipboard and pen. “You can help Jessie and me do inventory, and maybe we can take care of our parts of the interviews while we work.”

“Oh, that’d be great; thanks!” Hope followed them back into the kitchen, where she spent the next few hours listening to the two of them bat O’Donnell stories back and forth.

They started with Kate and Liam’s quickie marriage and divorce down in Vegas—a secret for the better part of a decade, until Kate showed up at the Buoys last spring with the purpose of convincing the O’Donnells to sell. They talked about how Jessie had been working at the Buoys since she was seventeen but she and Finn had never been anything more than friends until last summer.

They talked about Liam’s pitching, about how Finn had been a heavy-duty mechanic up in Fort Mac before plunging oil prices sent everyone scrambling and left him laid off, and they talked about Ronan and his ex-wife and how he’d completely changed after they got married—and not for the better, by the sounds of it.

There were stories about Kate’s and Jessie’s lives outside the Buoys and even a few about Jimmy O’Donnell, whom Jessie had lived and worked with over the years: about how proud he’d been of his boys, how he never expected any of the three of them to take over the lodge, which was why he’d been this close to selling it before he died, and how much he scared Jessie when she first started to work there, mostly because of his size but also because, when he yelled, he rattled the rafters, Jessie swore.

“Ronan didn’t fall far from that tree, did he?” Kate laughed.

“No, he didn’t.” Jessie’s smile, distant but genuine, didn’t last long. “Stubborn as all hell, both so sure their way is the right way, the only way, and both of them usually wrong.”

The whole time they spoke of Jimmy, Hope couldn’t help but feel there was an undercurrent of some kind, something they weren’t saying about him, and whatever it was, it seemed to be a big piece of everything about the Buoys.

By the time they’d finished inventory, Hope’s clipboard had but a few marks on it, because she’d spent most of the time watching Kate’s and Jessie’s expressions as they somehow managed to laugh and make light of everything.

“You ’bout done in here?” Liam leaned in through the doorway, grinning straight at Kate.

“I am now.” She tossed her clipboard on the table, flipped Jessie and Hope a wave, then reached for Liam’s outstretched hand. “So Jessie and I had a great idea about tomorrow.”

Once they’d gone, Hope stacked her clipboard on top of Kate’s and pushed them into the middle of the table.

“I guess I better call it a night if I’m going to be up bright and early.”

They said their good nights and Hope headed downstairs to recruit Chuck and Kevin to going out on the boat tomorrow, but as soon as she started talking, they both shut her down.

“Not a chance.”

“No way.”

“What?” she cried. “Why not? It’s a free day of fishing with the O’Donnells—something other people pay good money for.”

Neither Chuck nor Kevin was the least bit impressed.

“I’ve done more filming on more fishing boats than I even want to think about,” Chuck said. “If I never set foot on one again, it’ll be too soon.”

“Then why did you take this job?”

“Because I’m not on the boats anymore; that’s his gig now. All I have to do is make sure I get the land people on film.”

With a sigh, Hope turned to Kevin. “What about you?”

“I’m going to be spending enough time out on the boats, so if they’re not gonna let me turn the cameras on, I’m keeping my feet right here on terra firma.”

She couldn’t force them because, technically, they were entitled to a day off before filming started, and tomorrow would have to be it; Sunday they were going to do a final run-through with all the equipment and finish up the exterior shots before the guests arrived in the afternoon.

“Fine. I’ll go by myself, but when I land a hundred-pound halibut, you’ll both be sorry.”

“No, we won’t,” Chuck laughed. “ ’Cause you’ll have done all the work and we’ll still get to eat it.”

And then, as if that settled everything, he reached over and bumped his fist against Kevin’s.

Rolling her eyes, Hope left them and stepped back into the hall, trying not to wonder if Ronan was in his room, next to theirs, or if he was drinking coffee on the porch. He hadn’t been out there since her first night at the Buoys, but maybe…

Never mind. She needed to focus on getting ready for tomorrow. Having never been fishing before, she wasn’t entirely sure what she should pack, but a quick Google search set her on the right path, so after dumping her tote bag out on the bed, she spread everything out and started repacking it. Even without Google, she knew the first thing in the bag had to be a couple of Ziploc bags in good working order. On the off chance that she was going to get seasick, she had to make sure she didn’t hurl all over the deck.

Parachute-cord bracelets, hat, sunscreen, first-aid kit, pocket knife, bug spray, deck of cards, raincoat, extra socks and shirt, emergency blanket, flashlight, duct tape, bottle of Advil, some WD-40, a couple of bungee cords, her mini air horn, book, notepad and pen, lip balm…What else? Phone. Right. Because when she did reel in that monster halibut, she wanted photographic proof that she’d been the one to do it.