Lured In

Lured In
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Loveswept Ebook Original

Copyright © 2016 by Laura Drewry

Excerpt from
Catch and Release
copyright © 2016 by Laura Drewry

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

L
OVESWEPT
is a registered trademark and the
L
OVESWEPT
colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Ebook ISBN 9780399593741

This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book
Catch and Release
by Laura Drewry. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

Cover design: Diane Luger

Cover photograph: hidesy/iStock

randomhousebooks.com

v4.1

ep

“A fine kettle of fish.”

“I got him!”

“Sorry?” Jessie Todd looked up from her computer monitor and tried to blink Kate Hadley's grinning face into focus, but after two hours of nothing but spreadsheets and formulas, Jessie was lucky she could blink at all. Pressing her shoulders against the back of her chair, she wrapped her right hand around her left wrist and stretched up as high as she could, cursing herself for sitting still for so long. “You got who for what?”

“Sam Ross!” With the phone clenched tight in her fist, Kate practically vibrated with excitement. “You know, from
Hooked
. I got him!”

Oh yeah, Jessie knew exactly who the super-cute, super-popular host of the highest-rated Canadian fishing show was. She also knew there wasn't a fishing lodge on the West Coast that didn't drool at the thought of having him film an episode on one of their boats.

And if what Kate said was true, then having him come to the Buoys would send next year's bookings through the roof. But surely to God Kate must be mistaken.

Please, God, let her be mistaken.

Hooked
only filmed at the big fancy lodges, and while the Buoys certainly had its charm, and you couldn't beat its location tucked into the seclusion of Strip Cove, it was neither big nor fancy.

“What?” Kate asked, her voice wary. “What's that look mean? Finn said cast a wide net, so I did, and we got
Hooked
! Isn't that crazy?”

“Yeah. Crazy.” Licking her lips, Jessie inhaled deeply and tried to keep her voice calm. “But I thought they were filming down in the Gulf of Mexico this season.”

“They
were
.” Kate's grin widened so much she was practically nothing but teeth. “Until they got stopped by some kind of labor dispute—picket lines, protests, the whole nine yards; sounds like a giant mess—so they're back, on the coast looking for new places to shoot the rest of the season.”

“Got any duct tape?” Finn O'Donnell's smooth voice preceded him into the small office by a fraction of a second.

Jessie pulled a new roll from her desk drawer and tossed it at him as Kate turned her blinding smile on him.

“Guess who we got?” Kate gushed. “Go on—guess.”

Standing in his old green rain gear that already boasted at least half a dozen patches, Finn ripped off a piece of tape, which immediately twisted the wrong way and stuck together around his thumb. Cursing quietly, he tried to tug it off and only succeeded in making it worse.

“Who?” He held his thumb out to Jessie, who was already prepared with her scissors.

“Sam Ross! We got him! He'll be here for a few days over the last week in August, and his people said if it all goes well, it could be an annual thing for us.”

Jessie tossed the ruined piece of tape, then took the roll back before Finn wasted the whole thing. “Where?” she asked.

Finn turned around, pointing down to the back of his knee, where he'd somehow managed to rip another hole about an inch away from the last one she'd taped up.

“Did you hear me?” Kate asked.

Jessie stretched the tape over the rip, then gave it a tap for good measure. “All set.”

“Hello?” Kate leaned between them, waving her hands in their faces. “Sam Ross.
Hooked
. They're coming here. You're welcome.”

“Sorry,” Finn mumbled. “That's…great. Really.”

He shot Jessie a quick look, which she hoped Kate wouldn't see. She did.

“Yeah, I thought so, too,” Kate said, her voice laced with irritation. “But going by the wholly underwhelming response I'm getting from the two of you, I'm beginning to wonder now.”

Thumbing toward Kate, Finn frowned. “She doesn't know?”

“Know what?” When Finn didn't answer in the fraction of a second Kate gave him, she turned straight to Jessie. “Jessie?”

“It's nothing,” Jessie muttered. “He and I…”

Kate's eyes rounded and she jabbed her finger at Jessie, but it took a few seconds for words to finally form.

“Nooo!
You?
And
Sam Ross
?”

“It's not—” Jessie started, but Finn talked right over her.

“I thought it was.”

“Well, sure, it
was.
” She wished they'd both go away.

“
What?
It was what?” It was as if Kate was watching a tennis match, the way her gaze zipped from Jessie to Finn and back. “Tell me!”

“Nothing! It just sort of…was. There's nothing to tell anymore.” Jessie pushed out of her chair, lifted the half dozen folders off her desk, then didn't even try to file them correctly; she stuffed them all in the front of the cabinet drawer and shoved it closed.

“Nothing my ass! If you had ‘just sort of' anything with Sam Ross, there's definitely something to tell!” Kate's voice wasn't quite at a roar yet, but it got awfully close before she lowered it again. “When? And
how
? I've been here since mid-April and you've been here the whole time!”

Jessie leaned against the file cabinet and shrugged. “I was actually out to dinner with him the night Finn called to tell me about Jimmy.”

A small dark storm clouded Finn's blue-green eyes as the unspoken memory of that call settled between them. The O'Donnell boys hadn't exactly had an easy time growing up, but no matter what, Jimmy was still their da.

He'd given Jessie a job at the Buoys when she needed it the most, and as much as it broke her heart to hear that he'd died, it hurt more to be on the other end of the phone line, listening to the raw ache in Finn's voice and knowing there was nothing she could do to ease that.

“Have you seen him since then?” Kate's question cut through the moment, bringing Jessie back to the present.

“Hmm? Seen who?”

“Sam!”

“Oh. No.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” In all the years she'd worked for the O'Donnells, Jessie had never once wished the place were bigger, until that moment. The office was cramped enough when it was just her in there, but with the two of them crowding the doorway, it was almost suffocating. “He took his show south this season, and in case you've forgotten, Kate, we've been a little busy working to get this place back up and running, so it's not like either one of us has had a lot of free time.”

Besides that, she couldn't afford to call in a Helijet to take her to the mainland, which meant she would have had to go by boat or float plane, and not even Sam Ross was cute enough to make her do that.

The radios on Jessie's desk and Finn's hip crackled to life, filling the room with Ronan's deep voice.

“
Fishin' Impossible
to Finn. Be there in five.”

Finn pulled the radio from its clip and had already started walking away before he responded. “On my way.”

“Want some help?” Kate called after him, wincing slightly until Finn waved her off. Then she immediately returned her focus to Jessie. “Good, I didn't want to go anyway. So spill it—tell me everything, starting with why you don't look nearly as happy about him coming here as I think you should. I mean, good God, Jessie, the guy is freakin' hot!”

Jessie slumped down in the chair, then pulled the elastic from her wrist and twisted her hair up out of her face.

“What?” Kate pushed. “You didn't like him?”

Jessie half-snorted, half-laughed. “It's Sam Ross, Kate. Everybody likes him.”

Sure, she might not have liked the way he chewed with his mouth open, and she wasn't a fan of how often he checked his phone, but so far as she could tell, that's what most people did these days. And besides, everything else about him was great; he always seemed to be in a good mood, he seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say, and he did sweet things like holding the door for her and showing up at her apartment with soup that time she was sick. He was just a likable kind of guy.

“Then what?” Kate prodded.

Crap
. Jessie let her head fall back against the chair for a second before blowing out a breath and sitting up again.

“Okay, here's the thing, and I admit it's really stupid, so don't judge me.”

“Ha!” Kate scoffed. “You're talking to the woman who married a guy less than a week after meeting him, so let's try and keep ‘stupid' in perspective here, shall we?”

Jessie couldn't help but laugh at that. “If you and Liam weren't glued at the hip now, I might have to let you claim the ‘stupid crown' on that one, but clearly…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kate said, rolling her hand in circles to hurry Jessie along. “Whatever. Back to Sam.”

“Okay. Finn and Liam were both in Vancouver at the beginning of the year, so we all went to the boat show together because…I don't know…it's what we always did when Jimmy was running this place, so we kept on doing it even after he shut it down. Anyway, Sam and his crew had a booth set up at the show and that's where I met him.”

“And?”

“And it's really shallow, I know, but he's
so
cute, and he was the first guy who showed any interest in me since…well…” Jessie sighed. “It had been a while, let me tell ya. I mean, crap, Kate, I worked for Jimmy from the time I was seventeen until he shut the Buoys down three years ago. And living out here doesn't exactly lend opportunities to get into a relationship, you know?”

“But what about after this place closed and you moved to Vancouver?” Arms folded, Kate leaned her butt against the edge of the credenza. “You must have gone out with a few guys then, no?”

“Sure, but…I don't know…I always felt weird and awkward around the guys I met.”

“But not Sam?”

“Well…yeah, even with Sam, but a girl can deal with a lot of weird when she's sitting next to someone who looks like him.” Jessie laughed as heat rushed over her cheeks. “Told you—beyond shallow.”

Truth be told, there was only one guy she'd never felt the least bit weird or awkward with, and he'd just walked out of the room.

“You have to understand,” she said. “When I worked here before, I was the only woman. Sure, we had the occasional female guest, but every other worker here was male. They all considered me one of the guys, so it was really weird when someone came along who didn't think of me that way. It's
still
kinda weird actually.”

Kate's frown darkened her whole face. “Why?”

“Oh, come on. I've never worn a pair of heels in my life, and the last dress I owned was the one I wore to my First Communion. When Jimmy shut this place down and I had to get a job in the city, I didn't get a ‘normal' job; I went to work down at the docks. The few girlfriends I have outside of here I see—what—once a year maybe? And the only makeup I own is this.”

Jessie lifted her well-used tube of cherry ChapStick off the desk and waved it back and forth.

“Who cares?” Kate clicked her tongue. “You're like a female MacGyver crossed with a little Bear Grylls, and I bet if you gave a guy half a chance, he'd see how amazing you really are.”

“Maybe.” It was an automatic response, more to appease Kate than anything. Too bad Kate was smarter than that.

“No maybes about it. Cute or not, if Sam or any other guy doesn't appreciate you and your ChapStick, then he's an idiot.”

“Yeah, well.” Jessie snorted quietly as she tossed the tube back on the desk and watched it roll between the stapler and the open Day-Timer. “In Sam's defense, he didn't actually know the real me.”

“What do you mean?”

Jessie groaned, long and low before answering.

“It's so stupid, but I swear I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, it's not like I'd never been out with a guy before, but suddenly I turned into one of those ridiculous fangirls, you know, and I…I panicked.”

“Panicked?” Kate asked.

“All I could think about was this stupid interview I'd seen him give to one of those entertainment channels, where they asked him what he looks for in a woman.”

“Oh God. Those are the worst.” If Kate's eyes had rolled any higher, they might not have ever come back. “What did he say?”

Jessie couldn't have felt more idiotic if she'd tried. “He said he looks for someone who's strong and confident.”

“You're strong and confident.”

When Jessie cocked her brow, Kate laughed quietly.

“Okay, well, maybe not right this second, but most of the time.”

Jessie huffed out a sigh and went on. “Someone who likes the outdoors—”

“You
love
the outdoors.”

“—and someone who loves fishing as much as he does.”

“Oh. Wellll…” Kate leaned her hip against the doorframe and scratched her chin slowly. “You like the
idea
of fishing. You like working in the fishing industry, and you can fillet salmon almost as fast and clean as Finn can.”

“Yeah, somehow I doubt that's what he meant.” The whole thing was stupid, and Jessie still couldn't believe she'd let it go the way it did. “We're talking about a guy who surfs and kiteboards and goes white-water rafting for fun.”

“So what?” Kate's confused frown didn't last long. “Oh my God, did you tell him you do all those things, too?”

“No.” With a small, tight grimace, Jessie rubbed the back of her neck. “I was simply telling him stories about what it had been like to work here before Jimmy shut it down, and when I talked about where we took the guests on the boats, he sort of took it to mean that ‘
I'
was part of ‘
we
.' ”

“You told him you were one of the guides?”

“No!” Jessie's voice cracked as she hurried to defend herself, knowing it was a pathetic attempt at best. “I didn't. I told him I worked the lodge; I just didn't tell him I
only
worked the lodge.”