Lured In (29 page)

Available from Loveswept

“Did you know there's a town in Saskatchewan called Climax?” Hope Seaver pulled a Wet-Nap out of her oversized tote bag and handed it to her camera guy, Kevin, as the small float plane banked a little to the right.

Having spent most of the flight bent over his barf bag, Kevin's already pale complexion seemed almost transparent as he sat up slowly, dragging the damp cloth over his mouth.

“It's true.” Hope smirked, quirking her left eyebrow. “And as you drive out of town, their sign says
Come Again
.”

Instead of laughing—or even smiling—Kevin leaned his head back against the velvet-covered rest and groaned.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “That's funny.”

He barely managed to roll his gaze her way before closing his eyes again.

“It's better than the other stupid shit you've been spouting the whole flight,” he muttered. “I'll give you that.”

“It's not stupid shit,” she said, her laugh brittle and a little forced. “It's quality bits of knowledge that help to enhance and enrich your life.”

Okay, the bit about Climax, Saskatchewan, might not have been all that enriching, but who didn't like trivia? It was interesting, helped start conversations, and was a great distraction when she was worried or nervous.

And holy crap on a cracker, she was plenty of both just then. Thankfully, neither Kevin nor the other cameraman, Chuck, seemed to notice, Kevin because he'd been too sick and Chuck because the second he'd buckled into his seat he'd stuck his earbuds in, closed his eyes and started to snore. The pilot hadn't so much as acknowledged any of them since takeoff, so sick or not, Kevin was the only one Hope had to talk to on the flight, and, honestly, it had been more of a running monologue than an actual conversation.

“If this is what you're like even after you're medicated,” she said, “how are you going to manage out on the boats? Should I call Luka and tell her to send someone else?”

“Relax, Blondie, it only happens when I fly.” Kevin dragged his eyes opened, inhaled a long, slow breath, and then blew it out again—right in Hope's direction. “Feeling better already.”

“Sweet Jesus.” Clamping one hand over her mouth and nose—too late to do any good—Hope reached the other hand deep into her bag again. “Here.”

The first thing she shoved at him were the rest of her wipes, then a pocket sized package of tissues, a lunch container filled with plain crackers, a couple of Advil caplets, a bottle of Pepto, and the rest of her water. Somewhere in there…
oh, come on
…she was sure she'd packed some…Yup, there it was: a travel-sized mouthwash.

Kevin stared down at the heap on his lap, then blinked hard and grunted. “Are you for real?”

Still grimacing, Hope flicked her fingers toward the mouthwash. “Don't be shy with that stuff. If a little's good, a lot's a whole lot better.”

Bypassing the mouthwash, he popped the lid off the cracker container and stuffed a couple of them into his mouth, leaving a trail of crumbs falling behind.

“Got any ginger ale in that drug store you carry around?” he asked. “Spare toothbrush, maybe?”

“No. And if you know this is what happens when you fly, why don't you come prepared?”

“I did.” He swallowed hard and shoved in two more crackers before pulling an unopened pack of gum out of his pocket. “See? Ready for anything.”

“Yeah, that's hilarious,” she said, her voice dry and unamused. “The O'Donnells aren't exactly keen on us being here to start with, so the last thing we need is for you to be smelling like…
that
…the first time we meet them face to face.”

Kevin dropped his gum on top of the pile on his lap and took a long swig of water. “I can't wait to meet these guys, especially that one from the conference call—the one who told the network to go fuck itself. Ronan, right? Pretty sure that dude's my spirit animal.”

“Yeah,” Hope muttered. “Ronan.”

Hope had been sitting in on that call, staring down at a picture of the O'Donnell men, and had actually jumped in her chair when Ronan's roar blasted through the speaker on Luka's desk. It wasn't just the shock of him yelling that made her jump, it was that she never would have guessed the man in the picture could yell like that.

The photo was nothing more than a candid closeup shot of the three brothers sitting around the fire pit in front of their lodge, Ronan in the middle, his arms curled around his brothers' shoulders. And while they all looked happy enough, with big smiles and glasses of beer lifted in the air, there was something else in Ronan's expression; something soft and tender, almost vulnerable.

He didn't have that look in any of the pictures of him by himself, just the ones with his brothers. Clearly, they were his weakness, and if his roar was any indication, he wasn't going to let anyone do anything to exploit them or their business, which was exactly what he thought Luka and the network were trying to do.

Sitting there in Luka's office, Hope had actually smoothed her finger over Ronan's face in the photo, as if that would soothe him, as if he could somehow feel her touch and know they were in safe hands. Maybe not overly experienced hands, but safe ones nonetheless.

Hope blinked the memory away and sighed.

“Yeah, well, spirit animal or not, you weren't there for the whole conversation, so you don't know how hard Luka had to work to keep the O'Donnells on board with this.”

Kevin snorted. “Gimme a break. Luka could sell salt to a slug.”

“Usually, yeah, and by the end of that call, she'd made it sound like we're going to be the best thing to happen to this fishing lodge since the invention of the spinning reel, but we still need to convince them that they did the right thing.”

“We will.”

“Really?” Hope scoffed. “Because we're about five minutes from deplaning, Kevin, and so help me God, if you so much as dry-heave on their dock…”

“Trust me, I got nothin' left to heave.”

He had better be right on that, because she'd beat out eight other people for this field-producer job with
Hooked
and she couldn't have Kevin or anyone else screw it up for her.

The plane skimmed down over the water, its floats bouncing and wobbling a little before the pilot evened them out and pointed the plane toward the Buoys fishing lodge. Kevin took another quick sip of the water, then rubbed a fresh wipe over his face.

Hope pulled an small plastic container out of her bag and used it to catch the cracker crumbs as she brushed them off his knee. He sat there staring at her, wide-eyed, like she was some kind of nutter.

“Seriously, is there anything you
don't
have in that bag?”

“I like to be prepared.” She pointed at his used wipes, then at the container,and waited for him to drop them in with the crumbs. “And you're welcome. Let's just hope they chalk up how pale you are to the fact that you're a ginger.”

While Kevin worked on making himself presentable, Hope pressed her forehead against her tiny window, watching their new part-time home get closer and closer. She'd studied all the still pictures and video they had on file and committed the specs to memory, but seeing the Buoys now, without guests crowding the dock or wandering around outside, she finally saw it through Ronan's eyes. The Buoys was more than just a fishing lodge; it was the O'Donnells' home.

Tucked back into Strip Cove, an almost perfectly crescent-shaped beach on the southeast side of Welch Island, the Buoys consisted of a simple three-level timber-frame main building and three small log cabins that sat along the north edge of the cove. From what Hope could see, the grounds looked to be well kept, with low-lying shrubs lining the gravel path that started at the end of the dock and wrapped around the whole cove to the front doors of the cabins.

Brilliant bursts of red and purple flowers streamed over the sides of hanging baskets on each porch and buckets along the staircases. Each cabin's door was painted a different color—green, white, and orange—and two flagpoles stood at the halfway point around the cove, one bearing the maple leaf and the other bearing the flag of Ireland.

The entire place was surrounded by towering old-growth cedars and pines that, if what Hope read was true, were home to more wildlife than she even wanted to think about. Technically, Welch Island wasn't an island at all but a peninsula, and it was that narrow strip of land on its northeast side connecting it to the mainland that made it so easy for bears and other creatures to wander in and around at will.

“Did you know a quarter of all North American grizzly bears live here in B.C.?” Hope didn't look at Kevin for his reaction, but instead kept her forehead pressed against the cool glass and tried not to think about how many grizzlies and black bears were probably wandering around the perimeter of the lodge right at that moment. “And did you know they can eat up to ninety pounds of food in a single day?”

As Kevin grunted behind her, the three O'Donnells came out the front door of the lodge and started toward the dock, but before she could get a close look at any of them, the pilot turned the plane sharply to the right so Hope's window faced out to the open ocean.

“I hope you're—” Turning back to Kevin, she stopped and blinked hard. If she hadn't seen the transformation with her own eyes she never would have believed it, but sure enough, Kevin had somehow managed to get back to his normal shade of pale and was looking almost human again. “…ready.”

“Right as rain,” he said, casually as can be, as if he hadn't spent most of the last hour sick as a dog. “No sweat.”

Amazing.

Hope gathered up what was left of her tissues, wipes, and crackers and dropped them back into her bag just as the plane's float nudged the dock. Chuck blinked awake, stretched, then unbuckled and shifted to the edge of his seat, waiting for the pilot to open the door. Neither Chuck nor Kevin appeared to be the least bit nervous about this job, which was just as well, because Hope was nervous enough for all of them. In fact, if she didn't get her stomach to stop twisting like that, she was going to be the one throwing up on the dock in a minute.

Kevin and Chuck had both done jobs like this before and had experience and knowledge to pull from. But
Hooked
was Hope's first big job, her first solo project as field producer, and the first time she really and truly needed to have her shit together. And she thought she had it together, she really did, thought everything was sunshine and rainbows, right up until the moment she saw the O'Donnells walking toward the dock.

And now…yeah…now it was cloudy with a good chance of vomit.

“Go ahead,” she said when Chuck tried to wave her out first. “I just have to…”

She didn't finish, but that didn't matter because Chuck didn't wait; he was already out the door, followed immediately by Kevin. It gave her only a few extra seconds, but it was enough for one final deep breath before she climbed out of the plane into the soft misty rain.

The pilot had already opened the back and was pulling out the gear when Chuck started the introductions, pointing to each person as he spoke.

“Kevin Lennox, Hope Seaver, this here's Finn, that's Liam, and the one taking the bags there is Ronan.”

Hope shook Finn's and Liam's hands, smiling all the while as she focused on maintaining slow, easy breaths. And then she turned to greet Ronan. From the photos in the
Hooked
files, she'd catalogued every detail about him—about all of them—so deep in her brain that she could have described him perfectly even with her eyes closed.

From the green of his eyes, to the single freckle in the middle of his left cheek, to the three lines creasing across his forehead. From the way he wore his thick brown hair just short enough that he probably didn't have to brush it, to the way he stood a good inch or so taller than both of his brothers, to the way he always wore his watch on his right wrist. And, yeah, okay, she'd noticed the way his shoulders and biceps stretched the fabric of his T-shirts. Just like they were doing now.
Whatever
. The point was, none of this was new to her; she knew all of it and more.

And yet not a single one of those details, nor any of the others she'd stored up, prepared her for the real Ronan O'Donnell—for the way his eyes weren't just green, but a soft mossy color that looked at her not with blatant anger, as she'd expected, but with uncertainty and what seemed to be a bit of surprise. Or for the way his strong handshake somehow infused a little strength into her too, and for how much actual space he took up.

Sure, she could have chalked up the crowding to the number of people on the dock just then, or the fact that the low-lying clouds made the whole cove feel socked in, but the fact was, Ronan James O'Donnell had a physical presence that was a little intimidating, a little daunting. Or at least it was right up until he spoke.

“Hope.” Ronan nodded slightly as he released her hand. “Good to meet you.”

In contrast to the great thundering way he'd yelled during that phone call in Luka's office, his voice was unexpectedly deep and warm, which helped to calm the turmoil in her stomach; but at the same time, it sent crazy flutterings racing through her blood until she shivered them out as goosebumps.

Nerves, that's all it was, but she couldn't let him know that. Instead, she needed to act as though everything were fine, as though she had this under control and the O'Donnells had absolutely nothing to worry about.

Nothing except for the fact she'd never been the one in charge before, she'd never done this on her own, and one wrong move would no doubt bring the whole show to a screeching halt, putting herself, Kevin, and Chuck out of work.

But other than that—yeah, no worries.

“Thanks,” she said, with what she hoped looked like a bright, confident smile. “Good to meet you too.”