Page 45 of Ace
Yap. Bark. Woof!
Keller found himself surrounded by the rest of Savannah’s waggling, posturing canines.
“I think we’re safe,” she told him, grinning at the enlightenment spreading like sunshine over his grumpy countenance. Wow. That smile turned Keller into a completely different man. He was so damned handsome that it hurt to look at him.
Savannah’s breath caught. Not only did she stop, but she changed directions and threw herself into him. He caught her as easily as he had every other time today. In his arms. Against his heart. Under his chin. She snuggled in where she wanted to stay, inhaling her favorite masculine scent. “I do love you,” she told him sincerely.
Chapter Twenty-Two
He believed her. He did. Keller just couldn’t give Savannah what she wanted. Hell, it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since he’d met her, and love just did not—could not—work that way or this fast. Not for him. Could it?
He set her back on her feet and like one of her hound dogs, he followed her to a one-car garage behind the cat barn. Keller stopped short when Savannah flipped the garage door up and revealed, of all things, an airboat.I’ll be damned.He stifled the urge to swing her back into his arms and shout ‘Hallelujah!’ This woman and her remarkable gift of independence and self-reliance would be the death of him.
“Surprised?” she asked coyly.
Thrilled was more like it, yet he offered a mere, “It’ll work. Is it gassed and ready to go? Does it even run?” The craft was inside dry storage after all, cradled on atrailer that rested on some kind of track. Not docked in water like a respectable boat should’ve been.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” she murmured as—of course—she smacked a pad similar to the one that locked her gates, this one on the wall inside the garage.
Gears moved, simultaneously flattening the garage door up to the ceiling while moving the trailer forward. Out the door. Momentum took over from there, and for the first time, Keller noticed the gentle swell in the land that no doubt led to the bayou. The trailer had four wheels instead of two. No hitch. Over a barely concealed gravel path it moved, straight for the line of brush Keller now understood was most likely just a blind disguising the swamp. Probably a dock. This lady was smart.
“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”
Her shoulders lifted as if she were used to being minimized. “Have to, living out here. No one else to rely on.”
Not even him. Chagrined, Keller ran a hand up the back of his stiff neck as the trailer plowed through the thin line of brush. He’d made Savannah sound like an inexperienced fool, when the real fool was him. He should’ve known better, yet he’d discounted her merely because of her gender. Sure enough, the trailer’s wheels jolted to a stop at a strategically placed log in its path. Alongside a wooden dock jutting into the swamp. Just like she’d intended.
The garage door eased shut behind them. With one hand, Savannah released the straps securing her boat to the trailer, while Keller cranked the lever that released the craft into the water. It was a good boat. Flat-bottomed with a caged three-blade propeller aft, one molded plastic bench sat forward and low to the deck, while two captain seats sat behind with the tiller and instrument panel between them. It sat high in the water but it was clean and well-cared for. Very few scrapes or scratches marred its wide aluminum hull.
Savannah’s baby had been a fishing boat in a previous life, since the instrument panel boasted a Garmin depth finder. But Keller had to wonder just how often she went to town or if she did. Sanctuary seemed to offer everything she needed to survive, and if it didn’t, the swamp did. Yet he’d treated her like a helpless female when she was anything but.
“What horsepower?” he asked to redeem himself.
“Five-fifty,” she answered without blinking. “There’s bigger boats out there, but I don’t need big. Just good.”
Ouch.He’d been anything but good. Or decent. He’d been patronizing. “Where do you want me?” he asked, not assuming anything from here on out. Savannah was captain of this craft. He was just a knucklehead at her disposal.
“Not with the boys,” she answered distantly as she grunted and shifted several gear boxes out of the aisle and under the front bench seat. The boys being Red and Galahad, the other knuckleheads, who were now side by side on the front bench like a couple kids ready for a ride.
Keller boarded, carefully distributing his weight while he took stock of the gear strapped below deck. Spotlights. Oars. Two long-handled nets. A couple canefishing poles. That made him smile. He hadn’t seen bamboo cane poles since he was a kid. A couple empty plastic buckets, the tall kind with wire handles. An ice chest. A rifle and what he hoped was a real ammo box with real ammo in it instead of stored junk.
“You carry?” he asked, still trying to make solid eye contact.
But Captain Savannah had grown remote while she readied her boat for travel.
He tried again. “How do you trailer this little baby of yours when you’re done? How do you get it back in storage all by yourself?”
“Elbow grease and willpower.” Another shrug like what he thought of her didn’t matter. Damn, she must get treated like an idiot all the time, and she’d come to accept it. How sad. Keller had just joined the last group on earth he wanted to be aligned with—the closed-minded male assholes club.
“Will you need to stop for fuel?”
“Nope. I never dock without filling up first. Get in. It’ll be dark soon. We’ve got to get going.”
“Are you sure your dogs will be okay?” Red and Galahad had no problem leaving Sanctuary, yet Keller hesitated. The rest of Savannah’s dogs now lined the bank, some barking, some already standing in the water like they meant to go with her. She seemed to have taken Gran Mere’s dying and the mayhem of the day in stride. Or had she? Was she just finally so numb that she had to get away?
Or was it him? Was she upset that he hadn’t returned her endearments or that declaration of love?Keller sat behind the dogs in the right captain seat. That’d put the stick at Savannah’s right when she sat with him. It’d work if she were right-handed, but Keller had no idea if she was or wasn’t. Which also proved why he couldn’t profess emotions he didn’t feel. He didn’t know Savannah well enough yet, and oh yeah. He was leaving in a couple days, maybe sooner. He had an important life and a job to get back to. Well, a job anyway.
Seemingly preoccupied or at least, ignoring him, she handed him a heavy-duty headset. “Here. Put this on.”
