Page 13 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
“If I told you, it would be a list and not a name.” He scanned the slips. A dinghy idled three boats over, no lights, low man in a dark cap facing away. By the time Rone looked, the motor puttered quieter and the bow turned out toward the channel like it had never been interested in this dock at all.
Echo tracked it with the hard stillness he saved for prey he wasn’t allowed to chase.
Rone wanted to chase. He wanted to put fingers in the fabric of whoever kept testing boundaries and rip until seams popped. Instead, he breathed and tucked the lure into his pocket, a piece of proof he could put on a table later.
Isobel came down one step and stopped herself on the next, catching his look. Smart. He set a hand out to balance her as she stepped the last one to the platform. She didn’t need it. She took it anyway. Despite her calm expression, her damp, clammy palm told a different story. Quiet strengthagain, sliding around his ribs and settling there like it meant to stay.
“Was this Shade’s world?” she asked, voice low. “Warnings and lines and games?”
“Shade’s world had rules.” He felt the old weariness file down his words. “Men who left warnings usually kept them. Men who didn’t… weren’t men for long.”
“And where do we fall? People who ignore them?”
He almost smiled. “Stupid. Brave. Both.”
She looked at his hand still in hers, and he let go. The loss was immediate in a way he didn’t like, because when he touched her, he knew she was safely by his side. She disembarked and studied the outside of the boat as if to find more danger.
Echo stepped up and gave him that side-eye again, hard enough to count as an opinion.
“I’m not her savior,” Rone told the dog under his breath. “We’re helping. That’s it.”
Echo didn’t blink.
Rone scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Fine,” he said softly. “We don’t walk away. Happy?”
The dog’s tail thumped once. Isobel pretended not to see it, but the corner of her mouth tipped—flicker quick, there and gone.
“Isobel,” Rone said, because the quieter part of him didn’t want to keep ducking the thing sitting in his chest. “About Shade. There’s stuff I could tell you. Maybe should.”
She lifted her chin. “Like how he died?”
“Like who he made enemies of on the way.” He hesitated. He saw Shade’s hands, rough and careful, setting a mint tin on a table; heard him sayniecewhile his eyes saiddaughter.“Like who he lost before that.”
Her breath hitched. Then she shook her head once, neat. “Not here. Not when someone’s stringing tripwires on my ladder.”
“Fair,” he said. Relief flickered with regret. He could live with both for now. “We’ll pick it up somewhere that isn’t a target.”
She nodded.
“Dinner tonight. Casual. Take the dinghy to a spot a bit from here.” If he got her away from the boat, away from the questions she thought she’d find the answers to in Shade’s boat, maybe he could convince her to leave and let him finish the work.
Echo stood and wandered back toward their boat as if he’d finished his job. The dog sashayed like he was a stage dancer. Rone followed him to their slip and growled down at him. “Don’t be so smug. Not a date.”
Echo pranced into the boat and went to the stateroom only to return with Rone’s button-up shirt he only wore when he had to dress for an occasion.
Rone snatched it, balled it up and threw it on the settee. “I. Don’t. Date.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Isobel slidon the long summer dress she’d purchased instead of her leggings or shorts. It felt good to not be covered in sweat and grease and feel a little less like an old captain and more like a woman for a few minutes.
Rone stepped onto the dock in a crisp button-up, a stark contrast to his usual grease-stained T-shirts and salt-splotched shorts, sleeves shoved up and jaw dark with stubble. If she wasn’t mistaken, Echo had a bath too—his coat gleamed under the dock lights like polished mahogany, and he carried himself with a self-satisfied swagger. The dog clearly knew.
Rone’s gaze drifted down the length of her as if assessing her new dress, then blinked and cleared his throat. Echo nudged him. “You look… nice.”
Echo whined and plopped down as if to say he wasn’t doing something right.
“You both look nice, too.”
