Piper kicked off her shoes and walked barefoot to the kitchen and turned on his coffee machine, desperate to get rid of the chill. When a mug had been prepared, she opened the refrigerator to take out the milk—and an unopened bottle of champagne rolled toward her in the crisper drawer. Her half-drunk one was still wedged in the door, but . . . he’d bought two? Just in case she stopped over while he was gone?
Her throat ached as she carried the mug of coffee up the stairs, trying not to acknowledge how natural it felt to set her coffee on the sink in his bathroom and strip off her soaked clothes, hanging them over the towel rack. She brought the coffee into the shower and drank it while the water stole the chill from her bones. She lathered herself in his body wash, and his scent carried up to her on the wafting steam, making her nipples stiffen. Making her close her eyes, press her forehead to the tile wall, and ask God, very politely, to bring the stubborn man home safely.
Wrapped in a towel minutes later, she walked into Brendan’s bedroom, turned on a lamp on his bedside table, and sighed. So practical. Navy blue and beiges everywhere, no-nonsense white walls, creaky floorboards that reminded her of the decks of ships she’d seen in the harbor. A window directly in front of his bed faced the harbor. The ocean beyond. The love of his life. As if he needed to see it first thing in the morning.
She sent a text to Hannah to make sure her sister was all right, then slumped sideways in the center of the bed, Brendan’s pillow hugged to her chest, praying that when she woke up everything would be fine. That he’d walk through the door.
God must have been busy answering someone else’s prayers.
* * *
Brendan tuned out the endless chatter coming in through the radio from the coast guard, his single-minded focus where it needed to be. Pulling pots. This wasn’t their first typhoon, and it wouldn’t be the last. They were par for the course this time of year in the Bering Sea and the neighboring Pacific. This job was dangerous for a reason, and they had no choice but to ride it out, finish retrieving this string, and make it back to Dutch. So he trained his eyes on the water ahead, searching for out-of-the-ordinary swells while keeping tabs on the busy deck below.
His crew moved like a well-oiled machine, although after a week of hauling pots, they were showing signs of fatigue. The next buoy appeared alongside the ship, and in a practiced movement, Sanders threw out his hook, dragging in the line and attaching it to the winch. Deke joined him on the other side to engage the hydraulic system, raising the pot. An exultant cheer went up from the men on the deck, though it was muffled by the storm raging around the boat, the burr of the engine below.
Half-full. If this pot didn’t put them at their quota, it would bring them close, providing the crabs were male and they wouldn’t be required to throw the lot of them back. It was against regulation to take females from the sea, as they kept the population growing.
He waited for Fox to signal a number through the window of the wheelhouse.
Seventy.
Brendan made a note of the number in his log, his mouth moving as he did the math. Their quota issued by the wildlife commission was eighty thousand pounds of crab for the season. They were at 99 percent with five pots left to collect. But with the storm howling outside and the men growing weary, it wasn’t worth continuing. Especially not if he could beat the Russians to market and get a stronger price for what they’d caught.
He signaled Fox to wrap up the operation, secure the gear on deck, and get everyone below. They were heading back to Dutch early. And the fucking relief that gripped him around the throat was so much stronger than usual, he had to take several bracing breaths, his fingers flexing around the wheel as he waited for a break in the swells to start executing the turn.
Had this storm made landfall yet back home?
Where was she?
Would she be waiting for him?
Brendan braced his body against the side of the wheelhouse as the Della Ray carried over a three-story swell and slapped back down into a black pit of churning seawater. Goddamn this storm. It wasn’t any fiercer than the ones they’d worked through in the past, but this time . . . the boat didn’t seem quite as substantial under his feet. Was the wheel vibrating with too much force in his hands?
His life felt too easily snatched away.
These were worries he hadn’t acknowledged since being a greenhorn, and it was because he’d never wanted to get home so badly. Not once in his fucking life.