Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

1
    H ONOR D ONOVAN TOOK one look and knew the man was trouble. On the other hand, she was already in the kind of trouble even her family’s company, Donovan International, couldn’t handle.
    “If you’re from the police, shut the door on your way out,” she said. “If you’re a reporter, go to hell.”
    “Been there. Done that.”
    “You have the T-shirt to prove it?”
    He reached for the buttons on his stained denim jacket.
    “Never mind,” she said quickly. “Are you a reporter?”
    “No. I’m a fishing guide.”
    “Piranha?”
    “You are the Ms. Honor Donovan who advertised for ‘a person with expertise in Pacific Northwest waters in general and SeaSport boats in particular’?”
    She sighed and accepted the inevitable. The big man with the black beard stubble, light eyes, scarred left eyebrow, and clean fingernails hadn’t wandered by accident into her missing brother’s Puget Sound cottage. Despite this man’s less-than-cozy looks, her instincts said he was a better candidate than the others who had come looking for the job.
    One of the men had been a cop trying to pass for a fisherman. Another was a recent immigrant whose English defied understanding. A third man was convinced she really wanted the body he was so proud of. The fourth man’s English was good, but his eyes had made her think of things that lived in swamps.
    It had been three days since anyone else had applied for the job. She was going nuts counting minutes and waiting for Kyle to appear suddenly in the doorway with his crooked grin and a good explanation of why the cops thought he had stolen a million bucks in amber. She refused to consider any other reason for his disappearance, especially the one that kept her from sleeping, the one that made her throat close around tears she wouldn’t cry.
    Kyle had to be alive. He just had to be.
    “Miss Donovan?”
    Belatedly Honor realized that the most recent applicant was still waiting for her to say that she was indeed the one who had posted ads all over the small town of Anacortes.
    “I’m the one,” she said.
    “You took the words right out of my mouth.”
    She looked at his mouth and knew how Little Red Riding Hood felt when she first saw “grandmother’s” teeth.
    “Excuse me?” she asked.
    “Your ad could have been written with me in mind,” he explained.
    “Do you have references?”
    “Driver’s license? Fishing license? Boat handler’s ticket? Tetanus shot?”
    “How about rabies?”
    The retort popped out before Honor could think better of it. It came from a lifetime of dealing with big brothers.
    “Sorry, Mr . . . .”
    “Mallory.”
    “Mr. Mallory.”
    “Try Jake. Saves time.”
    “Um, Jake. I meant references given by people you worked for in the past.”
    “You don’t know much about fishing guides, do you?”
    “If I did, I wouldn’t have to hire one, would I?”
    He smiled.
    She thought of poor Little Red. “You should work on that smile. It really isn’t reassuring.”
    Jake tried to look downcast. It wasn’t any more convincing than his smile.
    “If your hands are half as quick as your tongue,” he said, “I’ll make a fisherman out of you in no time.”
    “Fisherwoman.”
    “Ain’t no such animal.”
    “Fishersan, then.”
    “Fishersan?”
    “Man and woman both end in an . Do you want the job?”
    “Fishersan,” he said, rolling the word around on his tongue. “Yeah, I want the job. We’ll be the only fishersen on the water.”
    This time Jake’s smile was slow, warm, amused, and something more. It reminded Honor that she was a woman as well as the scared younger sister of a missing man. She looked down at her hands and cleared her throat.
    “Fishersen?” she asked, distracted. “Oh, I get it. En. Plural. M en and wom en . You’re pretty quick yourself. When can you start?”
    “Do you have a fishing license?”
    “No.”
    “Then we can’t start yet. Too bad. The sun is out. The wind isn’t. Slack tide in a few hours. It doesn’t get any better than this in the San Juan Islands.”
    “What would we be fishing for?”
    “Whatever we catch. Less disappointment that way.”
    “Is that your life philosophy?”
    “Only after I grew up.”
    She lifted her head and looked at him intently.
    “What’s the matter?” Jake asked. “Are my ears on backwards?”
    “I was just trying to imagine you as a child in need of growing up.”
    “Funny. I have no problem imagining you that way. Can you swim?”
    “Like