Donovans 02 - Jade Island

let the fisherman feel every twist and wriggle of the fish, and to give the fish a fighting chance to throw off the hook. The reel was also designed with sport in mind, which meant that Lianne was having to work for her fish. Most reels were double action—one crank of the handle equaled two turns of line around the reel. Eight inches of line came in at a time. But Kyle used a mooching reel. One turn of the handle equaled one turn of the line around the reel, period. Four inches, not eight.
    Suddenly the reel turned easily. Lianne made a dismayed sound. “It’s gone.”
    “Nope. It just gave up. Keep reeling.”
    As Kyle had predicted, the fish came docilely to the boat and wallowed on its side.
    “How do you know so much?” she asked.
    “Legacy of a misspent youth. See those red spines along the back?”
    “Yes.”
    “Stay away from them. Now wrap your hand around the line and swing this baby aboard.”
    “What about the net?”
    “Nets are for salmon.”
    He got a pair of pliers and a cosh and waited for Lianne to lever the fish into the stern well of the boat. After a few false tries, she leaned way over the gunwale, wrapped the line around her hand, and yanked the fish aboard.
    Kyle wished Lianne had several fish to play with. She looked good bent over the gunwale, her skirt and his jacket riding high enough that he could see that her nylons came only to mid-thigh and were held in place by their own elastic tops. They made a sexy, smoky-gray contrast against her golden skin. He couldn’t help thinking how plain damn good it would feel to slide his hands up nylon to flesh, then to stroke and probe until she was wet and so was he.
    What’s the problem—your mind or your dick?
    Kyle grasped the rockfish’s lower jaw with the pliers and coshed it on its tiny brain. Though he expected Lianne to flinch, she didn’t. She just watched him as she had when he explained how to handle the mooching reel.
    “No screams over killing something?” Kyle asked, removing the hook with a quick twist of the pliers.
    Lianne looked at him with wide, dark eyes. A smile teased the corners of her mouth. “Disappointed?”
    He laughed, opened the fish box, and threw the rockfish in. “Maybe a little. Honor and Faith used to make the most incredible high noises. It was half the fun of fishing, at first.”
    What he didn’t say was that cleaning fish or accidentally threading a hook through a baitfish eyeball had made him queasy the first few times it happened. Same for all of his brothers, but you could have roasted them over a slow fire before they admitted to such weakness in front of their baby sisters.
    Before Kyle could thread another limp herring on thehook, Lianne took it and skewered the little bait fish neatly just behind the eyes.
    “You sure you weren’t already a fisherman?” he asked.
    “Fisher san, ” Lianne corrected instantly. “That’s what Honor told me last night. Fishersan is the proper usage, neither male nor female.”
    “Honor is as full of stuff as a Christmas goose.”
    “I liked your sister. Both your sisters. They’re so close,” Lianne said with unconscious wistfulness. “And your parents were great. Putty in each other’s hands and solid rock in anyone else’s. Best of all,” she added, dropping the baited hook over the side and letting it spiral rapidly down into the green water, “Susa is smaller than I am. I was beginning to feel like a midget.”
    “Only because Tony kept towering over you.”
    “That’s what I like about you. You’re big, but you don’t loom.”
    “How about your mother?” Kyle asked. “Big, little, in between?”
    “Same size as I am. Small.”
    “Small? You’re just—keep your rod tip up! That’s a salmon!”
    “How can you—”
    “Watch your knuckles!” he interrupted.
    Kyle’s warnings and the wildly spinning handles of the reel connected with Lianne at the same time. She cried out, shook the hand that had stinging knuckles, and hung onto the rod with her left hand.
    “You okay?” he asked.
    She nodded and went back to reeling. Or trying to. The fish kept taking off, stripping line from the reel in a long, sustained scream of friction, pulling the handles right out of her grasp.
    Kyle whistled. “That’s a nice salmon.”
    “Are you sure it’s a salmon?” she asked, struggling to control rod and reel. “It feels like a killer whale.”
    “It’s a salmon. Blackmouth. I’ll bet you picked it up just off the bottom.”
    “I