Coast Guard Sweetheart

Both feet planted, he pulled. And with a squelching, sucking sound, he extracted her from the muddy tomb.

He stepped back a pace, giving her breathing room. “Thanks for trusting me.”

She scowled. “Forgiveness is one thing. Trusting is another. Trust has to be earned one day at a time.”

“I’d like the chance to earn back your trust. We were friends... Before.”

Before. Always before. She was so sick of Before.

“Thought you were shipping out next week after Labor Day. Your eight-second, bronco-busting attention span kicking into gear again? Takes more than a hand up to earn trust, Coastie.”

“Well, you know what they say?” His lazy cowboy grin buckled her knees. “Got to get right back on the horse that threw you.”

“Did you just compare me to a horse, Kole?”

“Mule-headed is more like it.” He retreated toward the kayak when she reached for a glob of mud. “How about I follow you to the lodge?”

“How about you keep paddling toward England?”

“Aboot.” He pursed his lips, imitating the lilting local cadence. Sawyer gave her a wicked grin. “You know how I love it when you Shore-talk me, baby.”

With as much dignity as she could muster, she pushed the canoe off the mud and held it for Max to climb aboard. “Don’t call me baby. I’m nobody’s baby. Not Dad’s. Not Amelia’s. And definitely never yours. Steady, Max,” she instructed as she joined him in the canoe.

Max grabbed hold of both sides as the canoe rocked until she evenly distributed their weight.

“What aboot your clam bucket, Beatrice?”

She thought aboot—about—cracking the paddle over his cocky Coastie head until she remembered the eight-year-old eyewitness and her responsibility to be the grownup. “For the love of fried flounder, just hand me the bucket, Kole.”

“Your wish is my command.” He waded in and positioned the plastic bucket between her feet and Max.

“That’ll be the day.”

After shoving off in the kayak, Sawyer pulled alongside their canoe.

“Even strokes, Max.” She congratulated herself on the tremendous willpower she exerted in averting her eyes from the play of muscle along Sawyer’s bicep. “Paddle on the right, Max. I’ll take the left.”

And then Sawyer started singing an old Irish sea shanty her dad used to sing to her when she was a little girl. A song called “Holy Ground.”

“Fare thee well, my lovely Dinah,

a thousand times adieu.

We are bound away from the Holy Ground

and the girls we love so true.

We’ll sail the salt seas over

and we’ll return once more,

And still I live in hope to see

the Holy Ground once more.

You’re the girl that I adore,

And still I live in hope to see

the Holy Ground once more.”

It annoyed Honey to no end that by the chorus Max matched his stroke to Sawyer’s rollicking cadence. Yet at the sound of his mellow baritone, she worked hard to keep from smiling.

“Oh now the storm is raging

and we are far from shore;

The poor old ship she’s sinking fast

and the riggings they are tore.

The night is dark and dreary,

we can scarcely see the moon,

But still I live in hope to see

the Holy Ground once more.

You’re the girl that I adore,

And still I live in hope to see

the Holy Ground once more.”

He had a right nice voice. Not that she’d ever tell him that. Would only enlarge that already swelled ego of his. She reminded herself of the fleeting nature of cowboy Coastie charms.

But in no time flat, they arrived at the Duer dock. Sawyer scrambled out of the kayak and hoisted Max onto dry land. Beaching the canoe onto the shore, Sawyer offered his hand again. “Beatrice.”

Honey was already wishing she’d never told him to call her that. But she placed her hand in his, unsure if she’d receive a dunking or not. However, he set her feet onto solid ground and released her hand immediately. But not before she noted how his hand trembled at her touch.

And something knotted a long, long time, started to uncoil within Honey.

Clambering onto the dock, he cranked the faucet and freed the hose wound around a piling. “Max, your turn first.”

Max shivered in his cut off jeans and Chincoteague Pony Roundup shirt. He shimmied when the cold spray of water hit his head. Sawyer kept the nozzle trained on Max’s short crop of hair until the curls resumed their natural carrot-topped hue. Bobbing on his tippy toes, Max closed his eyes as Sawyer spray washed his face, neck and clothes.

A brown puddle formed at Max’s feet. “Look at the dirt coming off me, Aunt Honey. Cool.”