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Read An Excerpt

Prologue

Will Young’s stomach clenched tighter than a seaman’s knot. He rechecked the stack of invoices. He couldn’t be wrong. He just couldn’t.

His boss, Bertram Muller, strode up and down the loading dock. The sun bouncing off the top of his bald head gleamed brighter than the rays shining on the rippling water of Tide Harbor Bay.

Bertram stopped and glared at him. “So, where’s this tenth truck?”

Will scanned the line of tractor trailers ready to leave the pound. He counted again. Matched the invoices to the plates. Nine. How could there be only nine?

He ran his fingers under his sweat-wet collar. The white semi had been there last he looked. He knew it had.

“I counted ten, sir.”

His boss narrowed his eyes. “Did you now?”

Will tried again. “Saw it clear as a blue-sky day. It had a small dent on the door, a black scrape running along the passenger’s side, a broken chain hanging down at the back, and a faded C. M. on the tailgate. Ontario license plate.” He twisted a button on his shirt. “I swear it was here before I went to lunch.”

“Well, it ain’t now. And there ain’t no paperwork.”

“But … but I did fill out an invoice.”

Bossman scowled at him. “And it seems to have vanished along with the truck. You’re a good-for-nothing, just like your father. Instead of doing your job, you’re too busy coddling that one-footed gull you feed your lunch to every day. Knew I should never have hired you, no matter how much your fiancée begged. Felt sorry for you planning on getting married and all with a kid on the way. Even if the babe ain’t yours.”

Bertram seized the invoices from his hand and flapped them in his face. “That missing truck is worth a million dollars, Squirrelhead. One million dollars. I should sue you. But what would be the point? It would be like trying to squeeze water from a rock.

“Consider yourself fired. Now get your junk out of your locker and scram.”

Bertram headed for the office then stopped and looked over his shoulder. “In fact, I suggest you leave town. Reporters catch wind of this, you’re gonna be the national laughingstock. I can see the headline now: World Log Rolling Champion Loses a Million-Dollar Truckload of Lobsters.”

Chapter 1

Mack

Norma Mackenzie Elliot lowered her binoculars. Something fishy was going on at Cove Lobster Pound. She was sure of it. But time and money were running out, and so far, she had nothing to show for the legwork she’d done over the last two weeks in Nova Scotia.

Summer Moses, her local contact for EcoGreen Action, was in for a major letdown. If illegal trading in lobsters was happening in Tide Harbor, it was well hidden.

Mack peered through her binoculars again and studied the two men arguing on the loading dock. She’d been watching the tall, lanky guy in the plaid flannel shirt and faded jeans for two days now. There was something about the controlled way he moved that drew her eye and stirred up feelings she tried not to pay attention to anymore.

With his broad shoulders, narrow hips, and wild, wavy black hair tied back in a ponytail, he would have been dubbed by her cliché-mouthed college roommate, “Sex-on-a-Stick.” She, being an English major and all, preferred the more precise, if equally asinine, Sexy Lumberjack, in honor of his backwoods taste in dress.

Mack shook her head. Stop being stupid. When you carried twenty extra pounds, stood five-foot-one on your tiptoes, and had a pinky finger missing on one hand, guys like that one didn’t give you a second look, if they noticed you at all.

She clenched her marred hand. She’d learned that lesson the hard way.

Time to move down the coast and check out the other lobster pounds. Just maybe she’d catch a glimpse of a Twin Torrent Fisheries truck.

According to her research, Torrent had been involved in some shady deals in the past, and she’d bet they would slip up again. But no such luck.

She pushed up from her observation post behind a pile of fish crates and froze.

“What in the world?” Mack raised her binoculars again.

Sexy Lumberjack seemed upset about something. Bald Boss Man was gone, and good-looker was storming around the trucks in the lot, looking—as far as she could tell—like he was counting them on his fingers.

She squinted. He really was holding up his fingers as he touched each truck like a bewildered kindergartener. She could count them from here. There were nine. What an idiot.

She slung the binoculars around her neck and her daypack over her shoulder. Oh well, she should know better. A spiffy package on the outside didn’t mean much was going on in the brains department. No wonder his boss was angry at him.

With a huff, she turned and set off down the road to town. Tomorrow was another day. She shifted the pack away from her overheated skin. Hopefully, a cooler one.

It wasn’t usually hot in the Maritimes, but today had been a scorcher. Not a whiff of sea breeze blew in from the bay to relieve the unrelenting sun beating down or to sweep away the rank stink emanating from the fish processing plant on the opposite headland.

She brushed her hair off her forehead. The heat and the working conditions were more than annoying. But she’d known it would be hard when she’d taken on the assignment to investigate the illegal lobster trade for EcoGreen Action. But sometimes life demanded hard, and that was no small thing.

After all, if marriage and children weren’t in her future, then the least she could do was dedicate her single loneliness to saving the environment—in this case, by finding out who was selling smuggled lobsters.

She sped up her pace. Somewhere ahead, a truck full of illegal lobsters was heading to the Twin Torrent packing plant. And she had only a few days of her vacation left before she was due back. To be precise, forty-eight hours until she was stomping the beat as a part-time reporter for the Brooklyn Ledger and waitressing at an all-night diner to pay the bills.

Seventy-two hours to find the criminals who were illegally importing lobsters into the States and to get a scoop that would put her on the front page of the newspaper.

A battered silver-gray pickup truck rumbled up next to her and stopped dead. “Ma’am?”

Mack jerked her head up. What the heck? Her lumberjack peered down at her. She blinked. Up close, he was a lot rougher than when viewed at a distance. Days-old stubble shadowed his jaw, and a jagged white scar over one eyebrow marred the perfect symmetry of his face.

But none of that mattered. Not with the way he was looking at her. She’d never seen eyes of such an intense blue—the color deeper and more luminous than the sea behind him. And they were totally focused on her.

Heat flooded her already overheated body. She stepped up to the rolled-down window and gave him her tipped-up smile, the one her mirror told her dressed up her ordinary features the best.

“Yes?” She winced. Was that tinny, high-pitched voice hers?

“Hey yah. Saw you watching the birdies. Was wondering: did you happen to see a white sixteen-wheeler heading back up the road here aways?”

She had to work at keeping the smile pasted on her face. Of course. The idiot was interested in trucks, not chubby ladies with blotchy freckles and Raggedy-Ann red hair sweat-stuck to their brows.

She opened her mouth to answer, but just then, another pickup rattled out of the gate and slowed to a halt alongside, sandwiching her in between.

The driver leaned out. “Hey, Squirrelhead. Wait till Arabella hears you’ve been fired because you can’t keep count of a few trucks. Man, she’s going to go up in flames.”

Baldy scowled at her. “Stay away from this guy, lady. His fiancée is about to kill him. Gonna be bloody.”

With that, the pickup took off, kicking up a trail of dust and grit.

There was a moment of silence, and then Lumberjack Guy asked again, “So, did you see a white semi leave the yard with a C and an M on the back?”

She slowly turned back to the man peering down at her. Fool. Served her right for ogling the guy. He had a fiancée, a one-truck mind, and apparently was numerically challenged. Still, just looking at him sent tingles down her spine. She shifted her pack. She must be suffering heatstroke. Time to send Mr. Temptation on his way.

She shook her head. “Sorry, but no.”

“Well then, uh … thanks.” He turned and stared out the windshield, his lips moving as if he were talking to himself.

She turned to start hiking back to town.

He stuck his head out again. “Tide Harbor is two miles. If you need a lift, I’d be glad to give you one.”

She glanced up into those eyes and bit her lip. She should say no. She really should. Being that near to a guy she couldn’t have was just asking for pain. But it was hot, and Fletcher’s Seaside Cottages was a long, dusty trudge ahead. If only she hadn’t decided, in the lovely cool of the morning, to leave her rental car in the parking lot and hoof it to the fishery.

So, instead of giving Sexy Lumberjack a resounding no, she heard herself say, “That would be wonderful.”

Mack moved around to the other side of the dust-covered silver pickup, went to climb in, and stopped dead. A large cardboard box occupied the bench seat.

Her number-challenged lumberjack gave a wave. “Just shove my stuff to the middle and shimmy in.”

She gazed up at the seat then down at her short legs. Shimmy in? More like bellyflop. Oh well. She shoved the box over. Then, with a heave and a huff, she grasped the door handle and clambered into the cab. She slammed the door shut and fiddled with the seat belt.

If she’d thought this a mistake before, she was sure it was now. Despite the open windows, Sexy Lumberjack’s scent—some strong mix of sea, pine forest, and an earthy aroma that had to be unique to him—filled every molecule of air in the truck. She didn’t even want to think about what she smelled like after lying in the hot sun next to a pile of none-too-clean fish crates. She glanced out of the corner of her eye. At least, he wasn’t wrinkling his absolutely perfect nose.

He gave her a wide grin that hinted at the imp he must have been as a boy. “I’m Will Young, by the way.” He shrugged his shoulder back toward the pound. “Formerly employed at Cove Lobsters.”

“Your co-worker called you Squirrelhead?”

“Ex-boss. That’s ’cause of my menagerie.”

“Menagerie?”

“Yeah. I find an injured rabbit or something, and I like to—ya know—make it feel better.” He put the truck in gear and stepped on the gas. “So, where to … Miss …?”

“Oh.” No way was she going to tell him her real first name. She hated it. She could never figure out why her parents had christened her Norma. Wasn’t even a family one. “Mack … Mack Elliot.”

He gave her a puzzled look. “Mac? Like in mac n’ cheese?”

Yeah, that was her—the Mac-n-Cheese girl. Good-looking guys took one look at her and thought of food. Well, she was done being polite. Besides, in twenty minutes or so, she’d go her way, and he’d go his.

For a brief while, she’d pretend to be someone else. Someone braver. Someone who had confidence in herself. Someone who could wrap a guy like the one sitting next to her around her finger.

She straightened and pushed out her lower lip. “No, M.A.C.K. like the truck. It’s short for Mackenzie.”

He gave her a long look. “Too bad. I love mac n’ cheese. Not so hot on trucks right now.”

“Yeah, well, I guess you wouldn’t be if you just got fired for losing one. What’s so important about that truck, anyway?”

He let out a deep, masculine grunt, put the pickup in drive, and took off down the road toward town. “Well, for one thing, it had a million dollars’ worth of lobsters on it.”

Her ears perked up. She could see the headline now: Investigative Reporter Recovers Stolen Truckload of Lobsters Worth a Cool Million. She grasped the edge of the cardboard box and leaned closer.

“And it’s been stolen?”

He glared at her. “Stolen? No. It just left before I could get the invoice signed.”

“Oh.” She fell back into the seat. So much for that idea.

Will slapped the steering wheel. “But it couldn’t have just left.”

“Huh?” She straightened up. “Why?”

“Because the gate was locked, and I had the key.

Mack tapped her knee. Might be a story here yet.

“So, how do you think it got through?”

He rolled his shoulders. “You sure you didn’t see a white semi go by with a black scrape on the passenger side and a noisy chain swinging off the back? Sometime around noon?”

She shook her head. “No. A few fish trucks came by from the salmon farm. A car or two. No sixteen wheelers.” She rubbed her forehead. “I did wander down to the shore to take a dip and cool off. Might have missed it.”

“That’s okay. You were probably focused on the birds.”

“Birds?”

He tipped his chin at the binoculars. “Seen you on the sand spit last day or two. Figured you were one of those lady birdwatcher types.”

Lady birdwatcher? He thought her a birder? She choked down a laugh. She couldn’t tell a seagull from a crow. But hell, if he wanted to think her a bird enthusiast, that was fine with her. Better than being thought a nosy reporter.

She lifted the binoculars and pretended to look at him. “Bull’s-eye. You found me out.” The truck bounced over a pothole, and she peered through the windshield. “Oh, we’re almost to Tide Harbor. I’m staying at Fletcher’s Cottages. If you’d drop me there, I’d appreciate it.”

“Yah sure. But I got to stop here first.” He turned the pickup down a narrow side street to the left.

She stiffened. Uh-oh. What had she been thinking? She could hear her mother screaming down at her from heaven, “Never take rides from strangers.”

“Stop, please. I can get out here and walk the rest of the way.” She put her hand on the door handle as he pulled to a stop.

Her companion held up a hand. “Uh … You might want to wait a minute.” A shoe hit the hood of the truck with a thud. “Seems Arabella already got the news.”

Mack glanced in the direction he was pointing. An extremely pregnant woman stood in the doorway of a white clapboard house, surrounded by a gaggle of onlookers. Every few seconds, she disappeared inside, came back out, and tossed something. Socks, underwear, flannel shirts, and an assortment of tools littered the walk and front yard.

“Idiot. Good for nothing.” Angry Mama-To-Be picked up another shoe and hurled it directly at the truck.

Mack ducked as the shoe thumped the side of the truck just below her window.

The woman yelled, “Nincompoop! Three days, and you’re fired?”

“Take it easy, Arabella.” Will grabbed the cardboard box and jumped out of the truck.

“Take it easy?” She gazed around at the crowd. “Take it easy, he says. It’s all over town. You’re a laughingstock.” She grabbed a hammer and threw it at him.

Mack winced. But hapless Lumberjack swerved to the side just in time, and it whizzed harmlessly past and landed on the grass.

He moved closer. “Look, it will blow over. I’ll get another job.”

“Don’t you try to sweet-talk me. Everyone said I was crazy to hook up with you again. So I’m unhooking in front of all these witnesses.”

He held out the box. “But the baby. Made things for him.”

She seized the carton from his hands and tossed it to the ground. Hand-carved wooden animals tumbled out.

“You’re not this baby’s daddy. Never gonna be. If you think that, you’ve got wood chips for brains.” She bent down, picked up a wooden rabbit, and slung it at him.

He threw up an arm and caught it. “Please?”

“Please, my foot. Babies can’t live on junk like this. They need food and clothes, and a roof over their head. They need a father who can hold a job for more than three days.” She grabbed what appeared to be a toy duck and whipped it at him. This time, she didn’t miss—it hit below his eye.

Wiping away the blood, he backed up toward the truck. “Okay, okay. Got the message. I’m leaving. But if you need anything, give me a call.” He came back around the pickup and clambered in. He tossed the carved rabbit on the seat then rested his forehead on the steering wheel.

“Sorry you had to witness that.”

Mack let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Do you want me to pick up your stuff?”

“No. Don’t. Better Arabella not see you at the moment.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

He lifted his head and stared out the windshield. “I’m going to drop you off at your rental cottage, and then I’m going to find that missing truck.”