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“Why not?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. As soon as I told them my name, they suddenly didn’t have a room to rent.”
“Ronan?” she asked. “Or Smith?”
“Quinn,” he said. “My name is Ronan Quinn, not Smith.” He paused and watched as surprise came over her pretty features. “See. That’s the look right there. So it is the name.”
She laughed softly and then a sudden hiccup stopped her. Pressing her fingers to her lips, she sent him an apologetic smile. “Yeah. People around here have a pretty big grudge against anyone named Quinn.”
“How could they have a grudge against me? They don’t even know me.”
Charlotte shrugged. “Well, I don’t really believe in all the silliness. Spells and curses and witches. I’m willing to give you a job, Ronan Quinn. And a place to stay, if you want.”
“What did this Quinn do to make everyone mad?”
“It’s a complicated story,” Charlie said, waving him off.
“Don’t you think I ought to hear it, so I know what I’m up against?”
She shook her head. “If I tell you the story, you’ll think we’re all so crazy that you’ll want to leave town. And I need an oysterman.” She pointed to his duffel. “Grab your bag and I’ll show you the apartment.”
Ronan breathed a silent sigh of relief. “I didn’t mean to lie about my name. I was just trying to figure things out.”
“No matter,” she said, walking him back upstairs.
When they got to the second floor, a doorway opened into a lobby for a spacious office opposite the tasting room. “Things usually get busy in here in the afternoon when we’re preparing packing lists and labels for our shipments but all that starts next week.”
She showed him a comfortable one-bedroom apartment with a galley kitchen and a comfortable bed. A bay window overlooked the water and he could hear the metallic clank of the boat riggings through the glass. “This is nice,” he said.
“If you need an advance to buy groceries, I can help you out there.”
“I could use that,” he said. “And I can finish the skiff today. I’ll work on it all night if I have to.”
“Great,” she murmured. Charlie stood in front of him, her gaze flitting nervously around the room. Though Ronan had tried to hide his attraction to his new boss, he hadn’t really considered that she might be attracted to him. As she shifted nervously, her fingers twisted together, he decided to test a theory.
He leaned a bit closer, just a few inches, waiting for her response. Would she lean in as well, and close her eyes, expecting a kiss?
“Bathroom,” she said, turning away.
He followed her into the tiny bathroom. It looked like the room had once been a small closet and they had to struggle to move around. When they finally maneuvered themselves into a comfortable position, they were so close Ronan could feel the heat from her body.
“You—you have to jiggle the handle on the toilet to get it to stop running. And the—the tub drains real slow,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “So it’s probably best to use the shower stall instead. Unless you’re a bath guy.” She paused. “Most guys aren’t.”
He leaned a bit closer and when she turned back to him, she sucked in a sharp breath, startled by the move. Charlie retreated a step, but didn’t realize how close she was to the edge of the tub. She began to lose her balance, flailing her arms.
Ronan had to think quick and decided to save her the pain and humiliation of falling into the bathtub. He slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her against his body. But this didn’t have the intended effect at all. She shifted to evade slamming up against his chest and ran face first into the edge of the door.
“Ow!” she cried, covering her eye with her palm.
“Are you all right?” Ronan asked.
Charlie pulled her hand away and shook her head. “I think I’m bleeding.” She struggled to get to the medicine chest above the sink and Ronan wrapped his hands around her waist.
“Out. I’ll get them.” Ronan found a box of band-aids and then grabbed a washcloth from the towel rack and soaked it with cold water. He found Charlie leaning against the kitchen counter, her fingers doing little to staunch the flow of blood.
“Let me look,” Ronan said.
Wincing, she pulled her hand away. “It’s bleeding a lot. Does it look like it needs stitches?”
Ronan dabbed at the small cut. “No. It’s tiny. There’s a lot of blood. Here, hold this.”
She pressed the cold cloth to her head as he fumbled to open the bandage. “Sorry,” she murmured.
“What are you apologizing for? It’s not your fault.” Ronan wanted to reach out and touch her cheek, to see if it was as soft as it looked. His gaze drifted down to her mouth. If they were going to spend time together, it was going to be hard to resist kissing her.
Though Ronan didn’t work hard at romance, he had enjoyed the regular company of a number of beautiful women. But he usually liked to spend his free time in solitary pursuits, which left little for long-term, serious relationships. Still, he was curious about this particular woman. What was it about Charlie Sibley that he found so intriguing?
“Hello! Anyone home?”
She forced a smile. “That would be the real Joel Bellingham,” Charlie murmured.
Ronan drew her wash cloth away and then neatly covered the cut with a small band-aid. “There. All better.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“No problem.”
She stared at him for a long moment and Ronan’s gaze fell to her lips, so lush and slightly parted. He wanted to lean forward and take just a quick taste, but she seemed to sense what was on his mind and quickly stepped back.
He watched as she hurried out of the apartment, her footsteps fading on the stairs. They’d have plenty of time to figure this all out, Ronan mused. A lot could happen in six weeks.
2
CHARLIE WALK ED CHEF Joel to the door, then shook his hand. “We’ll be looking forward to your first order. Please, don’t hesitate to call me if you have any questions or concerns.”
He patted the folder she’d given him. “I’ve got everything I need right here,” he said. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Charlotte. We’ll talk soon.”
She closed the door behind him and smiled. Mistry Bay oysters in one of the best new restaurants in Boston would be a huge account for the farm.
The effects of the champagne had worn off and she counted herself lucky that she’d been able to complete her sale pitch without an embarrassing incident. What had she been thinking? Ronan Quinn had thrown her into a complete tizzy.
“A tizzy,” she murmured to herself. It was the perfect word for how she felt when she thought about Ronan. In fact, the word applied to her everyday life lately.
Since she’d been back from New York, she’d been waiting for some sign, some new direction for her life. Charlie had always had a laser-like focus on a goal. At first, it had been the move after high school, and then auditioning and attending acting classes and finding an agent. After that came the jobs, each one bigger and better than the last.
But here in Sibleyville, there was no goal anymore, besides getting up in the morning and going to sleep at night. She was drifting aimlessly through life and she couldn’t seem to stop herself. It really was time to make a few hard decisions about what she really wanted to do. Cursing softly, she climbed the stairs to the second floor.
When she got to the tasting room, she quickly tidied up the mess from Chef Joel’s visit. She’d heard the shower through the door of the apartment, but the water was off now. Drawing a deep breath, she crossed to the door and rapped on it softly.
The door swung open and Ronan stood on the other side, shirtless, his cargo shorts riding low on his hips. His hair was damp and droplets clung to the smooth expanse of his chest.
Charlie drew a deep breath and the scent of soap and shampoo filled her head. Her fingers twitched and she fought the urge to reach out and smooth the water from his skin. “I thought it might be good to show you the nursery and the farm,” she said. “You’re going to be working at both.”
“All right,” Ronan said. “Just let me grab a shirt.”
She swallowed hard. “I’ll just wait outside in the truck.”
The image of Ronan Quinn half-naked was now burned into her brain and it was a memory she didn’t really want to forget. His body was beautiful, lean yet muscular, every limb in perfect proportion. It had taken every last ounce of her resolve to walk away.
She could have reached out and touched him, knowing that he might take the action as an invitation. But what then? Would he have kissed her? She wanted to believe that she saw desire in his eyes, but she’d only ever been with one man and that gave her little to use as a reference.
The only option left to her was to wait until he made the first move. At least then she wouldn’t be humiliated by misreading his signals. Charlie hurried down the stairs, stumbling on the last step and grabbing the rail for balance. But maintaining her composure was going to be the difficult part. Whenever she looked at him, her knees got wobbly and her brain refused to function.
Charlie grabbed a brochure from the rack near the front door, then walked outside to her SUV. She hopped behind the wheel, the started it up, a love song blaring from the radio. With a soft curse, she reached out and turned it off. The last thing she needed was to start thinking about romance. Besides, if the curse was to be believed, then falling in love within the village limits of Sibleyville was impossible.
A few minutes later, Ronan stepped outside, squinting his eyes against the noonday sun. He slipped his sunglasses on. She honked the horn and Ronan started toward her. When he was settled in the passenger seat, she handed him the brochure. “There’s a map inside. You’ll need to learn how to get to the pond and the bay by road as well as by water. I’ll show you by water tomorrow, but today, we’ll go by land.”
“I don’t have a car,” he said.
“How did you get here?” she asked as she pulled out of the parking lot onto the street.
“Bus?”
Charlie frowned. Why would a guy like Ronan be traveling by bus? He might as well have told her that he’d rode up on a camel. “Bus?”
“Yeah. It was part of the deal,” he said.
“What kind of deal was that?” A sudden sting of doubt pricked at her thoughts. “You didn’t just get out of prison, did you?”
This time he laughed, a deep, resonant sound that caused her heart to flutter. She glanced over at him and took in his smile. God, he was really handsome when he smiled. “Did you?”
“No,” he said. “My grandfather sent me on this trip. He picked the place, bought me the bus ticket and sent me on my way.”
“Why?”
He paused for a long moment, as if he was deciding exactly how much to reveal to her. “When me and my three brothers were just kids, our folks died in an accident.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Charlie murmured.
“We all worked together on the family business,” he said. “We build custom sailing yachts. Quinn Yachtworks in Seattle.”
“So that’s why you knew so much about the skiff.” She risked another glance over at him and caught him staring at her from behind his dark glasses. “Why would he send you away?”
“He wanted us all to live a different life for a while. To figure out if we wanted to continue on with the family business or strike out on our own.”
“So you decided to try oyster farming,” she said. “I’m not sure that was a very sensible choice. It’s not nearly as glamorous as building yachts. It’s a lot of dirty, sweaty work. And some days, the mosquitoes are so thick they’ll carry you away.”
“I don’t mind working hard,” he said. “And I like being outside.”
“All right,” she said. “Now, watch that map because this next turn is kind of tricky. It’s easy to miss.”
Charlie pointed out the sign for the hatchery right before she turned down the narrow, winding road to Kepley Pond. “My dad’s brother, Uncle Jake, runs the hatchery and nursery.”
She stopped the SUV in front of the hatchery building, then jumped out and waited for Ronan to join her. “This is where we start,” she said. “Kepley Pond. It’s really not a pond, but an estuary. We bring adult stock into the nursery from the bay. Usually, oysters spawn in mid-summer, when the water reaches a certain temperature, but we gradually bring the temperature up, forcing them to lay their eggs in the spring. We also grow phytoplankton here to feed the larvae. When they’re ready, we move the seed oysters into an upweller system beneath those six docks. We also sell seed oysters to other farmers in the area.”
Charlie led him down to the pond. Long wooden docks jutted out into the brackish water. “As they grow, we put them in containers that sit on the bottom of the pond, giving them space so that they grow evenly. And when they’re big enough, we plant them out in the bay.”
“How do you do that?”
“We toss them overboard with a snow shovel. Very high tech. Maine oysters grow slower in the colder water so they’ll stay in the bay for about three or four years before we harvest them. We do that a lot of different ways, mostly dredging. In some areas we culture them in lantern nets. A few times a year at low tide, we can harvest them by hand.” She smiled. “So, that’s oyster farming in a … an oyster shell.”
They walked to the end of one of the docks and Charlie showed him the upwell system. When she’d replaced the cover, she watched as he sat down at the end of the dock, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.
She sat down beside him, glancing over to study his expression. “Is there something wrong?”
He shook his head, his gaze still fixed on a point on the pond. “So, I’m going to have to go out on the water with a boat?”
“Yeah. That’s how we plant and harvest. Can’t you swim?”
“Oh, yeah, I can swim. I’m just not a real big fan of boats. And deep … dark water.”
“That’s going to be a problem,” she said. Why would he have come to an oyster farm for work if he didn’t like the water? Oysters didn’t grow in a cornfield.
“No, it won’t,” he said, his voice on edge. “I need the job. I’m just going to have to suck it up and do it.”
“We wear life vests,” she said. “If you fall overboard, we’ll pull you out. My brothers and sisters fall in all the time.” She paused. “Why are you afraid of the water?”
“It’s just something from my childhood. It really doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“You can tell me,” Charlie said.
“My parents—they were lost at sea,” he said, turned to her. “They were sailing a yacht across the Pacific and it disappeared. Probably sank during a storm. Or maybe it got hit by a cargo ship. Nobody knows.”
“Oh, my God,” Charlie said. “That must have been horrible.”
“After that, I couldn’t bring myself to get onboard a boat and whenever I tried I’d get kind of freaked out.”
Charlie reached out and took his hand, covering it with hers. “I guess we could work on that,” she said.
“You don’t have to pay me until I can do the work,” he said. “It’s my problem. I’ll work it out.”
“Sure. Why don’t we take a little boat ride tonight,” she said. “A test ride, and see how you feel. These estuaries are a lot different than the open ocean.”
He stared down at their hands, then wove his fingers through hers. When he looked back up, their gazes met for a long moment. Ronan leaned closer and in a heartbeat, his lips met hers in a soft, lingering kiss. He drew back, then decided it wasn’t enough, cupping her face in his hands and deepening the kiss.
It was so unexpected, but not at all unwanted. Charlie was afraid to breathe, afraid to make a sound for fear that the spell that had fallen over them would suddenly burst. It had been so long since a man had touched her this way, but all the old familiar feelings came back in a rush.
When he finally pulled back, a long sigh slipped from his body. He pressed his forehead to hers, still holding her face in his hands. “Was that all right?” he murmured.
