Float Plan - Trish Doller Page 0,10

sneaker—is bionic and complicated-looking. Not flesh and bone.

I have no idea what’s happening.

“Um … hello?”

He turns in my direction and, under any other circumstances, waking up to this man’s face would probably be a religious experience. He looks like he should be playing guitar and singing in pubs, with dark just-fucked hair and a scruffy jawline. “Oh good,” he says. “You’re awake.”

“Who are you?”

“You don’t remember?” He touches his hand to his heart, covering up the crackled gold letters that spell CIARRAÍ across the chest of his faded green T-shirt. He’s older than I am by a handful of years, but his grin is pure ten-year-old boy with a frog behind his back. And his accent sounds Irish. “Now you’ve gone and shattered my heart.”

I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of my bed. After my narrow miss with a married man, there’s no way I would’ve had sex with a different stranger. I think. “Did we…?”

“Christ, no.” He pours a second mug of coffee. Mine, with flowers and the pink A for Anna. “You were drunker than a monkey, but I did appreciate the offer.”

“Oh my God.”

“I’m joking.” He closes the space between us and offers me the mug. Accepting a drink—even a caffeinated one—from a strange man is not a mistake I should make twice, but the coffee smells good, and I desperately need it. I take it.

“The long and short of it is this—I found you passed out in your dinghy and it wouldn’t have been right to leave you there with your bare arse for God and all of Bimini to see.” His accent grows more pronounced as he picks up speed. “So, I rowed you out here to your boat and helped you to bed, then realized I was stranded unless I took your dinghy, in which case you’d be stranded. I slept on deck. I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed a sleeping bag.”

As if everything about last night wasn’t already deeply embarrassing, this man has seen my ass. He also saved me from … well, who knows what could have happened while I was unconscious and half-naked. Someone else, someone less honorable, could have found me first. He rescued me from that possibility—and my own stupidity.

“Wow, um—thank you for being so kind.”

He rubs a hand over his messy hair and glances down at the floor before looking at me. “Well, I didn’t want to see you come to any harm, is all.”

“And it’s not that I’m not completely grateful, because I am, but … who are you?”

“Oh, right. Keane Sullivan.”

“Anna.” I opt not to overshare on the personal details. Lord knows what I might have said last night when I was drunk. “How did you guess which boat was mine?”

“There was only one without a dinghy,” Keane says with a one-shouldered shrug. “The odds seemed favorable.”

“Well, thank you. For everything.” I take a sip of coffee and steal a quick glance at my phone to see if anyone responded to my job offer while I was off making bad choices. There’s a notification, and a string of digits that don’t look anything like a telephone number. The text says: I am a professional sailor and delivery captain currently in Bimini. If you haven’t already filled the position, I’m interested.

“Excuse me one second,” I say, typing a quick response.

I haven’t filled the position.

“Are you hungry?” Keane asks, digging into his back pocket. He pulls out his phone and looks at the screen. “My apologies. I’ve got to check this.” He quickly taps out a message as he talks. “Whenever I’m hungover, fried eggs and buttered toast usually set me to rights.”

The thought of food makes my stomach queasy, and this man has done more for me than anyone should have had to do. “I don’t know if—” My phone chimes with a new text.

Meet me at the Big Game restaurant in an hour? I’ll be wearing a green shirt. I’m Keane, by the way.

My shoulders shake with suppressed laughter as I respond.

You’ll probably recognize me by my ass.

Keane looks down at his phone, and up at me, laughter escaping him in a great gust. We laugh until I have tears in my eyes and my sides ache. I haven’t laughed this much since before Ben died. The sound withers in my throat because … shit … I’m not ready for this. I didn’t think about having to share the boat with someone, even for a few days. Keane is taller

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