Page 11 of Best Laid Plans (Rock Harbor #1)

CHAPTER SIX

CAM

O n Monday morning, Cam was out of the apartment quickly. It felt good to have a purpose again. And, more importantly, if he spent another minute in the apartment with Elle, he might do something that he’d regret.

Elle Pierce was surprising him, which put him in a precarious position.

When she’d broken down against his chest, he’d wanted to sink his hands into her soft skin and anchor her to safety.

He hadn’t expected to see that side of her.

She’d been so fucking vulnerable, her love for her family on full display in a way that had made his chest hurt.

And she’d done all she could to keep it inside when they’d been downstairs.

So when she’d finally let herself go, he’d wanted to protect her. To be the rock for her that she wanted to be for her family. To wrap her in his arms and take away that pain. Pain that he shared with the idea of something happening to Jim, but that he wouldn’t let himself consider.

Which meant that as the weekend had worn on, he’d done his best to avoid her.

Cam wasn’t known as the guy that women turned to for comfort.

He’d done a great job of making it that way.

But when Elle had stood in front of him, so upset that she’d been on the verge of having a panic attack, he hadn’t thought.

All he’d done was react, and in that moment, there was nowhere else he’d wanted to be except holding Elle in his arms.

And that was a thought that he couldn’t consider in any meaningful way.

So instead, he decided to focus his energy on something that wouldn’t throw his life into chaos.

Which was how he found himself heading out of the apartment early Monday morning.

It was a gorgeous day already, big, puffy clouds dotting the horizon.

He took only a few minutes with his long strides to reach Main St., the town already starting to come alive.

He turned right, heading the opposite direction from his childhood home. He’d grown up in a small apartment not far from the Pierces’ restaurant, close to where the commercial fisherman moored their boats.

His dad was a fisherman, and Cam had spent countless hours of his youth heading down to the docks to try and find him after a bender. To make sure that he was still alive after not showing up at home for days on end, even when he and his mom knew that the boat had returned to shore.

Somehow, he always was, in spite of what felt like his dad’s best attempts to drown himself at the bottom of a bottle.

The sea could have done a much faster job, as far as Cam was concerned.

By twelve, after his mom had left, Cam had brokered an agreement with the owner of the boat his dad worked on to do odd jobs.

Mostly so that he’d have enough money to buy food.

By the time he was a teenager, he’d sworn that he’d never eat a frozen meal again.

To this day, even Wyatt didn’t know the full scope of Cam’s life before he’d started spending time with the Pierces.

It wouldn’t change anything, and he hadn’t wanted their pity.

But he always wondered if Mr. Pierce had known, when he’d offered Cam a job in the kitchen of Pierce’s Lobster Co. when he’d been only fourteen.

He also wondered, his steps moving him farther away from the strong smell of seafood, freshly pulled in from the ocean, if his dad had managed to hang onto the dingy apartment that Cam used to call home.

The last time he’d seen it was thirteen years ago, when he’d left town to move to Boston.

He couldn’t imagine that his dad, now left to his own devices, had fixed the holes in the walls or replaced the carpet so littered with cigarette burns that it had looked like an intentional pattern.

But in spite of his early childhood, he would always consider Rock Harbor his home, no matter where he traveled.

The Pierce family had made it that way. Home wasn’t where you were born or where you’d grown up.

It was the place that made you feel safe, the first thought in your mind when you needed somewhere to turn.

And when he’d had to flee Boston, there was nowhere else he was going. Not even his piece-of-shit dad would keep him away from Rock Harbor, even if his hands reflexively worked themselves into fists whenever he thought about him.

He took a deep breath, flexing his fingers as he reached the stores and restaurants downtown.

Some were new to him, but that was no surprise.

Rents were always going up, and turnover could be high for new businesses, especially the restaurants.

Profit margins, particularly on seafood, were laughably low.

He knew that firsthand when he’d started looking into opening his own spot a few months ago.

Lobster traps, for example, had to be dropped and then left for days before fishermen could head back out to secure their catches.

It hadn’t been automated or scaled the way most other industries had gone in the last few years.

Boats went out. They dropped traps. Then they came back to pick them up.

It was a manual, dirty business that most people would never see inside.

The only good thing that had ever come from having Gary Devers as a father was that Cam, many times, had gone out on the boats. He’d seen first-hand the work that went into catching something that a person walked up to a counter and ordered, only for it to be delivered to their table in minutes.

His days on the water had given him a reverence for seafood–all food, really.

Cam didn’t believe in any type of higher power, but he did believe in the food chain, in how everything was connected.

And he also believed that the Mr. and Mrs. Pierce were good people who’d done right by this town for decades.

So after talking with Mr. Pierce yesterday, Cam was hellbent on doing everything he could to make sure it could stay that way.

The Rock Harbor Chamber of Commerce had a small office in city hall, Cam had learned from a quick Google search. With the chowder fest less than a week away, it made sense that, as the host, they would be busier this week than normal.

What Cam hadn’t expected, however, was to see the office had spilled out into the hallway and all the way down to a large conference room.

About a dozen volunteers were moving through the confined spaces, walking with purpose. There were clipboards. Signage spread across every available surface. Stacks of programs feet high were batched like newspapers.

Cam hadn’t been to the chowder fest in at least a decade, but it had grown. Considerably. Which meant that there was no way he was letting Pierce’s Lobster Co. sit this year out.

“Excuse me.” Cam finally stopped the third person that had walked by him without a glance. It was a woman in her mid-sixties with white, curly hair. And she was carrying a clipboard. That felt official. Hopefully, if she couldn’t help him, she could at least point him in the right direction .

“What can I do for ya, hon?” she asked, still looking down at her clipboard, rapidly checking off what looked like a tasklist. Her glasses were down on the bridge of her nose, so close to the tip that Cam wondered how they hadn’t fallen off.

“I wanted to talk to someone about a food vendor stand for the event this weekend.”

She looked up at him then, her mouth drawn into a shape of complete surprise. “We’ve been planning this event for a year, hon. Vendor sign-ups were months ago.”

Cam had had more doors shut on him in his life than he could count.

As the executive chef at Gossamer, he’d dealt with missing delivery items, orders running late, staff management issues, and of course, his asshole boss, Michael.

And before that, he’d had to hustle for years as a dishwasher while going to culinary school just to be considered for a job at a no-name restaurant that had been a stepping stone in his career to get real chef experience.

‘No’ wasn’t a word that he’d gotten used to accepting as anything more than an opening salvo.

Especially when he was here for the Pierces.

“I understand,” he said, flashing what he hoped was a charming smile. “Pierce’s Lobster Co. originally had a booth, but they thought they needed to drop out. Our plans have changed, so I’m hoping that you can help me get us back on the roster.”

The trick was to not push too hard, too fast. He let the silence settle between them, as the woman looked him up and down.

In a heather gray henley t-shirt and a pair of khakis, he thought that he looked pretty presentable.

Especially when you considered that he’d gone so far as to iron the aforementioned khakis this morning.

There was nothing that was going to stop him. Not today. Not with what was at stake.

“Jim came down and told me himself a few weeks ago that they wouldn’t be participating.

” She gave him a suspicious look that was so at home in small towns that Cam felt a pang of nostalgia.

He’d been on the receiving end of it many times in his youth.

She clicked her tongue then, looking back down at her clipboard before she met his stare again, studying his face.

“I was sad to hear it. Pierce’s was one of our longest running vendors. What did you say your name was again?”

He extended his hand, already knowing that he was going to fall as far onto his sword as he needed to make this happen. “Cam Devers. I used to work at Pierce’s, but I’m now a chef in Boston.”

“Sandy.” She narrowed her eyes and lifted her glasses so that they rested atop her head. “You look really familiar.”

“I’m from Rock Harbor,” he chanced. All he really wanted to do was keep the line of communication open.

“Then you should know,” she said, giving him another scrutinizing look, “that the vendor sign-ups happen months before the festival.”