Page 20 of Handling Skylar (Hope Parish #5)

I’d forgotten the effect of the bayou after spending so much time in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the city teeming with life, going out with my friends, crewing until my arms and thighs burned and attending to my classes which were, as academics had been in high school, a breeze for me.

Then, I’d been splitting my time between the orchard and Anna Kate as my thoughts and emotions festered into something as graveolent as the bayou. All that while, I’d hungered for Sky.

There was something about the bayou that remained largely uncivilized, a lush no man’s land that had been rife with pirates and smugglers, now populated with hard working men and women whose ancestors had carved out a place here—a unique, rich culture that was found nowhere else on this planet.

Passing the old fishing village AnnClaire was rumored to have leveled, I caught arcs of light that sparked off the channel that opened up and flowed past Imogene’s.

In the jumble of debris and fragments of a once busy village, now gone to rot, protruded some of the boards, crude grave markers of what a woman’s scorn and black voodoo magic could wrought.

Further down the road, I saw the sign, intricately carved and stuck into the ground. Sutton Bait and Tackle. I turned off and followed the dirt and gravel road up to a makeshift crushed shell parking lot.

I got out of my car and looked around. His truck was parked off to the side with quite a few cars here, a throng of people on the dock and milling around inside the shop.

I looked out to the swamp, the channel a long, straight shot.

The murky green water beyond the dock was as calm as glass, a partially submerged log lying at the edge of a thicket of cattails and with the innate intuition of a man who had grown up here, I recognized it as a gator.

The predator of the bayou and unrivaled in its dominion.

The structure was like Chase, simple, neat and practical with a wide porch that led up to the shop area.

Beside and not far from the business was a dock with several boats tied up, and at the very end a brand new seaplane.

Chase’s business had been vandalized and he’d had to replace all his equipment.

I envied him that freedom and wondered if he’d teach me to fly, but pushed that onto the back burner.

I wasn’t even sure we could work things out.

Most of his touring boats were gone, but there were several canoes floating and bobbing against the moor lines.

Across the channel, not far to the south, the jagged stump of a dead cypress had become home to a nest of herons, and one stood motionless, while the other foraged among the sheets of delicate green duckweed and rafts of water hyacinth, shimmering violet and looking as deceptively fragile as the heron’s spindly legs.

Nymphaea or water lilies floated in a green scattered disarray, their fluted white, salmon, and yellow blossoms atop green pads offered the tourists plenty of money shots.

These birds were my favorites with their long arched necks tucked in, black beaks as straight and slender as a willow branch.

I had told myself it didn’t matter that he had moved on and built something with his own two hands outside the influence of my daddy.

An accomplishment to be admired. Something wanted to break free there, but a barrier as strong as a force field blocked me from going deeper.

It was all tied up with my ancestor, my daddy, expectations, legacy, duty to family, respect and pride.

I was choking on it all. Sky’s words had really hit me hard.

Did I want to miss out on Chase’s life? The resounding answer was no .

That meant I had to talk to him. Listen to him.

Get all this out in the open and work it out, work through it, or I would lose our connection completely. I didn’t think I could handle that.

“Jake?”

I started from my absorption of the view and turned toward my name.

Chase stood in the sunlight, looking like an ad for Outdoorsman in an orange crewneck, long-sleeved T-shirt, beneath a tan fisherman’s vest and faded, well-worn jeans, poised with a load of fishing equipment in his hands.

He arched a brow, his shoulders suddenly stiff.

I knew the reason for that, and I felt a twinge of guilt and remorse.

He expected a fight. I locked my door and pocketed my keys.

Taking a deep breath, I headed toward my brother.

“Yeah, you said something about fishing?” He stared at me for a moment, and I didn’t want the hopeful cast to his features to affect me.

I looked toward the gear on the dock. “Where you headed?”

His shoulders relaxed and that felt good.

“To the Gulf and some bull reds.” Sciaenops ocellatus or red drum.

Any Southern outdoorsman worth his salt knew that, channel bass, redfish, spottail bass or simply reds, were a popular game fish.

“You want to come along? It means forty-five minutes of flying.”

“Yeah, you got the gear for me? I don’t usually drive around with bait and tackle.” I shrugged and looked toward my sleek car.

Chase grinned and nodded. “I got you covered. You’re not squeamish about flying in a twin are you?”

“Nah, I’m good. I’ll help you load up.”

The side panel of the plane is open. Let me go inside and get more gear.” I walked to the end of the dock and picked up the empty coolers, bait coolers and other equipment stowing everything neatly into the Cessna’s storage area.

“Hey, Jake,” a female voice said from behind me.

I turned around to find Samantha, looking fresh and pretty in a white sleeveless shirt and a pair of cutoff denim shorts, her dark hair free and falling over her shoulders and down her back, her feet bare. With a wide, beaming smile, she said, “So glad to see you here. It’s pretty impressive, huh?”

I turned and smiled warmly at her for what must have been the first time since I’d met her.

It felt good and normal not to have to maintain that fucking barrier.

I had always admired and liked Samantha.

Her cooking was off the charts. “Hey, yourself. I’m not horning in on your time with Chase, am I? ”

“Oh, no. I was going into Imogene’s as soon as he left, so no worries there.

Although, I do love fishing with him.” She placed her hand warmly on my arm.

“Have fun. The reds should really be huge and biting. Chase said there’s been a resurgence of them after all the conservation and the continuing decline of the marshes. ”

I nodded as Chase stepped onto the dock with rods and a tackle box.

She turned to him as he touched her on her lower back.

“I’ll see you tonight, babe,” he said, kissing her soundly on the lips, and I noticed her engagement ring sparkling in the light.

My chest got tight and my thoughts went immediately to Sky in her kitchen when that kiss we’d shared had gotten out of control.

I could see her, hair mussed and her lips kiss-swollen, her body full and lush beneath my hands.

I remembered how much I’d wanted to follow her right to her bed and do her so good.

Tell her dirty and low how much I wanted to fuck her, overpower her and find her wet heat until I went out of my mind.

“Let’s go,” Chase said as I came out of my decadent thoughts and helped him stow the rest of the stuff.

Settling into the passenger seat, I watched as he unmoored the plane and cast us off.

He opened his door and hopped inside. After going through his pre-flight checks, he taxied away from the dock and out into the channel.

“Slick as snake spit,” I said with a grin. Something we’d say when we’d gotten away with something during our teenage years. He laughed and all the memories of the past came back at me with the power of a Mack truck. I swallowed hard and looked out the window.

“This plane handles like heaven in the air and on the water. Fast in and out. Ideal for my purposes.”

The land fell away below us as we ascended into the cloudless blue sky.

The bayou stretched out with canebrakes and copses of trees, skipping over fingers of Bayou Berangere, plantations, shacks and ribbons of rivers and lakes as the countryside grew wilder with every second.

Masses of green for as far as the eye could see, trees crowding what land there was, shoulder to shoulder, massive crowns so dense, leaving the floor below them veiled in darkness.

The banks were thick with patches of yellow and flame braided together along the edge like embroidery, the shallows thick with spider lilies and water lettuce.

The Atchafalaya was a place where it seemed the world was still forming, ever-changing, metamorphosing and yet always true to itself.

Something I found was happening to me because of a beautiful, outspoken and sassy woman.

We passed over a shadowy corridor of trees where no land was visible at all, solidifying the constant battle between water and earth.

“Will you teach me how to fly?” I asked and Chase glanced at me, the satisfaction and the hope all mixed up in his eyes so like mine, another visible sign of our kinship.

He nodded. “I’ve been flying for eight years, almost nine and it never gets old. Won’t take you long before you’re doing this on your own.”

I was eager to try. “You go down to the Gulf often?”

“Yes, every week to fish for customer orders. It’s great and as long as the weather permits, pleasant. I love what I do.”

“I can see that you do and that’s good, Chase.” I cleared my throat. “Do you have any interest in the orchard? Ideas?”

“Is this why you showed up?” His eyes narrowed and his voice grew hard.

“No. It’s not about the orchard. It’s about…us and how we can deal with this animosity between us,” I said, honestly, my tone wistful.

His features softened and his shoulders relaxed. “Oh, okay. I’m not the one with the animosity, Jake.”