The Enemy's Obsession

A hundred and twenty traps to pull before noon. A diesel tank reading under a quarter. Ruby's appointment at one-fifteen. Connor Finnegan does not have time to think about the winch line Danny keeps promising will snap, and he certainly does not have time for the silver Mercedes parked at the far end of the wharf, where the pavement turns to gravel and the gravel turns to mud. The man who gets out of it wears a charcoal suit worth more than a year of fuel for Connor's boat, and he looks at the docks and the stacked traps and the peeling paint on the shed door the way you look at something you are about to buy. *Julian Prescott. I've been reviewing some property records.* In Port Haven, that surname means the man who sat in the front row at a foreclosure auction and smiled while Connor's father signed papers he could not read through his own tears. Richard Prescott bought the waterfront for pennies on the dollar during the recession. His son has just bought the ground under Connor's feet, and the paperwork is three weeks old. Connor tells him the truth about why he cannot simply refuse: *My sister. She has cancer. I'm paying for her treatment.* Ruby has leukemia. Her chemotherapy runs three hours at a stretch, her wig slips, her nails have gone brittle, and her doctor has started talking about a trial in Boston. The money for any of it comes off a boat named for Connor's grandmother, out of water Connor has been fighting for since his father went out on a clear night twelve years ago and the Coast Guard brought back the boat and not the man. So when Julian offers a ninety-day consulting contract at a rate no legitimate marine advisor would command, Connor signs it. What follows is worse than hating him. Julian listens. He writes down what Connor says about tide patterns and dredging and a channel marker that is off by forty feet. He turns out to have a mother nobody in Port Haven ever mentions and a father who was never going to let this arrangement stand. Richard arrives with a checkbook, a fountain pen, and a number that makes the choice look simple. A contemporary MM small-town romance set on a working Maine waterfront: a lobsterman, a developer's son, a sister in treatment, and a development that breaks ground in six months whether anyone consults or not. The romance is closed-door.