He shook his head, still marveling at her. “How did you end up with a job like that? Your degree was in business. You started out at a bank, right?”
“I did.” She met his gaze. “But after watching what your family suffered and struggled through with Jason’s health, I knew I wanted to do something else. I kept the bank job while I looked around. It took me a couple of years, but when the position for health care advocate at my local hospital opened up, I applied.”
He felt overwhelmed by her revelation. That last Christmas they’d spent together had been only a few months after Jason had died. He’d been messed up and hard on everyone, especially Hannah. He didn’t like to look back on that time because it made him feel like there was an elephant sitting on his chest, but memories were coming in fast and hot now.
He’d been so caught up in his own grief and issues that he’d overlooked that she too had loved and lost Jason. Her parents were split up by then, and all of this had hit her hard as well, but none of it had stopped her. While he’d been running from continent to continent and then building his business, not dealing with his grief, Hannah had chosen to make a difference by working with families just like his every day.
So really, who had let whom down? “Hannah—”
“Look.” She pointed out at the water, where they could see The Therapist setting anchor.
“Ahoy!” rang out across the water.
Captain Harry, with his impeccable timing.
Chapter Seven
MUCH LATER that night back on the ship, Hannah was helping her dad hang some new sparkling holiday lights that he’d not yet gotten up. Her mind kept drifting, playing the day on repeat—jumping off the bluffs, kissing James . . .
I thought you ran because you were scared . . .
“Well, if that’s not a crock of french fried baloney,” she muttered to herself, even knowing there’d actually been a lot of truth to his statement. She had hidden behind her scholarship and internship, when the truth was, what she’d had with James had been more real than anything else in her life, and well worth fighting for.
Something she’d never told him.
Harry stopped trying to untangle a ball of electrical cord and looked at her. “What are you muttering about?”
“Nothing.” She paused. “Love is dumb.”
He laughed and wobbled as he climbed a ladder, making her gasp and wrap her arms around the ladder and the bottoms of his legs. “Dad!”
“I’m fine.”
Sure. He was fine. And three sheets to the wind as well. “Seriously, please let one of us do this for you.”
“Are you kidding me? Trust my baby to a youngster?”
Of course the boat was his baby. It certainly wasn’t her—she wasn’t even his real daughter. Even though he’d raised her since she was a toddler, she always knew where she stood in the lineup. When it came to Harry, his priorities went: boat, fun, family—meaning her mom—and then finally Hannah.
She’d always understood that, accepted that, and even understood that was why James and Jason and their parents had been so important to her.
But sometimes deep down, when she let herself think about it too long, it stirred up feelings inside her she didn’t like. She was jealous of a damn boat. “Dad, you always trusted one of your ‘youngster’ crew to watch me when I was little.”
“Well, that’s different, kiddo. The boat needed my attention more than you did.”
Hannah sucked in a breath just as someone came up behind her. Turning, she met James’s gaze, warm with concern.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
Embarrassed without really understanding why, she nodded.
James looked up at her dad. “How about you come down before you hurt anyone else?”
“What are you talking about? I’d never hurt my boat.”
“Yeah, I was talking about your daughter. Come on.” And then, without waiting for Harry to agree, James moved close enough to reach up and take ahold of the back of Harry’s shirt. “Slowly.”
Harry sighed. “I’m not an invalid.” But as he backed down the ladder, he missed the second-to-last rung and would’ve fallen if James hadn’t been standing there to steady him.
On the deck, Harry scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’ve made a mess of this.”
James set a hand on her dad’s shoulder. “Go sleep it off.”
Harry nodded, then paused. “Thanks, James.”
James looked surprised as he met Harry’s gaze, probably because in all these years, she didn’t think her dad had ever called James by his given name. He had always referred to him as WK. She’d always figured that was her dad’s way of reminding James that he still thought of him as a kid.
Harry nodded at them both and walked off.
James stepped closer and tilted her face up to his. “I’m going to ask you again. You okay?”
“Yeah. That was just Harry being Harry.”
“He’d been drinking.”
“Yes, which makes him even more stubborn than usual,” she said. “Don’t worry, Vacation Harry is much nicer and easier to deal with. He’ll show up when your parents do.”
“Hannah . . . you deserve Vacation Harry as Everyday Harry.”
She shrugged and moved to walk off, but he caught her hand and slowly, almost gently, reeled her in, entangling their fingers together. “About today . . .”
“What about it?”
“I know we’re two very different people,” he said, carrying on their earlier conversation like no time had gone by. “But we’ve got the important stuff in common.”
She stared into his Caribbean eyes and saw the depth of his emotions there. He was letting her in, letting her see everything: his hopes, his dreams, his pain, even the truth about how he felt for her. It all made her heart squeeze hard. “James, how we feel about each other has never been the problem.”
He gave a small smile and brought her hand up to his mouth, brushing a kiss across her palm. “No, it hasn’t.”
Slowly, regretfully, she pulled free. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“When are you going to tell your dad about the divorce?”
The nerves in her belly took flight again. “I was going to do it tonight, but obviously that didn’t work out. I need to do it before the day we dock in Puerto Rico and meet up with your parents.”
He nodded slowly. “Do you want company when you tell him?”
“You’d be with me?”
“Always.”
It wasn’t just the word, but the way he said it, voice low and serious. He had her back in a way no one else ever had.
“Let’s have breakfast in the morning,” he said. “We’ll figure out the best way to tell him.”
She nodded, and he climbed the ladder, hanging the lights with no problem, his T-shirt stretched tight over his shoulders and biceps as he moved, his long legs affording him an easy reach. His body was a finely honed machine that spoke of long days of rowing, climbing, or pursuing his latest adventure, those board shorts of his lovingly cupping a world-class—
“You’re staring at my ass,” he said, voice laced with amusement.