“Yeah, he’s the sweetest.”
Janice smiled at Brooke. “I need to train Brad to get my favorite coffee for me.”
“Josh ended up loving my peppermint mocha so much, I have to make him some whenever I get myself some,” Brooke said. “Josh was a real keeper. Just like your brother was for Janice. Adam’s a keeper too.”
“Yeah, I hear you.” Sierra took another sip of her coffee.
“So?” Janice asked, raising a brow at Sierra.
Sierra chuckled. But what could she say? She and Adam would mate if or when they mated. For now, she was just having fun.
High overhead, a chirping sound caught their attention and everyone looked up to see an osprey calling out as it spied a fish in the river, dove headfirst for its prey, and skimmed the water with its talons, catching the fish near the surface and shooting back up into the sky.
Sierra had never seen anything like that before, and she was thrilled.
“We’ll have to go fishing,” Sierra’s father said to Adam as if the osprey fishing suddenly made him think of that. Her father loved to fish.
“Yeah, we will have the best time. The ladies are welcome,” Adam’s dad said.
“Or shopping, movies, happy hour,” Adam’s mother said.
Sierra raised her hand. “I’m with you…”
The ladies all laughed. “That sounds like fun,” Brooke said.
Everyone took turns at the helm, and while Sierra was captaining the ship, Adam was with her, the first real time they had been alone together while on the yacht since breakfast.
He rested his arm over her shoulder and leaned down and kissed her cheek. “You know, I could really get used to you being the captain of the ship and I’ll be your first mate.”
“Hmm, I could take you up on it.”
“Good. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
“This is a beautiful yacht, Adam. We will have to take it out every weekend we’re off now.”
He laughed. “First, I couldn’t get you to take me up on it, and now?”
“Yeah, it’s all your fault, you know.”
“Oh, how’s that?”
“When we went to see the River Patrol Unit about the stolen boat, just breathing in the air, listening to the sound of the water lapping at the boats, the seagulls crying overhead…” She sighed. “It just brought back so many good memories with my family. Of course there have been disasters too.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I got seasick when we ran into a storm on one trip on our sailboat. Man, was I miserable. And another time a drunk driver hit our boat, put a hole in it, and was thrown from his boat.”
“And?”
“Amazingly, he survived, but my dad wanted to rescue him in the worst way.”
“Not your mom?”
“Um, no. She was staying with me and Brad, ready to rescue my dad if he needed to be after going after the guy. But the boat patrol told Dad they couldn’t do anything until the boat ran out of gas. It was going in circles around the guy, hitting its own wake and changing course. The guy was lucky the water was warm—Texas, you know, not like this water—and that the boat didn’t hit him, or he didn’t just plain drown from being drunk.”
“And?”
“When the boat ran out of gas, the boat patrol pulled the guy out of the water, charged him with driving a boat while intoxicated and the damage to our boat, towed his boat, and pulled his license. It could have been a lot worse for all of us. We were able to reach the boat ramp under our own power, but Dad had to put the boat in the shop for repairs and there was no boating for weeks. He was not a happy camper. Well, none of us were.”
“I don’t blame him. I’m just glad none of your family was injured. You’re not afraid to boat then?”
“No. I love it out here. This is just wonderful. I have to ask… Just how soft is the captain’s bed?”
Adam chuckled darkly. “Perfect while sharing it with the first mate.”
She lifted her head to kiss him. “One of these days, we will have to try it out.”
To their surprise, Josh was steaming up lobsters in the galley for lunch as a special treat, something they’d brought to celebrate Sierra’s parents joining the pack and just the get-together, so the sandwich fixings were for anyone who didn’t like lobster. Everyone opted for the lobster.
“They’re fresh from this morning,” Josh was explaining to the rest of the guys. “I bought the live lobsters, blanched them in salted, boiling water for two minutes, put them in an ice bath for twenty minutes, placed them in freezer bags and squeezed the air out of them, then put them in the ice chest. You can double-bag them and freeze them for up to a year. After that, it’s time to boil them and eat them with a little lemon and butter.”
“I was afraid we were going to be late getting here,” Brooke said, rubbing Josh’s back. “We were still putting them in the ice chest when we noticed the time.”
“I’d say it was perfect timing,” Sierra’s dad said.
This was a slice of heaven, Sierra thought as she gave up the helm to her mom and Dad joined her mom up there. Sierra sat with Adam and the rest of the crew on the deck seating in the stern to have lunch, and she was thinking about her dad’s comment about not letting Adam get away. She had no intention of it.
Chapter 24
While Sierra had been talking to Brooke and Janice at the helm, Brad had told Adam how glad he was that he finally got Sierra to go for a boat ride.
“You knew how much she would love it,” Adam said to Brad.
“Yeah. She has always loved being near water. And boating… She was the first one to pack everything to go on a trip. If anyone was waffling about it—sometimes my mother, who wanted to garden or do something else—Sierra was always there to encourage her to go with us. She would tell Mom that it wouldn’t be the same without her. If you’re looking for a mate who loves boating like you do, Sierra’s the one for you.”
She had so much more to offer Adam as a mate, beyond that she loved boating. He was thinking they could run after dinner tonight at Brad’s home since it was on the pack leaders’ ranch. He really enjoyed running and playing with her. And she already had him hooked on ice cream dates. He would offer to take her to her favorite ice cream parlor after they ran as wolves tonight.
They finally reached the Willamette Falls in the Willamette River, a horseshoe-shaped, block waterfall, forty-two feet high and fifteen hundred feet wide. They felt the spray on their faces as some of them stood on the bow deck.