His voice was deeper than I remembered, filled with an unmistakable thread of amusement. He hauled me out of the water with an ease that was almost insulting. I landed on the dock in a dripping, undignified heap on my hands and knees, my capris soaked and heavy, my hair streaming saltwater down my back.
I pushed a wet strand of hair from my eyes as I lifted my gaze to stare up at him. Yeah, he was taller too. A slow grin spread across his face, crinkling the corners of those impossibly blue eyes. He wasn’t laughing, not out loud, but his body shook with the effort of holding it in.
“Well, that’s one way to make an entrance.” His voice was rough with suppressed humor.
Despite the humiliation, a small, traitorous laugh escaped me. “Not my most professional moment, I’ll admit.”
“Dr. Donovan! Are you okay?” Kaia’s panicked voicecut through the moment. She and Zane rushed toward us, their faces a mixture of alarm and confusion.
“I’m fine,” I managed as I pushed to my feet.
Braden’s smile tightened at the edges. His gaze flicked from Kaia back to me, and the humor in his eyes was replaced by something cooler. Something guarded.
“Doctor,” he repeated, the word sounding strange and formal coming from him. “Right. That tracks.”
I squeezed some water from the hem of my shirt, trying to regain some semblance of composure. I was the lead on this project, the authority figure, and here I was, dripping marina water at the feet of the guy whose heart I’d broken over a decade ago.
I cleared my throat, forcing my voice to be steady. “These are my colleagues, Kaia Marsden and Zane Peterson.”
They exchanged cautious, awkward greetings before Braden bent to right the hand truck, his movements economical. Then he swept his gaze over the equipment andSeahorse. “Marine biology. Following the plan.”
The plan. As if it were a flight itinerary with every stop for my life predetermined. He wasn’t wrong. I had followed it, right down to this assignment meant to add another line to my CV.
“Something like that,” I said, immediately feeling foolish.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “So you’re part of the Scripps team?”
“You know about it?” I couldn’t hide my surprise.
“Eli told me the resort was providing dive support, though he thought someone else was in charge.”
I straightened, trying to salvage some dignity as Kaia handed me a towel. “That was the plan until Dr. Albrightwas called away at the last moment to present at a conference in Singapore. Now it’s my project.”
His eyes were hooded, assessing. “Congratulations.”
As I dried my hair, I noticed the logo on Braden’s shirt. Two stylized hop cones crossed over a setting sun, with the wordsTidal Hops Brewpubin a clean, modern font beneath it.
“Oh. You work at a restaurant?” The question slipped out before I could stop it, a reflexive attempt to place him back in the box I’d mentally constructed for him—the charming, small-town guy with no real ambition.
Braden’s posture shifted. He straightened to his full height. The amusement vanished completely, replaced by a cool, almost challenging stillness. “No. I own it. I’m the brewmaster.”
His words hung in the air, each one landing like a stone, shattering the narrative my parents had carefully crafted. The one I had believed. The charming but dead-end distraction. The boy with no future plan.
Braden Coleridge hadn’t just stayed in Dove Key. He had built something real and successful enough to have its own logo on a T-shirt.
Kaia and Zane were chattering, asking if I needed to change, if the equipment was okay, but their voices were a meaningless buzz in my ears. I could only stare at Braden, at the stranger he’d become, at the chasm that had opened between the past I thought I knew and the present I had just fallen into.
He gave a curt nod, his eyes holding mine a moment longer. The look wasn’t angry. It was worse. It was dismissive. He turned his attention to the wayward keg. He righted the hand truck, secured the keg with bulging arms, and walked down the dock without a backward glance.
Soaked to the skin, I stood there watching him until hedisappeared behind a stack of lobster traps. With Herculean effort, I tore my gaze back toSeahorse. This was why I was here.
Project. Reef.
Success. Then onward to the Great Barrier Reef.
I had three months to complete this research. Three months to gather enough data to make a difference. Three months on an island where Braden Coleridge owned a brewpub and greeted me like a mistake from his distant past.
An hour ago, I’d had a precise, elegant plan.
