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I put my hand on Kenna’s back, steering her down the narrow dock and then the steps leading to where Johnny had the boat idling. “This is a pontoon boat with a third hull. The easiest of the boats to handle and one of the most popular rentals for how many people it can fit.”
Kenna stepped easily into the boat and I followed, communicating with Johnny as I untied the vessel and he backed us out of the slip. To her credit, Kenna watched everything I did, as if she was memorizing it for a future test. She sat in the front of the boat, watching the Keys get smaller as we pulled further away from the coast. Her hair was pulled back in her hand to keep it from whipping her face. It left her slender neck exposed. I’d never considered that necks could be pretty, but Kenna’s certainly was.
“How about getting behind the wheel, Ms. Kenna?” Johnny asked when he pulled back on the throttle. He gave her a toothy grin even when she shot him a look of terror.
“Might be a good idea. Sometimes Maeve would come down here and help out,” I added.
That wasn’t exactly the truth. Maeve left the handling of the boats to the dockhands she hired, but I had seen her take a boat out at least once years ago, so I knew she had the skills. If Kenna wanted to live in the Keys for a year, she needed to know how to safely commandeer a boat.
“Sure,” she said reluctantly, switching spots with Johnny. She looked out of place in the captain’s chair.
I leaned forward, crouching next to her with my hands braced on the back of her seat. “Just keep your eyes on the horizon and make sure you don’t cross in front of a boat. Put your right hand on the throttle and push it forward when you’re ready to go.”
Kenna nodded, then swiveled all the way around to check out her surroundings. There were few boats out already after the storm, so it should be smooth sailing. Finally, she looked up at me.
“Sit down and put your seat belt on, Mr. Boggs.”
She was taking this captain thing a bit too far, if you asked me. I smirked and followed orders though, sitting back down. I’d tell her later boats didn’t come with seat belts.
There was a high-pitched noise from the back of the boat. I swung my head that direction in time to see the prop rising. I opened my mouth to warn her that she’d hit the button on the side of the throttle, but she beat me to it, jamming the throttle all the way forward with a loud “yeehaw” that would have made a hardened cowboy wince.
Of course, with the prop in the air, all she did was fling gallons of salty ocean water up into the air. When it rained down on us and we still hadn’t gone anywhere, she gasped. As a nice side benefit, the water-soaked clothes instantly cooled me down. Kenna pulled the throttle back and spun around to see that all of us were soaked. All that pretty blow-dried hair was plastered to her head again.
Johnny tossed his head back, lost his hat in the ocean, and let out a belly laugh that made the sides of my mouth tip up. It was pretty funny, I had to admit.
“My hair!” Kenna yelped, swiping at her face to get the water out of her eyes. The unintended shower had plastered her white T-shirt to her body, highlighting her slight curves and showing me she preferred light pink bras.
I stood and forcibly removed her from the captain’s chair. “You gotta keep the prop in the water, sunshine.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, but let me move her into the aisle of the boat. I sat in the captain’s chair and then pulled her into my lap. She flopped down with a surprised squeak. Hell, I was just as surprised.
“I think you need some better supervision,” I muttered, ignoring how nice it felt to have a warm-blooded woman in my lap. I grabbed her hand and put it on the throttle. “See this button on the side? Press it down.”
She did, swiveling to see the prop lower back into the water. All the swiveling on my lap was highly distracting.
“Now we can press the throttle. Maybe just a little bit until you’re used to the way she moves, huh?”
With my hand over hers, we pushed the throttle forward and the boat responded, gliding cleanly through the water. I showed her how to turn without capsizing us, and then got her up to a decent speed returning to the dock. Her eyes got big when she saw the slips we’d have to pull into.
“I’m definitely not ready for that.” She scrambled off my lap and let me do the docking, which was for the best. I noticed she also used one of the hair ties on her wrist to wrangle her wet hair into submission. What was with her obsession with buns?
Johnny gave me a few curious looks, but I ignored him. No one in Sunshine Key had ever seen me with a woman, which was by design. I was sure having Kenna in my lap came as a shock, but he was reading too much into it. I was just helping Kenna adjust to life in Florida, exactly as Maeve would have wanted me to.
Kenna was the first off the boat, one foot on the dock and the other still inside the boat when it shifted away from the dock. She panicked, freezing when she should have just pulled her foot back in the boat. Now she was doing a rendition of the splits with her eyes bulging out of her head. Johnny snickered, covering himself with a sneeze so fake it made me embarrassed for his acting skills.
I ran over to Kenna and grabbed her by the arms. Johnny pulled on the line and the boat floated back to the dock. Kenna scrambled onto the dock like she almost considered getting on her knees and kissing dry land. I bit back a smile and helped Johnny get the boat stowed away for the afternoon. When I was done, I joined her on the dock, putting a hand on her back, not as a gentleman, but because I genuinely thought I might have to grab her at some point to keep her on her feet.
“How about we get you somewhere safe?”
She eyed me warily as we walked back to the rental office. “Does such a place exist?”
Kenna Ryan had a sense of humor I was coming to admire. “Yep. It’s called The Dirty Hooker.”
“Oh thank God. I did not want to go to a strip club,” Kenna said as the young woman seated us at a table in the sand. We had a lovely view of the ocean and had at least three fans blowing in our direction. The heat didn’t bother me, but I knew Kenna wasn’t used to it yet.
I moved the plastic menu out of my way. I knew the offerings by heart. “Mind out of the gutter, sunshine.”
Kenna gave me a look. “Why are you calling me sunshine?”
