AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ready?”
She put her hand on my chest and gazed up at me, looking like she was also suffering with the lack of contact we’d had since Liz arrived. “Think we can ditch them all and have our own afternoon on the island?”
My grin was predatory. “Like the day we went out on my boat and you fell in love with my captain’s chair?”
Her cheeks went pink while I grinned. She remembered exactly what I did to her in that chair, an act I intended to repeat just as soon as I could get her alone.
“Did you remember sunblock, Kenna?” Mona dug in her oversized bag, coming out the door and disturbing our moment.
“I put it in your bag, I promise.” Kenna rolled her eyes. Her mother wasn’t worried about Kenna getting burned, she was worried Kenna hadn’t packed proper supplies for her own selfish needs. I’d have to watch Pops more closely. I didn’t want Mona putting unfair pressure on my disabled father. The woman needed to learn how to grow up and take care of herself, but that wasn’t really my business. Unless, of course, the burden trickled over to my father.
Another truck pulled up to the curb and Harley honked the horn once. He had Char and Laurie with him, right on time. I’d be taking Kenna, Mona, Pops, and Liz in my truck. We would take my boat over to Goat River Key, one of the larger keys a few miles away. There, we’d rent tandem kayaks and float through the mangroves before picnicking on the beach. The resort there had gladly rented out their cabanas to our party, given that tourist traffic was slow this time of year.
Everything went surprisingly well, considering it was like herding cats to get them onto the boat. Mona insisted on wearing a life jacket the entire ride out to the key. Liz stood precariously on the bow to reenact the scene from Titanic until Kenna enticed her down with a thermos of bloody Marys. Harley laughed his ass off and didn’t help one bit as I prepared to pull away from the dock. Even the gator boys had steered clear when they heard our group coming down the dock.
But we finally made it to the Goat River Key and there were plenty of tandem kayaks for our group. I insisted Kenna go with me, Pops assured me his arms were strong as an ox and he could man the kayak with Mona, even when I told him oxes didn’t have arms and I wasn’t coming to save his ass if he got lodged in the mangroves. He and I both knew I was lying. Char barnacled herself to Harley, so that kayak was easy to figure out. Liz and Laurie were the only two people left, so they shrugged and shared the last kayak.
Once we’d all put on our hideous orange life jackets and grabbed our paddles, the tour guide gave us a brief safety rundown at the launching ramp.
“The full route will take you about forty-five minutes to over an hour, depending on how fast you paddle. If you see a gator, just keep all limbs in the kayak and float past. They don’t normally cause a fuss.”
“What the Florida?” Kenna hissed next to me. “You didn’t tell me there’d be gators!”
“It’s Florida, baby. Of course there’s gators,” I responded. It was simply a way of life here.
“Oh! We should do a kids’ book with gators, Kens!” Liz gave her an enthusiastic thumbs-up and promptly dropped her paddle, which clattered to her feet. “Wait, do gators have genitalia?” The instructor lifted an eyebrow, but went on with his spiel, though I noticed he kept a close eye on Liz after that.
Kenna and I went first, Kenna in the front of the kayak and me in the back. The cushioned seats had a comfortable webbed backing to support our seated position. The tour guide grabbed the front of the kayak and hauled the plastic into the water. I put my paddle in the river and pushed off the shallow bottom. The kayak rocked a bit and Kenna yelped.
“Just remain seated and I’ll do the heavy lifting, okay?” I started paddling gently, getting us out of the way so the tour guide could launch the next kayak. The mangroves got thicker the further we went into the tunnel.
“Wow. This is so pretty. I had no idea.” Kenna’s head was on a swivel, taking in the tangle of brown roots and green trees shooting up to create a canopy. It was cooler here in the dense thickness of the mangroves. Birds flitted through, looking for worms and eyeing us like we were disturbing their breakfast. It was almost as peaceful as a morning fishing on my boat. Except for Mona clacking her paddles against Pops’s and then Pops yelping when she splashed him with water.
It was three-quarters of the way through the route that disaster struck. Kenna’s back went stick straight and she yelled. “Gator!”
Straight ahead was a pair of eyes and gnarled forehead sticking out of the water. He was floating to the other side of the bank, eyeing us with caution, but otherwise, harmless. That is until Kenna in her panic began to paddle to the other side of the bank, her oars splashing water everywhere.
“Kenna! Stop!” I shouted, but she didn’t hear me.
The people in the other kayaks behind me all murmured varying degrees of concern. The gator now stayed right there in the middle, having halted his migration to the other side, probably wondering why the hell this large thing in the water was splashing so much and could it be his lunch.
“Kenna!” I barked again, leaning forward to grab her paddle and force her to be still.
She abandoned the paddle, giving me exactly half a second of relief before she stood up. The woman fucking stood in the kayak, making it rock dangerously side to side. With two paddles in hand, I tried to balance the rocking hunk of plastic, sweat now bleeding through the bill of my hat.
“Sit down right now, Kenna!” Harley hollered, fear tinging his tone.
The gator changed course, swimming toward our kayak. Somehow seeing the predator straight on got through to Kenna. There was nowhere to go but through and her chances in a kayak were better than being defenseless in the water. She plopped her ass down so fast we almost tipped over again, but I somehow managed to steady us.
Kenna let out a whimper as the gator came within a foot of our kayak, the two having some sort of staredown.
“Don’t fucking move,” I growled under my breath.
Pops and Mona’s kayak bumped into us from behind, shooting our kayak forward. Kenna let out a high-pitched keen, but our kayak just floated right over the gator who’d wisely ducked under the water. I twisted my neck to see him behind us now, so using one oar, I gently dipped it into the water to paddle away as quickly and gently as I could. Pops and Mona were still as a statue, as were everyone behind them. Eventually, Laurie and Liz, in the last kayak, hollered that they were clear. Kenna slumped in her seat.
“I think I peed myself,” she whispered, staring straight ahead.
I thought about how badly the kayak had rocked when she stood up. How close we both came to tumbling into the water with a gator. “I think I did too.”
