Rescued by the Single Dad

Single Dad and brewmaster Clint McEvoy went down to the beach to drink and wallow. He never expected to find a Hollywood starlet naked and unconscious on the rocks. Nor did he expect to learn that someone wants her dead. He’ll do whatever he can to keep Brooke safe, even if that means risking his heart and his family’s peaceful life to do it.Brooke Barker didn’t see it coming. One minute, she’s on a yacht, celebrating the release of her latest film, the next, she’s fighting for her life in the frigid Puget Sound. Waking up on Clint’s couch was a blessing she’s not sure she deserves. Now, she needs to figure out who pushed her while allowing the world to think she’s dead. One thing that’s alive and well, though? Her attraction to Clint, and her growing affection for his young daughter.Can Brooke keep her heart out of the equation, and also keep the McEvoy family safe? Or will hiding on the island and in Clint’s bed bring danger to their doorstep?

“Go!” Jagger said, shoving Clint out his front door. “We both know you need this. Your problems won’t drink themselves away, and we both know your child sleeps like the dead. She’ll be fine. I’m here.”

Clint swayed a little on his front porch, his face moving side to side, between the past and reality, with the back-and-forth sloshing liquid in the half-empty bottle of Hardwood Distillery whiskey in his hand. He had started consuming away those problems an hour ago.

“Maybe you’ll find a mermaid you can tell your woes to. Or an otter.” Clint glared at Jagger but only for a second, since his youngest brother’s face turned sad. “I know days like today are hard.”

Clint made a noise in his throat to neither dismiss nor confirm what Jagger said.

It was Talia’s birthday. His daughter turned eight today, and just like for the last five years, her mother wasn’t there to watch her baby blow out her candles.

Or maybe she was ... if you believed in angels and spirits and that stuff.

She was watching over Talia as she swung the T-ball bat at her mermaid pinata, blew out her candles and opened all her presents.

But she wasn’t there to hug her daughter. To reminisce with Clint about the day they welcomed Talia—perfect, and covered in goo with a squishy face and curious eyes—into the world.

It’d been five years, and although it got easier, it was still hard as fuck.

And on days like today, Clint put on a brave face until his daughter went to bed, then he hit the bottle hard. Jagger always came and made sure Talia wasn’t in the house alone. Then Clint wandered down to the beach to wallow.

“It’s a full moon,” Jagger offered. “And warm for early May. Seems like a nice night to go drink until you pass out on the beach. Make sure you stay above the tide line, though.” He snorted softly, then stepped out onto the porch and rested a hand on Clint’s shoulder. “Just do what you gotta do, so you’re whole again tomorrow.”

Clint grunted, nodded, then spun around, taking the steps off the porch slower than normal.

It was just a ten-minute walk down to the beach from where he and his brothers had their houses all lined up in a row of five on the back of their family property.

The motion-sensor light for the brewery flicked on when he passed under the deck on stilts and made his way down into the sand.

They reserved the primo land with the unencumbered ocean view for the deck of their brewpub. Patrons could come and grab a pint or a flight of beer, snack on some pub grub and watch the boats out in the straight. Then behind the brewpub were six cabins that they rented out to tourists, and beyond the cabins stood a line of trees for privacy, followed by a little hill, with five houses all side-by-side. One for each of the McEvoy brothers and their children.

Except Jagger, the youngest. He had no kids. But he was a damn good uncle.

They each had a small backyard, and beyond that spanned a rolling hillside with tall grass and wildflowers. A place for the kids to roam free like the little wildlings they were. Chase grasshoppers, pick flowers and lay under the sun watching the clouds.

It was everything Clint ever wanted for his child.

His pace slowed, and he wobbled even more as his shoes sunk into the loose, dry sand. He had a favorite piece of driftwood that he liked to sit on when he came down to the beach to wallow and grieve. But they had some pretty wicked winter storms, so there was a good chance his log had drifted out to sea and found a new beach to call home. He’d have to find a new one.

Jagger was right. The moon was full and bright.

Not a cloud floated in the inky sky to block Clint’s only source of light as he left the safety of the sand and traversed his way onto the rocks. He continued along the tide line, where the kelp and driftwood nestled close to the overhanging trees. Resilient evergreens with harsh bends in the trunks that took a beating from the wind and sea each and every year yet never buckled hung over the rocks, creating a low canopy.

The madrona, or arbutus to someone from Canada, was his favorite tree. With branches that twisted and kinked toward the sky, and bark that peeled like cinnamon curls to reveal a bright, green, silky skin underneath. They had leaves, but they weren’t deciduous. And the berries were edible. It was something they were considering experimenting with at the brewery. Madrona berry ale. It remained in the workshopping stage, since they’d need a lot of berries, but he knew they could make it into something delicious.

Once he was out of sight of the brewpub, he found his log, or one similar enough that it didn’t matter, and sat down, tipping the bottle of whiskey up to his lips and taking a long, hard pull.

He rarely drank hard alcohol. He was a brewmaster, so he usually drank beer. But on days like today, he needed to flesh out a way to feel and yet also feel nothing, and whiskey seemed the fastest way to do that and slip away into memories of her.

Their marriage hadn’t been good for a while. All they did was fight.

It wasn’t that he didn’t love Jacqueline; it was that he wasn’t in love with her anymore. They had always been better friends than spouses or lovers. And she knew that, too. They just didn’t have a lot in common. He was a homebody, and she loved to socialize. She also grew to resent their quiet life on San Camanez Island and kept pressuring him to move to Seattle, where life could be busier and more exciting.

But he loved the island. It was where his business was, where his family was, and it was a safe place for their adventurous and spirited daughter. Talia and her cousins could run around without any shoes on and not worry about stepping on broken glass, a needle, or getting abducted from her front yard. They had property, privacy and most of all, community.

But Jacqueline grew up in the city and became almost immediately bored with island life.

They’d had a big fight right before she went on her girls’ trip with her three sisters in-laws. They were going down to Vegas for Remy’s thirtieth birthday. Clint fully supported the trip and thought maybe getting to the big city and off the island would be good for Jacqueline. That it would feed her need for busyness. But she saw his acceptance and excitement for her to go, as him happy that she was leaving.

So, while his brothers kissed their wives goodbye, Clint got a harsh glare from Jacqueline as she climbed into Sheila’s car.

That was the last time he ever saw his wife.

Their car got side-swiped on the way to SeaTac airport, and all four women passed away. Jacqueline was declared dead on the scene, as was Remy. Sheila and Carla were taken to the hospital in critical condition. Neither woman survived long enough for Clint and his brothers to get to the hospital and say goodbye.

Four men became widowers that day.

Six children lost their mothers.

So, given the guilt he felt about his daughter not having a mother anymore—piled on the fact that he and Jacqueline were at odds and probably on the road to divorce—Clint still struggled with things.

He muddled through the days somehow. Because he had to.

For Talia.

But the guilt still gnawed away at him.

He took another pull off the bottle and stared up at the glowing moon.

At least he still had his daughter.

Precocious, cheeky, brilliant, beautiful and so much like her mother, Talia was his sunshine. His glowing moon, his stars and the reason he hadn’t sunk into a deeper pit of despair and nauseating, debilitating guilt. Because he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He needed to do right by his little girl, and being both mom and dad for her was how he did it.

Heaving a big sigh, he set the bottle on the marble-like pebbles at his feet and shoved his fingers into his short, dark hair, then dragged his hand down his face, pulling at the stubble on his jaw.

His eyes drifted out to the ocean. The water was calm, and the tide must have been slack because there wasn’t the normal whoosh of the surf breaking against the rocks.

Once in a while, a seal, sea lions or otters would splash about, drawing the attention of the brewpub patrons. They’d even been graced with a few orca or humpback sightings. That was always good for business. Jagger—who handled all of their social media—would post like crazy that there were whales in front of the brewery, then people would flock to their establishment.

Keeping his eyes out on the water, he scanned for signs of life.

It was closing in on midnight. Even the seals were probably sleeping.

Where did seals sleep? On land? Or floating around the ocean like a dolphin? That didn’t seem safe. They had far more predators than dolphins.

No little heads popped up out of the water, and when he concentrated, he heard no sudden gusts of breath from a blowhole or pinniped’s nostrils.

He took another sip. He still had about a quarter of the bottle left, and it hadn’t been full when he started.

But he had a high tolerance for alcohol and could—if he wanted to—finish a two-six himself and live to tell the story. After a three-day hangover, of course. Because he wasn’t twenty-two anymore, and his body no longer found joy in self-destruct mode. It didn’t bounce back as quickly and liked to punish him for a few days afterward to remind him he was a forty-four-year-old man and needed to behave like one.

He continued to scan the beach, glancing down one side, then the other. He looked to the right again and paused.

What the fuck was that?

From where he sat, the shadows and his drunk brain playing tricks on him, he couldn’t tell what it was.

Probably a seal.

But maybe something else?

He stood up, left his bottle where it was, but then paused.

Maybe he needed a weapon?

But glass on the beach was a terrible idea. There were rocks. He could always defend himself with a big rock.

He left the bottle on the rocks and started walking down the beach beneath the trees. The rocks were probably slippery, meaning the path of least resistance and ultimate safety was not a straight line. He wasn’t so drunk that he would do something stupid like traipse along the slippery rocks in the dark. That would probably cause him to break his neck. Then Talia would be an orphan. He was always in his right mind when it came to her.

He reached the point where he was up at the tide line, but directly in line with the lump.

The lump that didn’t move.

Fuck.

He blinked a bunch of times, trying to get his eyes to adjust to the light of the moon a little better, but nothing worked. He needed to get closer.

Careful not to slip, he was mindful where he put his feet, keeping his eyes on the ground as much as he could so he didn’t step on a rock covered with slippery green seaweed.

He lifted his head again now that he was closer to the lump.

Oh fuck!

That was no seal.

That was a fucking person.

A naked person.

Was that a mermaid?

He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head hard enough that he nearly lost his footing, then blinked them open again.

Or was it a dead body?

Oh God.

“Hello?” he whispered. “Are you a mermaid?”

Did mermaids speak English?

Oh, you drunk idiot. Mermaids do not fucking exist.

Hopefully, the person didn’t hear him ask that.

But also, hopefully, they weren’t dead.

He stepped closer, his shoes on the rocks making the stones slide across each other and the normally banal noise of pebbles across pebbles suddenly sounded like a foghorn in the eerily quiet night.

“Hello? Are you okay?”

He was only about fifteen feet away now. It was definitely a person. They had legs. Not fins.

And they were basically naked, aside from black underwear—well, more like a black thong. Shit. Long blonde hair covered the person’s face as they lay curled up in the fetal position. But when he leaned in closer, he noticed breasts. Fuck. Fuck. It was a woman.

Not that it mattered whether it was a dead man or woman. A dead person sucked either way.

But given that he’d come out here to silently self-destruct over the death of his wife, just added another layer of gravy to his open-faced shit sandwich.

“Hello? Are you okay? Do you need some help?” He crept closer.

He finally reached her and sunk to his knees, rolling her over onto her back. Her hair fell away from her face.

And holy flying fuck.

It was Brooke Barker.

The Brooke Barker. Hollywood sweetheart. Big screen phenomenon. Two-time Oscar nominee, Brooke Fucking Barker.

His jaw dropped.

“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God, oh God.” He leaned down and pressed his ear to her mouth to check to see if she was breathing . But he couldn’t tell. All he heard was the pounding of his pulse in his ears.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her gently, but forcefully. “Brooke. Ms. Barker, you need to wake up. Oh my God. Fuck.”

He sat down on the rocks and pulled her head into his lap, pressed his fingers to her neck. She had a pulse.

Hall-e-fucking-lujah, she had a pulse.