Randy White - Seduced

“My world record just swam off!” Mrs. Gentry hollered to me. She was dancing around, both fists raised.

This was a phrase she repeated several times while we celebrated over lunch, then drinks by the pool on Useppa Island.

No alcohol for me, not on a charter. Even so, we had fun, and, as it turned out, more than that. We got to talking about the orange trees, and their biotech background sparked a lot of questions and comments from them-so many that, by the time we were done, I’d filled up a napkin with scribbled thoughts.

My thoughts of the previous evening were again displaced until I could no longer ignore the time. It was nearly three. I was still obligated to meet Kermit and his daughter at four despite what had happened last night aboard my boat.

“Like this never happened,” the grove manager had said to me before leaving. His exact words.

It was almost true.

Aboard the boat that is my home, alone with the married man, what happened wasn’t much, at first, but enough to cause me to say, “I’d like you to leave before we both do something stupid.”

It was too late for that. I’d already made the error of inviting him into the cozy privacy of my cabin, where stars sparkled outside the windows and the lighting inside was dim.

“Us being here is my fault, Kermit. Let’s call it a night and start over tomorrow. Usually, I’m more careful about, uh… getting into situations like this.”

At first, he feigned confusion. Finally, though, he proved he was an honest man by saying, “Okay, okay… I like you too much to lie. I know exactly what you mean. And you’re right, I should leave.”

This was after I’d moved from the captain’s chair to the little booth, which, truth be told, I seldom use because I prefer to eat, or read, outside, and I almost always dine alone. I sat across from him. We discussed citrus, and his life in California, and Lonnie Chatham, then more trivial matters. Mostly, we laughed. I enjoyed our laughter, particular after the day we’d shared. I liked the sun lines in his face when he smiled. The recollections we exchanged about how we’d met-him in the river, me at the rail where he’d hung his clothes-added a scent of bawdiness to the air.

My wineglass was empty by then. This freed my hands for the occasional subtext of an accidental touch. Nothing so obvious I could not pretend it was innocent. Beneath the table, however, our feet were bolder. Soon, I felt perfectly at ease resting an ankle against his-this under the guise of his leg being part of the table. But when his shoes came off and he reinitiated contact, skin on skin, it was too much to ignore. That’s when I called a halt to the evening.

The grove manager had apologized his way up the steps to the stern deck outside. I’d made sure the dock lights were out, of course-another sneaky decision-which only softened the man’s soft brown eyes when he turned to me to say good night.

“I don’t know what got into me, Hannah. Wait… that’s not true, either. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long, long time, or felt so at ease. If things were going better at home, maybe… And then there’s my job-hell… if I still have a job. Mostly, though”-he had placed his hands on my wrists to say this-“it’s the feeling I got when I first saw you. You are so damn beautiful, and not in the typical hair spray, lipstick sort of way. Believe me, I’ve never done anything like this before.”

If he had only said “attractive,” I might have allowed him to kiss me, for I knew that was coming. I wanted to be kissed; I wanted to be held. The word striking might have worked, too, for I’d like to think I am striking in the right dress and soft lighting, but no man has ever called me beautiful-not with honest motives or without irony.

The exaggeration brought me to my senses yet did not slow my breathing. I had to step free of his touch to find air. “That’s sweet of you, Kermit, but you can’t say such things if we’re to be friends. Follow the dock; I’ll switch on the lights. I think you can find the way to your own truck.”

I didn’t expect him to leave without another attempt. He didn’t disappoint me.

“Are friends allowed to give each other a hug good night?”

“Of course,” I said, well aware of the ledge I had just stepped off.

Time is sometimes difficult to gauge, but it wasn’t much later when he whispered in my ear, “Pretend like this never happened. Both of us. We’ve got no choice and we both know why. But, Hannah? I can’t pretend I don’t want this to happen again.”

Only then did the married man return to his truck.

All this replayed in my head after I dropped off the Gentrys and pointed my skiff home. It was nearly four; I was in a rush and distracted or would have been quicker to notice a boat trailing too close in my wake.

I looked back and did a double take. It was the black catamaran hull. Yes… the same boat, but only the driver aboard, with his green visor and wild, red handlebar mustache. His shirt was open, flapping in the wind.

I swung around and pretended I hadn’t seen him. We were on the east side of the Intracoastal Waterway. It was busy on this winter afternoon. Lots of cruiser traffic, yachts that plowed a wake, so I couldn’t be certain of the man’s intentions. Not yet anyway. I increased speed, sledded down a series of waves, then banked into shallow water. Ahead lay three miles of shoals separating me from the dock my Uncle Jake had built and home.

The tide was flooding. Oyster bars and limestone jetties and snags caused by hurricanes would be masked by water, but that was okay. I’d been skidding boats through that maze since childhood.

Behind me, the man with the mustache turned, too.

No doubt now. He was following me, coming fast, and way too close.

In the 1980s, when Florida banned traditional mullet nets, fishermen forced out of business were offered water leases and the chance to raise clams commercially.

It was a high-risk, low-profit “opportunity.” What else could they do?

As a result, west of Demere Key is a vast acreage of Styrofoam buoys and stakes that mark the clam leases and the bags of seed clams that grow beneath. It’s an area I avoid out of respect for people whom the government has seldom treated fairly. They didn’t deserve the added burden of property damaged by propellers, but that’s where I headed… until my conscience got the best of me.

Why not stop and have it out with the guy right now?

I tried, but, when I slowed, Yosemite Sam-that’s what Mrs. Gentry had called him-nearly rammed his boat over the corner of my transom. He would’ve if I hadn’t jammed the throttle forward. When I glanced aft, he towered above me at the controls and wore the same idiotic grin, his hair and shirttails flapping like flags. To acknowledge eye contact, he flashed the peace sign, then used the same two fingers to throw me a kiss.

The man was crazy.

I had no choice but to run. My skiff is a 21-foot Maverick, built for thin water and over-powered with a 225-horse Mercury OptiMax. Seldom did I invite the eye-watering discomfort by exceeding 40 mph, but the speedometer climbed to 50 as I raced away.

Behind me, the black catamaran had no trouble keeping up; in fact, it could have passed me, which cartoon Sam threatened several times by nosing close to my stern, then jumping my wake, before dropping back.

A mile of water lay between us and the clam beds.

Beneath the console was a VHF radio I seldom use, and also my cell phone. I chose the radio. I contacted the Coast Guard at Fort Myers Beach. After the duty officer had me switch to Channel 22-Alpha, I told her what was going on. Because of the noise, I had to shout, and repeat my location several times.