Lisa Carter - Coast Guard Sweetheart

Honey made a futile grab for her nephew as he appropriated two fistfuls of fried dough. “Max! Don’t—”

But too late.

The little girl yanked a Long John off a fellow scout’s plate and chucked it toward Max. But instead of Max, it hit a grungy waterman in the nose.

“Hey!” The boat captain jumped to his feet. His reactionary winged donut walloped the troop leader, Mrs. Francis, upside the head.

Mrs. Francis rose with battle fury in her eyes. “How dare you, you crazy ole—”

“Boys against girls!” Max scrambled atop Sawyer’s vacated stool. Using the stool as a shield, with machine-gun rapid fire, he launched the doughy projectiles at the rest of the Girl Scouts.

Who returned fire with targeted accuracy.

Max retreated toward a table of his granddad’s contemporaries. Who, when the barrage sailed their way, responded with a volley of catapulted sugar and cinnamon. Ducking behind the padded booths, Mrs. Francis, the Kiptohanock postmistress and the town librarian, directed the Girl Scouts’ cannon assault.

“Score!” Max fist-pumped as another donut grenade connected with the little redheaded girl.

Her answering shot left Max with a mouthful of pastry. Spitting and coughing, Max retreated behind the counter.

Donuts a-flying, Sawyer and Honey gaped at the ensuing melee taking place around them. An island of calm in the midst of mayhem.

“Your turn, Aunt Honey.”

She dodged too late as the Long John smacked her in the forehead.

Max clenched another pastry in his right hand. “Bull’s—”

“Don’t do it, Max... Drop it...” Sawyer stepped in front of her and scooped a mangled Long John off the floor. “Don’t you dare hit your aunt Honey again, Max.”

Max chuckled and took aim. As did Sawyer. Peeping through her fingers, she covered her face with her hands.

The bells jingled as the door whooshed open.

“Executive Petty Officer Kole! What is going on in here? You will cease and desist immediately.”

Sawyer groaned at the sight of his boss, Senior Chief Braeden Scott, framed in the doorway of the cafe.

“Max Duer Scott! Honey!”

Honey lowered her hands. Her older sister, Amelia, glared. Max dropped the donut and shuffled his feet.

The surreptitious thud of twenty other donuts hit the floor as the townspeople came to their senses and surveyed the sugary wreckage of Kiptohanock’s favorite hangout.

“Storm’s a-coming.” Seth Duer, her father, crossed his arms across his flannel plaid shirt. “But what in the name of fried oysters is going on in here?”

* * *

“What were you thinking, Kole?” Sawyer’s superior—and Honey’s brother-in-law—stared at him. “We’ve got a tropical depression barreling up the East Coast and you’ve started a war in Kiptohanock?”

“I’m sorry, Chief.” Sawyer scanned the deserted and wrecked diner. “I accidentally ran into Honey and we sort of...collided.”

“Do you think this is a laughing matter, Executive Petty Officer Kole? Do you think this is any way for the second in command at Station Kiptohanock to treat the local populace? Represent the United States Coast Guard? Provide an example to the station crew?”

Sawyer wiped the emerging smile off his face. He went into a rigid salute, feet clamped together. “No. Not at all, Chief Scott.”

Braeden glowered. “I should hope not, BMC Kole. Or I might have to rethink requesting your reassignment here on the Delmarva Peninsula.”

“Permission to speak freely, Chief?”

Braeden narrowed his eyes. “Ankle deep in powdered sugar, I’d speak carefully if I were you, Kole.”

Sawyer cut his eyes around his thirtysomething commander toward the kitchen where the chief’s pregnant wife, Amelia, reamed out a much-subdued Honey. A firm hand clamped on her orphaned nephew and adopted son, Amelia kept Max affixed in place. Fixed like a bug on a pin until his turn for her strawberry blonde wrath.

“This was a bad idea, me being reassigned to the Eastern Shore again, Chief.”

Braeden’s eyebrow arched. “Oh, really?”

Sawyer nodded. “I thought after what happened three years ago...after our last conversation that night...” He slumped. “That you understood... It was better for everyone, especially Honey, for me to never—”

“What I understand, XPO, is that you acquitted yourself extremely well at your last duty station in California. You are an asset to any boat station, especially this one.” Braeden skewered him with a look. “And let me remind you the Coast Guard does not exist for the benefit of the Coastie but the other way around.”

Sawyer went into regulation stance again. “Yes, Chief.”

Braeden took a deep breath. “However in this case... In the weird—albeit endearing—way of southern families, when Amelia and I got married, the Duers adopted everyone on my side of the marriage, too. Including my father’s best friend, Master Chief Davis. And I promise you the Master Chief no more enjoyed watching Honey go from depressed Honey to angry Honey to cynical Honey—”

“I’m guessing we’re back at the angry Honey phase.” Frowning, Sawyer took a quick, surreptitious look across the cafe.

“Exactly. So one word in the Master Chief’s ear and it was no problem getting you reassigned here. Time to work out the unresolved issues chaining the both of you to the past. Nothing worse than might-have-beens. This way—barring a few damaged donuts—better for both of you in the end. Get each other out of your systems.”

Braeden’s clipped voice gouged at Sawyer’s heart. “Or not, as the case may be. Time to let nature—or donuts—take their course.”

“So now we know.” Sawyer gulped. “She hates me.”

“That what you took from this?” Braeden gestured. “Don’t know if I’d agree.” Braeden’s lips twitched as he surveyed the culinary disaster zone. “I already hear this skirmish is going down in the annals of Kiptohanock lore as The Battle of the Long Johns.”

Sawyer smothered a groan. “I’m sorry, Chief. Really sorry. I promise you it won’t happen again. I’ll perform my duty watches and otherwise keep my distance.”

In the corner, the hitherto silent Seth Duer cleared his throat. “That strategy kind of defeats the purpose, don’t you think?” The man’s bristly mustache twitched.

Sawyer cast his eyes toward the snowy floor.

Honey’s dad had never been one of his biggest fans. And rightly so as subsequent events that spring proved. Sawyer was nothing, as his own father routinely declared twenty-odd years ago, if not a self-fulfilling screw-up.

Worthless. Good for nothing. Ruined everyone’s life.

Amelia—one hand around the back of Max’s scrawny neck and the other squeezing the tender underflesh of Honey’s arm—hauled the pair of miscreants toward them.

“Ow, ’Melia.” Honey wrested free. “Let go. You’re—” Her forward momentum carried her to within an arm’s reach of Sawyer.

Honey teetered in her powder-slathered heels. Her eyes flicked toward Sawyer and then to her toes. She clenched and unclenched her hands at her sides.

Sawyer’s heart pounded at her proximity.

Beatrice “Honey” Duer was the loveliest woman he’d ever known. As beautiful in her kindness and generosity as her beautiful honey-colored hair and chestnut brown eyes. Seeing her again, despite the circumstances, was both a pleasure and a stabbing ache he’d never quite managed to rid himself of.

He’d never understood until face-to-face now with Honey how one person could inspire within him—all at the same moment—such joy and pain.

This newly embittered, enraged Honey was entirely Sawyer’s own fault. A product of his previous misjudgment in allowing the twentysomething Shore girl to get close to him that spring. His father’s words—though the man was long dead in a state penitentiary—reverberated in his mind.