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Privacy and cookie detailsShe wants his kiss. He wants her fishing grounds closed.
Veda, 46, loves her fishing boat. She also wants the man campaigning to close the estuary grounds that keep it working.
Completed · 18 chapters · 1h 41m
SteamyIntense chemistry. Sensual intimacy.Heat guideYearning · Tender
Threatened livelihood, Community conflict, Commercial fishing and discussion of environmental harm
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Dear Maeve,
I stopped Roscoe Sayer on the quay and asked whether he had come to disagree with me or to kiss me. He said the second. It would have been convenient if he had been bad at it.
Veda Quade stops Roscoe Sayer on the quay and asks whether he came to disagree with her or to kiss her. At forty-six, she knows what she wants. She also knows what the badge on his jacket means. His campaign wants a no-fishing recovery area across the estuary grounds that help sustain her small boat. Roscoe is forty-four, a furniture restorer with a workshop, a dry sense of humour and convictions he has never concealed. He is a volunteer, not the official deciding Veda's future. Over lunch he asks what she loves about her work. In his workshop she discovers how much she likes making him laugh. Their disagreement survives every reason they find to see each other again. Veda has a crew member to pay, a public submission to make and a place in the working life of the quay. Roscoe has an argument he still believes in. As wanting him becomes harder to dismiss, she must decide what she can ask of a man whose hands she wants on her and whose hopes could change the life she has built.
I am forty-six. I own a fishing boat, I pay my crew and I know which conversations can wait until we’re safely back alongside. Apparently I can also lose my good sense over a man wearing a campaign badge.
Roscoe is forty-four. He restores furniture. In his spare time he argues for a recovery area across the estuary grounds that help keep my boat working. He’s a volunteer; he doesn’t set the rules. Unfortunately, that leaves me with no sensible explanation for wanting him quite so much.
We knew where we stood before the kiss. Neither of us offered to move.
He asked me to Sunday lunch somewhere we wouldn’t be expected to make a speech. I wore a green dress and took my earrings off because I thought they made it too obvious that I wanted him to notice. He noticed anyway.
At lunch he asked what I liked about fishing. People have asked about my figures, my alternatives and my willingness to adapt. I wasn’t ready for that question. I told him how the boat settles after a turn, how some mornings I know where I am in my hands before I check it with my eyes. He didn’t turn it into a lesson about transferable skills.
Then he invited me to his workshop. He had labelled a chair leg LEFT REAR, which was a serious mistake around a woman with my level of maturity. I made him laugh. I liked that almost as much as I liked kissing him.
He showed me a repair that looked handsome and didn’t fit. He put it aside. I found that more disarming than if he’d shown me something perfect.
I have been imagining considerably more than a workshop visit. I told him so. He wasn’t shocked. We did establish that a workbench is an unsuitable place to pursue certain ambitions, and went for a walk instead.
On the walk I asked whether he wanted me as I was or as someone he hoped I’d become. He didn’t promise never to hope I’d change my mind. I couldn’t honestly promise that either.
I want his hands on me. I want to hear him laugh in a room where neither of us represents anybody. I also want my work, my boat and the particular life I’ve made here.
I can say all of that plainly to you. I’m trying to learn whether I can keep saying it when he is close enough to kiss.
From Where the River Narrows
Read this if you want a kiss that leaves a real disagreement standing.
Read this if you want desire between two adults who cannot agree about the place they love.
Enemies, rivals and forbidden love
First five chapters free. No card needed.
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