She was somehow able to thrust aside the nausea that always plagued her, concentrating for the present on someone other than herself.
It felt good.
“Let’s get moving.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lace looked tired.
More tired than last week.
Not that Vincent should have been able to note the difference between how she appeared now, and how she’d presented then, but he felt oddly in tune with her, and he noticed.
“Everything still going, uh, according to plan?” he asked tentatively as they walked toward the peds unit. Lace was rolling her IV pole alongside him like a pro. She’d been given permission from her nurse to head down the long hall with Vincent, provided she didn’t go into any “public” areas.
Lace glanced over, one corner of her pretty pink top lip turning upward.
“Like, is my entire life proceeding the way I thought it would when I was younger?” she returned teasingly, sending him an arched brow.
“Uh. Sorry. No. That’snotwhat I meant,” he responded sheepishly. “But…I’m okay if you want to talk about how you’re dealing with all that. I’m here any time to listen.”
Damn.This was all be new territory for Vince, but he wasn’t one to shy away from tough situations.
Lace gave a self-deprecating groan. “Thanks. And pay no attention to the bitch behind the curtain,” she quipped. “Iknowwhat you meant.” She sighed, giving him a crooked smile. “I’m just a little out of it. I’ve had a pretty rough week at work.”
Okay.Vince could wrap his head around that one.
“Like how? It seems like the weather has been cooperative for fishing,” he noted. “Which leads me to believe your problems have to do with either the catch or the crew,” he speculated.
“Both,” she spat out with a little pique in her voice.
“And?” Vince prompted.
“And the problems started because we had more than our usual number of throwbacks over the course of the last six days, as well as some really soul-crushing bycatch. Both of which pissed the captain off, and lowered the entire mood onboard.”
Vincent was very familiar with not only the terminology she used—having worked long hours on fishing trawlers for two summers during his high school years—but how a good day or a bad day could alter the atmosphere in the small confines of a boat.
“What kind of bycatch are we talking?” he asked.
“Sea Turtles,” she sighed. “Leatherbacks. In one of our hauls yesterday, there were fourteen of them, and four didn’t survive coming aboard.”
That sucked. But there was more to it than that. Vince could tell. He probed a little deeper. “What about the other ten?”
There it was on her face. The edge of anger he’d previously glimpsed. But now, Lace was no longer holding back.
“The crew was just so freaking callous,” she lamented with full blown ire emerging. “Nobody took care to make sure the rest of the turtles weren’t injured when they came off the hooks. Not one crewmember. I’d be surprised if half of those leatherbacks survived being released.”
“That really sucks,” Vincent commiserated, upset on the turtles’ behalfandon Lace’s. He hated animal cruelty of any kind, and her having to witness it up close and personal when she couldn’t do anything about it, had to have been horrific.
“I hope you reported them all,” he growled.
“I wrote them up,” she acknowledged almost defeatedly. “But nothing will happen. My higher ups are more concerned with the tuna numbers, and even if they did sanction the behavior, Captain-Fucking-Hook doesn’t give a shit about reprimands. He’s a hateful man.”
“Captain Hook?” Vincent snorted, trying to find some humor in her tirade. “That can’t be his real name.”
“No. It’s not. But I equate the bastard with every evil captain I’ve ever come across in literature and movies, so I don’t have to say his real name, out loudorin my head.”
Vincent wanted more.No. Heneededmore. “Am I familiar with this guy?”