She took a bite of fish, chewing around a smile. “Have you ever had a woman on your crew?”

“Jesus Christ, no.” There went the smile. “I’m trying not to sink.”

Amusement danced across her face. “So the idea of women is comforting, but their actual presence would be a disaster.”

“Yes.”

“Well, that makes perfect sense.” Her sarcasm was delivered with a wink. “My stepfather told us a little bit about king crab fishing. It’s only a few weeks out of the year?”

“Changes every season, depending on the supply, the overall haul from the prior year.”

Piper nodded. “What do you do the rest of the year? Besides yell at harmless women in the street.”

“You planning on holding that over me for long?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“Fair enough.” He sighed, noticed she’d stopped eating, and nudged her fork hand into action. When she’d put a decent-sized bite into her mouth, he continued. “In the summer, we fish for tuna. Those are the longer jobs. Four, five days out. In between those long hauls, we do overnight trips to bring in salmon, trout, cod.”

Her eyebrows went up, and she angled her fork toward the plate. “Did you catch this?”

“Maybe.”

She covered her mouth. “That’s so weird.”

Was it? He kind of liked sitting there while she ate something he’d brought back on his boat. He liked knowing most of the town either made money off his catches or fed them to their families, but it had never quite felt like the masculine pride hardening his chest right now. “You want me to put in an order for your sister? Or they can box up Fox’s dinner, and he can fend for himself.”

“She’ll be happy with the other half of yours.” She pushed Fox’s plate toward him. “You should eat his, though. I don’t know what it is, but it looks good.”

Brendan grunted. “It’s a potpie.”

“Ohh.” She waited, but he made no move to pick up his fork. “You don’t like potpie?”

“It’s not fish and chips.”

“And that’s bad.”

“It’s not bad, it’s just not what I order.” He shifted in his chair, wondering if the seats had always been so uncomfortable. “I always order the fish and chips.”

Piper studied him in that way again, from beneath her long eyelashes—and he wished she wouldn’t. Every time she did that, the zipper of his jeans felt tight. “You’ve never eaten anything else on the menu?”

“Nope. I like what I like.”

“That’s so boring, though.”

“I call it safe.”

“Oh no.” A serious expression dawned on her face. “Do you think there is a female fisherman hiding in this pie, Brendan?”

His bark of laughter made her jump. Hell, it made him jump. Had anyone ever caught him off guard like that? No, he didn’t think so. He turned slightly to find the employees of the Red Buoy and a half-dozen customers staring at him. When he turned back, Piper was holding out the fork. “Try the pie. I dare you.”

“I won’t like it.”

“So?”

So? “I don’t try things. If I make the decision to eat the pie, I’ll have to eat the whole thing. I don’t just go around sampling shit and moving on. That’s indecisive.”

“If Hannah was here, she’d tell you your problem is psychological.”

Brendan sighed up at the ceiling. “Well, I didn’t seem to have any damn problems until you two showed up and started pointing them out.”

A beat passed. “Brendan.”

He dropped his chin. “What?”

She held out the fork. “Try the pie. It’s not going to kill you.”

“Christ. If it’s that important to you.” Brendan snatched the fork out of her hand, careful not to graze her with the tines. As he held the fork above the pastry shell, she pressed her knuckles to her mouth and squealed a little. He shook his head, but some part of him was relieved she didn’t seem to be having a terrible time. Even if her entertainment came at his expense. He reckoned he kind of owed her after the scene in the street, though, didn’t he?

Yeah.

He stabbed the fork into the pie, pulled it out with some chicken, vegetables, and gravy attached. Put it in his mouth and chewed. “I hate it.” Someone behind the counter gasped. “No offense,” he called without turning around. “It’s just not fish and chips.”

Piper’s hands dropped away from her face. “Well, that was disappointing.”

He kept eating, even though the runniness of the gravy curled his upper lip.

“You’re really going to eat the whole thing,” she murmured, “aren’t you?”

Another large bite went in. “Said I would.”

They ate in silence for a couple of minutes until he noticed her attention drifting to the window, and he could see she was thinking about the frying pan incident. Another stab of guilt caught him in his middle for yelling at her. “You planning on trying to cook again?”

She considered her plate of food, which she’d hardly made a dent in. “I don’t know. The goal was to make it through one night and go from there.” She squinted an eye at him. “Maybe I’ll have better luck if I give our stove a woman’s name.”

Brendan thought for a second. “Eris.” She gave him an inquisitive head tilt. “The goddess of chaos.”

“Ha-ha.”

Piper laid her fork down, signaling she’d finished eating, and Brendan felt a kick of urgency. They’d been sitting there a good ten minutes, and he still didn’t know anything about her. Nothing important, anyway. And he wouldn’t mind making sense of her, this girl who came across pampered one minute and vulnerable the next. Hell, there was something fascinating about how she glimmered in one direction, then the other, delivering hints of something deeper, before dancing away. Had he really talked about fishing for most of dinner?

He wanted to ask what Hannah had meant when she said men treat Piper like garbage. That statement had been stuck in his craw since he’d heard it. “You never answered me this morning. Why exactly are you in Westport?” was what he asked instead. She’d been running fingers through her hair, but paused when she heard his question. “You said three months,” he continued. “That’s a pretty specific amount of time.”

Beneath the table, her leg started to jiggle. “It’s kind of an awkward story.”

“Do you need a beer before telling it?”

Her lips twitched. “No.” She closed her eyes and shivered. “It’s more than awkward, actually. It’s humiliating. I don’t know if I should give you that ammunition.”

Man, he’d really been a bastard. “I won’t use it against you, Piper.”

She speared him with those baby blues and seemed satisfied with whatever she saw. “Okay. Just keep an open mind.” She blew out a breath. “I had a bad breakup. A public one. And I didn’t want to be labeled social media pathetic, right? So I mass texted hundreds of people and broke us into the rooftop pool at the Mondrian. It got out of control. Like, police helicopters and fireworks and nudity out of control. So I got arrested and almost cost my stepfather the production money for his next film. He sent me here with barely any money to teach me a lesson . . . and force me into being self-sufficient. Hannah wouldn’t let me come alone.”