your ears blue. And if you don't have the others doing something to keep
them busy, they make trouble out of thin air."
"Well." Ethan puffed out smoke, watched the kids send Simon into ecstasy
with rough rubs and scratches. "At the rate they're going, they'll have
that hull sanded down in ten or twenty years."
"That's something we have to talk about."
"Hiring on those kids for the next two decades?"
"No, work." It was as good a time as any to take a break. Cam stooped
and pumped iced tea out of the cooler. "I got a call from Tod Bardette
this morning."
"The friend of yours who wants the fishing boat?"
"That's right. Now, Bardette and I go back a ways. He knows what I can
do."
"He offer you another race?"
He had, Cam mused, cutting the dust in his throat with the sweet tea.
Turning it down had stung, but the sting had eased more quickly this
time around. "I made a promise here. I'm not breaking it."
Ethan tucked a hand in his back pocket and looked toward the boat. This
place, this business, had been his dream, not Cam's, not Phillip's. "I
didn't mean it that way. I guess I know what you put away to pull this
off."
"We needed it."
"Yeah, but you're the only one who's given up anything to make it
happen. I haven't bothered to thank you for it, and I'm sorry for that."
Every bit as uncomfortable as his brother, Cam stared at the boat. "I'm
not exactly suffering here. The business is going to help us get
permanent guardianship of Seth--and it's satisfying on its own account.
Of course, Phil's bitching about our cash flow every time you turn
around."
"That's his strength."
"Bitching?"
Ethan grinned around the cigar clamped in his teeth. "Yeah, and cash
flows. You and me, we could never pull this off without him nagging us
about the details."
"We may have more for him to nag about. That's what I started to tell
you. Bardette has a friend who's interested in a custom catboat. He
wants fast and he wants pretty, fitted out and sailing by March."
Ethan frowned and worked timetables in his head. "It's going to take us
another seven or eight weeks to finish this one, and that puts us into
end of August, beginning of September."
Calculating, he leaned back against the workbench, his eyes narrowed
against the smoke. "Then we got the sport's fisher. I can't see us
finishing her off before January, and that's pushing. That doesn't give
us enough time to deliver."
"No, not the way things are. I can give it full-time and after crab
season's over, I imagine you'll put in more hours here."
"Oystering isn't what it was, but--"
"You'll have to decide if you can juggle more time off the water, Ethan,
and in here." He knew what he was asking. Ethan didn't just live on the
water, he lived for it. "Phil's going to have to make some hard