You've Got Male novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: By the Hour

Kellen read Lyle's text twice, then laid the phone face down on the blanket.

"He found my name in under a day," he said.

"He asked around the club. Someone knew."

"What do you want me to answer?"

"Nothing." I pulled my sweater back over my head. "He's fishing. If you reply, you've told him he's right to worry."

"And if he comes after the agency?"

"Then he looked up his wife's date the morning after his wedding," I said.

"Let him explain that to anyone."

I was back in my father's room by four in the morning.

I slept for an hour, and I did not feel guilty at all.

By nine I was on the dock at Barnwell Marina with a coffee, watching the tide come in around the pilings.

The marina was the one place Lyle could not charm.

Eight dock hands had known me since I was in braces.

The dockmaster, a big gray man with a limp, set down his clipboard when he saw my face.

"Cassidy. You look like somebody who got married."

"I look like somebody who needs a boat fixed," I said. "Is the Rosalind still on the hard?"

My father's sloop sat on blocks at the end of the yard.

She was thirty-eight feet of old wood with a split in her transom and my mother's name on the stern.

I had not been able to look at her for three years.

"She needs more than paint," the dockmaster said.

"Then she needs somebody good."

Behind me, a car door slammed.

Lyle came down the gravel lot in a pale-blue suit with Francine on his arm, her cane tapping.

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