The Hidden Heiress: Married to My Ex's Brother novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: The Salt Pier

"Rem," I said. "Wake up. We have a problem."

He sat straight up in the white quilt with his hair on end.

"Is it my brother?"

"It's Seattle."

He came to the window and looked.

Then he started to laugh, and couldn't stop.

"She did warn you," he said.

"She said sorry. That's not a warning."

I had a uniform on a hook in the crew locker, a hundred yards down the pier.

There were about four hundred people between me and it.

So I went out in his gray sweater and yesterday's trousers, with my hair in a knot and two rings on my hand.

The line saw me and went quiet.

Then the woman with the sign held it up.

I could read it now.

SIGN MY TICKET, CAPTAIN.

I walked down the middle of the pier with Rem behind me carrying my shoes.

People touched my arm as I passed. A girl in a yellow raincoat on her father's shoulders waved both hands.

The fish market lady was rolling up her shutters.

"Told you, honey," she said. "Yellow raincoat. Everybody loves a yellow raincoat."

I ran the 7:10 that morning with a full car deck and a passenger deck so full the ticket booth lady sold standing room.

Halfway across, I picked up the handset.

"Good morning, this is your captain. We'll be at Bainbridge in about twenty minutes."

"Some of you have asked, so I'll say it once. The wedding is on the Salt Pier, at the end, eight weeks from Saturday."

"Everybody's invited. Bring your own chair."

The cheer came up through the deck plates into my boots.

Eight weeks later, they brought their own chairs.

Hundreds of them. Folding chairs, camp chairs, a couch somebody carried down from a truck.

The crew had strung lights from the net sheds to the pavilion roof.

Not white roses. Ferry flags, and the fish market's buoys painted gold.

Dina wore red and stood at the end of the pier like a bouncer.

The old engineer had gotten himself ordained on the internet for twelve dollars.

He stood with his back to the bay in a new suit that didn't fit him, holding a book upside down.

"I've never done this," he'd told me. "But I've docked in a crosswind. How hard can it be."

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