Becalmed: When a Southern woman with a broken heart finds herself falling for a widower with a broken boat, it's anything but smooth sailing. Read online

  BECALMED BY NORMANDIE FISCHER

  Published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas

  2333 Barton Oaks Dr., Raleigh, NC, 27614

  ISBN 978-1-938499-61-6

  Copyright © 2013 by Normandie Fischer

  Cover design by kateink.com

  Available in print from your local bookstore, online, or from the publisher at:

  www.lighthousepublishingofthecarolinas.com

  For more information on this book and the author visit: www.normandiefischer.com

  All rights reserved. Non-commercial interests may reproduce portions of this book without the express written permission of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, provided the text does not exceed 500 words. When reproducing text from this book, include the following credit line: “Becalmed by Normandie Fischer published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. Used by permission.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Normandie Fischer

  Becalmed / Normandie Fischer 1st ed.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  Praise for Becalmed

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Disclaimer

  Praise for Becalmed

  With a voice that sings and characters that sail right into your heart, Fischer has crafted a story that will keep the pages turning, the heart twisting, and stick with you long after The End.

  ~Roseanna M. White, author of

  Ring of Secrets and Jewel of Persia

  Normandie Fischer’s spirited tale enchants in the tradition of Maeve Binchy and Anne Rivers Siddons. Her Southern charm pours over the page like warm honey on a sweet bun. Each delicious morsel leaves you longing for more.

  ~D. D. Falvo, author

  Normandie Fischer anchors her readers so she can set them on a course full of twists, turns, and unforgettable characters. She digs into the human condition and pulls life’s richest moments out, allowing the reader a chance to sail away and dream the impossible.

  ~ Linda Glaz, literary agent and author

  “Write about what you know” is what any good writer does. Normandie Fischer just does it better than most. On inland waterways and the open ocean, Normandie’s characters chart a course for home through trials and temptations, for a chance at love and redemption Becalmed is the story of one woman’s journey to care for herself while caring for others, to be true to herself and true to another when what she hopes for will take a miracle or at least an act of God.

  ~ Jane Shealy, editor

  Normandie Fischer brings the Carolina coast alive as her characters walk off the page to become your friends and enemies. She weaves her incredible sailing experience and love of the sea through a story that captures the reader’s heart and holds it to the end.

  ~ David E. Stevens, author of

  The Resurrect Trilogy

  Smart and sassy with a Southern twang. Sailing with authentic lingo and imagery. Normandie Fischer delivers a spunky but lonely heroine who feels like she’s running out of time in the love department. Intriguing characters and a timeless story of need and desire, Becalmed takes readers out on the rough seas of relationship and delivers them to a satisfying conclusion on stable shores.

  ~ Nicole Petrino-Salter, author of

  The Famous One and Breath of Life

  The author manages to pull you into the life of Tadie from the very first line, and continues to hold you captive with every line thereafter. Weaving a story that is both enchanting and real to life, this is a novel that will resonate with anyone who has known heartache, loss, and the sweeping joy of love’s sweet arrival.

  ~ Susannah Friis, freelance writer and speaker

  Fischer has delivered a marvelous romance set in the sailing world of coastal North Carolina that intelligently includes the sometimes challenging reality of that life. In a delightful twist, the daughter of a widowed cruiser falls in love with a recreational sailor/professional jewelry designer before her father does, and tries to bring them together. But the adults in the novel just won’t cooperate. Storms, damaged boats, a delightful seven-year-old, unwanted advances from an old flame, and two people searching for truth in their own lives, all work together to make Becalmed a wonderful read. Well done!

  ~ Patti Phillips, author of the crime fiction blog, www.kerriansnotebook.com

  Acknowledgements

  If it takes a village to raise a child, it certainly takes an entire town to craft and publish a book. Becalmed wouldn’t exist without the encouragement and help of my long-time critique partner, Jane Lebak, or my writing and editing friends, Amy Alessio, Linda Glaz, and Robin Patchen.

  Many, many thanks to my agent, Terry Burns, for his friendship and faith. Thank you to Eddie Jones and everyone at Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, including Andrea Merrell and Christy Miller, for pushing me to make this story the best it could be. How could I go wrong with another sailor at the helm of a publishing company? And Andrea has the patience of a saint as well as an excellent eye for detail.

  I’m so grateful to my beloved Michael, who has always given me space and time to write. I love it that he “gets” me, and his encouragement and prayers kept me going when all those negative voices in my head tried to shout me down. My mother, Ella Meadows Giesey, continues to teach me so much about grace and love. Thank you, Mama. And to my darling children, Ariana Milton Scoville and Joshua Milton, who have always been my cheerleaders, I couldn’t be more proud of the adults you have become. When my own world felt becalmed, you were there.

  Dedication

  To Sara Meadows, my beloved auntie.

  I first loved sailing because of her. She was my aunt, fourteen years my mother’s senior. Named Sara, she was called Sister by all of us, and Tadie by the town she knew … a Southern thing. I remember the way sh
e wore her boat cap pulled low, the sleeves of her loose shirt rolled above the elbow as she tacked past crab pots and out the narrow channel from Sleepy Creek into Core Sound.

  Her life made me wonder about small towns and single women. Hence, this story.

  Chapter One

  Out here on the water between Shackleford Banks and the islands fronting Taylor Creek, the wind can turn as skittish as those barrier-island ponies. Some days, it blows up a stink as it whips through the Beaufort Inlet and across the low dunes of the Cape Lookout National Seashore. Other days, it just lies down flat.

  Tadie Longworth didn’t mind which way the wind played its tricks when she sailed alone. But with Hannah on board and the breeze a dimming memory, she cared. Her best friend sat forward in the cockpit, wilting like the edges of her floppy red hat as she poured bottled water down the front of her shirt.

  “You want me to soak a towel?” Tadie asked. “Drape it over your legs to cool you?” She plucked at her own shirt, damp with salt water. “It helps.”

  Hannah fanned her face. “Just find us some wind,” she said, elongating a sigh.

  Tadie bit back a grin. Such a drama queen. Trust Hannah to milk even discomfort.

  In the stillness, the loud rumble of an overtaking speedboat grabbed Tadie’s attention. Fool. He had plenty of water to steer clear of them, but no, he’d rather throw a wake at Luna’s beam as he flashed past in a blur of yellow.

  Luna’s sails snapped, whip-like. Tadie pushed away the wooden boom and scanned the horizon for some sign that a breeze might waft this way before Hannah cried mutiny. Yet even the gulls were silent, sitting placidly on glass.

  A loud ringing from her satchel startled them both. Hannah, closest to the bag, dug out the cell phone and glanced at the screen before handing it over. “Don’t recognize the number.”

  Tadie released the breath she’d been holding against images of an ambulance and Elvie Mae rushed to the hospital. Absurd flight of fancy. It was only a lumpectomy, after all, and not until Friday.

  She spoke a hello, but the half-whisper that answered almost made her drop the phone. She hadn’t heard that smooth, dream-shaper voice in years. Too surprised to hit the End button, she said, “Alex?”

  “Who else?” The tone seemed amused. She could almost see his smirk, perhaps a brow lifted and lowered. “I’m back and I’ve missed you, Tadie. Missed us.”

  Cat’s paws disturbed the water about a hundred yards out, but the only wind on board at the moment came from Alex’s sigh—and from her own gathering ire, which sounded in her head like the whoosh of water past her ears during a deep dive.

  Hannah’s eyebrows nearly hit her hairline. “Alex?” she mouthed. “Matt’s brother? That Alex?”

  Tadie covered the phone’s mike and frowned. “The one and only.”

  Hannah settled back against the cushion, the long nails of her left hand beating a nervous tattoo against her plastic water bottle.

  Tadie whispered, “Shush now,” before bringing the phone back to her ear.

  Bored, that’s what she’d been. Hot and bored. Why else would she have answered her phone, like Pavlov’s dog responding to a bell? Now look where her curiosity had gotten her.

  She corralled her frustration and spit it at Alex. The creep. “Us? What us? The us you flicked off like so much dust sixteen years ago?” She’d thought they’d been in love, for heaven’s sake. Promised.

  “Now, Tadie, don’t go rehashing that. We were good friends, even more than friends.”

  “And then? Poof! All gone.”

  “You know sometimes things happen beyond our control.”

  Was he delusional? “Zippers don’t usually slide open without help. There was no immaculate conception.”

  Hannah hooted, then slapped her hand over her mouth.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Alex said, a bit of a whine creeping in. Tadie had forgotten that whine. “I said so then,” he continued. “I’m saying so now. But after all this time, I thought we could be friends again and take Luna out. We could swim off the shoals like we used to.”

  “That’s not happening, Alex. Not in this lifetime.”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t sail anymore.” He paused. “Or are you seeing someone? Hannah didn’t mention anybody.”

  “Alex, you have a wife. Go play with her.” She hit the End button, huffed, and pushed the tiller hard to port, trying to eke out enough momentum to shift Luna into that patch of breeze, and then pointed to the cleat near Hannah’s back. “You want to loose that jib sheet? Hold it and be ready to pull in on the other when I give the word.”

  Hannah, roused from her half-recumbent position, uncleated the line. “Aye, aye, skipper. If you think we need to bother.”

  “I’m hoping so. If not, we’ll improve our arm muscles with those paddles stuck there behind you.”

  Hannah sipped from her water bottle without comment. Then she slowly screwed on the cap, set the bottle in the cooler, and fluttered her painted nails toward the bag and Tadie’s now silent phone. “You gonna tell me about that?”

  Tadie ignored the question. “You didn’t say Alex was already in Beaufort. Or that he might be on the prowl.”

  “I don’t get him calling you, but I told you Matt needed help running the business and Alex was coming. He started back yesterday, after he and Bethanne got settled out at her parents’ place on the Straits.”

  “I’d like to know how he got my cell number.”

  “It wasn’t me. Or Matt, not knowingly,” Hannah said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I bet Matt’s got you in his Rolodex at the office. He’s got the world in that old thing.”

  Blowing out a loud breath, Tadie leaned down to peer under the boom at the water ahead and corrected course slightly. “You think something else is going on I should know about?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like some issue between him and Bethanne. You know Alex. He was a sneaky, conniving snake when he left the first time, and it doesn’t look like he’s shed that skin.” Tadie’s words slapped the air. She wished they could have connected with Alex.

  Luna’s bow crossed into the short wind waves, and a breeze caught the main.

  “Jib,” Tadie said, nodding toward the lee sheet.

  Hannah grabbed the line and pulled it taut while Tadie settled their direction from the helm. At her nod, Hannah set the line in a quick-release cam cleat at the centerboard well. She could free it if things got dicey as they sometimes did in these waters, especially when Luna sailed near a headland where dunes or trees blocked or shifted the wind.

  “You want I should leave it stuck here or cleat it?” Hannah asked, still holding the line’s tail.

  Tadie glanced from the water to the sky at their stern. An anvil-shaped cloud had formed over Shackleford Banks, but it shouldn’t toss anything their way for a while. “Looks like a wind shift, probably from whatever’s brewing on the Atlantic. Leave it while we see what happens.”

  The afternoon sun danced off the water, little diamond sparkles on the short waves. If a storm came, the water would turn ugly, from this silvery blue to a darkened pewter that spewed whitecaps.

  “Will we beat it home?” Hannah nodded at the heaping cloud mass as she tightened the chin strap on her floppy hat so a gust couldn’t grab it.

  “If the wind behaves, easily.”

  “And if not?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve run from a storm before. And you’ve been with me.”

  “And gotten soaked in the process.”

  “Trust me.”

  “Said the spider to the fly.” Hannah reached back to readjust her cushion. Finally settled, she stretched her legs and wiggled red-painted toes that matched her fingernails and those hat stripes.

  Tadie grinned at her friend’s fascination with scarlet. “I think that was what the snake said to the boy.”

  “Kipling?”

  “Probably Disney.”

  Hannah huffed, and she lowered her sunglasses dow
n the bridge of her nose to show off a scowl.

  Tadie wasn’t buying it. “You remember the movie. We saw it together.”

  “Fine, the movie, the book. Whatever,” Hannah said, fluttering again. “What I want to know is why Alex called you? He hasn’t before, has he, when he and Bethanne came to town?”

  A disgusted half-whistle was all Tadie could manage. “Never.” She just wanted to forget the call—both Alex’s tone and his words.

  Hannah didn’t let her. “What’d he say?”

  “Loose the jib a little.” Tadie let the main sheet slide through her fingers as she pointed them a little off the wind, heading north. “That’s good. Right there.” Then she answered Hannah’s question. “Your esteemed brother-in-law wants to be friends again and go sailing with me. Lands, Hannah, we haven’t been friends since we were nineteen.”

  Hannah’s lips pursed. “Did he forget he’s married?”

  “Seems like it.”

  “But still …”

  “But still, what?”

  “Well, I don’t get it, looking back and all.”

  “Looking back’s the problem, isn’t it?” Tadie said. “My memory is exceptional when it comes to those days.”

  “I know he hurt you, but at least he did the right thing by Bethanne and the baby. And it’s been a long time.”

  Tadie shot a glare Hannah’s way. “What’s got into you? Where’s that solidarity, the old, ‘How could he do that?’ Weren’t we both members of the We-Hate-Alex-for-Being-a-Scumbag Club?”

  “I’m just saying …”

  “Is this all because he came home to help Matt? I mean, I know Matt loves his brother.”

  The hat shaded Hannah’s face, but her silence seemed awfully loud.

  “Hannah?”

  “We need Alex. Matt says he gave up his job and his house in Connecticut just to come home and take up the slack at work. I’m counting on things being different now. On Matt getting well again.”

  Did she imagine a choke in Hannah’s voice? The hint of tears? “Has something else happened, something with Matt’s heart? Something you’re not telling me?”