He shook his head, but he was clearly struggling against shock, needing two tries to grasp at the rubber rungs of the ladder before he very shakily climbed up.

“We’ve got you,” Logan assured him, going onto his belly so he could reach down and grab hold of the man’s life preserver. Reid did the same and they dragged the man up, landing him like a two-hundred-pound tarpon onto the deck where he lay shaking and gasping.

Sophie was over on the port side calling, “Come around to the ladder.”

Two pairs of double kayaks paddled around the bow. An older woman in the front position of the first one was crying. She held a paddle, but didn’t seem capable of using it, or even knowing what to do beyond making a panicked grab for a rung on the ladder.

“I’ll come down and stabilize it for you,” Sophie said, starting to swing her leg down to the ladder.

“You will not.” Logan caught the waistband of her shorts in a fist.

“You guys are stronger,” she pointed out impatiently and brushed his hand away. “You need to pull her up. I’m wearing a life jacket.”

She lowered herself down the ladder and, with one hand and foot on the flexible rungs, stepped her other foot onto the kayak, keeping it close. The second woman in the kayak took the paddle and Sophie guided the first woman onto the ladder.

“There you go. That’s it. You’re doing it. Keep going.”

The ladder quivered under the wobbling scramble of the terrified woman. Sophie swung precariously outward as the kayak shifted beneath her foot. The second woman in the kayak was anxiously pushing forward so she could also climb the ladder.

Logan swore, heart swerving as Sophie grasped on with two hands and worked to secure her footing.

They got the two women aboard, both shaking with reaction.

Trystan guided each out of the way, wrapping them in blankets before he came to help with the second couple.

Once they were aboard, Trystan went down the ladder to help Sophie recover the kayaks and paddles. They guided them up and Logan stowed them out of the way while Sophie and Trystan came back on deck.

Reid closed the rail while they all scanned for anyone else still in the water.

Sophie was safe, Logan told himself, waiting for his heart rate to settle. He didn’t have to worry she was in the water, floating out of reach, but damn her for almost letting it happen.

*

Sophie collected the names of their passengers and radioed that they were aboard the Storm Ridge.

A few minutes later, the captain of the Missionary II announced everyone was accounted for. While the fire brigade continued to put out the fire, Trystan steered the Storm Ridge back to shore.

They all breathed a huge sigh of relief. That could have been so much worse!

“You’ll help with salvage,” Reid instructed Logan who nodded curtly. “I’ll open a tab at the pub to feed everyone.”

“People are going to need beds,” Sophie said. According to the information she’d just received, “There are twenty passengers, plus crew.”

“We can sleep twelve here. Fourteen if we drop the settee,” Reid said.

They continued making logistical decisions as they came ashore. Locals were already gathered at the top of the wharf, ready to offer blankets, beds, and meals.

Reid took charge, herding everyone to the pub for food and drink, bed assignments, and medical assessment by the resort’s first aid attendants.

Sophie hung back, planning to help Trystan make up the beds with the fresh linens he’d picked up from the lodge a few hours ago.

As she gathered up the damp blankets people had discarded, Logan came striding back into the saloon.

“I thought you were going out with the tug,” she said, surprised to see him.

“I am, but—” He came right up to her and hooked his hand behind her neck, planting a hard kiss on her lips.

Her hands automatically came up to his chest, but she didn’t push him away. This was too hungry a kiss. Too infused with raw need.

His gaze was angry as he held hers, but he stopped short of bruising, swiping his hot lips across hers in a message of desperation, one that made her heart crash around in her rib cage.

Heat, an old, fierce, furnace of heat, burst to life inside her, melting her bones and sinew and willpower.

As her eyes started to flutter closed in surrender, he abruptly released her.

“Don’t you ever do anything so reckless again. You have a son to think about.” He passed Trystan on his way topside. “Not one fucking word.”

Trystan watched him go, brows up, then turned his bemused look onto Sophie.

She was still trying to press the sizzle from her lips. Be mad, she told herself, but her head and heart were bonking into each other, incapable of outrage, still trying to make sense of what had just happened.

With her cheeks stinging, she picked up the blanket she had dropped when Logan had grabbed her.

“It was pretty stupid,” Trystan said. “Going down that ladder like that without a line.”

“You did it, too! You weren’t even wearing a life preserver.”

“It was stupid of me, too.” He pulled a retractable clothesline with three wires from one post to another across the saloon and secured it. “Maybe if I had a son, he would have kissed me, too.”

“Oh shut up.” She threw the wet blanket at his smirking face.

*

He shouldn’t have kissed her.

He hadn’t meant to. One second, he had been on his way to the tug; the next he’d been in the saloon. Angry, anxious words had been in his throat, but a far greater need had overwhelmed him. He’d had to touch her. He had needed to feel that she was real and safe. He had had to transmit in the most basic way that she mattered and shouldn’t scare him like that ever again.

So stupid. He was her boss. Her houseguest. Acting like a damned Neanderthal did nothing to improve her opinion of him. He had just been so fucking scared. Not just by those tense minutes while she had been hanging over the water, but by everything she had told him that he couldn’t undo.

I was punishing myself.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her saying that, going over and over it without ever finding a way to travel back into the past and fix what he’d broken.

Not that he had time for ruminations or building a freaking time machine. The next two days were hairy as the boat was salvaged, the kayakers were reunited with their belongings, and the travelers scrambled to find a way home after their vacations were cut short. Some were understanding about the late-night ferry schedules. Some bummed their way onto vessels going whichever direction they were headed. A handful of passengers pressured the captain of the Missionary II to charter a plane, annoyed there were no direct commercial flights back to Vancouver.

The commercial flights left from Bella Bella, which was only a seabus ride away, but the plane was small and usually booked out well in advance. The airstrip here in Raven’s Cove was overdue for some TLC, but a bush Otter was secured, and they were flown to Victoria the next afternoon.

“What a bunch of babies,” Sophie muttered, coming back into the marina office from driving those passengers to the airstrip. She clattered the keys for the company truck onto the desk. “Welcome to Canada. It’s big. Things are far apart. It takes time to get from here to there. Gawd.”