Lifeboat Love Read online

  Lifeboat Love

  a US Coast Guard romantic suspense story

  M. L. Buchman

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  About This Book

  After failing to land themselves Coast Guard husbands, local women Tabby and Suzy set off from Astoria, Oregon to find a future of their own making.

  Rescue Swimmer Tad and his rescue-helo Crew Chief Craig have been playing the field together at the bars for years. But when the two women return to town as Coast Guard lifeboat drivers, all roaming thoughts are soon lost at sea—target acquired.

  1

  “There’s something wrong with these people,” Craig waved his sandwich at the rest of the table.

  “Says the dude eating a clubhouse like the pansy he is.” Tad held up his own monstrous Buschman Burger, dripping with mushrooms, onions, and cheese out every side to make his point. The Workers Tavern was crowded with locals and off-duty Coasties, and most of them, Tad was glad to see, ate real food—not little triangular sandwiches on white toast.

  The USCG Station Cape Disappointment and its Motor Lifeboat School were just over the big bridge in Ilwaco, Washington. And the rescue helos of USCG Sector Columbia River were planted at the Astoria, Oregon airport on this side. There were also a pair of two-hundred-and-ten-foot cutters perched at the Astoria docks when they weren’t out saving people’s asses.

  Meeting in the middle at Workers, nestled under the big bridge that crossed the four-mile width of the mouth of the Columbia River was a thing long before he and Craig had shown up.

  “Just shows I’ve got taste.” Craig grimaced at Tad’s burger. It was an argument that had gone back to their third day of deployment together four years ago and they’d joyfully never resolved it.

  “Just shows you’re a lazy crew chief, sitting on your ass in the helo, while us swimmers do the real work.”

  “Fine, next time I won’t haul you back out of the ocean after a rescue and you may content yourself with swimming home.”

  Tad decided he was too hungry to keep it going, so he took a big bite of his burger before he remembered Craig’s comment and looked around their table. “Whuf ifz rong mif deez people?” he managed.

  Craig rolled his eyes, then waved at the two couples sharing their table.

  The cutter Steadfast was in to dock so Hailey and Vera, the two Landing Safety Officers, were ashore. And they sat with their helo-pilot husbands. It wouldn’t be quite so irksome if they weren’t all happier’n roosters-in-the-henhouse about it. And it was just rotten luck that they were the two pilots for his and Craig’s rescue helo.

  Sly and Ham just never shut up about these two women. Which was nauseating…except it wasn’t.

  He’d liked Vera when they did a cave rescue together. Hot, funny, but with an elegance that looked amazing on her. And Hailey was a hell of a laugh. The four of them actually made it look as if happy-ever-after existed.

  Tad scanned the dive bar.

  It looked the same as always. Battered as a twenty-year-old manure spreader. The only reason it didn’t collapse into the river and wash away was because it lay a block back from the waterfront. The late afternoon June sunlight sparkled off the sea salt that hadn’t been washed off from March’s final storm. The light was out there, it just didn’t dare come inside which gave the place a muddy but comfortable feel.

  Beer and booze signs on three walls; the fourth was covered in small bills from a hundred or more countries—for almost a hundred years mariners had been filling in the gaps on that wall of Workers Tavern.

  The big U-shaped bar took up half the space. Four old graybeards, too aged to go out to sea, sat in their usual spot telling lies and singing off-key harmonies to the jukebox. The tiny kitchen in the back offered the best meat in town. And the scattering of tables looked just as work-worn as the graybeards.

  But the bar looked different in some way.

  Normally when he scanned it, he’d see if there were any likely women about. Charlene was in, but she already had some boy-o at her side. She was fun, but not enough to get upset about. There was a new pair of fairly hot chicks he hadn’t seen before, but he’d spotted them holding hands when they came in, and were now very cozy at the bar. Nothing happening there.

  Tonight though, it all looked just a little too familiar. All the training time and hard work, yet all he’d done was trade one small town for another. Not a chance was he going to find what the Coasties sitting at his table seemed to have in spades. Of course, they hadn’t fallen for local talent: these Coasties had married Coasties. Local talent was always a bad bet.

  Didn’t matter. He’d never wanted that cute-couple stamp anyway.

  But…they did make it look damn tasty.

  Maybe he’d better stick with harassing Craig and eating his Buschman Burger. At least those he understood.

  2

  “You ready for this?” Suzy gripped the rusted door handle of Workers Tavern.

  “So not. It looks even worse than the last time we were here. What delusion makes you think I want to do this?” Tabby Alton would rather throw herself off the pier. Of course, it was June, so it wouldn’t be that much of a hardship—until the Columbia’s fierce current swept her out to sea.

  “You remember what Marj Kaye used to say.”

  Tabby sighed. No need to make it a question because of course she did.

  They spoke in unison. “You’ve got to face your shit and move on.” Their third-grade teacher never would have deigned to say “shit” of course, but all of the kids had picked it up that way as soon as Suzy had modified it.

  “But why?” Tabby waved a hand at the tavern. It was a dark hole under the on-ramp to the soaring Astoria-Megler suspension bridge. A place filled with memories of who they used to be. How many nights had they come here in tight tank tops to troll for a USCG husband? Way too many.

  “Because,” Suzy swung open the door. Seared meat, spilled beer, and off-key music reeled drunkenly out onto the sidewalk, stumbling on the cracks. “I’m hoping that Vivian is here. I’d like to thank her.”

  “Oh, okay.” That was good. She’d thought it might be one of her best friend’s long-running guy quests that she was inevitably swept up in.

  A year ago they’d been majorly chatting up a pair of Coastie officers right here in Workers—best chance at getting out that an Astoria girl could have. Then a female petty officer had nudged her way onto their table, busting up the play but good. The guys left. PO Vivian Schroder had delivered a lecture on all that it took to escape a town was leaving. And that until they’d looked around the outside world for themselves, they’d never know what they really wanted, or deserved.

  Vivian had been hella persuasive. She made it all sound so real and possible. So they’d gone. Bus to Portland, then Suzy’s whim had led them south. They’d ended up frying donuts in a hole in Alameda called Lee’s. It wasn’t really a hole; it was just another place in another strip mall in an upscale neighborhood close to the water—though a step down from the Blue Scorcher back home—the best bakery in Astoria.

  She’d been the one who’d walked into the Coast Guard Recruiting office on the other side of the building from Lee’s. Maybe it had been a fit of nostalgia for Astoria. Or maybe just wanting to see an eligible male not stuffing his waistline with lemon-filled carbs soaked in sugar, then glazed, then topped with sprinkles. Even the sight of a sprinkle had made her nauseous since then. Neither one of them ended up dating the recruiter, but they’d walked out of the office signed up to serve.
r />   Weirdly, training had suited both of them down to their boots. When it came time to file a Station preference, it had barely taken a glance at each other before they both wrote Astoria in the blank.

  Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride wandered out the door and thankfully faded fast into sunset—gone before the second verse.

  “I wonder if Sly and Ham are still here?” Suzy remarked before breezing through the door to Workers Tavern.

  “I knew it!” But Tabby was standing outside talking to herself. She hadn’t even remembered their names, but Suzy never forgot a guy. She was like a flirt-savant.

  Resigned to her doom, Tabby stepped out of the bright light of the long evening into near darkness of the tavern. She ran into Suzy’s back and almost knocked her to the floor.

  “What?”

  “They are here.”

  “Where?” She followed the angle of Suzy’s head; ever since kindergarten it was the very best indicator of where the cute guys were.

  She recognized them easily. Ham dark as night and Sly looking like he’d last sunbathed, maybe, in a former life. She’d remembered them as so dashing and so much larger than life.

  They still were pretty dashing, but they appeared to be more human-sized. She and Suzy were Coast Guardswomen now, so it brought the two officers into somewhat sharper focus. Sure they were just E-3 grade Seaman, but E-4 Petty Officer Third Class was looming near, if they did well on their first real assignment.

  But Sly and Ham were already sitting next to two women, also clearly in the Guard. There was just something about how a trained sailor sat that said they weren’t locals.

  She also noticed the two other men at the table. The one with his back to her had the unmistakable shoulders of a rescue swimmer, and he wasn’t Harvey.

  “Vivian’s gone.” A different swimmer and crew chief now sat to Ham’s and Sly’s other side from the women.

  “Aw shit. Maybe they’ll know where she went.” And Suzy just walked right up to the table. Nothing about socially awkward, or time to turn tail and run. They’d both been more than willing to bed the two pilots on the off chance of getting a ring from them. And they’d all four known those terms.

  She spotted the sparkler on each of the women’s hands. Yep! Married. The two Guardswomen had pulled off what she and Suzy hadn’t been able to—even if she and Suzy had been doing it for all the wrong reasons.

  “Hey Sly. Hi Ham.” Suzy planted herself at the end of the table by the two new guys. “Is Vivian still around?”

  Sly looked over and called out cheerily, “Hey Suzy! Long time no see.” Because he was just as unflappable as Suzy.

  Ham looked up, first at Suzy, then at her. It took him a moment, then he blinked hard. His expression clearly said that if his skin had been lighter it would be shining red with a blush.

  “Naw! She and Harvey shipped out to Hawaii for their honeymoon and never came back.”

  Tabby could feel the blood drain from her face.

  Ham spoke softly. “Not dead. They signed up over there. Warm water rescuer.”

  “Yeah, left the cold shit to me.” The swimmer, who still had his back to her, said with deep chagrin and a bit of humor.

  3

  Tad could feel something. The swimmer’s itch. At sea, a swimmer never knew what they’d encounter during a rescue and had to develop “ten-eighty” awareness.

  The best swimmer he’d ever met, Senior Chief Vernon, had insisted that knowing three-sixty degrees around you in water wasn’t enough. A collapsing mast could come from above, the lash of a snapping line from behind, a shark from below, and a wave from any damn direction it was in the mood for.

  “Three-sixty around, three-sixty over, and three-sixty under. One-thousand-and-eighty-degree awareness at all times. Forget about a single slice of that ten-eighty and it will get you. You know what happens then?”

  “You die, Senior Chief,” had been his naive answer.

  “No, you idiot. The people depending on you to rescue them die. That’s a thousand times worse. Got it, Meat?” He’d called all swimmer hopefuls that. Just meat for the grinder that was swimmer school and its eighty percent failure rate.

  “Yes, Senior Chief.”

  Then ten minutes later Vernon would prove that Tad didn’t have a clue, again.

  The proudest day of his life hadn’t been making it to rescue swimmer. It had been the Senior Chief shaking his hand after graduation. “Go make us proud, Swimmer.”

  Tad knew no higher praise.

  And right now, his swimmer’s itch—another of Vernon’s phrases—was itching something fierce.

  Sparky brunette beside him. Excellent breasts under a Coastie-blue tee, right at eye-level as he was sitting, so he let himself enjoy the view for a moment before looking farther afield. Face was no disappointment. You could just tell she had a sass-factor set to permanent high. Even so, rigidly posted in an “at ease” stance, she stood like a first-year addressing officers on base. It always took them a while to chill in public.

  At the bar, the old guys were swaying their way through the Beatles’ When I’m Sixty-four, an age they’d abandoned decades before. That the Stones were rocking Wild Horses on the juke didn’t seem to faze them. Grandma had always been a hardcore Beatles’ fan. None of those upstart Stones in my house. Because he landed on her side of the duplex every day after school, he knew all thirteen core albums by heart. Grandma wasn’t one for remixes and US re-releases.

  Sly was grinning up at the lady attached to the nice breasts. The two of them were tossing it back and forth like it was old times. At least until Hailey fisted him pretty hard in the ribs.

  Vera had no need to tap Ham; he was looking thoroughly embarrassed. Had they both dallied with Ms. Breasts and now…

  No, Ham wasn’t looking at the sparky brunette but rather behind Tad’s back.

  He glanced around.

  Then he fully turned to get a better view.

  Cut from the same cloth, yet totally different. The quiet blonde was a study. Built just like her brunette pal, the same five-eight and fit-as-hell. Maybe a little more in the shoulder. But his gaze didn’t even hesitate at her chest despite the same tight blue t-shirt. Her face and piercing blue eyes were far too arresting to waste time looking anywhere else.

  “Ma’am,” he greeted her respectfully enough to earn him a surprised laugh from Craig. The blonde was the sort to command respect.

  She arched a single eyebrow.

  “Grandma had that down.” He touched his own forehead and pulled up his right eyebrow. “Scary as shit lady, I can tell you.”

  “And you loved her very much,” the blonde said softly.

  Tad didn’t know that it was so obvious, but he shrugged its truth.

  “Mine too. Grannie is awesome. And I was terrified of her every time I screwed up. Still am, I suppose.”

  Tad could just imagine Ms. Blonde being a scary grandma herself someday. Real easy to imagine.

  4

  “Still sorry we came home?”

  “Wrong time to ask.” Tabby stared at the bilge of the forty-seven-foot Motor Lifeboat, 47-MLB, that they’d just spent two hours contorting themselves worse than a yoga class to scrub down. The bilge, the very bottom of the boat, sparkled. And every bit of grime, grease, and she didn’t want to know what, was now embedded in her skin.

  “I’m talking about the boys.”

  “You always are.” Last night at Workers, everyone had squeezed over and they’d found one spare chair. She and Suzy had shared it, one cheek each. Suzy had spent the whole evening prodding at Craig’s cultured Long Island, New York bonhomie. She and Tad had discussed grandmothers. His passed away three years back, hers still tenacious as could be, living alone out on the sandy, windswept side of Warrenton, Oregon. House I was married in. House I’ll die in.

  Tad had laughed. “Adair, Iowa. Not the sort of place folks leave much. Excepting anyone who can figure a way out.”

  “Astoria, Oregon. Place I thought I’d n
ever want to come back to.”

  She’d liked his easy laughter at himself. And despite all of his teasing of Craig, it was clear that he trusted him as only a rescue swimmer could trust his helo crew chief. Tad’s life often truly depended on Craig just as much as others’ lives depended on Tad going in the water.

  But she and Suzy were assigned to the motor lifeboats on the other side of the Columbia River from the airport. They’d both chosen boat operations and there was no better berth they could have drawn. The Motor Lifeboat School, located at the Cape Disappointment Station—Cape D—on the Columbia River was the most prestigious school of its type in the world.

  Suzy had taken her dad’s penchant for being the town’s best car mechanic straight into the engine room. Her own target, Boatswain’s Mate, was going to be a long road before she could con her own boat. Senior Chief McAllister had made that clear when he’d assigned her to Sarah Goodwin’s boat. And BM First Class, BM1, Sarah Goodwin had assigned her to help Suzy clean the bilge.

  “A BM knows every inch of her boat and every skill of her crew.”

  Then she’d turned away as if neither of them existed. Now they crouched exhausted to either side of the immaculate twin Detroit diesel engines.

  A voice came through the access hatch above. “You sure you know which side of the scrub brush cleans things up? Boat looks fine. But damn, girl.”

  Tabby looked up to see BM1 Sarah Goodwin smiling down at her.

  Then the smile clicked off. “Five more just like her along the dock. Don’t take so long this time.”

  Tabby stared down at the fouled water in her pail and considered throwing herself into it. Ugly way to drown, but still…six?

  By the time they finished the other five boats, even Suzy wasn’t wasting energy talking about guys.