Here is an early chapter in the book where Tobin makes a bold assumption.
Tobin
“You asked her out yet?” Jerry McAllister, my deputy, asked.
“No,” I replied firmly.
“Why the fuck not? She is heaven on a plate.”
“I know that, but for some reason, she hates me.”
“That’s because you keep fining the timber merchants, and it probably pisses her off.”
“I can’t help that. Rules are rules. Anyway, why does Saffron care? It’s not like she owns the company.”
Jerry McAllister laughed hard at my response. He had been goading me for weeks to ask Saffron out, but I got cold feet each time.
“Whatever. You need to sort your shit out, or you’ll be a lonely old man like me,” Jerry said.
“You’re not that old.”
“Fifty-three is no age to be alone, with next door’s cat as company on the cold winter nights.”
“Get your own cat, or better still, a dog.”
“I think you’re missing the point here. Ask the girl out and put us all out of our misery.”
I gave Jerry a slide glance as I took the log book down from the shelf above my head. I put up with his tutting while I filled out my duties. When I arrived, I had taken over from a long-serving harbour master who had retired. Jerry had worked alongside the man for thirty years. Coming into that set-up was intimidating, and while some of the men and women hadn’t warmed up to my charms, Jerry had taken me under his wing. We had the port running like clockwork with very little drama.
Lighthouse Timber Merchants had the biggest portion of the port, next to the steel works and the aggregate plant. I’d wanted to visit the premises to see where Saffron worked. Jerry advised against such a move in case she thought he was spying on what the company did on a daily basis. The only time I saw her apart from every morning at seven was at the cafe at the end of the beach. More times than not, she would be behind the coffee machine, making a latte to pour into her travel mug.
The timber merchants couldn’t be more than eight hundred yards from the cafe. Why she had to have a travel mug was strange. Didn’t they have coffee machines in the offices?
Saffron struck me as a high-heeled kind of lady, but I only ever saw her in laced-up shoes that matched her dress.
“That tug boat is coming in, and it looks like it’s listing. Let’s go see what he’s caught today,” Jerry said, bringing me out of my fantasy of Saffron and her secret wardrobe of stiletto heels that made her legs go on for miles.
“It’ll be some heavy metal object he’s dredged from the sea that will be worthless.”
“One day, he’ll find something worth selling.”
“So long as he doesn’t end up blowing himself up by an old WWII bomb.”
“There’s always that.”
Jerry took his coat off the peg by the door. It might look like the start of summer, but the wind was cold enough to slice you in half.
Pulling my coat around me, I followed Jerry into the breeze that had picked up in the last half an hour.
Grace Harper Books 