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aren’t gonna hop in the boat.”
    “They aren’t?” she asked, only partly joking. “Shit.”
    The men started assembling assorted equipment and Natalie marveled over the tremendous amount of stuff needed for fishing. And here she thought she had a lot of photography equipment. Ewan had returned her small digital camera this morning and she pulled it from her backpack to snap a few pictures of Ewan and his pop and Moose.
    Ewan caught her and took the camera again. “Strike two, babydoll. I can see I’m going to have to hold on to this camera until you leave next weekend. You’re off-duty.
    Today is about fishing, not photography.”
    He handed her a pole. “Great,” she said, failing to mask her lack of enthusiasm. “A fishing pole. Just what I’ve always wanted. You sure do know the way to a girl’s heart.”
    “Did you just call that a pole?” Moose asked.
    Natalie nodded. “I know I’ve never been fishing before, but I can tell a fishing pole when I see one.”
    “You’ve never been fishing?” Moose’s questions were becoming more aghast by the minute. “Sweet stuff. Number one, that’s a fishing rod . And number two, where the hell is your father? Why didn’t he take you fishing?”
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    Natalie rolled her eyes at his rod comment. “Semantics. Rod, pole, whatever.”
    Ewan smirked. “It’s a rod. He and Pop are purists when it comes to that.”
    “Fine. Thank you for letting me use your fishing rod today and my dad was a workaholic. It’s sort of hard to take your daughters fishing when you work 24/7.”
    “What about your mother?” Moose asked.
    Natalie laughed. “The alcoholic June Cleaver? Um, no. Fishing doesn’t seem to be one of those sports you can do in pearls with a gin and tonic in your hand.”
    The men fell silent and Natalie cursed herself for her too-revealing, too rude comments about her parents. She decided a change of subject was her only shot at trying to salvage the mood she’d just killed. “So I suppose I just put this hook in the water and wait?”
    Ewan laughed and Moose shook his head. “Ah, Natalie. Come over here, sweet stuff. You let Uncle Moose teach you all about fishing.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Uncle Moose? You do realize I’m thirty-four years old.”
    “Doesn’t matter how old you are. Sounds to me like you need an adult male influence to teach you the finer things in life. Like fishing.”
    “Fishing is a finer thing?”
    “It’s the best thing.”
    He reached down and grabbed a Styrofoam cup full of dirt. “You need to put bait—
    in this case, a night crawler—on your hook, and then you cast it into the water.”
    She glanced at the cup. “Fine, Uncle Moose. How about you dig around in that dirt and bait my hook for me because there’s no way I’m touching a worm. I just got a manicure.” She flashed her freshly painted nails at him, but the men didn’t seem deterred.
    Pat rubbed the back of his neck and stepped closer. “Well, Natalie, I’m afraid on this boat, it’s every man for himself. Go on and dig in there and get yourself a nice, fat worm. They don’t bite.”
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    She blew out a deep breath and then reached into the cup, wrinkling her nose as she pulled out a worm. It wiggled and she dropped it. “It’s still alive!”
    Moose laughed and bent down to pick up her squirming bait. “Of course it is. What did you think?”
    “I thought it would be a dead worm.”
    Moose shook his head. “Here, I’ll show you how to do it this first time.” He grasped her hook and deftly poked in through the worm several times. “There you go. Next time, you do it just like that.”
    She looked around at the men, her gaze freezing when she caught Ewan’s amused smirk. “That’s disgusting.”
    “That’s fishing, babydoll. Come here. I’ll show you how to cast.” She crossed to the other side of the boat as Moose and Pat prepared their own rods. Ewan stood behind her, showing her the finer points