Revenge and Roquefort Ebook (#3.5)

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CHAPTER ONE
Brianna West shivered and pulled her wool coat tighter around her bare shoulders. Frigid wind whipping over the black ocean crawled straight through the coat’s buttons and gleefully attacked her skin with icy fingers. A full moon lit their motorboat’s passage over the choppy waves.
“What did I tell you, you aren’t dressed for the weather.” Magnus Pickleton, the owner of the marina where her float home was moored, shook his grizzled head and adjusted his grip on the wheel. Brianna didn’t take much notice of his perpetual scowl, because a loyal friend lurked under his gruff exterior. “Bare legs at the end of December. Do you think this is the tropics?”
“I can hardly turn up to a New Year’s Eve party wearing fleece pants and a parka,” she replied. A part of her bleated, “Why not?” when the wind slapped her face again, but she shushed it. They were almost at their destination. She could handle a few more minutes.
“And she looks gorgeous,” her friend Macy Jones declared. She’d carefully wrapped her blond, shoulder-length hair in a scarf and draped a blanket around her own bare legs. Unlike Brianna, who was a recent transplant from the city of Vancouver, Macy had lived on a chilly west coast island for years.
They rounded the tip of Driftwood Island, and the bow of an enormous yacht appeared. The huge boat glowed brightly in the winter’s night and beckoned Brianna forward with a promise of light, warmth, and good company. She leaned forward involuntarily.
“You’re going to climb a ladder in those ridiculous shoes?” Magnus snorted. “Women.”
“There’s a swim platform on the back, my friend said.” Brianna met Magnus’s caustic comment with a grin. “Although I’m pretty handy in a pair of stilettos.”
Magnus snorted again but didn’t comment further. Their motorboat roared toward the mega yacht and careened around the back of the slowly moving vessel. A crew member must have noticed their arrival because the yacht slowed so Magnus could nudge next to the swim platform.
“You must be Brianna West and guest,” said a surly deckhand with a scruffy chin. He held out a hand to help Brianna step onto the platform. She took it gratefully but kept one hand clutching a baking tin that she’d brought. Her mother had taught her never to arrive empty-handed. Since she was a baker by trade, with a thriving cheese-themed café back in Snuggler’s Cove on Driftwood Island, she’d brought baked goods.
“Thanks for the ride, Magnus,” she called out as Macy disembarked with a wobble of her own heels.
“Don’t get into trouble,” the older man waved at her with a dismissive gesture. “Like you usually do.”
He roared away before Brianna could retort. Just because she’d been involved in solving a few mysterious crimes in Snuggler’s Cove didn’t mean she always got into trouble.
Well, maybe Magnus had a point. But this was only a party. What could possibly happen?