Free Where Dreams Are Born (Angelo's Hearth) by M.L. Buchman

steep and difficult. The boat kept shifting, little jerks in unexpected directions. This is how clumsy people must feel. She hated it. Hated it so much she wanted to cry. She clamped down on it hard, careful not to bite her lip.
    The floor was a surprise when she ran out of steps. Then she turned. There was just enough room to stand upright. She wanted to hunch down like a troll. The ceiling was high in the middle, but sloped down to either side. The floor was a narrow strip running all the way to the front. The walls sloped outward from the floor. Seating was perched part way up the wall, making more use of the wider space. God, it was even smaller than her father’s trailer, may the old bastard rot in hell.
    “I’m going to put the galley here,” he pointed to a couple cardboard boxes of groceries, an ice chest and a small camping stove.
    “Pilot’s berth there.” A bed no bigger than a coffin, across the narrow walkway from the galley. How could you even climb into the thing? The deck was just two or three feet above the narrow bench.
    “A settee that can be a dining table or collapse into a comfortable double bed right here across from this little woodstove.” He continued forward oblivious of the fact that all this meant nothing to her. Whatever he was calling a settee was now a card table and two folding chairs. And how that became a bed for two was beyond her and a place she’d certainly never be found.
    A section of the flooring was pulled up and she half expected to see the ocean beneath it. Instead, about six inches down, was concrete and, she swallowed hard, a wash of blackish water running back and forth with each motion of the boat.
    A loud buzz below her right foot made her jump. There were splashing noises and slowly the skin of water disappeared. The buzzing stopped with a sigh and a gurgle.
    “That’s just the bilge pump.”
    The smell of fresh cut wood and paint added to the queasiness in her stomach. The bilge pump, she did her best to catalog all of the strange words he kept using. Booms and tillers and hulls. Even something called a fang or a vang that he wanted to replace for reasons she’d never understand.
    Again she focused on the curve of the hull. It had looked wider from outside. She peeked out one of the round windows and could just see the water. The floor was deeper than she’d thought, she was in the ocean up to her waist.
    The “head” was next on the tour .
    S he blinked twice but it didn’t go away. A porcelain toilet. With handles and levers that would make a dentist chair look safe. Sitting right there in the open on the floor. It was a good thing that he’d promised her a hotel room or she’d be on the red-eye back to New York.
    He waved at a blank section of hull, “Books, maybe a bench seat that could double as a bunk. Don’t really know yet.”
    The last of the tour was the forward stateroom. A fancy name for a double bed jammed into the pointy end of the boat. He was dreaming if he thought they were going to make love there. The place wasn’t as cold as a meat locker, by maybe five degrees but not by ten. She hadn’t roughed it since she and her mother had escaped the trailer park and she wasn’t about to start again now.
    Tools were piled everywhere. Cans of paint and who knew wha t. They smelled. It all smelled nasty.
    He was waiting for her to join him at the far end.
    Deep breath. Deep breath.
    He was so damn handsome. And he’d never looked better. Standing with his legs spread like a sea pirate standing on his treasure. The work on the boat had flattened his stomach even more and his arms had a power that was stronger, safer than she’d imagined possible when they’d hugged at the airport.
    Keeping her attention on his eyes, and where the hole in the floor was, she headed in his direction. When the boat shifted, she reached up and a small rail was in just the right place to grab. She could do this.
    She was halfway there when something shot between her