Storm Watch

7

DOUBLE FISTING her flashlight, Cece waddled down the flight of stairs to the single-car garage beneath her condo unit, where she made the unhappy realization that the entire place had sprung a leak.

There was four inches of water swirling at her feet.

Which was perfect, really, because now it was official. The day had gone to hell in a handbasket.

She surveyed her car, which was as useless as her phone, because the garage door was shut and she had no electricity to open it. In the corner, soaking up water, was a bag of skinny clothes, also useless.

And the raft from last summer’s river trip…

No.

She couldn’t.

For a moment, she stood there in indecision-never a good state for her because being indecisive made her do things without thinking.

Stupid things.

Like having sex without a condom.

Way late to rue that decision, she reminded herself. Besides, she was getting a present out of the deal, the best present she’d ever had; she rubbed her belly. “Don’t you worry, baby. You really are the best thing to ever happen to me.”

In response, her stomach banded tightly.

Another contraction.

“Oh, God.” She clutched the hood of her car for balance and breathed through it. Then when it passed, she waddled past the car, knowing there was a manual lever somewhere, which would allow her to open the garage door by hand. She was going to have to risk her bad tires, and drive herself to the hospital.

To reach the lever she had to stand on the bucket of Pretty-In-Pink paint she’d bought on sale last week. She didn’t know if she was having a boy or girl, she’d refused to peek, but she was all for hoping. Buying the paint ahead of time was one thing-it’d been half off, and a deal she couldn’t pass up. But actually painting the walls with the pink had seemed a little bit like taunting that bitch Karma. So she’d waited.

And now she was tempting Karma anyway. Gritting her teeth, she managed to climb up onto the bucket. Barely reaching the lever, she pulled. It was much harder than she expected, and she had to tug with all her might. As the garage door slowly lifted, she lumbered down off the bucket for better leverage, sweating in spite of the chilly wind and rain flying through the opening as it widened.

And that wasn’t the only thing she could see as the door slowly rose.

She saw a pair of kick-ass motorcycle boots, topped by long, leanly muscled legs inside a set of jeans faded in all the stress points.

So not Lizzy.

As she gasped and backed up a step, another contraction hit, and her last thought as she sank to the ground was shit. Her worst nightmare was coming true-she was going to have this baby in front of a perfect stranger, and a bad boy to boot.

Just her luck.

JASON AND LIZZY SLOGGED their way along the streets toward Eastside. For now they were above the worst of the flooding, but she knew that at some point within the next half mile they’d have to turn and cut across the roads, heading down into the areas quickly filling up with runoff water from the hills.

They’d had to stop twice. Once to help a guy climb over a huge fallen pine tree to get out of his driveway, another to help two college students-one of whom had broken his leg-get back to the roadblock to where Sam and Eddie were.

Lizzy took a glance at Jason. In profile, with his hood up, backpack on, face set, he looked like a soldier. Unreadable. Impenetrable.

Unapproachable.

And yet he’d kissed her. Touched her. Talked to her.

He hadn’t been unapproachable then, not when they’d opened up to each other, and not when she’d been in his lap, straddling him, his hands all over her.

She’d never considered herself a particularly sexual woman. She liked sex, even loved it occasionally, but it didn’t happen all that often. Her fault, she knew. It was that whole rely-only-on-herself thing.

And yet from the moment she’d seen Jason again, she’d been thinking about it. It was getting uncomfortable, all the thinking, and when her cell phone rang, she pounced on it.

“Just me,” Cristina said. “You find Cece?”

Lizzy exhaled. “No. We’re still trying to get to her place.”

“We as in you and Jason?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. You jump his sexy bones yet?”

“Hey.” She hurriedly turned down the volume on her phone. “Jesus, Cristina.”

“Oh, come on. Take a look at him and tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

She craned her neck and took him in-tense and edgy, wet and hungry, exhausted.

And sexy as hell.

Yeah, she’d thought about it once or twice.

Or a hundred times.

“We’re a little busy,” she said instead.

“Who’s too busy to think about sex?”

Lizzy rolled her eyes and closed her phone.

Jason raised a brow. “Who was that?”

“Nobody.”

“Nobody made your face red?”

“I’m warm.”

He gave her a “yeah, right” look, but let it go. “No cars, no people,” he noted, looking around.

Lizzy took her mind off jumping his incredibly well put together bones and nodded. “Everyone’s already gone.”

“Which means…”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “She probably is, too. I told you, this is just me being overprotective.”

When a heavy gust blasted them, taking visibility back to zero, he turned them both into the dubious safety of a tall oak along the side of the road. Pressing her back to the trunk, he bowed his body to hers to catch the brunt of the wind and rain.

She held on to him, more out of pleasure and appreciation of that hard body pressing against hers than out of fear.

“It’s getting worse,” he said in her ear.

The storm? Yes. Her ridiculous reaction to him? Double yes. She nodded, her jaw brushing his, and he pulled back enough to look into her face. Lifting a hand, he ran a thumb over her jaw, clearly mistaking her discomfort over how much he excited her for her concern for her sister. “We’ll find her. I promise.”

“I don’t need a promise from you.”

“Humor me.”

She had to work at not turning her face into his palm. “Why?”

A half smile curved his lips as he watched her mouth, making her feel he could read her mind. “Maybe because I want you to owe me.”

She choked out a laugh as he’d meant her to, and they began moving again. She pulled out her cell phone as she’d been doing every few minutes. Still nothing.

“We’re going to have to cross soon, if the flooding lets us. Don’t worry. I pretty much majored in Stubborn-ism. You, I’m guessing, majored in Ornery-ness. You know what that means, right?”

“That we’d kill each other in the long run?”

He smiled. “Besides that. It means we’re going to get there. We won’t give up until we do.”

She looked into his eyes, steely and determined, revealing that while his tone might be easygoing, he was anything but. “Ornery-ness?” she asked.

“Yes, but I realize that it takes one to know one.” He smiled at her, drenched, tired and not leaving her side, and something about him continuously grabbed her by the throat, by the gut.

By the heart.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“What did I tell you about thanking me?” He reached for her hand and squeezed it as they walked. “Besides, I should be thanking you.”

“Because you’re here in the wind and rain and craziness instead of having all that sleep you wanted?”

His mouth quirked. “And the sex. Don’t forget that. But I mean because today, with you, I feel…” He shook his head, searching for words. “Alive.”

A ball of emotion stuck in her throat so that for a minute she couldn’t speak. “Well, then, maybe it’s you who owes me.”

He smiled, a warm, real smile. “That works, too.”

They came to an intersection. Below, they could see the high school sports field, and beyond that, a grove of trees, then the school itself, and about a half mile beyond that, Cece’s condo complex.

The high school football and track fields were under water. It was hard to tell how much from here, which wasn’t nearly as much of a problem as was the fact that the street that ran between the high school and hill had become a gushing river.

They stopped before it. “New plan,” Jason said, staring at the water. “You give me the exact location of her condo and I’ll go get her.”

“While I…?”

“Wait here.”

She looked up into his face. He wasn’t kidding. He wore a fiercely intense expression, with absolutely no softness in sight. None. “I’m going with you, Jason.”

He sighed. Swiped a hand down his face. “Yeah, I figured you’d say that.” His jaw tightened as he surveyed the area. The school buildings looked to be under a foot of water, which was rising with shocking speed.

She thought of all the news footage she’d ever seen of floods, and how the water seemed to always be up to the rooflines.

That it could actually happen here boggled her mind.

“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,” he said calmly. “You’re going to do everything I tell you. Everything, Lizzy, to the T.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“I realize that.” She looked at the river which had formerly been Third Avenue. “The water’s only a foot or so, right? No swimming required.”

“Hate to disagree, but six inches of moving water can carry you away if there’s a current, and there does appear to be a good one.”

“I won’t slip. I might not swim like a fish but I have good balance and I’m in decent shape.” She’d be in better shape if she liked exercising, but there was no need to point that out.

He was looking at her, his gray eyes revealing frustration, and fear.

For her.

In her world, she was the one in charge, the one with the answers, and all the worry and stress: at work, at home, everywhere. How long had it been since someone had acted with her safety and well-being in mind?

Long enough that she couldn’t remember.

“That water is really moving,” he said. “So we’re going to walk a little farther down to find a better place to cross.”

“If Cece’s in labor-”

“She told you she wasn’t. But even if that’s changed, you’ve no doubt delivered babies, right? And so have I.”

“You have?”

“Two of them, actually. One in Katrina, one in Puerto Rico. We’ll figure it out, Lizzy.”

His confidence was oddly compelling and, even better, contagious. Once again, they took each other’s hand and kept moving.

A QUARTER OF A MILE LATER, Jason stopped Lizzy, his gut tightening hard. They stood at another intersection facing a waterfall caused by a dam of debris more than fifteen feet high, blocking the street. Water poured over the fallen trees, house pilings, furniture, and a myriad of other crud, rushing onto Third Avenue in a crazy whirlpool, making the current hard and fast.

Deadly.

In the Guards, when he protected and served, it was for strangers, not someone embedded into his heart.

And she was embedded, crazy as that was. Once upon a time, it’d taken his job to make him feel alive, and now it was Lizzy doing that-Lizzy who was now in danger.

“Oh my God,” she murmured at his side, clearly shocked.

“Not here. We can’t cross here. We keep going.”

She didn’t argue.

It was another half mile before the water slowed marginally. “Better,” he said grimly, knowing it was only slightly better, that they’d still have to backtrack to get to the condos, but his concern was the fact that things were deteriorating across the board, and deteriorating fast. He looked at Lizzy and wished like hell she’d stayed in the Jeep.

“Don’t even think it,” she said. “I wouldn’t have stayed.”

“So you reading minds now?”

“Yeah, well.” She grabbed his hand, put it over her heart and looked into his eyes. “You’re pretty transparent at the moment. Listen to me, Jason. I’m not going to get hurt.”

What about drown? Are you going to drown?

She eyed the water. “I can do this.”

“Counting on it.”

They waded in together, him using all of his will-power not to grab a hold of her and never let go. At his side, she sucked in a harsh breath but didn’t complain. And it was that, he thought, that one thing among many which told him this was somehow going to be okay. She wasn’t soft, except for where it counted. She was tough as hell, and also, incidentally, giving him a much needed kick in the ass.

Not to mention the heart.

Debris floated in the current around them. Wood, car parts, a whole variety of things, weaving and bobbing and threatening their safety. But they were managing, and doing okay, when suddenly Lizzy gasped and pointed.

Coming right at them was an old metal fishing boat, sans engine, looking as if it’d seen better days. Packed in it like sardines were four men, two women and several teens. Two of the men were rowing, with the guy in the back yelling directions. “Right, Lenny! Right! Jesus, your other right!” When he caught sight of Jason and Lizzy, he cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “You two need help?”

The small boat wasn’t meant for more than two, three people max. It was straining, seeming wobbly and unsteady in the relatively shallow water. Even if they found Cece in her condo just down the street, there was no way they could fit a nine-months’-pregnant woman in that boat. “We’re good,” he told them, waving them on.

“It wasn’t steady enough,” he told a silent Lizzy. “If she’s there, we’ll find another way to get her out-Oh, shit.” He lunged after the metal boat as it headed nose-first toward the huge steel traffic light on the corner. He could hear the shocked screams of some of the occupants, including the guy still yelling, “Right, Lenny! Right-”

But he couldn’t catch it in time. The boat hit the pole and people went flying.

Jason shoved Lizzy the rest of the way across the street, then headed for the closest two splashes, managing to snag a woman in his right hand and a teenage boy in his left before they were washed downstream. “You okay?”

They both stood up, gasping and coughing but nodding. Jason waited until they had their feet beneath them to let go, then turned to the others.

The guy doing the yelling had caught the boat. Everyone else scrambled back into it, still griping at one another.

Jason helped them hold it steady while the woman and her son got back in. “Take it easy on the steering,” he said.

“We will, thank you.” The woman reached out to squeeze his hand. “You’re an angel.”

No. He wasn’t. Because he didn’t catch them all…And as he thought of Matt, and all the people he hadn’t managed to save over the years, he locked eyes with Lizzy, who was holding on to a sidewalk parking post, watching him as if he was a superhero.

Too bad he was nothing close.

Yeah, he had training in survival and rescue, but that was pretty much his only claim to fame. The rest of life-the emotions, the heart, the real stuff…ever since Matt’s death, it’d all eluded him.

Lizzy sent him a half smile, clearly worried, leaving him no doubt that she felt real affection for him. And when he touched and kissed her, that affection smoked and burst into a heat neither of them seemed able to resist. Just looking at her caught something deep in his chest.

Yeah. Most definitely feeling again, which was something he could think about later, after he’d figured out what the hell he was going to do with himself. Leave…or stay. Leaving was easy. But for the first time in recent memory he wanted to stay right where he was. Wanted to fit in right here…

He headed toward her and her expression warmed further, and hell if that didn’t do something to his insides, as well, telling him that leaving might not be the easy thing after all. “You okay?”

“Yes, I-Jason, watch out-”

That’s the last thing he heard before he was plowed over by something hard and unforgiving. Before he could process anything except maybe “fuck” and then “ouch,” he was underwater and down for the count.