“Time to go, son,” I heard as the door closed fully behind me.
I shivered as I made my way back to the parking lot.
I’d just decided that I would need to wear some better socks in the morning with the boots I was wearing—wondering if Steel had any that he’d let me borrow—when I heard water sloshing behind me.
My stomach started to roil.
I hastened my steps, coming to the conclusion that I shouldn’t have come all the way over here in the dark, alone, without an escort. That was rather stupid, and I knew better.
When I was younger, a few weeks shy of nineteen, and walking home from school with Conleigh, I’d had a similar experience.
I’d gotten off shift and had immediately walked over to pick my daughter up from the campus daycare. It was nearly six in the evening, and it being the first or second day after daylight savings time ended, I’d forgotten how dark it got so early.
I’d walked with Conleigh as fast as I could, and had managed to make it three quarters of the way home before realizing that we were being followed.
The man doing the following had been slick. I hadn’t even heard or seen him until we were turning the street to our apartment complex.
Instead of going inside my own apartment and leading him to the front door of where I stayed alone with my young child, I went into the laundry mat where quite a few of the young residents had been doing their clothes at the time.
I’d swallowed my heart when I’d arrived inside to find the man standing there watching me.
Two days after the incident, I’d found out that the same man had raped another young mom on a walk home much the same as I had been. I’d been crucial in identifying him during the investigation, and he’d gone to jail for ten years.
Shivering at the thought of him getting out soon, I chanced a look behind me to see that no one was there any longer.
Then I looked forward and stopped.
The reason he wasn’t behind me any longer was because he was now in front of me.
What the fuck?
I froze a few inches away from a useless light pole that was about eighty yards away from the command tent and stared, heart in my throat.
“I’m sure you don’t remember me…”
I shook my head. “No.”
He laughed then. “Funny, because you’re all I’ve been able to think about for a very long time.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
I didn’t know the man standing in front of me. But then again, the only part of him that I could see was a silhouette from the lights around the command tent at his back.
My stomach was churning.
When I’d gone through that incident with that rapist all those years ago, I’d made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t ever put myself into a situation similar to that ever again.
Yet, I’d done it.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“I don’t know who you are,” I admitted. “I’m sorry.”
He may seem vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him at all.
“I guess you wouldn’t know this face,” the man continued. “Not since it’s been put through the ringer these last few years.”
I opened my mouth to say something but couldn’t find the words.
The more he spoke, the more he became familiar to me, yet I couldn’t quite place why.
“Well, I have to be getting back to work,” I gestured, moving slightly to the side to try to avoid him.
He stepped with me.
Fear shot down my throat as I tried to calm my breathing.
“I’m not done…”
“Yes,” a cruel voice replied behind the man. “You are.”
Steel.
Everything inside of me loosened.
I was okay. I was going to be okay.
I looked over the man’s shoulder to see not just Steel standing there, but the man with the cowboy hat, too. The Texas Ranger.
While the Texas Ranger wasn’t paying attention to me, but instead the man, I hurried around him and bee-lined straight for Steel.
Steel caught my wrist the moment I made it to him and practically shoved me behind him.
The move jostled the food in my hands, and I suddenly realized that throughout the encounter I’d managed to hang onto it and not drop it.
And that, right there, was the telltale sign of just how comfortable I was with Steel. I knew, from the bottom of my heart, that he would protect me. If he was there, nothing, and I do mean absolutely nothing, would happen to me.
He’d protect me to his last dying breath if he had to.
I chanced a look up at the man at Steel’s side, and my belly tightened. He didn’t look too happy, either.
“Who are you?” Steel rumbled.
I pressed against Steel’s back almost automatically. Then thought better of it.
Before I could pull away from him, though, he reached around and placed his hand on my thigh, right under my butt, and stilled me.
The two cups of still steaming hot food were now pressed against his back—which I just now realized he wasn’t wearing a rain slicker any longer—and he had to feel it. Yet he held firm as he spoke to the man that had downright terrified me. His hand never strayed up or down, but the position his hand was in was almost intimate.
Other things inside of me started to throb.
I licked my lips, then placed my forehead against the soft material of his t-shirt, directly in the middle of his shoulder blades.
Then I inhaled and forgot what I was doing.
He smelled so good.
Laundry detergent—Tide, the same as mine—a spicy smell that was likely his deodorant, and sweat.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Yet, it did things to me inside that I hadn’t felt in quite a long time—not even with my husband.
Matt, after a while, had always felt like a job for me. Something I had to do to keep him interested—which obviously hadn’t worked, so who was I kidding?
But just standing there, pressed against Steel’s body while he spoke to a man in front of him, I realized what I was missing with Matt after a while.
The intense attraction.
This feelings that I had for Steel? They had the potential to be overwhelming.
Hell, it was damn near at that point already, and I’d only just realized my desire for him over a few weeks.
None of those times that I spent with him, though, were anything I could quite point my finger at as to why I was feeling this for him.
There had been no overt advances on his part, and hell, sometimes I wasn’t even sure he liked me.
Yet, the longer he stayed there, his hand on the curve of my ass, the more I realized that the attraction to him was only getting stronger and stronger.
The man at Steel’s side shifted, and I heard him start to speak.
“Civilians are being moved out by bus to a different location,” the Texas Ranger, Griffin, explained. “The next bus out, you’re on it.”
“I’m a volunteer,” he argued.
“You’re not a volunteer,” Griffin countered. “You’ve been standing outside the tent all day, and at first I thought it was because someone you knew was here, but there’s not. You’re alone, and you haven’t done a damn thing to help all day. The next bus that leaves, you’re on it.”
The bus under discussion pulled up as if Griffin had called it.
They were using the city buses to haul the people out, taking them to a temporary holding facility. Once they made room at the shelter, they’d be moved from the temporary holding facility to the newest shelter.
“I’m here with my sister.”
“Who’s your sister?” Steel questioned.
The man opened his mouth, then closed it.
“Get on the bus now,” Steel growled.
The man narrowed his eyes, his gaze scanning from the tips of Steel’s toes t
o the top of his head. Then took note of the arm that he had around my ass and the eyes that I now had aimed at him.
Then smiled.
“Yes, sir.”
Then he walked to the bus and got on it, all the while whistling an upbeat tune.
“Fucker has been creeping me out all damn day,” Griffin growled.
Suddenly Steel turned, and I had to raise the cups up high in the air to keep him from knocking them to the floor with the suddenness of his movements.
“Whoa,” I said, swaying slightly.
He caught me around the hip and his hands came to a rest on my sides, which were now exposed due to me lifting my arms in the air.
He squeezed lightly, making sure I was steady, and then let me go.
His eyes, though…those eyes of his said he’d rather do anything but let me go.
But the look was gone in a blink of his eyes, and his careful expression was back on my face.
“Are you okay?”
I felt his concern in the pit of my belly, and I wanted nothing more than to launch myself into his arms.
I was scared.
That man…he brought up terrible memories.
I was so lost in my own mind, my hands still in the air, that I didn’t realize when Steel’s face turned from assessing to concerned.
The cups were removed from my hands, and Steel handed them over to Griffin.
“Winnie?”
He took my arms and brought them down, curling one hand around both of mine with room to spare.
I blinked, coming back to myself, and said, “Yeah?”
That’s when I realized he’d flattened both of my hands to the hard plane of his chest.
Jesus Christ.
Now my mind was lost for an altogether different reason.
I knew that Steel was older. Hell, it was hard to miss the silvering gray hair, and the way his beard was more gray than brown at this point.
But I hadn’t really realized how in shape he was—now I knew differently. Steel was just that…steel.
His muscular chest didn’t have an ounce of fat on it.
I wondered what it looked like when he had his shirt off…
“Winnie.”
The hard, even tone of Steel’s voice had me blinking. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Are you okay?”
I nodded once, my fingertips itching to run along his chest.
“Are you sure?”
I swallowed, then nodded. “When I was nineteen, I had a close call. That guy reminded me of it is all.”
“A close call.”
I nodded.
“What kind of close call?”
“The kind where someone followed me and Conleigh home, but he didn’t actually get anything accomplished before I ducked into the laundry room of our apartment complex. The next day, the same thing happened to another girl, only she wasn’t as lucky as me.”
His eyes studied my face.
“What was his name?”
My stomach started to churn despite having Steel right there.
Every time I thought about what could’ve happened to me—to Conleigh because he hadn’t just stopped at women—my belly started to protest.
“Anderson Munnick,” I answered. “He was a…”
“A serial rapist that they could only pin one rape on,” Griffin answered. “You remember that case that rolled through Texas a few years back? Those ones that we called every single chief of police in the state of Alabama to warn?”
Steel’s hand tightened on my wrist.
“You testified.”
I nodded. “I did.”
His eyes warmed. “Good girl.”
A moment passed in between us where we stared at each other. His praise made me feel light and airy, and I wanted to bury my face in between his two perfect pecs.
“What is this?” Griffin suddenly asked.
I looked over at him studying the contents of the cup.
“Jambalaya,” I answered. “The man up there had his wife cook the contents of their freezer since their power was out and the meat was going to spoil. She cooked jambalaya, stew, and about ten different kinds of meat.”
Griffin grunted. “Smells fucking divine.”
“You can have it,” I offered, then turned to the man still holding my hands to his chest. “I brought you one, Steel.”
“Thanks,” he said, finally realizing that he was still holding me and letting go. “Are you sure you don’t want it?”
I nodded. “My appetite is gone.”
Steel studied me for a few more seconds before he nodded.
“They’re likely about to move this to higher ground,” Steel suddenly said. “The levees that are holding back the lake in town are about to break. That means when it does, this parking lot is going to be underwater. Are you ready?”
Wide-eyed, I nodded.
“But what about everyone else in the tent?”
I looked over my shoulder at the tent and noticed that there weren’t nearly as many people around as there had been when I’d first left for the bathroom.
“They’re shipping out. The new central evac point will be about a mile and a half up the road. Higher ground,” Griffin muttered, taking a cautious bite of his food.
Then he moaned.
“Oh my God. This shit is the bomb.”
He brought the cup of food up to his lips and started to drink it like one would when they chugged a beer.
I started to laugh, then shook my head and turned my gaze back to the man that was still studying me.
“I’m ready when you are.”
He nodded once. “Right.”
Then we spent the rest of the night and way into the early hours of the morning helping.
An hour after six in the morning, we finally hit Steel’s truck.
“I’m dying,” I moaned, shucking my wet boots and setting them carefully into the floorboard of the backseat.
Steel grunted. “Fucking rain. If I never see another goddamn drop of it again it’ll be too soon.”
Another raindrop hit the windshield then, causing me to laugh.
“You were saying?”
He sighed.
“These pants are fucking wet as fuck.”
He’d taken his waders off before he’d gotten into the truck, but at some point during the night, Steel had sunk into the water past his waders as he tried to rescue an elderly woman from her car.
He’d spent the rest of the night wet, but he hadn’t once complained.
Until now.
“Take them off,” I suggested. “I’ll close my delicate eyes.”
He scoffed as he reached for the waistband of his jeans. “They’re coming off whether I had your permission or not.”
My heart rate skyrocketed as I slapped my hands over my eyes.
I heard the clink of his buckle and the slide of his zipper before he cursed while he shoved the wet pants down his legs.
“Shit,” he cursed. “Can you reach my bag?”
Could I reach his bag?
“Where is it?” I questioned, still keeping my hands over my eyes even though I wanted to do nothing but open my eyes and stare at him.
He had to be naked at this point. Had to.
“It’s behind the back seat. You’ll have to crawl back there and reach behind the seat for it.
I carefully started to crawl back there without opening my eyes.
“You so owe me,” I informed him.
He started to chuckle.
“Duly noted.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how I got my first good look at the man who was, indeed, sitting in his seat buck naked.
I’d had to open my eyes to see what I was doing, and I’d turned only to get an eye full of naked Steel.
Wet, naked Steel.
Wet, naked Steel who was looking at me in his rear-view mirror.
Shit!
&n
bsp; “Sorry!” I squeaked. “I forgot!”
He started to laugh. “I’ll take my peek at you when you change out of your wet clothes.”
And, ten minutes later when we were both dry, I wondered if he did indeed peek.
The expression on his face was void of anything telling, however.
Leaving me only to guess.
My guess is that he did look but that might only be my hopes and dreams talking.
Chapter 10
Some days I eat salads and go to the gym. Other days I eat three pounds of bacon and drink a dozen beers. I call it balance.
-Steel to Winnie
Winnie
Curiosity killed the cat.
In this instance, it almost killed Winnie.
Me.
Shit!
“What are you reading?”
I slapped my laptop closed and smiled guiltily.
“Nothing.”
He grunted something in reply and went to his bag for a new pair of underwear and a dry pair of jeans.
“Tomorrow I’m gonna need my flannel back!” he said. “It’s the only thing dry I have left! Plus, I’m an old man. I need to stay warm.”
I grimaced and looked down at my attire.
I was wearing his flannel shirt, but only because my own shirts just weren’t cutting it.
With the hurricane came a cool front, and that cool front was chilly to the point that I needed more clothes than I’d brought.
We’d tried to stop and pick up a sweatshirt from a drug store, but apparently along with the food on the shelves, everyone had bought all the sweatshirts they had in stock as well.
“You’re so full of shit. You’re not that old.” I headed to the bathroom door.
“I’m old.”
“Not old enough that it matters.”
He turned and gave me a long look that felt like he’d stripped me bare.
“I’m old enough to be your father.”
I laughed. “You’re not. But even if you were, why would that matter?”
“It matters because I’m old, and you’re young. You’re in the prime of your life, while I have an adult son that could be your brother. It’s just…odd.” He finally settled on.
I felt my heart beating faster. “Yes…but the heart wants what the heart wants.”
He looked away.
“And, just sayin’, but I have a sixteen-year-old.”
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