She was quiet as she looked down at him through the grate. And from where he stood, their faces were only two feet apart. She sighed and he felt the faint brush of her breath across his face.
“Alright, whatever. Yank the damn thing out.”
Relieved, Jay fisted his fingers through the tread of the grate, braced his feet, and yanked. The grate resisted for a half second before it tugged free of the ceiling, old plaster crumbling down around it. Jay tossed the grate out into the hall and grinned up at her, deeply grateful that there wasn’t anything blocking his view of her face anymore.
She blinked at him. One, two, slow blinks. And he realized he’d been wrong. She wasn’t beautiful. She was good looking. Downright sexy. Not quite pretty. But just, damn, majorly sexy. She had a defined bone structure and plush lips. Her green eyes against her tan gold skin was a devastating combo. He cleared his throat as some of her black hair tumbled through the vent toward him. He badly wanted to bring his hand to the ends, play in her hair’s silkiness. But he, of course, didn’t.
She continued to blink at him, her mouth coming slightly open, before she ducked away from the hole. He heard some rustling around before she appeared again.
“Here,” she shoved a cheese stick and a hardboiled egg down through the grate and into his outstretched hand.
Jay’s mouth watered as he looked at the food. He really was hungry but… “Seeing as you’re being so nice to me, I find it incredibly difficult to be honest with you about something.”
“What’s that?” she asked, cocking her head to one side.
He grinned up at her. “I’m vegan.”
“Oh Jesus,” she rolled her eyes again. “You’re one of those? Gimme my food back.”
Not able to stop grinning, he held the food out of arm’s reach and sat down under the hole in the ceiling. “No way. Trapped in a hurricane is a perfect excuse to break veganism for an evening.”
She’d been smiling, but the words trapped in a hurricane immediately wiped the smile off of her face.
He could have kicked himself.
“Hey!” she said in an outraged voice as she narrowed her eyes at his pile of Clif Bars in the corner. “You saved yourself all the macadamia nut ones and you gave me all the crappy mint chips?”
Jay grinned up at her. “I’m nice, but I’m not a saint.”
She pursed her lips and looked like she was trying hard not to smile. Her expression tightened into concern as a loud gust of wind made the entire hotel shiver and creak.
“You said you’ve been in a hurricane before?” Her voice was small, but somehow still as tough as it was before.
He nodded, carefully peeling the cheese stick. “Two in the Gulf of Mexico and one in Florida a few years back.”
She was quiet for a minute. “What did you mean by they come quick? When you said it before?”
“Oh. Well.” Jay leaned his head on the wall behind him. “I guess I meant that the kind of flooding that happens in a hurricane isn’t from rainfall. It’s from storm surge. And that kind of flooding is like a tsunami that doesn’t recede. It’s not really gradual. It’s just sort of not there and then it’s there. Until the storm breaks.”
“Jesus,” she whispered and her face disappeared from the hole.
Jay wasn’t sure if he should have lied or told the truth about that one. Either way, he took a bite of the cheese stick and couldn’t help the guttural groan of pleasure that tore out of him.
“What?” she asked, her face appearing at the hole again.
“Holy shit. I forgot how good cheese is,” Jay growled, looking up at her from where she sat.
She grinned and flared her eyebrows at him. “You remembered what you’re missing, huh?”
“Apparently. Look, you’re gonna wanna look away while I murder this egg. Things are gonna get a little messy down here.”
At that, she outright laughed and Jay got the strange sensation of wanting to lift his arms up in the air in triumph, maybe do a victory lap or two.
He hesitated, didn’t want to push too much while he was ahead, but found he couldn’t resist. “Will you tell me your name?”
She sighed as she sat back up, away from the hole. She glanced around the dim supply closet, the only source of light coming from all the way down the hall. And from the reflection off his blindingly blonde hair. Blonde men were not her type. Not in the least. She liked them lean and dark and suavely handsome.
This guy looked like a J. Crew model. And he had muscles on muscles. Not her thing. Not in the least. Which was why she’d been shocked into blinky, stunned silence when she’d finally gotten a good look at him. Because those eyes. Those eyes were killer. Sinatra blue. And the five o’clock shadow that told her the blond was real. It wasn’t from a bottle like so many surfer bros.
It would really, really be better if she could just think of him as a surfer bro. Being an active part of the surfing world for the last seven years, she’d become extremely adept at dodging surfer bros. They were always a dangerous mix of cocky and ignorant. High on themselves while being falsely humble. She was not a fan.
But this guy didn’t quite give her that vibe. He’d left Clif Bars for her. Gone to a more dangerous part of the hotel because she’d asked him to. And he hadn’t just said, ‘what’s your name.’ He’d asked if she would tell him. Like the name wasn’t even so important. It was the telling part that he wanted. The trust part.
She gritted her teeth together and rolled her eyes at herself. What was the harm in it? The guy was a floor away from her. And if he started freaking her out, she could lock herself in the storage closet for a few days. Wait out the storm until help came.
“Mari,” she said into the empty room, so quietly that she thought the raging wind outside might just carry it away.
“Good name,” he said, clapping eggshell off his hands. “Short for something?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t say any more.
And neither did he.
CHAPTER TWO
Jay watched the storm from the window at the end of the hall on the third floor. He didn’t like what he saw. Without any artificial light, and without even the moon, it was hard as hell to make anything out. But still, he could see enough. The water was rising. The ocean was clear up to the first floor below. From occasional glimmers on the surface, he guessed that there was only twenty or so feet between where his feet were and the water level.
He grimaced and scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. Whether she was comfortable with it or not, Mari might be getting a roommate at some point that evening.
Jay turned and looked back down the hall, through the ceiling toward where Mari slept. He knew she’d fallen asleep because he’d heard her rustling around with her sleeping bag, and then ultimately her breathing had fallen even.
“No!” Mari’s scream punctured the night, stabbing it through the heart.
Jay froze. A nightmare?
“The water!” she screamed in feral pain. “The water!”
Jay sprinted toward the stairwell leading up to the fourth floor. He thought he’d been certain that the water level was still far below their floors, but could there be another way it was getting in? Could her room be somehow filling?
He didn’t wait to ponder his question. He just slammed through the doorway and took the stairs four at a time, sprinting into the fourth floor hallway. He saw, with a sinking heart that she’d closed the door to her supply closet. He paused out front of it. “Mari?”
“Help!” she screamed. “God, please, help me!”
That was all Jay needed to hear before he reared back and kicked the shit out of the door, the old, rusted handle screeching and jamming at the first impact, and folding away at the second.
The door flung open and revealed Mari, twisted on top of her sleeping bag. Her hair was ink spread over her face and her body was in a tight rictus of fear. “Help,” she gasped into the night.
Jay quickly surveyed the room, his heart threatening to beat o
ut of his chest. No water. She was dreaming.
Fuck.
And she was about to wake up and realize that he’d broken the lock on her door.
Jay stepped back out of the supply closet and moved to go back downstairs when she moaned and rolled over again, he saw a glistening light against her cheeks. Tears. He found he couldn’t leave her there to be tortured by whatever she was dreaming about.
Trying to adopt the least threatening position he could possibly think of, Jay sat down on his butt, leaned back all the way on his elbows and stretched one foot into the supply closet, kicking at her feet.
“Mari,” he said, trying for a soothing and reassuring tone. “Mari!”
He swiped her feet with his and she suddenly sat up, gasping and staring around in blind, fuzzy confusion. “Mamá?”
Her small question broke Jay’s heart into a million pieces. “Mari,” he spoke quietly. “It’s Jay. You’re in the hotel. You were having a nightmare.”
She blinked again, peering through the darkness at him. “Jay?” she asked, still obviously confused.
He tapped her foot once more with his own, and was deeply relieved when she didn’t flinch, when she took it as the friendly gesture that he meant it.
“What happened?” she asked, blinking at him.
“You had a nightmare,” he repeated. “But you were screaming about water. I thought water had gotten in. So I came upstairs. You screamed for help. I broke the lock.”
He pointed to the door and Mari followed his finger, glancing up at the broken door. “Oh.” She drew her feet up toward her chest.
“I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “I never would have come up here except that I thought you needed help.”
“Oh,” she said again, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. She shook her head and pushed her hair out of her face with rough hands. “God! It’s so fucking hot in here.”
She wasn’t telling him to leave yet so Jay slid himself backwards, his back on the wall across the hallway from the door of the supply closet. “I know. I couldn’t sleep. It was way too hot. I was shocked that you could go to sleep up here.”
She chuckled humorlessly into her hands. “Falling asleep has never been my problem. I can sleep on a street curb if it comes to it.”
“Me too, usually.” He surveyed her in the dark, mostly able to only see her vague outline. She still sat up, her elbows leaning on her knees. She was obviously still shaking off the dream. He figured that if he tried to make things light hearted right now, the best that would happen is that she’d feel better. The worst is that she’d tell him to go back downstairs. It was a risk he was willing to take. “Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever fallen asleep?”
Mari paused, he couldn’t tell if it was because she was considering the answer to his question or just ignoring him. “My own birthday party. It was a surprise party. They were all waiting for me to come back into the living room, but I was so tired after school that I just tossed my bag on the front porch and caught a few zs.”
Jay laughed and took a chance on stretching his legs out in front of him. He was long enough that it meant his feet stretched into her space but she didn’t protest.
“You?” she asked. “Weirdest place you’ve ever fallen asleep?”
Jay scrubbed a hand over his stubble. “Well, I’ve fallen asleep in a public restroom before. Slumped over the sink.”
Mari chuckled. “Been there. Only it was one of those really fancy bathrooms where they have the benches with cushions and the lady that hands you a towel after you wash your hands.”
“Did she hand you a towel after you fell asleep?”
Mari laughed. “Nah. She poked me in the side and told me to tip her or get the hell out of there. I think she thought I was part of the staff.”
She scooted herself further away from him but Jay saw that it was just to lean her back against the opposite wall, the way he was doing. “Sorry about the, uh, nightmare. I know that can be freaky. Especially from a stranger.”
Jay shrugged. “It’s understandable. Especially considering the situation we’re in right now.”
“Hmm.” Mari made a noncommittal noise as she swiped her water bottle off the ground, took a sip. She grimaced. “God. Even the water is hot.”
Jay cocked his head to one side. “I could filter some of the rain water for us, I bet that’s cooler.”
Across the room, he was pretty sure he could see Mari’s eyebrows rising up in disbelief. “You brought a water filter?”
“At my mother’s insistence. It’s the only way she sleeps when I’m off doing shit like this.”
Mari was quiet. Jay cleared his throat. “You want me to grab my water filter? See if we can’t get some slightly cooler water?”
“Sure.” She rose when he did. “I’m up already, so I might as well go with you.”
Jay kept a healthy distance between them as they tromped through the dark together. He held the door of the stairwell open for her and didn’t miss her raised eyebrows as she ducked underneath his arm. The stairwell was pitch black and their shoulders brushed as he miscalculated a step.
“Sorry,” he muttered, wanting her to know that he wasn’t trying to take advantage.
She said nothing, but he heard her breathing speed up.
He led them out onto the third floor, and the dim light at the end of the hallway was a welcome relief to the pitch black. They were just walking down the hallway toward his supply closet when a huge bang shook the entire hotel.
Mari screamed and jumped out of her skin as the branches of a tree smashed through the window at the end of the hallway. Jay raised a wry eyebrow and turned to look at the way she’d flung him in between her and the perceived danger.
“Nice to know you have my back, Mari,” he said, with a little smile in his voice as she shrank between his back and the wall. The flats of her soft hands against his back.
“Oh. Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “Knee jerk reaction.”
“I’m not complaining.” And he wasn’t. Not when she was actually shrinking into him instead of away from him. He would take a hundred more moments like that if it meant her trust in him was growing. He grabbed his water filter out of his backpack and padded down the hallway toward the broken window. The whole thing was shattered and a stiff wind came through the hallway.
Mari stepped quietly next to him and helped him hold the tureen out the window. It took less than a few minutes to fill up the filter with rain water. They hauled it back in, having gathered about a gallon of water, and dragged it back down the hall toward his supply closet. Jay crouched over it and tinkered around, setting up the filtration system so that the rainwater would filter through the cleaning system and come out into the clean bottle on the other side.
The two of them sat side by side on the space blanket he’d laid out before and watched the water filter. Mari’s eyes kept shooting back to the storm outside. There was barely rain. It was just a solid sheet of water, being blown almost sideways by the wind.
“I hate to say that the wind feels kind of good,” she admitted, tilting her head back and letting the air wash over her.
“Yeah,” Jay agreed, trying hard not to look at the thin column of her throat. It was too dark to tell, but he was pretty sure she was just in a tank top and some underwear. He knew he made her nervous enough without throwing attraction into the mix.
A half an hour later, they passed the cool water back and forth to each other, taking long, grateful swigs. Eventually, soothed by the cool water and the air rushing over top of them, they both found their eyes growing heavy. Jay wondered if she was going to go back upstairs. But it was the last thought he had before falling into shallow, but persistent sleep.
***
She woke to the gritty light of day. The storm howled from down the hall and Mari could see thick ropes of water lashing in from the broken window. Mari knew that Jay laid beside her on the space blanket, but she almost didn’t dare to look over there
yet.
She knew that looking at him was going to seal the deal for her. She’d only gotten a good look at his face once, yesterday, through the grate. And something about the way he’d looked just made her want to trust him. He had a kind face.
And then he’d been so sweet last night. Waking her up from her nightmare, giving her so much space, and then going to all that trouble just to give her a cool drink of water. Yeah. She knew that this skeptical, suspicious thing she was clinging to was about to dissolve into thin air.
She sighed and sat up, glancing her eyes over him quickly. It didn’t matter, the jolt to her system at the sight of him was shocking and complete. He lay there, eyes closed with one hand behind his head.
He was shirtless. His skin was tanned and smooth, smattered with hair. He had a tattoo running up one side of his ribs and down under the line of the navy swim trunks he wore. His legs were crossed at the ankle, the picture of repose.
And again, it was his face that arrested her. With his eyes closed, and those Sinatra blues hidden away, he looked much less like a model, she realized. In fact, his nose was just a bit overlarge, his eyebrows too severe, his smile lines around his eyes just a little too deep. But it was a very attractive face. And covered, Mari noted, by a significant amount more of a beard than yesterday.
The storm outside screamed and shook the hotel and Mari realized that they must be getting close to the moment of landfall. Her stomach flipped. She needed this to be over.
“Jay,” she said, nudging his hip with her foot. “Jay, wake up.”
“Hmmmm?” he groaned, turning toward her voice but keeping his eyes closed. “What is it?”
Bachelors In Love Page 27