After the Storm

by Amy Knupp

  And of course, Zoe had been hanging around to hammer the point into his head some more whenever his courage waned.

  He loved those two crazy women who were his family. Zoe had been amazing when he’d decided to take the plunge and find an online program to start studying arson investigation. After collaborating on what their mom had declared the best meal she’d ever had, the two of them had researched until the wee hours for the past three nights. Penn knew more about the career now, and knew without any doubts it was what he wanted to do.

  His future was looking brighter than he’d thought possible even a week ago. He was beginning to have faith in it and himself. He just had one more crucial part of it to take care of.

  * * *

  NADIA SPREAD AN EXTRA thick towel on one of the wooden benches and stretched out on her stomach.

  When she and Penn had been together, it’d been easier for her to drag herself from work for a few hours a day, to begin to find some semblance of balance. Without him, she’d had to find other reasons to walk away from her desk. Her favorite so far was her 5:00 p.m. date with the sauna. Every day.

  She almost always had it to herself, so when the door now creaked slowly open, she lifted her head to see who on earth was interrupting her Nadia time.

  It was a good thing she was lying down, otherwise she might have fallen over from shock.

  Penn, dressed in his standard shorts, tee and shoes, ducked his head and walked through the door, letting it close behind him.

  While acting casual would have been Nadia’s first choice, it was impossible. Not after she’d spent weeks feeling as if she was grieving. The intensity of her sadness after walking away from him had surprised her and concerned her mother. They’d been together such a short time, but Nadia’s feelings for Penn had been stronger even than she’d realized.

  A reality she pushed out of her mind now as she hid her face in her arms and tried to stop her heart from racing. She counted to five as she inhaled deeply.

  “What are you doing here, Penn?”

  “Getting ready to sweat, it appears. Damn, it’s hot.”

  “It’s a sauna,” she said, daring to turn her head to look at him. “How’d you find me?”

  “Your mom clued me in. I’d like to talk to you, Nadia. Is there any way we could take it out of here?”

  She studied him for a hint of what he wanted to discuss but his face showed nothing. Apparently she wasn’t over her anger because she said, “I’ll be done in fifteen minutes.”

  He stared at her, disbelief in his eyes. He opened the door and she relaxed a degree—until she realized he was only grabbing a towel from the stack by the door so he could join her.

  Penn sat on the bench at a ninety-degree angle from hers, leaned forward a little and pulled his shirt over his head.

  Whatever the game was he so wasn’t playing fair.

  She bit her tongue and cradled her face out of his sight again before she could get sucked in to staring at his chest. Hearing him out anywhere else would have been a better option, she realized too late. Now she’d doomed herself to sitting with a shirtless Penn for the next fifteen minutes.

  “Are you going to hide like that while I set my man card aside and bare my soul?”

  She blinked a few times, trying to absorb his words.

  Baring his soul?

  She eased herself up and sat against the wall. He stared at her the whole time.

  “Nice suit,” he said, nodding appreciatively at her body.

  Instead of the black one-piece, she wore her red vintage-style bikini that sat low on her hips and had a halter-style top. Thankfully not overly revealing—for a swimsuit—but still, she felt exposed.

  “Red is one of my favorite colors on you,” Penn said.

  Her eyes immediately veered to his to judge his sincerity, then she looked away quickly and used her hand towel to wipe perspiration off her face, trying to hide how the simple compliment unnerved her.

  “You wanted to bare your soul about something?” she threw out, trying to volley the discomfort back to him.

  He chuckled. “Hadn’t planned to do it in a thousand degrees Fahrenheit but I can be flexible.” He stood and paced three steps to the opposite side and back. Faced her. “I’ve been in Boulder the past three weeks. Staying with my mom and sister.”

  She bit down on the instinct to ask how they were. Somehow, she sensed that wasn’t the point of the conversation.

  “Long story short, I finally get it, Nadia.”

  “Get what?” she asked, wondering if it was possible to be wary and hopeful at the same time.

  He moved to her bench, sat so close their legs and shoulders touched. She waited, but he didn’t continue. His brow was furled as if he was struggling to think of what to say.

  The suspense was killing her. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here, Penn?”

  He took her hand in his. “I’m here to tell you I love you.”

  She stopped breathing and maybe her heart stopped, too. Slowly, she turned her head toward him, looked him in the eyes. “You love me.” She repeated it as a statement, but it was definitely a question.

  He grinned like a shy little boy.

  “Yeah. I love you, Nadia. And you were right. I was scared. I am scared. That sucks to admit out loud.”

  “You love me?” she asked yet again, not hearing anything else he said.

  “I love you.”

  The heat climbed higher, becoming stifling. If she sat there for another second, she swore she was going to pass out. She jumped up, thrust open the door and headed straight for one of the open-stalled showers in the common area. She turned it to cool and sat on the tiny shower bench under the spray. Within thirty seconds, the fear that she was going to pass out dissipated but she didn’t budge.

  The sauna door opened again and Penn emerged. He came over to the opening of her stall and stared at her.

  “I tell you I love you and you run away,” he said, frowning. “How much should I read into that?”

  She smiled. “Don’t take it personally.” She stood and shut the water off.

  “So.” Nadia went to the stack of towels and grabbed a fresh one.

  “So,” Penn repeated.

  “You think you can waltz in here and tell me you love me and everything will be fine, huh?” She smiled as she said it, but she was about 50 percent serious.

  “Actually, no. If you’ll recall, you ran away before the discussion was over.”

  “Okay, so there’s more?” She squeezed her hair with the towel to get as much water out of it as she could, trying to occupy her mind with that task instead of letting it wander to the “more.”

  “Yes.”

  The spa area of the hotel’s fitness center was not where she’d choose to have this conversation. “Give me two minutes to grab a cover-up and a hair band and we can take a walk.”

  He chuckled. “Even when it’s my show, you have to take charge, don’t you?”

  “If I didn’t, we’d still be broiling in the sauna.”

  “Point taken.”

  She went into the locker room, ran a pick through her hair and gathered it at her nape. From her locker, she took the plum-colored cover-up she rarely had use for and pulled it over her head. She tossed the pair of cheap flip-flops intended only for the beach to the floor and slipped them on. Glancing in the mirror was a mistake—her cheeks were pink and her hair frightening.

  But he’d said he loved her.

  If he loved her, he better love her both ugly and pretty.

  Her pulse raced at the idea and she closed her locker, painfully curious about what else Penn had to say. She had to admit, he was off to a good start.

  When she rejoined him, he’d grabbed his shirt from the sauna and put it on, which was both a relief and a disappointment.

  “Ready?” he said, looking her over from head to toe.

  “As ready as I can get anytime soon.”

  “You’re beautiful. Care to walk on the be
ach?” He held out a hand to her.

  She looked at his hand, glanced at his face and wove her fingers with his.

  They didn’t speak until they were off the hotel’s property and well onto the beach, walking along the waterline.

  “So where was I?” Penn asked.

  “Something about a good stay in Colorado and you love me.”

  “We’ll start with Colorado.”

  He told her the effect paying his respects to the firefighter he didn’t know had had on him. Then he explained how his mother had bragged about him to her friends and colleagues. He paraphrased her award speech—or at least the part that was about him and, call her a sucker, but Nadia’s eyes teared up as she imagined the moment. Because she agreed with his mom. He had so many admirable qualities, so much to love.

  “The more I thought about what she said, the more it sank in,” Penn said. “All that stuff she was saying about when I’d decided to become a firefighter and about being a firefighter—she made it sound like it’s more than a label. That it’s what’s inside of me.”

  “It is,” Nadia said simply.

  “I don’t know if she’s right about all the praise, but it made me realize something. Probably something you’ve tried to tell me a dozen times. While my job title may have to change, I’m still the same guy inside. Everything that saw me through in the past is going to get me through now. Just with a different result.”

  Nadia closed her eyes, wanting to pump her fist in the air that he’d finally grasped it. “Yes! That is so absolutely what I’ve tried to tell you a dozen times. Guess I just wasn’t saying it right.”

  “Or I wasn’t listening.” He squeezed her hand affectionately. “But you weren’t listening a few minutes ago when I said you were right.”

  She replayed their discussion. “You must have rushed that out after dropping the big L bomb so I wouldn’t notice.”

  “I might be guilty of that.”

  “What was I right about?” She leaned into him as they walked, feeling lighter than she had in three weeks. Lighter and…bubbly. That was the only word she could come up with.

  “I’m scared. Of the future, of starting over, of not knowing what’s going to happen. But I know now that I’m also brave.”

  “Yes, you are,” Nadia said.

  “I wasn’t acting brave. Wasn’t facing my fear, or owning up to it, like you said.”

  “Now you are?”

  He stopped walking and faced her. Nadia’s heart was fluttering hummingbird-fast.

  “Now I am.” He grasped her other hand so he was holding both of them. “I enrolled for two courses online and talked to Dave Applbaum about maybe shadowing him on some investigations while I learn the ropes. He’s on board to help me however he can.”

  “Good for you, Penn. I think you’ll be amazing at it. You have a passion for firefighting and justice and…you’ll be perfect.”

  “I don’t know about perfect, but I know I can love it. I think I can do it.”

  “There’s no doubt in my mind about that.” She studied their entwined fingers, his large and calloused, hers winter-white and dainty in comparison.

  “I’ve made headway on the anger,” he said, hitting on the very question in her mind. “I won’t say that it or my frustration are gone completely, but you were right about that, too. Moving forward feels a thousand times better. I’m starting to get excited about possibilities. I no longer blow up when my future is mentioned.”

  She laughed quietly. “You realize you just said the word future without freaking out?”

  Penn grinned. “It’s getting a lot easier to imagine. One day physical therapy will be over. I’ll get through classes, get a job as an inspector… And if I play my cards right, I’m hoping for a chance at long-term access to Great-grandma Hamlin’s chocolate chip cookies. And the girl who can give that.”

  “Hmm, those are pretty high stakes. How do I know you really want me and not just cookie access?”

  “I’ll do my best to convince you,” Penn said, leaning down and kissing her, thoroughly, tenderly. As though he meant it.

  When he finally ended the kiss, Nadia’s head was spinning. She stared up into his green eyes and knew she would remember what she saw there for the rest of her life. The moment was perfect, the sun starting to set, the sky full of color, and this beautiful, amazing man looked down at her with so much love.

  “Are you convinced yet?” he asked, his voice husky.

  “You’re most persuasive.”

  He brushed her hair behind her shoulder, breathed his next words into her ear. “Excellent. So now what?”

  “You said this was your show. It’s your turn to take charge.”

  “Yeah?” He teased her earlobe with his teeth, nibbling lightly. “In that case, I think it’s time we go usher in that future we were just talking about.”

  Side by side, hand in hand, they walked toward their future together.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt of The Road to Bayou Bridge by Liz Talley!

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  CHAPTER ONE

  August 2012

  Naval Station, Rota, Spain

  THE PAPER ACTUALLY SHOOK in Darby Dufrene’s hand—that’s how shocked he was by the document he’d discovered in a box of old papers. He’d been looking for the grief book he’d made as a small child and instead had found something that made his gut lurch against his ribs.

  “Dude, come on. The driver needs to go.” Hal Severson’s voice echoed in the half-full moving truck parked below the flat Darby had shared with the rotund navy chaplain for the past several years. His roommate had waited semi-good-naturedly while Darby climbed inside to grab the book before it was shipped to Seattle, but good humor had limits.

  “Just a sec,” Darby called, his eyes refusing to leave the elaborate font of the certificate he’d pulled from a clasped envelope trapped in the back of his Bayou Bridge Reveille yearbook. How in the hell had this escaped his attention? Albeit it had been buried in with some old school papers he’d tossed aside over ten years ago and vowed never to look at again, surely the state of Louisiana seal would have permeated his brain and screamed, Open me!

  Yet, back then he’d been in a funk—a childish, rebellious huff of craptastic proportions. He probably hadn’t thought about much else except the pity party he’d been throwing himself.

  The moving truck’s engine fired and a loud roar rumbled through the trailer, vibrating the wood floor. The driver was eager to pick up the rest of his load, presumably a navy family heading back to the States, and his patience with Darby climbing up and digging through boxes already packed was also at an end. Darby slid the certificate back into its manila envelope, tucked it into his jacket and emerged from the back end of the truck.

  Hal’s red hair glinted in the sunlight spilling over the tiled roof, and his expression had evoled to exasperation. The man was hungry. Had been hungry for hours while the movers slowly packed up Darby’s personal effects and scant pieces of furniture, and no one stood between Hal and his last chance to dine in El Puerto de Santa Maria, the city near the Rota Naval Base, with his best comrade. “Let’s go already. Saucy Terese and her crustacean friends await us.”

  “Not Il Caffe di Roma, Hal. I don’t want to look into that woman’s eyes and wonder if she might greet me with a filet knif
e.”

  “You ain’t that good, brother,” Hal said in a slow Oklahoma drawl. “She’ll find someone else on which to ply her wiles when the new guy arrives.”

  “You mean the new guy whose name is Angela Dillard?”

  “The new JAG officer’s a girl?”

  Darby smiled. “Actually she’s a woman.”

  Hal jingled his keys. “Entendido.”

  “Your Spanish sucks.”

  “Whatever. Now get your butt in gear. There are some crabs and sherry with my name on them.”

  Darby tried to ignore the heat of the document pressing against his chest. Of course, it wasn’t actually hot. Just burning a hole in his stomach with horrible dread. He was an attorney and the document he carried wasn’t a prank, but he couldn’t figure out how the license had been filed. His father had virtually screamed the implausibility at him nearly eleven years ago—the day he’d shipped Darby off to Virginia—so this didn’t make sense. “Fine, but if Terese comes toward me with a blade, you must sacrifice yourself. If not, Picou will ply the sacrificial purifications of the Chickamauga on you. She’s been waiting for five years to get me back home to Beau Soleil.”

  Hal rubbed his belly. “Did they perform human sacrifices?”

  “Who? The Native Americans or Picou?”

  “Either.”

  Darby grinned. “I don’t know about the Chickamauga, but my mom will go psycho if I don’t climb off that plane.”

  “Consider it done. No way I’m left to deal with your mother. She makes mine look like that woman from Leave It to Beaver.”

  “Your mom is June Cleaver all the way down to the apron and heels.” Darby knew firsthand. Her weekly chocolate chips cookies had caused him to pack on a few pounds.

  “I know. All women pale in comparison.” Hal opened the door of his white convertible BMW, his one prideful sin, and slid in. He perched a pair of Ray-Bans on his nose and fired the engine.

  “Except our housekeeper, Lucille. Can’t wait to get my hands on her pecan pie.” Darby took one last look at his beachfront flat before sliding onto the hot leather seats of Hal’s car. He’d already shipped his motorcycle to the States weeks ago. He wanted it available when he got to Seattle and went in search of apartments, though he knew he’d likely have to sell it in favor of a respectable sedan. With all that Northwest rain, he’d have little chance to take as many mind-clearing drives as he had along the coast of Spain. Plus, Shelby hated it.