Men of Courage II

by Lori Foster

  “Bunk room, then. It’s the safest place.” He broke off at the sound of radio static and pulled a small handheld unit off his belt. “Go ahead,” he said into the mouthpiece.

  “What’s your status?” came a male voice.

  “We’re hanging in. Weather?”

  “Bad.” The voice broke up a bit and the static got louder. “Tornadoes all over the place, slinging debris and causing major destruction. We’re swamped with calls but forced to stay grounded until the winds die down.”

  “The rescue boats?”

  “One flipped, no injuries. The other is also officially grounded until this passes.”

  Wyatt dropped his hand to his side and looked grim. His gaze ran over Leah, but his eyes gave away nothing of what he was feeling.

  “I’ll be back for you as soon as I can,” the radio said.

  Wyatt brought it back up to his mouth. “We’ll be okay.”

  Because there wasn’t much choice. Leah knew that much.

  “You can make it until morning?” the voice asked.

  Leah sucked in a breath. Morning seemed a long, long way off.

  “That’s affirmative,” Wyatt said. “Assuming the boat holds. We’ve got a shot at it anyway.”

  “Call me,” said the radio.

  Wyatt pocketed the radio. “My partner,” he said to Leah. “Logan White.”

  “We’re going to stay until morning?” she asked in a very small voice that she couldn’t help.

  “Looks like it.”

  The winds howled. The lightning hadn’t let up, nor had the accompanying thunder. If the tornado-warning sirens were still going off, she couldn’t hear them over the unbelievable noise of the storm.

  “Get to the bunk room.” Wyatt handed her the flashlight. “I’ll meet you there.” He turned on his heels and once again moved toward the hatch door, hardly even staggering for balance as he went, his T-shirt and jeans stuck to him like a second skin, delineating every line and every muscle, of which he had many.

  She knew she didn’t have his catlike balance, so she stayed on her knees and did as he’d ordered, crawling through the rocking houseboat toward the bunk room, wondering how they could possibly survive until morning.

  Wondering, too, what they’d do to spend the long hours until then. She’d known her body was at huge risk. She just hadn’t realized her heart would be, as well.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE HOUSEBOAT PITCHED and swayed as Leah crawled toward the bunk room. Twice she was knocked off balance, but the corridor was narrow enough that she didn’t fly far.

  With Wyatt’s flashlight, she got herself to the door and then just inside, where she huddled in a corner. She hadn’t realized how badly she was shaking until she tried to scoop a strand of hair from her eyes and couldn’t get her fingers to work. Two stacks of three bunks lined two walls, bolted in place. There was a window running along the third wall, long and high, revealing nothing but inky blackness and staccato bursts of lightning. Each flash backlit the huge chunks of hail flung from the heavens above.

  She eyed the blankets on all six beds, but even with Wyatt’s jacket she shook so much now that her teeth felt like they were going to rattle right out of her head. Delayed reaction, she knew, but that didn’t help her get warm. She was just considering crawling over to the blankets when a light appeared in the doorway. Wyatt stood there holding two life vests, a pack and a lit lantern.

  “Found these.” He tossed the vests down along with the small pack and surveyed the room in one sweep. “A hell of a storm, and it’s not nearly spent yet.”

  “If you’re trying to cheer me up…”

  Striding to one stack of bunk beds, he hooked the lantern on one of the steel posts. He reached up to the top bunk and ripped the army surplus blanket free. Then he turned to Leah. “Lose the clothes.”

  “W-what?”

  “You’re turning blue, you’re dripping water in our dry room and you’re going to get hypothermia if you don’t hurry.”

  “I’ll just wrap the blanket around—”

  “I’m not wasting a perfectly good blanket on a drenched vic.”

  “Vic?”

  “Victim.”

  “I’m not…a v-victim.” Her chattering teeth were helping to prove his point so she shut her mouth. Chin high, she went to kick off her pumps but realized she only wore one.

  “It’s long gone,” he told her grimly. “Lose the rest, Leah.”

  She stood up. She needed height for this. “I don’t see you stripping.”

  With a sigh, he tossed aside the blanket and strode back toward her, which took all of two steps.

  “Don’t.” She had no idea what she was saying don’t to, but she had a feeling it had to do with him removing her clothes for her. There’d been a time when she’d begged him to do such a thing, but that had been years and years ago, when he’d looked at her in a way that had never failed to take her breath. Now all she saw was anger and frustration. “Don’t,” she said again, in a plea this time.

  He sighed and a real regret filled his gaze. “This isn’t a game, Leah. This isn’t fun.”

  “Do you s-see me l-laughing?” Damn it, she could hardly get the words out, and to make matters worse, the violent rocking of the boat was making it difficult to remain upright, forcing her to clutch his arms for balance.

  He held her steady. “I don’t see anything but you, in danger,” he said more sympathetically. “You need to be dry and warm. Fast.” Without a word he stripped his jacket from her. Then he tackled the buttons on her blouse, the backs of his hands brushing her breasts and belly as he went, causing more shivers. He made a rough sound that might have been sympathy, or just more frustration, but then he peeled the material away from her wet skin and looked at her lace bra.

  Jaw like granite, eyes completely unfathomable, his hands went to her shoulders, turning her around to unzip her skirt. When it fell to the floor, exposing her purple satin bikini panties, he wrapped her in the blanket and said in her ear, “This is survival. Just survival.”

  Then he pushed her toward one of the lower bunks. He pulled back the blanket there and found bare mattress. “It’ll do,” he said and waited.

  She supposed he meant for her to crawl in. With her knees threatening to buckle on her, she did, rolling into a ball facing away from him. The blanket came down over her and then she felt the weight of still another.

  It didn’t seem to help. Lying there in the dimly lit room, the shivers continued to wrack her frame, so much so that she no longer felt the wild rocking of the boat, she felt nothing but the painful beat of her freezing heart and the blood in her ears pounding with each beat. Her extremities were blissfully numb but the core of her was not, and she actually felt like she might burst into tears at the pain of the iciness filling her.

  Then, over the roaring in her ears came a shockingly quiet rasp of a zipper. A few thuds and one thump later, and the blankets lifted from her and Wyatt slid into the bed behind her. Wrapped like a sausage in that first blanket, she didn’t care, but that thought backed up in her throat when he tugged on her blanket, slowly unraveling her, flipping her over to face him in the process.

  One look at him in the lantern’s glow and she slammed her eyes shut. “You’re naked.”

  “Not quite. Besides, you’ve seen it all before.”

  Yes, but that had been a long time ago. A lifetime ago.

  His arms slid around her, and as he hauled her up against him, three things hit her at once. One, he was right. He wasn’t completely naked, he had on underwear. Two, he was every bit as damp and icy cold as she.

  And three…the proximity of their bodies vividly slammed home memories of all the times they’d spent in each other’s arms, less dressed than this.

  “This is a mistake,” she whispered, staring into his eyes, which glittered with something that was most definitely not a happy stroll down memory lane.

  “The whole damn week is one big mistake.” Against her he shivere
d, just as violently as she, and she realized she wasn’t the only one in danger here. Softening at that, she relaxed against him, hoping that somehow their two cold-as-fish bodies could warm each other. But he let out a rough sound, as if in pain, and she quickly pulled back. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?” Fear in her throat, she pushed back the blanket and looked him over in the meager lantern’s light, an action that proved to be another mistake. As she took in his broad, sinewy chest, a belly ridged with strength, his blue knit boxers clinging to every inch of him, her heart just about died at the sight. Not her body though. No, her body remembered. Yearned. “I don’t see an injury.”

  “Leah—just get warm.”

  The chill went so deep, she didn’t know how she could ever get warm again, but she closed her eyes, pressed her face into his throat and tried to shut her mind off and heat up.

  A tiny little flicker of warmth licked at her insides. She squirmed a little closer, desperately seeking another little flicker. But this time all she got was a low, thick moan—not hers.

  “Stop moving,” he grated out.

  She moved again. “I can’t. It’s starting to work—”

  His hands spread wide on her back, locking her in place. “Leah—”

  “Don’t you feel it?”

  One of his hands skimmed down and palmed her bottom. “Yeah, I feel it. Every time you squirm, you glide more of your flesh over mine. Just like old times.” His other hand joined the first, and squeezed. With a rough groan he let go, sagged back and closed his eyes. “This has got to stop.” He threw an arm over his eyes. “I know you’re back in town for a while, but—”

  “For good,” she admitted into his bleak face, wishing he hadn’t stopped touching her, even though she couldn’t come up with a reason she should be wanting his hands back on her, other than nothing had felt so right in so long. “I didn’t realize that until now,” she marveled softly. “But I’m back for good.”

  “Why?”

  Because she’d seen and done it all, and it’d left her cynical, tired and carrying a sense of hopelessness that dogged her every step. Because she’d watched a van full of comrades die right in front of her for no reason other than to satisfy some need for revenge she’d never understood. Now she was losing herself, or had been until she’d come back to Denton and taken a big gulp of air and understood life didn’t have to be lived at one thousand miles per hour. “It’s complicated,” she finally said, and unbelievably he laughed.

  “Hell, babe. It always was.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SHE WAS BACK. To stay.

  It shouldn’t have mattered to Wyatt, he’d have sworn it never would, but here in the moment, holding her trembling body to his like the past ten years had never happened, like they were still in love, like she hadn’t crushed his heart and shattered his idealistic view of romance, shook him. Shook him deeply.

  He’d long ago stopped thinking about her, missing her, but now time seemed to evaporate, and he stared down at her in the lantern’s glow. “I don’t think I’m going to like you being back.”

  “I know.” Her lashes swept along her high cheekbones as she shut her eyes, hiding from him. Her naked lips, always full and kissable, parted slightly, and he forced his gaze off them.

  If she’d started out the day fully made-up for the camera, and he suspected she had, every ounce of it had long been washed away. His gut clenched at that, and what could have happened to her on deck.

  Then she opened her eyes and met his. “Coming back here, to Denton, I didn’t think about how it would affect me. Or you. Didn’t think about it because there wasn’t time…” A spasm of pain crossed her features. “I really needed to be here,” she whispered. “Badly. So badly that even if I’d known I’d hurt you, I’d still have come.”

  “There’s a lot you’re not saying, Leah.”

  “I know.”

  He’d told himself a hundred times today he didn’t care, and yet he stroked her drying hair off her face and asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Still cold.”

  “I meant…New York. Were you hurt?”

  Again she closed her eyes.

  Shutting him out, damn it. He was such an idiot, doing this. He’d sworn he wouldn’t and yet holding her, feeling the shivers that still occasionally wracked her, he knew he was screwed. He could talk to himself until he was blue. It didn’t matter. Everything he’d once felt for her was shoving its way to the surface regardless. Shaken to the core, he jerked away from her as far as he could in the small cot and still share body heat, which wasn’t that far. He was done—he’d given her all he had—and now he was spent.

  She let out a soft sound of distress and he hardened himself against it. Outside, the storm continued to batter the boat. Inside, everything churned just as violently.

  For something to do, he reached down to the floor and grabbed the emergency pack he’d rescued from the galley. Because he wasn’t completely heartless, he unwrapped a power bar and handed it to her. She sank her teeth into it, stroking her tongue over her lower lip to catch a crumb, and damn if something deep inside him didn’t get all hot and trembly.

  He had to shake his head. Never again, he reminded himself. Her tongue was never again going to be anywhere near his. He needed to remember that.

  But then she took another bite, hummed out a little “mmm,” and Wyatt heard a rushing in his ears.

  She offered him a bite. Leaning in, he opened his mouth, eyeing her as he did, wondering if he was doing anything to her, anything even close to what she was doing to him.

  “Do you think the lantern will last?” she asked.

  Probably not. He lifted a shoulder, not wanting to lie to her.

  She looked at him for a long moment. “What are the chances of us dying out here?”

  “We’re not going to die.”

  “No.” She pressed just a little closer. A strand of her hair caught on the stubble of his chin. Her eyes never left his, and though fear still lurked, she was calm. “Not on your watch.”

  “Damn right.”

  She let out a warm little breath that blew over his lips and made him shudder with more memories—lying with her just like this, his hands all over her, bodies entwined.

  “You always were a take-charge kind of guy,” she murmured. “Remember our senior prom? There was a storm then, too, and the lights went off. You rigged the generator and saved the night.”

  And after the dance, they’d sneaked out to the lake and made love beneath the stars.

  “Wyatt…”

  God, the way she said his name. Around them the crazy wind whipped, huge hail pelted the windows, while adrenaline raced through him. Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and he knew. She was remembering, too. She was going to kiss him and he wouldn’t resist. In fact, when she touched her lips to the very corner of his and nibbled softly, he let out a rough groan of sorrow, of frustration, of need, and clamped her head in his hands, properly lined them up, opening his mouth over hers.

  A take-charge kind of guy she’d called him. He sure as hell wasn’t feeling in charge of himself as he dove right in. With a low throaty moan, she was right there with him, her tongue sliding along his, making him quiver like a damn teenager. She tasted like forgotten dreams and missed chances, and though he could hardly stand it, he couldn’t pull away. And he didn’t, not until they needed to come up for air, and then they stared at each other in mutual shock.

  Breathing unsteadily, she let out a sigh filled with pleasure, and reached for him again, eyes already closed, lips wet and parted….

  And though his body protested greatly, he managed to hold back.

  Slowly she opened her eyes, the shiny green orbs filled with a question.

  One he had no answer for.

  He had to be crazy not to give in and warm up in the good old-fashioned way, but his brain had finally kicked into gear. “Bad idea.”

  “But—”

  He set
tled a finger on her lips. “No buts.” A mistake, touching her in any fashion, but he had to make her understand. “You’re hard on my mental health, Leah.”

  She frowned and ran her hand up his chest.

  Even that little movement was sexy enough to make him want to cave. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. “Look, we’re over. Ten years over.”

  “Things change.”

  He shook his head, letting out another ragged groan when she pressed her heat-seeking body tighter to his. “Leah.” God. He dropped his forehead to hers, fisting his hands to keep them off her. “If you cared for me at all—”

  “I did, you know I did—”

  “Then stop. Please,” he added very quietly and closed his eyes, hoping to God she was listening, because his body, hard and aching and plastered to hers, sure wasn’t.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “I JUST THINK WE SHOULD TALK about it,” Leah said softly. “About our past.” The boat tilted roughly and she clung to him. “I need to talk about it,” she added desperately.

  Again they rocked, so that they nearly fell out of the cot, but he held them in. Leah let out a worried whimper, and with a sigh, he tightened his grip on her. “Shh, it’s okay.” He stroked a hand down her slim spine, and again the inner kick came from just touching her. He could only imagine if he tried touching her anywhere else. It was bad enough that, pressed against him, he could feel her breasts, her belly, her thighs….

  No. Bad. Stick to the situation: tornado conditions, trapped on a houseboat with the last woman on earth he would choose to be stuck with and no rescue happening tonight.

  At least she wasn’t shivering as violently anymore, and neither was he. Hell, he was beginning to feel like he was in a sauna.

  “Wyatt? Do you remember our first date?”

  Hell, yes. She’d been the hottest thing in his English Lit class, and just a little snooty, which for some sick reason had turned him on. It hadn’t been until later he’d realized she wasn’t stuck up at all, but shy.