It only pissed her off.
Or maybe it made her insanely jealous. Because what she wouldn’t give for a teensy, tiny bit of his calm.
Her face must’ve revealed some of what she was feeling, because he yelled above the noise of the storm, “It’s okay! Focus on your breathin’ and try to relax!”
“I can’t relax! Fear and anxiety are the only things keeping me together at this point!”
He chuckled and cocked his head. “You sure you don’t want some weed to take the edge off?”
“No thanks! Last time I got high was in college! And I was paranoid for three hours straight!”
“Weed’s come a long way since then,” he assured her.
She shook her head. “Just keep talking to me!”
They’d spent the last few hours exchanging the standard get-to-know-you fare.
She now knew John was originally from New Orleans. He’d spent summers as a kid working on his dad’s shrimp boat alongside his brother James, who was LT’s father. As adults, John and James had moved to the Keys to start a salvage business together. But John had quickly tired of the drudgery of the job and so had sold his share of the company to James before opening a bar in Key West. He’d run that bar for twenty-five years before retiring and moving out to Wayfarer Island to help LT and the others hunt for the storiedSanta Cristina.
It sounded like an exciting life. Far more adventurous than the one she’d led, having been born and raised in Iowa. She’d grown up thinking everyone knew about “the farmer wave.” That single finger salute a person used to acknowledge a fellow motorist on a gravel road that wound through a patchwork of cornfields. She’d told John that it wasn’t until she’d moved away to college that she’d realized not every state in the nation had a fair as glorious and grand as Iowa’s. And she’d admitted that her perfectionist streak meant she’d been valedictorian of her high school’s graduating class, which had landed her a scholarship to Georgetown where she’d studied analytics, and thatthatdegree had led to her job at the Federal Maritime Commission working within the legal department—where she’d stayed for twenty-seven years.
It’d been a nice way to pass the time, sharing the Cliff’s Notes version of their lives. But she wasn’t looking to pass the time now. She was looking for a distraction. She told him as much.
Or rather, sheshoutedas much.
He pushed up from the rocker and found a spot next to her on the bed. “May I?” He lifted his arm as if to put it around her shoulders.
She didn’t hesitate. Nodding briskly, she leaned forward so he could wrap her up and pull her close to his side.
She didn’t care that he was a relative stranger. For one thing, he smelled nice. Like coconut oil and sea breezes. For another thing, he was warm and solid, which grounded her and kept her from feeling like she was seconds away from doing her very own imitation of Dorothy from theWizard ofOz and getting caught up in the whirlwind raging outside.
“What do you reckon we should talk about now?” he asked.
She liked his voice. It was deep and resonant. His soft Southern drawl worked like a balm on her frayed nerves.
With him so close, she no longer had to shout. It was almost like they were cocooned inside a protective bubble while the entire world threw a tantrum around them.
“You haven’t mentioned a wife. Or a family of your own. Were you ever married? Do you have kids?”
“Nope to both,” he said succinctly.
“Why not?” She immediately wanted to rip her tongue from her head. She was assuming too much. She blamed it on the failings of her generation, having grown up in a far less enlightened time. “Sorry,” she apologized immediately. “I should’ve said you never mentioned apartner.I need to do a better job of not taking for granted that—”
“I like women,” he cut her off, his mustache curling around a grin.
Aflirtatiousgrin, if she wasn’t mistaken.
It was warm inside the house. Not uncomfortably so because the raging storm had cooled the atmosphere. Still, she hoped he mistook the sudden color in her cheeks for the heat and not the fact that he’d discombobulated her with that smile.
He’d also made her very,veryaware that her entire left side was touching his entire right side.
Swallowing convulsively, she nodded. “Okay. So my original question stands. What stopped you from putting a ring on some pretty woman’s finger and having yourself a couple of John juniors?”
When he rubbed a hand over his beard, she wondered if the hair felt wiry or soft. Her fingers itched to find out, so she clasped them together.
“Seems I was always busy startin’ a business or runnin’ one when I was younger,” he mused. “Then I swore I’d never marry ’cause I never wanted to suffer the kinda heartache James suffered when he lost LT’s momma.”
When she lifted an eyebrow in question, he went on. “Cancer. Only four months passed from the time she was diagnosed ’til the time she was in her grave. And James never got over it. Loved her ’til his dyin’ day. Kinda like Doc with his wife, except the difference between them is no one good enough ever came along to mend James’s busted heart. Doc is just pissin’ away a damn fine woman, if you ask me.”
