Coast Guard Sweetheart (9 page)

She put a hand to her throat.

“And you know what they say when someone saves your life where I come from, Beatrice?”

“No. What do they say, Sawyer?” she whispered.

He gave her the old smile that used to send her knees a-knocking. Still did, apparently. She caught hold of the edge of the bureau.

“They say when a person saves your life, you belong to that person forever.”

Forever? She swallowed. That's how long she suspected she'd be in love with this brash guardsman.

Sawyer leaned forward. She held her breath.

And the lights went out, plunging them into the darkness.

Chapter Nine

“D
rink this. The coffee's hot.”

Sawyer took the mug from Honey. His hand momentarily covered hers before she scooted away. Clad in Seth's red-checked flannel shirt and jeans, Sawyer's teeth chattered as he huddled around the kerosene lantern on the floor of the second-story common area at the top of the stairs.

Dry and his belly full of stale Long Johns, Max had recovered his energy. Baseball bat in hand, he and the dogs hunched over the top step, waiting for the next sea creature to invade their domain.

Sawyer flicked a glance at Honey. She'd not said much since the lights went out an hour ago. His heart lurched. Thrilled beyond measure to be this close to the woman he'd never stopped loving, yet he worried as the water crept up the stairs. The wind velocity had increased to an ear-shattering wail.

The nineteenth-century house, built to last against nature's fury, groaned. The walls and eaves vibrated. Any minute the house and its timbers could be torn apart, hurling them into the deep. Or as the flooding increased, they could climb higher to her third-story bedroom. But they could become trapped by the attic ceiling and drown.

“I wish I had an axe.”

Her eyes darted to his.

“So, if worse comes to worst, I can chop a way onto the roof.” Where perhaps they could hold on long enough for the storm to subside and rescue to come. Better to leave that part unvoiced.

But he didn't fool her. She'd always been able to see right into his head. And into his heart.

Those big, sunflower-brown eyes of hers widened. “The roof?” She glanced toward the ceiling and shuddered at the howling cacophony swirling outside the walls.

He frowned. Last thing he wanted was to scare her. He'd give his life if it meant protecting her from harm.

Rising, she disappeared into the flickering shadows cast by the lantern toward another bedroom. She returned clutching a quilt to her chest. Advancing, she draped the quilt around Sawyer. His breath caught.

The alluring essence of Honey Duer filled his senses. Her signature flowery fragrance clung to the quilt she tucked around his body.

Sawyer buried his nostrils into its folds and inhaled. Talk about crazy. He'd awoken one night from a dead sleep in his apartment in San Diego to this never-forgotten perfume. Convinced for a millisecond before reality returned, they'd found each other again. But just a dream. A hopeless dream.

Honey put a hand to the bandage she'd rigged over his temple. Her fingers drifted. For a second, her warm palm cupped his high cheekbones. He closed his eyes. If this was a dream, then he never wanted to awaken.

Sawyer's heart sank. He'd never stopped loving her.
But he'd never be good enough for her, either. There would—could—never be a chance of a future with her.

His face chilled as she removed her hand. He opened his eyes to find her beside him, her back pressed against the interior wall. The safest place—if such a place existed for them—in the midst of the raging tumult of the storm.

Max tired of his vigil. He inched over to the pallet next to the lantern. Bracketed by his faithful canine companions, he closed his eyes and slept.

As suddenly as if switching off a faucet, the deafening banshee stopped. Sawyer's ears continued to ring for a moment. And it took him another second to recognize they'd entered at long last the eye of the storm. Total peace. Total calm.

Until the western wall of the hurricane swept over their oasis once more. Thirty minutes? He had at most that much time to assess their situation and maximize their chances of survival before the wind returned with a vengeance. He stirred.

She snared his shirtsleeve. “Where are you going?”

Though as tall as the older man, the jeans were snug on his frame. The shirt hung loose and untucked over a tan Henley, which also belonged to her father.

Sawyer inched up the wall. He shrugged out of the quilt. Grabbing the lantern, he gripped the cold glass doorknob of a guest room and pushed open the door.

Bunching the quilt in her arms, Honey stepped inside the room after him. “You're still shivering. Keep this around your body.”

He strode to the window. “Stop fussing. I'm okay.”

At the sight that met his eyes, he considered retracting that statement. In the dim light, nothing but water stretched as far as the eye could see. The dock had disappeared. The water lapped halfway up the pine trees dividing the main house from the cabin.

She quivered. “Oh, Sawyer. If it continues to rise, what will we do?”

Honey, born and bred on the storm-prone Shore, probably knew more than he about the dangers. “My granddad was a boy during the big one, Hazel, in '33. A wall of water overran their barrier island home.”

She sighed. “The Duers and everyone else, including the life-saving station that predated Station Kiptohanock, abandoned the island for good. But no one alive at the time—” she gulped “—or at least those who lived to tell about it, ever forgot. Even here on the mainland, people were found clinging to life in the uppermost branches of trees. Babies ripped from their mother's arms, their little bodies never found. Boats shoved five miles ashore. Homes demolished and washed out to sea.”

Honey trembled. “I've read about what happened to the island of Galveston, too, and those people trapped by the floodwaters in their homes at the turn of the twentieth century. We're going to die, aren't we?”

Before he remembered how much she hated him, he put his arms around her. And she didn't pull away. Instead, she leaned into him and rested her forehead against the hollow of his shoulder.

“This isn't Galveston. We're not going to die. I won't let anything happen to you and Max, I promise.” He ground his teeth. “I know you don't believe in my promises. Rightly so. But no matter what I have to do, I'll make sure you're safe.”

She nestled closer. “You have to be safe, too.”

His safety didn't matter. He'd barely gotten off Shore three years ago before he realized that in saving Honey's future, he'd lost his own. For the first time since Braeden negotiated his reassignment to Kiptohanock, he breathed a prayer of gratitude. Perhaps God had brought him back for this—to save Honey's life.

Whatever God's purpose, he allowed himself to relish the feel of Honey in his arms. Something he'd never dared imagine would be his privilege ever again. Not after he'd cut her loose without an explanation for her own good. Saving her for Charlie Pruitt.

His heart knotted. In the end, saving her was the only thing that mattered. Then and now. He let go of her and stepped away.

“Let's see what we can scrounge up if we need to break out of our watery prison.”

She sighed and her arms dropped to her sides. “A prison of our own making?”

“My making. My fault.” He turned away lest she see the sudden welling of his eyes. “Charlie Pruitt's a lucky man...”

“What?”

Squaring his shoulders, he moved around her.

“Wait.” She caught his arm. “Sawyer...”

His heart pounded at the touch of her hand. How he wanted to hold her. Forever. To never let her go. To show her how much he loved her.

But cool reason prevailed. What he really wished was that he'd been born someone else. Someone other than the son of a convict and drug-addicted mother. Anyone else. More deserving of a sweet, gentle woman like Honey Duer and her remarkable, faithful family.

He reluctantly, but firmly, twisted free. And ached inside at the confusion etched across her lovely oval face.

“Why won't you talk to me?”

Sawyer turned toward the hall. Call it pride or self-protection. Because if ever he explained who he really was, he couldn't bear her pity. “Best thing we can do is pray.”

Honey gave him a mock salute. “Have been and will continue to do so, Petty Officer.”

Sawyer slipped across the hall, past Max and his snoring Labs, to Seth's room. She dogged his heels. He set the lantern on top of the dresser.

“Here's hoping your dad has some tools squirreled away inside the house. Life preservers are probably too much to hope for.” He wrested open the closet door. “I thought you were mad at God.”

“I'm working on that. I'm mainly mad at you.”

* * *

He laughed and rummaged through Seth's closet. “Good to know, Beatrice.”

She huffed. Which made him laugh again.

“I'm glad to hear you and God are communicating.”

She leaned against the bedpost. “Why is it whenever you're around, I always seem to find myself in a storm? And then one way or the other, you or it drive me to my knees.”

He grinned.

She steeled herself against the all too familiar buckling of her knees. His smile ought to be licensed. And that cocky Coastie probably knew it.

“Glad I could be of service. Always Ready is our motto. 'Cause in the Guard, we—”

“Live to serve.” She waved her hand. “I know, I know. So you've told me. I just want us to live through this never-ending day.”

He disappeared into the confines of her father's closet. Sawyer reemerged, triumph glowing in his blue eyes, a fire ladder in his hands. “If worse comes to worst—”

“Every time you say that,” she moaned. “It does.”

His lips quirked. “I meant we'll make our own lifeboat out of anything floatable. Break a window and crawl out.”

She wrapped her arms around the quilt, clutching it to her chest. “Get into the water again?”

His eyebrows rose. “What happened to my brave Shore queen now?” His eyes glinted with mischief.

“She did her best and then decided she'd rather go shopping.”

“Her best saved my life.” He gestured toward the common area. “And only you could turn a natural disaster into something cozy.”

“I'm not sure that's a compliment.”

“I'm sure enough for both of us.” He broadened his shoulders. “And might I also say that you glow in the lantern light? Always the most beautiful woman I've ever known.”

Something released in her heart and soared free. She'd not understood until this moment how his walking away had shattered her confidence. “Then why did you...?”

Clenching his jaw and carrying the rope ladder, he walked out of the room, leaving her question unanswered. But she found him waiting for her at the end of the narrow hallway. At the door to the walkup attic she'd converted into her own special place.

If he wouldn't answer her questions about the past, perhaps he'd open up about more recent events.

She held the lantern to his face. “Where did you get the scar on your jaw?”

He reddened. “A mission gone wrong.”

“San Diego?”

“No. After that.” He stared at her. “You knew I was in San Diego? Were you keeping track?”

Her turn to blush. “I wasn't keeping track.” So not true. “I—I was making sure we kept our distance.”

Sawyer motioned toward the attic stairs. “Can we check out the condition of the roof?”

Honey ushered him forward. “Be my guest.”

Sawyer stepped through with a strange look in his eyes as if
he
didn't quite trust
her
. Holding the light aloft, she brushed past him on the stairs and blazed the trail toward what had always been her refuge from every storm life threw her way. Her mom's death, her dad's depression, Lindi's death and Max's cancer. And somehow most devastating of all, Sawyer's abandonment.

He moved beyond the quilt-covered sleigh bed to the window.

“So what happened to your face?”

He didn't turn around. “Adds so much to my features, don't you think? Makes me look dangerous and more ruggedly handsome.”

“You're dangerous, all right.” Dangerous to every red-blooded American female heart. Or at least, dangerous to hers.

“And handsome...?”

She sniffed. “Vain much, Kole?”

He laughed. As she'd meant him to. The tension in his shoulders eased a notch. She fought a desperate urge to wrap her arms around him.

She'd missed this easiness with him. An almost instinctive familiarity she'd never found with any other man. The lighthearted banter and the surprisingly tender, heartfelt talks of that long ago spring had made Sawyer Kole possibly the best friend she'd ever had.

“The scar?” she prompted in an urgent need to take her mind off the past and the gaping uncertainty of their present.

He deposited the rope on the window seat. “If you must know, maritime law enforcement with a Central American task force in the Caribbean. Drug interdiction. Boat chase ended with my team boarding a fast boat. My chin,” he adjusted his jaw with his hand. “Caught the sharp end of a knife.”

She gasped and laced her fingers through his. “You need to be more careful, Sawyer.”

“Tell that to the cornered drug lord.” He blew out a slow breath. “But no worries, he's cooling his heels in a Mexican prison as we speak. And I'm doing okay.” He ran his thumb over her hand. “Actually today, I'm feeling better than okay.”

“Says the Coastie trapped in a hurricane with a little boy, two dogs and an innkeeper whose only skills are more decorative than essential.”

He let go of her hand and grasped both of her shoulders. “Someone as pretty as you doesn't have to be anything other than what she already is. And for your information, Beatrice, your presence is essential to everyone who loves you.” A pulse pounded in the hollow of his throat.

Sawyer dropped his hands and moved away. “I'm glad you were able to save the family portrait.” He gazed at the framed photo she'd deposited earlier for safekeeping on her bed. “Your sister Caroline looks the most like your mom. Whatever happened to Caroline?”

Honey shrugged. “After Mom died, Caroline returned to college off-Shore and never came back. We get Christmas cards. But nothing else. Dad can't even bear to say her name. So none of us bring her up.”