Safe Harbor (11 page)

She knew a second before it happened that it was coming.

It occurred in slow motion and yet, at the same time, it happened quicker than a heartbeat.

Mike cupped the back of her head, tilted it ever so slightly back and then, his eyes on hers, pressed his lips to hers.

What began as a simple proof to show her that he wasn’t tired turned into something a great deal more. An awakening in both of them that they were not simply just two people, but that they belonged to two very distinct, opposite genders. Opposite genders who were acutely aware of one another.

Stevi found that her breath had suddenly, inexplicably backed up into her lungs and then stubbornly remained there just as the pulses in her temples, in her wrists, in the hollow of her throat, went into a beat that was more than equal to double time.

Breathless and growing more so, she caught herself leaning into his kiss. Into him.

Her heart was racing so hard, she was afraid it would race right out of her chest.

Mike had taken the initiative, wanting to show her that he was alive and well and quite happily on the mend. He was not only up for a longer walk, but in all likelihood, would be able to be out of their hair and on his way in another few days. What he actually wound up doing was proving to himself that perhaps he was not quite as energetic as he was pretending to be.

Kissing her had all but drained him even as it set his heart hammering—or maybe
because
it had set his heart hammering, that had made him feel drained.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

When he drew his head back, he found that he was somewhat unsteady and needed a moment to collect himself. A moment to pull the world back into focus.

“I guess maybe you aren’t quite as tired as I thought you were,” Stevi told him, doing her best not to suck in air in his presence and look like some sort of hopeless idiot.

A half smile took over the corners of his mouth. “Funny, I was about to say that maybe you’re right. Maybe I was pushing too hard here.”

Her eyes rose to his. “Maybe we’re both a little right,” Stevi said.

“Maybe,” Mike agreed.

She grinned up at him, secretly glad he was taking the stand that he was. It meant that he was going to stay at the inn a little longer. And maybe, by staying a little longer, he might just decide that remaining at the inn wasn’t such a bad thing. After all, others had done it before him.

She was suddenly very happy that she hadn’t taken off for New York a couple of weeks ago.

Look what she would have missed.

Hooking her arm through his, she urged, “C’mon, let’s go back.”

“Took the words right out of my mouth,” he replied.

They turned around and walked back to the inn, their steps rhythmically in sync.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

E
VER
SINCE
HE
was sixteen years old, Mike had held down one job after another. Some had been manual labor, some had been white-collar.

If he thought about it now, it was hard for him to actually remember a time when he was
not
doing some sort of labor, whether or not he was compensated for his efforts.

He certainly hadn’t been allowed to just sit around, doing nothing, in the various foster homes he’d been farmed out to. There was always, always something for him to do to earn his keep, as one foster parent had told him.

As he recalled, that particular foster parent had worked him extra hard—and showed his displeasure in extreme ways when the job hadn’t been done to his satisfaction.

Consequently, Mike didn’t do sitting around well.
Relaxing
was not a term in his vocabulary.

So once he was at least well enough to be able to walk along the beach with Stevi, he very quickly found himself at loose ends. He wanted to be able to do something to repay these people who were feeding him and putting a roof over his head, neither of which they were in any way required to do.

Nor were they asking anything in return.

All in all, Mike found the Roman family to be the most decent group of people he had ever had to deal with. There were no hidden motives, no mysterious agendas, and best of all, he didn’t have to watch his back. No requirements of any kind, other than for him just to get well.

For someone like him, accustomed to having to deal with the dregs of society as well as those who dwelled in the underbelly of that society, Stevi Roman and her family seemed just about too good to be true.

Except that they were.

He found them not only to be a breath of fresh air; staying here at their inn was, for him, a vacation of the soul.

A vacation, he knew, that needed to end as soon as he was well enough.

But until then, he intended to enjoy being around them—around Stevi—as much as possible. And while he was here, he wanted to try to repay them for their hospitality in any way that he possibly could.

It was this restless need, this desire not to be in debt, that brought him into Richard Roman’s office this morning after breakfast.

Asking the older man if he had a moment, Mike had come in, closed the door and stated his position to the head of the family.

Richard leaned back in his chair as he studied the young man for a long moment. He was impressed. He’d had a good feeling about the young man when he’d first met him and it was only reinforced now.

Richard’s chair creaked in protest as he shifted slightly in his seat. “So you’re asking me for a job at the inn?”

“No, not a job, exactly, sir,” Mike corrected, afraid that he wasn’t getting his thoughts across very well. “Work is a more accurate description.”

Richard’s eyes never shifted away. “And the difference being?”

“Well, for one thing, people get paid for doing a job. They’re doing something on a regular basis.” He wasn’t getting this right, Mike thought. His tongue was tripping him up. He tried again. “It has some sort of a sense of stability to it.”

Richard cocked his head. “And you don’t want to be stable?”

He knew this wasn’t coming out right, Mike thought. “It’s not that, exactly, but once I’ve regained my strength and get to feel like my old self again, I’ll be leaving, so this is only going to be a temporary job, not something I intend to keep once I’m really back on my feet.”

“I see.” Richard nodded as he continued listening to him.

“Until then, though, I would like to repay you a little for the kindness you and your family have extended to me.”

Richard smiled and shook his head. “That’s not necessary, son.”

“It is to me, sir.” There was no wavering on this point as far as he was concerned. “I always repay my debts.”

“Very admirable, Mike.” His computer emitted a high-pitched beeping noise. Richard turned down the volume. “But this isn’t a debt. If you feel you need to classify it, what’s happening is more in the realm of a good deed. The only way to repay a good deed is to pass it forward. Do something helpful for someone else when the occasion arises and that’s payment enough as far as I’m concerned.”

Mike nodded. “I understand that, sir, and that’s a very good philosophy. But until I get a chance to pass it on, I’d still like to show you my appreciation.”

A strange pattern was beginning to reoccur on his monitor. Richard tapped several keys to erase it, but it stubbornly refused to disappear. “What did you have in mind?”

Over the years, because Mike had never had anyone to depend on but himself, he’d gotten rather handy in a number of areas.

“Whatever you need to have done, I guess. I’m pretty handy with tools,” he volunteered. “If you have anything that needs fixing...” His voice trailed off, leaving it to Richard to fill in the blank.

But there were no blanks to fill in. “Right now, everything is in good working order, thank goodness. And when it’s not, Shane, Cris’s husband, usually takes care of it. He’s good with things like plumbing or any major or minor electrical problems.”

Richard frowned at his computer screen, doing his best not to allow it to distract him. But lately, he’d been involved in more than one battle of wills with his desktop.

“I’d have you give Silvio a hand with the garden work,” he told the young man, “but I’m afraid he’d take it as an insult. Oh, nothing personal,” he was quick to interject. “Silvio would think that I’m subtly telling him he’s getting too old for all that heavy lifting and tedious labor. I wouldn’t want to offend him for the world.”

“Neither would I,” Mike agreed. He had another suggestion. “I wouldn’t mind any kind of maintenance work that needs doing, sir.” In his time, he’d done everything imaginable on that level, including cleaning out a pigeon coop one of his foster parents had. “Cleaning, sweeping—”

With the mention of each chore, Richard shook his head. “I’m very lucky that way. I have it all covered.” The monitor screen abruptly lost its picture, then just as abruptly, flashed an odd pattern across the screen.
“Everything,”
he repeated, all but gritting his teeth, “except this annoying machine.”

Punctuating his statement, Richard hit one of the keys on the keyboard harder than was warranted.

The sigh he emitted seemed to come from the bottoms of his toes. He was not, by nature, an angry man, but his computer was really trying his patience of late.

“This is one of the greatest inventions of all time,” he told Mike, never taking his eyes off the screen, which now seemed to be going from one site to another without any rhyme or reason. It also was increasing and decreasing its font size, apparently at will. “But when it decides it has a mind of its own, it makes me long for the days of the typewriter.”

Maybe he had finally found something he could do for the man, Mike thought. “Problem, Mr. Roman?”

Richard threw up his hands. “It’s beyond a problem. It’s gotten to the point that it’s decided to eat parts of the data that was inputted six months ago and now it’s attacking next month’s booking schedule, as well as giving me a headache.”

Mike came around and looked over the man’s shoulder at the computer screen.

“Do you mind, sir?” he asked Richard, nodding at the keyboard.

Richard raised his hands away from the keys as if to give up all claim to the infernal machine. “Be my guest,” he said as he vacated the swivel chair. Mike took his place.

Despite owning and working on a computer for a number of years, Richard was still pretty much a two-fingered typist. That was not the case with Mike. The second he sat down he began typing at lightning speed.

“I think I found your problem, sir,” Mike told him after a few minutes. The sound of his fingers hitting the keys underscored his statement. “You’ve got a virus.”

Richard, of course, knew viruses were out there, and that—like human viruses—you didn’t want to catch one. But he was only vaguely aware of this strange new electronic world he found himself wandering in. He took his cue more from Mike’s tone that this was serious.

“A very bad virus?” he asked, watching Mike’s expression.

Mike nodded, although he never stopped typing. “I’m afraid so.”

“Is it fatal?” Richard asked. If it was, he had a problem. He hadn’t budgeted for a new computer system. Six months from now, no problem, but right now, he was committed to an air-conditioning overhaul and that would take all the available cash in his business account.

He supposed that money could be found somewhere.

If Wyatt caught wind of the problem, there’d be a brand-new computer on his desk in less than twenty-four hours, but that wasn’t the way he wanted to operate his business. He didn’t want Alex’s husband to feel that the inn was his responsibility in any way, no matter how fond his son-in-law was of it. The financial responsibility was his and his alone.

Mike glanced at the man who had taken him in without firing questions at him, without demanding any sort of proof of identity or any explanations whatsoever. Richard also hadn’t questioned his request not to report the nature of his wound to the authorities. That would bring up more questions than he could answer. More important, it would place him on certain people’s radar. Radar he couldn’t afford to be on right now. Not until he knew exactly who he could and couldn’t trust.

It was better just to have everyone in the dark until he was strong enough to defend himself—as he knew he would be called on to do soon.

It wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when.

“Your computer tower’s not dying on my watch,” he told Stevi’s father. There wasn’t a hint of a smile on his lips when he said it.

* * *

L
ESS
THAN
FORTY
-
FIVE
minutes later, Mike had gotten rid of the virus, defragmented the hard drive, then reformatted it—after backing up all the computer’s files first. He also eradicated the problem of the ever-changing font size and the whimsical website merry-go-round.

“Try it,” Mike encouraged, getting up from Richard’s seat.

He turned the chair to face Richard. The latter sat down almost hesitantly, as if sitting was some sort of a commitment and he wasn’t altogether certain exactly what it was that he was committing to.

But when he pulled up the screen he’d previously been trying to work on, he discovered data that had been missing—or winking in and out on an ever increasing, not to mention annoying, basis—for a few weeks.

He was greatly relieved.

Looking up from the monitor, he turned toward Mike. “What did you do?”

“I fixed it,” Mike replied in his customary, noneffusive manner.

“Obviously,” Richard agreed, pleased. “You’re nothing short of a magician. Whatever debt you think you owe me, consider it paid in full.”

And then the older man paused, as something occurred to him.

Mike was immediately aware of the slight shift in demeanor. “What?” he asked.

“Are you any good with printers?” Richard asked. “It won’t print.”

Mike tried not to laugh. “That covers a pretty wide spectrum of possible problems. Let me take a look at it.”

“It’s over there,” Richard prompted, pointing out the offending piece of machinery by the opposite wall.

Twenty minutes, several replaced cartridges and one realignment later, the printer was up and running, as well.

“Nothing short of a miracle,” Richard declared, looking down on the test page in his hands. “Maybe this was what you did for a living before your accident,” he suggested.

They had all taken to referring to what had happened to Mike as an accident. Mike preferred it that way, but he had a feeling that no one, especially Silvio, who was still keeping a close eye on him, believed that what had happened to him fell under the heading of an accident.

For his part, he didn’t confirm or deny. He certainly never went into any details about it, maintaining that he couldn’t remember what had transpired, or even how he had come to be shot. He’d told Stevi he couldn’t see himself as being anyone’s intended target.

She had looked as if she’d believed him at the time. Or at least believed that that was what
he
believed. He’d felt pretty guilty about deceiving her and the rest of her family.

The feeling kept compounding.

It was ironic, really. He was a man who lied for a living, lied to
keep on
living, and yet this white lie of his, created more to protect her and her family than him, ate away at his conscience.

“Maybe it is,” Mike agreed, going along with the man’s suggestion.

Being part of IT was as good a choice of careers as any. In choosing it and displaying his skills at resurrecting a computer and the malfunctioning colored printer, he had, purely by accident, created the perfect cover for himself.

At least it would keep Stevi from asking any more questions out of the blue, questions that he couldn’t afford to answer.

“You’ve certainly saved me a great deal of grief,” Richard said, heartily shaking his hand. “I like to think of myself as a very even-keeled man, but there’s something about this computer when it decides to go on the fritz that just brings out the worst in me.”

Mike laughed. Electronics had been known to bring out the very worst in even the most mild mannered. “You’re not alone in that, Mr. Roman.”

“If by chance I run into another glitch?” Richard paused. “If I do, would you mind if I called you to come help—provided you’re still here, of course.” They both knew that he was free to leave whenever he felt strong enough to do so.

But, on the flip side, there was no urgency for him to leave if he chose to stay.

“I’d mind if you didn’t,” Mike said.

“Then for as long as you choose to stay here, son, consider yourself on call as my IT guy,” Richard told him with a chuckle.

“Absolutely.”

He hadn’t the vaguest idea why that would make him feel good. Better than he had felt, actually, in a very long time.

Except for that walk along the beach in the moonlight with Stevi.