Winds of Fortune (33 page)

Deo jerked a white T-shirt over her head, then grabbed a clean khaki work shirt from a pile in her dresser drawer. Leaving both untucked, she settled onto the arm of Nita’s chair and regarded her contemplatively. “Desiring me doesn’t feel good.”

“Actually,” Nita said softly, “it feels wonderful.”

“But.”

“If I forget it’s just sex, I feel vulnerable. I don’t like that feeling.”

“Just sex.” Deo nodded, then lifted Nita’s hand and pushed it under the bottom of her T-shirt, against her bare belly. Nita gasped and Deo’s muscles quivered. “That’s sex. Your skin, my skin, our bodies. It feels good.”

Nita said nothing, but inside she was burning.

Deo drew Nita’s hand away from her stomach and clasped her fingers. “Sylvia hurt you with sex. I won’t.”

“I know.”

“My cousins are all volunteer firemen, and so are half of my construction crew. I’ll probably be lending them a hand if they need heavy equipment, and then if it’s even half as bad as the predictions, it’ll take us weeks to clean up.” Deo kissed the back of Nita’s hand, then released it and stood up to finish buttoning her shirt. “I’m going to be thinking about you while I’m out there.”

“I’m afraid I’ll be busy too,” Nita said softly, sensing more behind this almost ordinary conversation because Deo’s eyes were so intense they seemed to be on fire.

“Thinking about you, wondering where you are, worrying if you’re all right—that’s not sex.”

“Don’t, Deo,” Nita said, rising quickly, her heart beating so hard in her chest she almost couldn’t breathe. The door to the hallway was just behind her, and she had a frantic desire to flee. “Don’t. Don’t make it any more than it is.”

“Why not?”

Nita shook her head. “I’m just getting used to trusting my body around you.”

“You gave Sylvia your body, but you wanted her to want more.” Deo picked up her keys. “Why don’t you want me to?”

Because,
Nita thought,
because I’ve already given you more than I gave her, and she almost killed me.
When Nita said nothing, Deo just shrugged and smiled wryly. She pushed open the bedroom door and held it for Nita to walk past her into the hall.

“I said I wanted to come inside you,” Deo said when Nita drew alongside her. “I love the way it feels when I start to come and you wrap your arms and legs around me so tight. Then I’m coming and I feel myself pouring into you.”

“God, Deo, don’t do this now.” A pulse thundered between her thighs, and she shimmered inside, silver-hot like molten steel. “We can’t.”

“I know,” Deo rasped, “but I have to say this. When I said I wanted to come inside you, I thought I just meant I wanted you to hold me inside your
body
.” She rested the tips of her fingers over Nita’s heart and kissed her very gently on the mouth. “I think I was wrong.”

Nita covered Deo’s hand and pressed it harder against her breast, leaning into her, shamelessly drawing on her strength. She couldn’t give her what she asked and she feared the coming storm. It wasn’t the angry rain and brutal winds that threatened to take Deo away, but the bitter clouds that shrouded her own damaged heart.

“Please be careful,” Nita whispered.

“I’ll call you.” Deo smiled a little sadly and pushed a folded piece of paper into Nita’s front pocket. “Or you call me. This time, Nita, it has to work both ways.”

When Deo turned and walked away, Nita followed, afraid that she had no idea how to give what Deo needed or take what Deo offered. Maybe that was the reason she had never said no to Sylvia. Maybe she’d been a coward and taken the easy way out. Deo deserved more. Much more.

Nita raced through rain that beat against her skin like a thousand needles and wrestled open her car door. Before diving inside she turned and saw Deo standing beside her truck, staring at her with the wind and rain lashing her hair. Waiting.

“I don’t want to lose you,” Nita shouted into the wind. The words flew back into her face, and as the sky howled, she heard Sylvia’s voice, felt her pounding inside her.
You’re mine, I’m not going to lose you.
You’re mine. You’re mine. You’re mine.
Frantically, she gripped the top edge of the door as it threatened to blow off the car or slam her back into the metal frame. She wasn’t Sylvia. She wouldn’t be her. Taking, taking, never giving. “Deo! I don’t know how to let you inside!”

Deo grabbed the door handle, her body shuddering. “I’ll be back!”

As Deo yanked open her door and threw herself into her truck, Nita surrendered to the onslaught and almost fell into her front seat. Even with the windshield wipers on, she could barely see. Drenched, shivering from more than the icy rain, she was aware of Deo’s truck backing out and disappearing. Then she was alone in the raging storm.

“Hello? Hello?” Tory strained to hear through the static. “Hello?”

“Tor…it’s me,” Reese said. “Time for…close…clinic. We’ve…wash outs…all up and dow—”

“I know. No one can get here anyhow. We’re on our way in to town.”

“… careful.”

“You too. I love you. Reese?” Tory shook the phone as if that would bring Reese back, and pressed it to her ear so hard it hurt. “Reese? Darling?” She slammed the phone down. “God damn it.”

“Anything I can do?” Nita said breathlessly, brushing water off her face with both hands. Her lab coat was soaked from the shoulders to thighs.

“You’re doing it. Did you and Randy get the emergency supplies into the Jeep?”

“Yes. Everything we can reasonably move.”

“Sally will come into town with you and me. I think we should send Randy home.”

Nita nodded. “Where are we setting up?”

“Emergency aid center will be at Town Hall. Between the two of us and Sally, the paramedics, EMTs, and some of the locals who have medical training, we should be okay in the short term.”

“I just heard on the radio that we’re three hours from maximum winds, but even after that it’s going to blow pretty hard for another twelve. Who knows how much flooding we’ll get.” Nita draped her dripping lab coat over the hook on Tory’s office door.

Tory scooped up her keys. “We can pretty much plan on being at Town Hall until tomorrow night. Did you bring a change of clothes and things?”

“Another set of these.” Nita gestured to her jeans and T-shirt, far more casual than her ordinary work attire. “When I got home this morning, I had a feeling I wouldn’t be getting back there anytime soon. I came prepared.”

“This morning? Meaning you were out all night?” Tory asked as they hurried down the hall.

“Uh-huh.” Nita held the door open for Tory, who gripped the handrail to steady herself on the slick stone landing as the wind threatened to upend her.

“Must have been something special to get you driving around in this last night,” Tory shouted as they linked arms and dashed towards the Jeep where Sally and Randy huddled in the back seat, waiting.

“I didn’t plan on it,” Nita shouted back. “But she
is
special.”

Tory spared Nita a quick glance as she pulled open her door. “Deo?”

“Yes.” Nita bolted for the other side of the car and clambered into the passenger seat.

“Everybody all set?” Tory called, glancing briefly over her shoulder to Sally and Randy. At the chorus of yeses, she put the Jeep into four-wheel-drive and sluiced her way out of the parking lot that now resembled a small pond. She wanted to get Randy safely home, and she wanted to get into town. She’d be needed there, and she’d be closer to Reese.

With too much water sheeting over the windshield for her to see anything at all, she gripped the wheel and drove the road from memory, praying she wouldn’t hit a downed tree or electric wire. The tension inside the Jeep was hot and thick, but her people—her friends—were good in a crisis, and she trusted them to handle whatever might come. She spared a second look in Nita’s direction and grinned.

“Deo, huh,” she muttered under her breath. “Good for you.”

“Yes,” Nita whispered. “Yes, I really think she is.”

*

The lobby of Town Hall with its wide, curving staircases flanking each wall was bustling when Tory, Nita, and Sally arrived. Tory immediately dispatched Sally to set up a triage area in a shallow alcove just inside the front doors, and she went in search of the medical staging area. From the cacophony of voices growing louder with each step she took, Tory surmised that a fair number of the townspeople had already decided to take shelter there rather than ride out the wind and water at home. She slowed at the foot of the stairs as she spied someone she hadn’t expected to see.

“Nelson! What are you doing here?”

Nelson Parker, fifteen pounds lighter than his usual weight, still looked imposing in his sheriff’s uniform. He grinned sheepishly. “I’m not doing anything here I wouldn’t be doing at home. Just minding the phones.” He pointed to a short wave radio and an array of receivers lined up on a nearby table. Caroline sat at one end of the table with a stack of files in front of her. “Someone’s got to coordinate the various response teams, and I told Gladys to stay home with George and mind their house. Talking doesn’t take much energy. Besides, Caroline won’t even let me lift the report folders.”

Tory frowned. “As long as all you do is talk. And you don’t leave this building. I mean it.”

“I understand.”

“Have you seen Reese?”

“Just a little while ago. There’s some folks cut off way down at the West End where the roads are flooded out. She took one of the big trucks down to get them.”

Tory bit her lip. She wanted to call Reese just to be sure she was all right, but she probably had patients waiting. “Will you let me know when she gets back…or if you hear from her?”

“Sure thing.”

“Thanks.” Tory headed up to the auditorium on the second floor. A large banner with a red cross made it pretty hard to miss the emergency medical station. So did the tall dark-haired woman in a white T-shirt and black jeans who sat on a stool suturing the forearm of an elderly woman.

“KT!” Tory exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“Didn’t want to miss the party,” KT said, shooting Tory a grin.

“I already told her she was foolish,” the sprightly octogenarian said, giving KT a fond look. “Coming in this direction when everyone else is going the other way. Of course, the girls are prettier out here.”

KT laughed and eyed Pia, who stood nearby with a clipboard. “Some of them sure are.”

Tory clasped KT’s shoulder briefly. “We can use the help. Thanks.”

“No problem.” KT caught Tory’s gaze. “It’s a good time to be with family.”

“Yes,” Tory murmured, accepting an intake sheet from Pia for someone with a sprained knee. “It is.”

*

Two hours after she arrived, Nita finally took a break. Glancing around the room, she was satisfied that all the urgent patients had been dealt with. While she, KT, and Tory had screened or treated everyone in need of medical care—chiefly for problems stemming from attempts to secure or evacuate homes—volunteers saw to the townspeople who had come seeking shelter. Now, everyone had a cot, a small bag of snacks, and sundries. From the weather reports and the din of driving rain against the windows, the worst of the tempest was nearly upon them.

Nita wasn’t frightened for herself. The 100-year-old building had undoubtedly weathered nature’s wrath many times, and she had no doubt it would again. But in the rare free minutes she’d had between tending the sprains, lacerations, and occasional broken bone of some of those emergency workers and storm victims, she feared for Deo.

Hundreds of residents and tourists had refused to evacuate in the hopes of riding out the hurricane in their homes and hotels. Already some areas of town were flooded, and the real people in danger were those stranded and the rescue personnel who attempted to reach them and their animals in trucks and small outboard boats. Deo was one of those rescuers. She was out in the storm somewhere, assisting with her trucks and generators and other emergency equipment.

Nita hadn’t seen her for over twelve hours, and she wondered if Deo had stopped long enough to get warm and catch a meal. She worried that she’d take chances, risking herself in atonement for the one life she hadn’t been able to save.

“How are you doing?” Pia asked, sinking onto the bench against the wall where Nita huddled to get out of the fray.

“Oh,” Nita said, her heart tripping crazily for just a second, Pia’s coloring, her dark beauty, was so like Deo’s. “I’m all right. A little tired.” She laughed self-consciously, glad Pia couldn’t read her mind. “I can’t actually remember the last time I slept a full night.”

“Me neither.” Pia rested her head against the wall. “I told KT I didn’t want her to come, but I’m glad she’s here. Have you heard from your family?”

“No, but I’m not too worried about them, because…you know, a cop’s family. They’ll be looked after.”

“That’s good.” Pia tracked KT on the far side of the room as KT and Tory wended their way between cots, checking on patients. “It’s funny how things work out. KT and Tory used to be lovers.”

“Really.”

“Mmm. A long time ago. They were separated for a lot of years, but I don’t think they ever stopped loving each other. And now,” Pia said softly, “KT is mine and somehow we’re all family.” Pia shifted her gaze to Nita. “Family isn’t always what we expect it to be, is it?”