by L. P. Maxa
After feeding himself and his dog, Noah settled onto the sofa to watch the weather report, continuing to hope the storm would make a last-minute swerve back into the Atlantic and spare St. Magnus Island.
###
Sticking a thermometer up a dog’s butt was not Lucy’s idea of fun. When she’d decided to foster a pregnant Beagle, she hadn’t thought ahead to the birthing process and what it might entail. Lucy had never owned a dog, but she had made a New Year’s resolution to volunteer and give back to her community. When she saw the flyer for St. Magnus Island Rescue and the photo of the sweet Beagle’s face, Lucy’s heart had melted and she had a dog. She reread the last paragraph of the pamphlet on dog whelping. Chessie’s temperature had dropped since morning, and according to the literature, labor should begin in roughly twenty-four hours. Lucy had bought a small wading pool and set it up in the laundry room as a whelping box.
I can do this, she repeated, trying to reassure herself. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror and brushed her teeth, wondering if she could get to sleep this early in the evening. Since Chessie’s labor would most likely proceed into the late-night hours the following day, Lucy wanted to be well rested for what was to come.
The telephone interrupted her internal pep talk, and she spit out the mouthwash she had been swishing.
“Hello,” she said a little too forcefully.
“Where are you?” The voice on the other end faded in and out.
“Aunt Ruth? Is that you?” Lucy hadn’t recognized the number but answered in case it was someone from the foster program checking on Chessie.
“Where are you? I heard everyone on the island was already evacuating and the governor was going to issue a mandatory order starting tomorrow.”
“I uh… Well, I can’t leave. Chessie is about to go into labor. We can’t leave until she has her babies.”
“Babies? Why on earth did a woman expecting twins not leave earlier?”
Before Lucy could explain that Chessie was the rescue Beagle Lucy had been fostering for the past six weeks, the connection broke. She checked the phone screen and saw she still had four bars. The disruption must have been on Aunt Ruth’s end. Lucy wasn’t worried since she knew her aunt was well cared for.
Lucy had been so wrapped up with all things dog, she had neglected to watch the television or even read a news site online. She padded to the kitchen, flipped the switch on the emergency weather radio Aunt Ruth had left behind, and prayed the batteries still had juice since Lucy didn’t have replacements. She had used up the few Aunt Ruth had left behind and never gotten around to buying more because there was always time to do it. Until now. She turned the dial and tuned in to the first station to hear how much trouble she was in.
“—storm is producing winds of ninety-five to one hundred miles per hour.”
She bit back a curse. She had unintentionally put both of them in harm’s way. She still had time to leave, but from everything she’d been reading, going now would cause problems for Chessie’s labor. Lucy felt unsure enough about acting as a dog’s midwife without adding any sort of complications to the mix. And she couldn’t and wouldn’t leave the dog to fend for herself.
Why had Chessie chosen now to present signs of imminent labor? And why had this storm not followed the norm and swung out to sea?
Well, hello, Dolly.
Chapter Two
Lucy sipped from a thermos of coffee—her last since she had never made that trip to the grocery store the previous day—and eyed the chestnut and white dog “Is this it, sweetie? Are your babies ready to arrive?” Earlier in the day, Chessie had begun pacing around the kitchen where Lucy had been listening to the radio. She would have paced too, but worried it would upset the dog.
Earlier, Lucy had retrieved the crank from the garage workshop and rolled down the storm shutters. Without the outside light, the atmosphere inside the house felt like a tomb. And now with Chessie exhibiting early signs of labor, Lucy’s anxiety level had skyrocketed.
Chessie couldn’t control her timing, and Mother Nature was her own boss where the weather was concerned, but damn. These events had no business coinciding.
“Oh hell,” Lucy mumbled. She slipped a headlamp-style light around her forehead and adjusted the strap. Not exactly the height of fashion, but serviceable given the situation. Yet another find in what apparently had been her aunt’s emergency equipment closet. She went to the back of a small workshop area in the garage that Lucy had ignored until now. She was not a do-it-yourselfer and rarely had the need for more than a simple screwdriver or pair of pliers.
The contents of that closet could make a huge difference with this storm, and Lucy had pulled out everything she thought she might need and piled it on the breakfast table. She wished she had paid more attention to severe weather emergency procedures before now. Under ideal conditions cell service could be spotty on the island, but now? Lucy couldn’t depend on her phone any longer. She had made sure the radio’s battery had a full charge along with the never-used battery pack Aunt Ruth had given her for Christmas last year. Now, the NOAA weather radio station was her only reliable source of information since she didn’t have cable TV, and that put her at a distinct disadvantage.
Before the shutters went down, Lucy took in the gusty winds and steady rain, sure signs that Dolly was on her way. Lucy began to second-guess herself and believe she should have left earlier and taken the risk with Chessie. Now, though, there was no safe way to leave with the dog.
She was aware of the governor’s evacuation order and hoped there were no harsh penalties for ignoring it. She did have a good reason—six Beagle puppies that would arrive sometime in the next six to eight hours if Chessie followed the norm.
Please let everything be okay.
###
The lights flickered once, twice, then went out completely. Using a flashlight from the end table drawer, Noah picked his way to the kitchen where he kept his emergency supplies. Halfway there he stumbled over a snoozing dog.
“Yo, buddy, are you trying to kill me?” Noah snapped his fingers and the dog yawned, then rose and lumbered out of the way, nails clicking on the tile floor.
“We’re going to camp in the bathroom. It won’t be the most comfortable night we’ve had, but it’s safer in there.”
Noah retrieved a small duffel from a lower cabinet and took it to the house’s only bathroom before dragging in the dog’s blanket and putting it in the bathtub.
“Get in,” he commanded. “Lie down.” The dog obeyed, curling up with his head propped on the teddy bear he had brought in with him. Noah sank to the floor and was tuning his battery-powered radio to a local station when his portable police radio crackled to life.
Noah, we had a report of lights in a house before the power went out. 432 Beachside. Investigate and get them escorted across the causeway to the mainland.
Noah responded to the dispatcher, then spoke to the dog as he rose from the floor.
“Sorry, fella. I have to go, but I should be back before the big action begins.” Noah retrieved his badge and weapon from the bedroom then put on his boots. The badge would adequately identify him. No need to dirty up another uniform.
People’s willingness to ride out a storm never ceased to amaze him. If he had a choice, he would be hundreds of miles away, out of the storm’s path instead of trying to talk someone out of a foolish idea. And if there were children in the house, he would lay a big guilt trip on the occupants. Risking their own lives was one thing; risking a child’s was a different level of insanity.
###
Rain hammered the windows, and branches from the huge live oak behind the house scraped the roof in syncopation as the wind howled relentlessly in counterpoint. Mother Nature was a heavy metal band at an arena concert, and according to the radio, which Lucy used sparingly in order to save the batteries, this wasn’t even the worst of the storm. With no power and no cell service, Lucy was stranded from civilization and was on her own. Yeah, her own fault.
When Chessie had begun to pant heavily and have visible contractions, Lucy had moved to the laundry room with several portable lanterns, the headlamp, and the weather radio. Within minutes of getting settled, the first puppy made its appearance and Lucy had looked on in wonder as Chessie went into mother mode and licked the newborn pup so it would start to breathe.
When Lucy heard the garage door roll up, she was pulled from the miracle of birth to the worry of whether the house was being broken into and looted. She’d heard that happened during storms. Lucy had pulled the lever to disconnect the electric door opener so she would be able to open it when the power was out. Now anyone could open it from the outside since, apparently, brilliantly, she had neglected to slip the manual lock bar into place. Procrastination and lack of organizational skills had kept her from sorting the boxes and furniture from her move. If she’d been a more together person, she would have put everything in its place and could have pulled in her car and spared it from likely damage. Damn, damn, damn. Now someone was in her garage.
She wondered if Aunt Ruth had a gun hidden somewhere, then dismissed the thought since Lucy had no idea how to use a gun. With her luck, she would shoot herself in the foot, helping out whoever was stealing from her.
“Hello. Hello. Is anyone here?” A man’s voice called from the garage and soon a knock sounded on the door leading into the house. Lucy tried to remember if she had locked that behind her after disengaging the garage door.
The master bedroom, bath, and laundry area were behind the garage and took up the north side of the cottage. Lucy barely used the two bedrooms and bathroom located on the opposite side. She ate her meals in the kitchen, watched television in the adjoining living room and had set up her home office on the dining room table. Her philosophy was the less of the house she used, the less she had to clean.
“Is anyone here?” the voice called again. “Hello. This is the sheriff’s department.”
“I’ll be right back, Chessie. Don’t go anywhere,” she informed the dog, then felt silly because obviously the dog wasn’t going nowhere.
Lucy rushed to the door, yanked it open, and was greeted by a hulk of a man holding a lantern and backlit by the headlights of a vehicle parked at the end of the drive. The odd combination of light cast weird shadows on his face, which was partially hidden under the brim of his ball cap. She took a step back. He whipped off the cap, and she got a good look at one handsome-as-hell man with closely cropped hair and dark brows over pale eyes.
“Ma’am, I’m Deputy Noah Tindall, and I’m here to enforce the evacuation order. If you’ll get your belongings, I’ll escort you across the causeway to New London and you can drive on from there. According to reports there are no available hotel or motel rooms within at least a four-hour radius, but there is a shelter at the armory in the next county with open beds. I can call and let them know you’re coming unless you have family to stay with somewhere.”
“May I see some identification, please?” Somewhere in the recesses of her scrambled—why did he have to be so gorgeous?—overtaxed brain Lucy remembered to ask an out-of-uniform officer for his ID, though heaven knew how that would help now. If the man wasn’t who he said he was, his six-foot-plus frame was a definite advantage over her five-foot-four-inch one.
In one smooth movement, he pulled a badge and identification credentials from his back pocket and shoved them toward her.
“You really do need to leave now, ma’am. The weather’s only going to get worse.”
“A hurricane hasn’t hit this island in, well, forever,” she argued, hoping if she said it enough times, the storm would turn and miss St. Magnus.
“Yes, ma’am, I know. But we have one headed here now, and it’s going to be a doozie. If you’ll gather your things, I’ll escort you to the mainland.”
If Chessie’s ill-timed labor wasn’t bad enough, now the tribe had spoken and Lucy was being voted off the island.
She heard a noise from behind her, turned to listen, then took several steps toward the laundry room. “I can’t leave,” she called over her shoulder, straining to hear the dog.
“You have to leave, ma’am. The governor has issued an order.” His voice became sterner and more intense.
She planted her hands on her hips. “I said I can’t. And I don’t have time to argue with you because I have a mother in labor in the laundry room.”
Lucy watched his eyes widen. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? I’ll radio the hospital and get an emergency vehicle here to transport her. How far along is she?”
“She’s not a woman.”
“Not a woman?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then exactly what is she?”
“I mean, it’s not really a woman.”
The deputy sighed heavily. “Well, there are no pregnant men, ma’am.”
“This isn’t a human. It’s a dog, for goodness sake. And I think her second puppy is about to arrive.”
Lucy stomped away and entered the laundry room in time to see Chessie give one last push and expel another pup.
Chapter Three
Noah watched the woman power away from him, her ponytail swinging like a metronome in time to the sway of her luscious hips as she hurried down the tiled hallway. Even in a pair of sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt, he could tell she had some serious curves. Now wasn’t the time to look into how curvy, but he filed that intriguing possibility away and began to imagine her on the beach, dark hair lifted by the breeze, her petite frame in a bikini showing a tanned body and—
Focus. Hurricane. Danger, deputy sheriff.
After turning off the Jeep’s headlights and pulling down the garage door, he followed the noise and found himself in a laundry room that had been transformed into a doggie birthing center. He knelt beside the woman by the whelping bed and saw a beautiful brown and white Beagle. She had two squirming puppies already with more on the way.
“Normally I’d suggest we call a vet, but the veterinary clinic was boarded up earlier today. You need to get off this island before the eye wall hits. We can put her and the pups in the back of my Jeep and—”
“No.” The woman practically spat out the word. He guessed she was about a foot shorter than he was, but she made up for it with the force of her personality. Stubborn, but tempting. Even in the dim glow of lanterns set about the small room, he could tell she was a beauty, but dark circles under her espresso-colored eyes evidenced that stress had taken its toll.
Her blonde hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and she wore a headlamp-style light around her head. Strands of hair had escaped and hung about her face, and he resisted the urge to push them out of the way and pull her into his arms to calm and comfort her.
She wagged a pink-tipped finger at him. “If you move her now, you could put her and the puppies at risk.”
“And trying to ride out a hurricane in a beachfront house at high tide isn’t risky?”
Her expression clouded, and for a moment he feared she might cry. He could handle lots of things, but a woman’s tears were not one of them. He had always been a sucker for a damsel in distress. He instantly regretted the remark.
He reached out and patted her arm. “We’ll figure out something,” he told her, though the only something was to take this woman and the dogs to his house after all the pups arrived since no shelter would take them. But he would wait to spring that bit of information on her. “Do you have any idea how many more pups she has to deliver?”
The woman nodded. “If the vet was correct, four more.”
“How far apart were the first two?”
“About thirty minutes. From what I’ve read that’s about average.”
Noah quickly calculated in his head. “At that rate, the last one should arrive about eleven. And the worst of the storm isn’t predicted until around six tomorrow morning.”
Unless it speeds up and hits earlier.
He didn’t even want to consider that possibility. “I’ll stay unti
l your dog has delivered all her puppies. Make sure everything is all right.” He gave her his sincerest smile, and in return, she rewarded him with a small smile that eased some of the weariness in her eyes.
Damn she was pretty. The absence of a ring on her left hand hinted there was no husband, and she was here alone. If there was someone in her life, he had to be an asshole leaving her on an island to face a hurricane alone with a pregnant dog.
Now that he thought about it, Noah didn’t remember seeing her around the island, and his regular patrols took him to every corner of St. Magnus. Perhaps she worked on the mainland and that’s why he hadn’t spotted her until now.
“Stay here? Oh, well, yeah, that’s fine. You can help if she needs it,” she agreed.
“Once she’s had all the pups and has settled down a bit, we can move her.”
“Where? Who’s going to take me and a dog with six brand-new puppies?” He could hear the panic in her voice, and he knew he had to keep her and the dog calm.
“I’ll figure something out,” was his noncommittal answer.
“How did you know I was here?” She eyed him suspiciously, and he squinted as the beam from her headlamp hit him squarely in the eyes. He held up one hand to shade against the glare.
“Someone saw a light from a small window in front before the power went out and reported it to the sheriff’s office.”
Her small shoulders slumped, and the corners of her mouth drooped. “Damn. And here I’d congratulated myself because I thought I got to all the storm shutters.”
“I’d be happy to shutter that window for you, Miss…?”
“Jansen. Lucy Jansen. And this is Chessie.” She stroked the dog’s head lovingly, and he couldn’t wait until she’d do the same to him.
He rose and left the room to secure the window, and to get his runaway thoughts, and body, under control.
