“The storm. Jay, I think it’s close to landfall.”
“Hmmmph.” His eyes remained closed as he flipped onto his stomach, pillowing his cheek on his forearm. “Go back to sleep, baby,” he grumbled, making Mari raise an eyebrow. Who exactly did he think he was talking to?
Apparently, a girlfriend of some kind, she realized when Jay’s arm snaked out and looped her waist. He dragged her across the space blanket toward him, nestling her into his side.
Mari immediately started to struggle and pull away from him. Touching him was an uncomfortable, charged energy that she didn’t think she liked. There was attraction there, sure, but there was also his strangeness. His huge body dwarfing hers. She couldn’t help but feel desperately stranded with him. The thought both thrilled and terrified her.
He stiffened against her, registering her struggling and raised his head. His Sinatra blues blinked at her blearily. Until they cleared all at once and he abruptly unhanded her.
“Oh, god! Mari!” Jay rolled away from her, sitting up and putting his back against the wall. “I’m so sorry.”
She couldn’t help but smile a little at his dismay. “It’s alright. You thought I was someone else.”
Jay cleared his throat and scraped a hand over his hair. “Right.”
He figured she didn’t need to know that he’d been dreaming of her. That in his dream they’d been back in Ocean City together, in his bedroom. She’d woken up to some sound and he’d pulled her back into him. She’d been his girlfriend in the dream. Jay shook his head. It had been a very potent dream.
And then to wake up to her in his arms. But looking at him like he’d lost his damn mind? Damn. Crazy way to start the day.
Jay let his eyes trail back over to her. Just as he’d suspected the night before, she wore black bikini bottoms and a tight white tank top. That looked to be just about it. Shit. He had to look somewhere else fast or this was gonna get real uncomfortable for both of them.
Jay leaned over to his backpack and dug through until he found a tube of toothpaste. He smoothed a bit onto the tip of his finger and tossed it over to Mari. “It’s chemical free. So you can swallow it.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Is that a vegan thing?”
He shrugged, grinning and finger brushing.
They wiped their hands off in the towel he kept in his bag and took swigs of water from the filtered water bottle.
Jay slid his tennis shoes back on and went to look out the broken window. The wind was strong enough that he had to steady himself against the wall of the hotel. He got just close enough to peek out through the skimpy, weak light of the sun through the storm. His stomach flipped. The water had risen another fifteen feet at least. And it looked like it was still coming. It was time to move up.
Padding back to the supply closet, he saw Mari jamming his things into his bag. She stood up to her full height and tossed him his packed bag. “Time for us to go upstairs, Cool Hand Luke.”
He caught the bag, tilted his head to one side at the nickname. She brushed past him, her sandals flicking over the old musty carpet of the hallway. “What?” she asked. “You’ve got kind of a young Paul Newman thing going on.”
He gaped at her as he followed behind. She thought he was attractive? Hell yes. Involuntarily, his eyes trailed down her back, lingered on her ass. It was a really good ass. Muscular and strong, with a good amount of cushion. Enough to really sink your teeth into.
She turned back at the stairwell and definitely caught his eyes on her ass. She smirked and pulled the door open. “Except you’ve got Sinatra eyes.”
Not quite sure what to say to that, and almost positive she’d seen him checking her out, Jay opted to keep himself quiet and unassuming as they made their way up to her floor.
“Oh good,” she said. “The window didn’t break up here.”
“Thanks for letting me up, Mari. I think the water is rising pretty fast.”
She cleared her throat and walked into her supply closet. “Yeah. Well. You can pay me back by continuing to not be a weirdo.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough.”
Jay tossed his bag into the supply closet and frowned at the sky, which had just darkened a little. He could hear that the wind had picked up and the building creaked and groaned around them. He wished he had something to board that window up with. “I think this is landfall.”
“Yeah?” Mari asked, looking up from where she’d sat down on the sleeping bag. She tossed him a Clif Bar. “That’s not so bad then.”
The wind screamed and the building trembled again. They both grimaced. “Let’s not jinx it.”
Jay sat down a few feet away from her, his back against the wall. They sat in silence as the wind picked up. As the rain and water tore at the building around them. As the entire hotel creaked on its hinges. Jay heard glass breaking downstairs. The sounds of water rushing.
She sat stiffly next to him and when he couldn’t take it anymore, when the storm had raged for hours already, he reached out to her.
Mari, her hands clenched into bone white fists, stared at his outstretched hand. She knew what he was offering, asking for. Comfort. And nothing more.
It was why she could disregard his hand, brush past it and move straight into his arms.
He stiffened in surprise, but it didn’t last long. Almost instantly he was wrapping his arms around her as she burrowed her head into his chest.
They stayed like that for hours.
***
“Do you think that’s the eye of the storm?” Mari asked damn near six hours later. The wind had quieted significantly, though the rain still beat on the roof and the building still creaked and shuddered.
Jay lifted his head, shifted himself as she spoke for the first time in what felt like days. “I don’t think so. I think that’s the other side of it.”
“Really?” she lifted her head from his chest and untangled herself from him, stretching and standing.
His back was screaming and his legs were asleep, but he wouldn’t have unhanded her for all the comfort in the world. He’d needed to hold her as much as she’d needed to be held and he was grateful they’d gotten out of their own ways enough to be able to do it for one another.
He rose and stretched, cracking his back. The light coming from the end of the hall was brighter than it had been in 24 hours.
“Wanna go check it out?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
Not thinking too hard on it, Jay grabbed Mari’s hand and tugged her back down the hall toward the stairwell.
He jogged through and paused when he heard the unmistakable sound of water lapping somewhere below.
“It’s flooded,” she whispered.
Jay tugged her up through the fifth floor and up to the very last door in the stairwell. It was marked emergency exit. He pushed the door open and grabbed a fallen branch to jam in it to keep it from locking behind them.
Still holding her hand, Jay led Mari out onto the flat roof of the resort. The rain still whipped around them, but the sun peeked through here and there. There were branches and debris littering every inch of the roof and the jungle around them still shook and trembled with the residual storm. But the wind wasn’t nearly what it had been, and the two of them walked out to the center of the roof.
Mari put her free hand over her mouth as they turned south and caught sight of the storm as it headed away from them, toward Grand Bahama. It was over the ocean again and she’d never seen anything like it before.
“It looks like a nuclear bomb,” Jay muttered and she couldn’t agree with him more.
The storm was a dark, exploding pillar of cycloning water and wind. It must have been hundreds of miles wide. Thank god it was over fifty miles away from them at the time.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, her hand clasped in his. “In a horrifying sort of way.”
They watched the storm for a while. So long that they were both completely soaked. So long that neither of them noti
ced the way they’d started to lean in to one another.
***
They sat back in the supply closet on the fourth floor. It was stuffy, but Jay had gone down to check out the third floor and saw that it was flooded. Only by a few feet, but still. He was happy to be up on the stuffy fourth floor.
“I figure we’ve got at least three more days here before they can send anyone for us,” Jay said, breaking a Clif Bar in two and handing Mari half.
“How do you figure that?” she asked.
“Well, it’ll take at least half a day for the storm to make it all the way to Grand Bahama. Which is where the rescue chopper will come from. And then they’ll have to weather it for half a day or so. And then they’ll have to spend a day or two getting everything right on their end before they can think about rescuing people from the outlying islands.”
“Three days,” Mari muttered, letting her head thump back onto the wall behind. “What the hell are we gonna do with three days?”
“Well, once the water recedes, we can surf,” he suggested.
Mari grinned. “There is that,” she agreed, both of them ignoring the fact that they’d lost their boards in their hurry to get to cover yesterday. “You must be an expert surfer if you were managing the waves on the north shore.”
Jay shrugged. “I’ve been doing it for a long time.”
“You a pro?” she asked. She knew that a lot of the more hardcore surfers made their livings through sponsorships. They had funding to enter competitions and talk up sports drinks or whatever.
“No,” Jay answered. “I’ve been approached about it a lot. And I was considering this deal from 5-Hour Energy. But no. I think if this,” he gestured around at the weather, their situation, “has taught me anything, it’s that you gotta respect Mother Nature.”
“And you don’t think getting paid to surf is respectful?”
“Ah, I don’t know. I’m sure there are people who can do it well, you know? I just… I don’t think the competitions are for me. I like the solitude. The Zen nature of it. I don’t want fans or sponsorships or announcements.”
“You don’t want people critiquing your form and analyzing each run?” she asked with a small smirk.
“Hell no.”
“That’s exactly why I surfed the south side on my own. When you’re a girl, every time you come up for air, there’s some bro or another offering ‘free’ advice and trying to slip you their hotel key.”
Jay grimaced. “That would drive me insane.”
“Yeah.”
“Is surfing your main thing?” he asked her.
“Nah. I do all kinds of stuff on the water. Scuba, skin diving, kayaking. Only on vacation though, I surf a little bit in the mornings back home. When I can. But my job keeps me busy.”
“What do you do?”
Mari took a sip of her water and rose up, stretching her arms over her head and leaning down to touch her toes. Her hair fell in a waterfall down toward the floor and Jay allowed himself to look. She couldn’t see him looking. And she was just so dang good looking. She really was tiny. Maybe 5’2”. But even so, she had long legs and these proportionate little curves. He could see the shadowing of some of her muscles and for the second time he got the strong urge to press his teeth into her. Just enough to make her squirm and gasp for him.
He cleared his throat.
“I work for an animal conservation non-profit.”
That had Jay’s eyebrows popping up. “And you gave me shit for being vegan?”
She laughed. “I eat local, not vegan. I’m not down with the Man.”
“The Man being big meat and dairy production companies?”
“Bingo. And I obviously don’t do fur or leather or any shit like that. But my org mostly works with raising awareness about endangered species."
“Desk job?” Somehow he couldn’t quite picture the wild, toned woman stretching in front of him tamed and leashed inside a cubicle.
“Sometimes. But I also travel a fair amount for it. My whole office spent a month at that oil spill last year.”
“Cleaning oil off baby seals and stuff like that?”
“Pretty much.”
“So you’re a bleeding heart?”
She shrugged as she came up out of the stretch. “I guess. But I also just care about conservation.”
“Me too,” Jay admitted. “I just left my job at a publishing company because they rejected my proposal about ways to go green.”
She squatted into some sort of yoga pose and looked at him with those startling eyes. Her hair was messy from just having been upside down. “Was the proposal any good?”
Jay laughed. He liked that she hadn’t fawned all over him about doing the proposal in the first place. She wanted to know if he’d put his money where his mouth was. Not enough people in his life did that.
“Yeah. It was damn good. Reasonable, cost effective, good PR.” He sighed. “They just didn’t care.”
“So now you’re out a regular paycheck and some health insurance, huh?”
He grimaced. “Yup. I quit three weeks ago. In another week I’m heading back home to figure out what comes next for me.”
“So this is vacation for you too?”
“Yeah,” Jay nodded. “With a little bit of soul searching mixed in.”
She cocked her head to one side to show she was listening as she melted into another yoga pose of some kind.
“I have two best friends, Marcus and Eli. We’ve known each other since we were born, practically. And our families have kind of all melted into one another. My dad’s out of the picture and Eli’s mom passed away. So my mom and his dad kind of tag teamed the three of us.”
“And Marcus?” she asked.
“His parents are total shit. His dad is an abusive asshole and his mom kissed him goodbye the first second she could. He pretty much lived at either mine or Eli’s house from about ages 12 to 18.” Jay sighed. Hoping that his message about being safe had made it to them. He’d texted from the emergency phone but couldn’t tell if it had gone through. “Anyways, Eli is a football player and Marcus is in the FBI. They both have these jobs that they’re passionate about, good at, meant for. And I just kind of ended up in a vaguely creative field that I was always lukewarm over. The most passionate I felt was when I was drawing up the green proposal. And that’s what I ended leaving over. So, I don’t know.”
Mari shrugged, listening hard. “Maybe you’re an eco-warrior then.”
Jay studied her face. There was just something so interesting about it. There was none of the typical feminine fall backs. No flitting eye contact or over-friendly smiles. She didn’t blush or look embarrassed ever. She looked tough, and calm, and…ready at all times. He was into it. He was really into it.
He studied her light eyes. So at odds with her black hair and toasted skin.
“Are you Latina?” he asked.
Mari eyed him, maybe she was surprised that he asked. “Si. Mi mamá era de Colombia.” Yes. My mother was from Colombia.
“She used to be?” he asked, recognizing her use of the past tense.
Mari tilted her head to one side. He must have understood what she’d said. “Si. Ella murió.” Yes. She died.
“Lo siento, Mari.” He paused. “Cuando?”
Mari bit back her smile, altogether much too charmed by the Spanish words coming out of this blonde man’s mouth. His accent wasn’t great, but he spoke with a kind of ease and comfort, like he’d been doing it for a long time.
Mari cleared her throat. “A long time ago,” she answered in English, hoping he understood it as the end of the conversation.
He did.
CHAPTER THREE
When night fell again this time, they didn’t discuss sleeping in the same room. They just did it. They both knew that he wasn’t going back down to the third floor, which may or may not still be flooded. But more importantly, they both knew that neither of them wanted to separate.
They’d survived a hurricane toge
ther that morning. They’d clutched one another for hours. They’d heard the world tear apart around them and they’d made it to the other side. You don’t go through that and then go back to polite distance immediately after.
Mari knew that the next three days were going to be some of the strangest of her life. And she knew that she’d probably need Jay to get through them. She saw no reason to alienate him. None at all.
So he laid his space blanket out on the floor of the closet when the light around them lengthened and darkened into night. She rolled her sleeping bag up like a burrito and offered it as a pillow they could share. It was too hot for blankets anyways.
And she felt her eyes fall closed only moments later.
***
A long, sad sound woke Mari before the sun even did. A foghorn, somewhere far out at sea. The light was gray all around her. And she was hot. Blisteringly hot. She’d stripped her tank top off at some point in the night so that the only thing she wore was her bikini top and bottoms. It took her a second to realize why she felt like she’d woken up in a sauna.
For one, she was trapped on a tropical island with no air conditioning. And two, there was a hundred and eighty pounds of muscular, tall, blonde man wrapped around her.
Mari and Jay were spooned together. She was small enough that she could feel his chin on the top of her head, she could feel his breath fan out over her hair.
His knees were puzzle-pieced into the backs of hers and one of his humongous hands spread over her hip. It was almost like he was fastening her to him in their sleep.
He obviously had a lot of practice sleeping next to half naked women if he was so comfortable. If his body naturally did this during sleep.
Mari didn’t want to pull away from him. And that was very strange to her. She was not a snuggler. Never had been and never would be. But right now, she found herself deeply content within the tight bands of his arms. She found herself wanting to burrow backwards into him.
And what the hell? Why shouldn’t she? She’d just survived a hurricane for god sakes. She refused to judge herself for her comfort-seeking impulse.
Mari pressed herself backward, ever so slightly, and shivered when the smooth skin of her back came in contact with his chest hair.
Bachelors In Love Page 28
