He’d held his breath, waiting for her answer. The only sounds in the tastefully decorated room were the wind shrieking outside the window and the rain spattering on the panes.
“I love you, Jeff.” He strained to hear her words above the howl of the storm, although the anguish in her eyes was clearly evident. “But love alone won’t do us any good. You have your work. I have Brittany and my business. We’re on separate paths, and, for the life of me, I can’t find an intersection.”
He couldn’t dispute her. He’d had the same running argument in his head almost from the day he’d first walked into her café.
“Then let’s take tonight,” he begged, “and not worry about tomorrow.”
Unexpectedly she giggled. “We’ll always have Paris.”
For a moment he thought she’d lost her mind.
“Sorry,” she said with a shake of her head. “It’s a line from Casablanca. Grant’s an old movie buff, and I’ve watched too many classics with him. The old dialogue hops into my head at the strangest times.”
Her expression sobered, and she continued. “But you and I are like Bogart and Bergman. Duty pulls us in separate directions.”
“Not tonight,” he said.
The happiness that flared in her eyes almost undid him. “No, not tonight.”
They made love with an intensity and ease that belied her inexperience, that made him feel as if he’d loved her a thousand times before and wanted to several thousand times again. Exhausted, they’d fallen instantly asleep. A short time later, in a fugue state, between waking and sleeping, they’d come together again, slowly and with a tenderness that Jeff had never known.
Now, with gray light of morning seeping around the edges of the draperies, he watched Jodie asleep in his arms and knew without a doubt that he wanted to wake up every morning to her face on the pillow beside him.
The ringing of the phone brought him out of his reverie. He reached for his cell on the bedside table and answered, noting from the digital readout on the bedside clock that it was almost 8:00 a.m.
“Jodie.” He shook her gently. “It’s for you. It’s Brynn.”
Jodie was instantly awake. She sat upright and grabbed the phone. “Hey, Brynn. Something wrong?”
She was quiet for a moment, then muttered, “Oh, no.”
Jeff sat up and wrapped his arms around her. She’d already been through so much, and he could tell from her voice and expression that Brynn’s news wasn’t good.
After several long minutes, she spoke again. “No, not yet. Let me talk to her first.”
More trouble with Brittany? Jeff wondered. But he couldn’t ask. Jodie was still concentrating hard on whatever Brynn was saying.
“Thanks, Brynn. We’ll be home as soon as possible.”
Jodie ended the call and handed him the phone. She scrambled out of bed and reached for her clothes. “We have to hurry.”
Jeff didn’t argue. As much as he wanted to coax Jodie back to bed and love her one more time, her frantic urgency spurred him to dress quickly. “What’s up?”
“Maria Ortega’s at the police station. When she came to work this morning and found out about Brittany and Daniel, she went straight to Brynn and confessed.”
“Maria stole the money from the register?”
Jodie yanked on her slacks, zipped them and tugged on her matching sweater. “Her baby’s been sick and she couldn’t afford the medicine. She’d hoped to pay the money back before I missed it. I told Brynn I wouldn’t press charges.”
“So Daniel’s cleared?”
Jodie nodded, but the grimness in her expression sent a sudden chill through him. “The theft is the least of my worries now.”
She rummaged in her purse, extracted a brush and drew it briskly through her tousled hair. Thrusting aside memories of his fingers in her soft tresses, he reached for his shoes.
“The river’s rising,” Jodie rammed the brush back into her purse. “It’s already at flood stage and expected to crest fifteen feet above that before noon tomorrow.”
Jeff threw open the draperies and glanced outside. Torrential rain had made a lake of the parking lot, and the deluge showed no signs of abating. He recalled a similar storm twenty years earlier that had sent the Piedmont River, paralleling Pleasant Valley’s main street, over its banks. Mr. Weatherstone had been almost crazy worrying that the waters would continue rising and flood his shop.
The shop that was now Jodie’s café.
His heart ached for her. She’d been through too much already, and now this, a force of nature that even the best of his Marine training couldn’t stop. “You ready?”
She nodded. “Let’s go.”
They hurried through checkout and raced through the storm to the car. With the wipers working at maximum speed and water spraying from the wheels like the wake of a boat, Jeff drove onto the interstate and headed west, praying that the heavens would clear before the river swelled and flooded downtown.
* * *
JODIE FORCED the protesting muscles in her legs to make one more trip to the apartment upstairs. With the help of Brittany and the wait staff, she’d moved everything possible, gift shop inventory, furniture, and pantry supplies, to the second floor in an attempt to save it from the steadily rising water that already swirled dangerously near the pillars of the rear deck.
She descended the stairs and found Brittany on the deck, staring at the raging water through the rain-spattered glass enclosure. Grant and Merrilee were next door, helping Jodie’s mother and father carry the contents of his hardware business to the second-floor storeroom.
Up and down Piedmont Avenue, merchants were scurrying to protect what they could from the coming flood. Blalock’s Grocery, Bud and Marion’s real estate office, the bank, and the Community Church were all on the riverside of the street and would be hardest hit. But if the waters rose as high as the weather service was predicting, both sides of Piedmont Avenue would be inundated.
“You need to evacuate. Now.”
Jodie turned to find Brynn, a yellow rain slicker over her uniform, standing in the doorway to the deck.
“We’ve done as much here as we can,” Jodie admitted.
“You’ll be safe at your folks’,” Brynn said. “The water won’t reach that far.”
Jodie shook her head. “We’ll join the volunteers on the barricades.”
“Be careful,” Brynn warned and hurried away, apparently to issue the same evacuation advice to other merchants along the street.
By the time Jodie and Jeff had returned to Pleasant Valley earlier, many town residents had already swarmed to the riverbank to fill and stack sandbags against the rising waters. That barrier was downtown’s only hope. The governor had called up the National Guard, but their mobilization took time, and the troops weren’t expected to arrive for several more hours.
After returning from Columbia, Jeff had dropped Jodie off and headed for Archer Farm. Jodie had been so distracted by the imminent disaster, she’d barely spoken during the ride home. She’d wanted to savor the memories of their night together, but circumstances hadn’t allowed time to think for longer than a few minutes about anything but saving her business.
Jodie suppressed an overwhelming urge to rage and shake her fists at the heavens. She’d worked seven long, hard years to build her café and shop into a business she could be proud of, and by this time tomorrow, all of it could be washed away. On top of that, her relationship with Brittany was tenuous at best, and Jodie found herself hopelessly in love with a man who admitted they had no future together. A weaker part of her wanted to curl into a ball and hide. But the better half of her nature, the strength that had seen her through a teen pregnancy, raising a child and developing a business from scratch stiffened her spine and her resolve.
“You go on to Grandma’s,” she told Brittany. She hadn’t even had a chance yet to talk with her daughter about running away. That serious discussion and the resulting consequences for Brittany would have to wait until the
flood waters receded.
“I can help with the sandbags,” Brit insisted with a stubbornness that Jodie recognized as exactly like her own.
She threw her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and hugged her. “You’re sure?”
Brit nodded. “I’m not tired.”
Jodie knew better. Neither had slept much the night before, and they’d both worn themselves out dragging the contents of the café and shop up the stairs, but if Brittany wanted to fill sandbags, Jodie wouldn’t discourage her. Waiting at the Nathan house for the river to rise would drive them both nuts.
After stopping in the hardware store to tell her folks where they were going, Jodie and Brittany followed the alley between the two buildings to the riverbank. Jodie had expected chaos, but the townspeople had organized into relay lines that ran from the river’s edge back to the stacks of empty bags and piles of sand dumped by the trucks from the lumberyard. Along the bank, a protective wall of sandbags rose ever so slowly. Gauging the gradual increase of the barricade’s height against the rapidly rising torrent, Jodie didn’t hold out much hope of saving the town.
Among the rain gear and slickers of the townsfolk were men and boys dressed in the soaked olive-drab T-shirts and cargo shorts of Archer Farm. Even in the downpour, Jodie identified Gofer, Kermit, Trace, Ricochet and Jeff, who’d apparently coordinated the lines of volunteers with military efficiency. The teens of Archer Farms were working hard, too. The battle-hardened Marines and the physically fit teenagers filled and moved the heavy bags with ease, efficiency and amazing speed.
Hefting a wet, sand-loaded bag as easily as if it were filled with straw, Jeff passed it to Jay-Jay behind him and, in the process, caught Jodie’s eye. With a nod and a soul-searing look from his storm-gray eyes, he acknowledged her briefly, then turned to take the next bag in the unending line.
Brittany slogged her way through the thick red mud into a line beside Daniel, and Jodie fell in place behind Marion Sawyer, who threw her a grim smile before manhandling the next bag and passing it on.
For the next two hours, hair plastered to her head, her sneakers oozing with mud, her body screaming with fatigue, Jodie wrestled the heavy bags from Marion and stacked them onto the wall she hoped would eventually stem the swiftly rising current. To block out her agony, she kept her eyes on Jeff, muscles straining effortlessly under his wet T-shirt, the strong line of his jaw set with determination, his steady words of encouragement sometimes penetrating the rumble of the river and the spatter of the rain.
A few feet away, Brittany worked at the end of another line. As the barrier grew taller, Brit scrambled atop the wall to take the bags Daniel hoisted up to her. With a surge of love and pride, Jodie observed her daughter slap a bag in place, swipe her hair back from her face and flash her a smile.
Maybe things between them were going to be okay, Jodie thought with a ray of hope. Nothing like adversity to draw families together.
But the next bag Daniel tossed Brittany overbalanced her, and before Jodie’s horrified eyes, her daughter windmilled her arms, teetered briefly, and pitched backward into the roaring river.
“Noooo!” Jodie screamed, but the wind snatched her cry away.
Jodie scrambled onto the wall, ran atop it alongside the river until she caught up with Brittany, tossed like a piece of balsa wood on the raging current. Without a thought for her own safety, Jodie plunged in after her.
Icy, murky water closed over her head, buffeted her like the full force of a water cannon, and dragged her toward the bottom. She kicked hard and fought her way to the surface. She spotted something in the water near her, shot out her hand, and grasped the back of Brittany’s shirt. Using strength she hadn’t known she possessed, she pulled her daughter toward her. Brittany sputtered, choked and grabbed Jodie around the neck in a panicked move that sent them both spiraling beneath the surface again.
Her lungs screaming for air, Jodie kicked with all her strength, but Brittany’s weight dragged against her own.
They were both going to drown.
* * *
MOVING WITH THE EASE and effectiveness of a well-oiled machine, Jeff lifted each filled bag and tossed it to Jay-Jay behind him. He’d started a running tally but lost it at the one-hundred-and-fifty-second bag when Jodie had appeared at the rear of the line beside him. Now, while he automatically caught each bag and heaved it down the line, his gaze sought Jodie and watched her grapple with the heavy bags without complaint and with amazing strength for a woman who weighed barely over a hundred pounds, literally soaking wet.
He turned to receive a bag from young Jason on the line in front of him, and when he handed it off to Jay-Jay, Jodie had disappeared. He searched the crowd and caught sight of her racing along the top of the barricade. When she suddenly dived into the turbulent river, his heart slammed into his throat.
Fear almost paralyzed him until his Marine training kicked in, thrust his emotions aside and made him focus on what had to be done.
He grabbed Jason and yelled in his ear above the rain and river noise. “Jodie’s in the river. Tell the staff to get ropes and come help.”
Before Jason could answer, Jeff hit the bank at a dead run, spattering mud. He vaulted over the wall downriver from where Jodie had disappeared, and flung himself headlong into the water.
Treading hard to keep his head above the surface, he scanned the river, but the roiling whitewater showed no sign of Jodie.
Then a flash of pale skin, the briefest flutter of a hand thrust above the rapids, appeared upriver. Knowing he couldn’t swim against the current, Jeff took several strong strokes crosswise to position himself in Jodie’s path.
He drew closer and saw her struggling with someone else. Seizing Jodie, who had latched onto the other person, he thanked God for the physical training that had developed the powerful muscles of his legs and enabled him to keep all of them afloat.
His confidence faltered slightly when he realized how close the relentless current shoved them toward the main bridge into town, only a hundred yards downstream and now underwater. If they tried to go beneath the bridge, they’d drown, but the water wasn’t high enough to carry them over it. Unless he could get them all to the bank damned quick, they would be squashed like bugs against the bridge pilings.
To his left, Kermit, Trace, Ricochet and Gofer raced along the narrow strip of bank below the sandbag wall. Kermit flung the coiled rope he carried. Hanging on to Jodie with one hand, Jeff lunged for it with the other.
And missed.
With another powerful kick, Jeff maneuvered closer to the bank. The sweeping branches of a weeping willow arched just above the surface far out into the river. Jeff grabbed a branch and held on. Only then did he realize that the person with Jodie was Brittany. While Jodie was alert and bright-eyed, Brittany was deathly pale, eyes closed, lips blue. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing.
Kermit had retrieved the rope and flung it again. This time Jeff caught it.
“Take Brittany first,” Jodie screamed in his ear.
Jeff didn’t argue. The kid was in bad shape and needed help fast. “Can you hang on till I get back?”
Jodie nodded and wrapped one hand around the willow branch. When Jeff grabbed Brittany from her, Jodie latched on to the willow with the other hand, too.
With the rope tied around his waist, his team, braced on the bank, hauled him in slowly while he struggled to keep Brittany’s head above water. He didn’t dare look back to check on Jodie for fear of being inundated and losing the teen, but he could feel Jodie’s eyes locked on him, could feel her spirit urging him on.
As soon as Jeff’s feet touched the bank, Gofer took Brittany from his arms.
Brynn appeared beside him. “Bring her this way. The paramedics are almost here.”
Assured Brittany was in good hands, Jeff secured the rope around his waist and plunged once more into the deadly current. The water’s movement took him instantly toward Jodie, who still clung to the branch, even though the water and the de
bris it carried battered her like a piñata.
Carried by the current, he overshot the branch, but the team hauled on the rope until he was within reach of her. He slid his arms beneath hers and felt her body jerk away, tugged by the current as she released her stranglehold on the willow. At the same time she threw her arms around his neck and held on.
Within minutes the team had hauled them both onto the bank. Jodie slid from his grasp and glanced around, obviously frantic. “Where’s Brittany?”
Brynn took her arms. “She’s on her way to the hospital. I’ll take you.”
“I’m coming with you,” Jeff said.
Jodie glanced at the steadily rising water and shook her head. “You’re needed here.”
He glanced at Brynn. “You coming back?”
The officer nodded. “But we’ll pick up Jodie’s parents on the way to the hospital. I won’t leave her alone.”
Jeff spoke to Brynn but kept his eyes on Jodie. “And you’ll bring me a report?”
“As soon as I get back.”
Jeff wanted to go with them, to make sure that Brittany was all right, to reassure Jodie, but the two women had already disappeared into the crowd of volunteers. Knowing he’d be more useful where he was, he ordered his team back into their lines and reached for the next sandbag.
* * *
JODIE PACED THE CORRIDOR of Pleasant Valley Hospital, waiting for the doctor’s report. He’d ordered her from Brittany’s bedside while he performed his latest examination. It had been almost two hours since Jeff had rescued her and Brittany from the river, two long hours that Brittany’s life had hung in the balance and the E.R. doctors and staff had worked furiously to save her daughter. Something in the water had struck Brittany’s head, causing her to lose consciousness. Although the doctor had cleared her lungs, he was waiting for her to wake up to assess the extent of any damage.
Jodie’s parents sat in the hard plastic chairs of the waiting room, talking quietly. Grant and Merrilee had gone to the cafeteria for coffee. The hospital itself seemed eerily quiet. Only the occasional ring of a telephone, a call for a doctor over the intercom, and the whir of a machine at the end of the hall, polishing the highly waxed floors, broke the silence.
One Good Man Page 15
