by Radclyffe
“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.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“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?”
Nita laughed bitterly. “No, it certainly isn’t.”
“Joey’s out on a cleanup crew with Deo,” Pia said. “I didn’t want him to go, but he wouldn’t let her have all the fun.” She shook her head. “He worships her. I think he wants to grow up to be just like her because he thinks she gets all the girls.”
“He might be right,” Nita said, strangely unbothered by the allusion to Deo’s reputation with women. Deo had awakened in her arms that morning. Deo had come for her, unguarded and vulnerable, the night before. That was truth. The rest didn’t matter.
“All my brothers love her, but it doesn’t make up for Gabriel. Deo said she told you about Gabe.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a big deal, that she told you, you know.”
“Yes, I know. I know how much she’s suffered.” Nita sighed. “I hope she isn’t out there taking chances…trying to prove something.”
“My uncle is the only one who hasn’t forgiven her. It was an accident, for God’s sake. She was just a kid, and we all did dumb things when we were kids. Jesus, it was just as much Gabe’s fault for going out with her as it was hers for taking a boat out when she was drunk.”
“What?” Nita frowned. “What did you say?”
Pia looked confused. “About what?”
“Deo wasn’t driving that boat. Her brother was.”
“No. That’s not what the sheriff said. That’s not what Deo told us either.”
“Who do you think told the sheriff what happened?” Nita stood abruptly. “Of course she wouldn’t blame her brother. He was dead.”
“She told you Gabe was driving?” Pia jumped up. “God damn her. I can’t believe she did that—let us all believe all this time that she got Gabe out there when no sane person would be on the water.”
“Why can’t you believe it?” Nita said, her attention drawn to a noisy group of men in yellow slickers and heavy black rain boots coming through the door. In the midst of them, she recognized Deo. “She’d rather hurt than hurt someone else. Excuse me.”
Nita caught up to Deo in the coffee line.
“I bet you could use a sandwich to go along with that coffee.”
Deo’s look of surprise turned to one of pleasure. “I was hoping you’d be here.”
“Were you now.” Nita knew there were people all around them, but she couldn’t see anyone except Deo. She couldn’t hear a single voice except hers.
“Yeah.”
After Deo got her coffee, Nita took her hand and led her to a quiet spot beneath the broad sweeping staircase. “Is this your first break all day?”
“More or less.” Deo sipped her coffee, then brushed her thumb over Nita’s cheek. “You okay? You look a little tired.”
“Someone has been keeping me up nights.”
Deo grinned. “Really.”
“Really.” Nita parted Deo’s rain slicker and slid her hand inside, settling her palm on the crest of Deo’s hip. “And when she’s not keeping me awake making love to me the way no one ever has, I’m awake thinking about it.”
“That’s funny.” Deo leaned closer and brushed her mouth over Nita’s. “I’ve been thinking about the same thing all day. Keeps me warm out there.”
A wolf whistle sounded from somewhere nearby and Deo scowled, sliding her arm around Nita’s waist as she scanned the nearby faces. Then she grinned. “Joey, take your eyes someplace else.”
“What, and miss all the action?” Joey skidded to a halt next to them, the coffee in the cup he held in his uninjured hand sloshing over the rim. “Hi Nita.”
“Hi Joey,” Nita said. “Are you taking care of that hand out there?”
Joey glanced down at the splint on his forearm as if he had forgotten it was there. “Oh yeah. I can do most anything with it now.”
“If you re-injure it,” Nita warned, trying to sound stern but finding it hard to raise any temper with the charming young man, “it will just take months longer to heal.”
“Forget that,” Deo grumbled. “He’s been freeloading long enough.”
“Listen,” Joey said eagerly, “I just heard there’s a bunch of power lines down and a few buildings caught fire. Fire crews are out already, but they’re probably gonna need some of our equipment. We s
hould go, Deo.”
“Okay,” Deo said, never taking her eyes from Nita’s face. “Send Marco and his crew out with the other truck. Then grab us some sandwiches and I’ll meet you outside in a minute.”
“Got it. See you, Nita.”
“Bye, Joey.” Nita leaned into Deo and the icy water from Deo’s soaked jeans seeped into hers. “You’re cold. You should rest awhile before you go out again.”
“I’m okay.”
“If you work like this you’ll get hurt.”
“I’m okay. Better than okay now.” Deo kissed her again and tossed her cup into a trash can. “I gotta go.”
Struck by sudden disquiet, Nita pulled her closer, wrapping both arms around her waist beneath the heavy slicker. “Don’t try to be a hero.”
“Me?” Deo laughed. “You know that’s not my style.”
“Don’t pull that attitude with me,” Nita said gently. “I know how brave and caring you are—even if you try to hide it.”
“What?” Deo’s voice caught. “I’m not—”
“Yes, you are. I see you looking after Joey. I see you out there in this miserable, dangerous weather, hour after hour, helping everywhere you can.” Nita could still feel Deo’s pain when she’d told her about Gabe, and that other storm, and all she’d lost. “I know how much you care—you never told your family what really happened that night with Gabe. You took all the blame.”
Deo jerked. “Who told you that?”
“Pia.” Nita tightened her grip when Deo tried to pull away. “Don’t be angry with her. It just came up.” She laid her cheek against Deo’s, her mouth close to her ear. “I think you’re wonderful.”
“Yeah?” Deo relaxed in Nita’s arms. “It matters, what you think. It matters a lot.”
Leaning back so she could see Deo’s face, Nita read the questions in Deo’s eyes. Questions Nita knew the answers to but feared to say. A loud crash sounded somewhere outside. The floor vibrated and shutters clattered. Deo was about to go back out into that angry night, and Nita couldn’t let her take all the chances. “You matter to me, Deo. You matter a lot.”
