Riding the Storm

T-Remy,
where you at
? Sa va mal.

"So
what else is new, Dad?" Remy muttered, squinting through the darkness and rain
the windshield wipers couldn't keep up with as he struggled to stay on the
muddy road and re-dial his cell phone at the same time.

For
his old man to say things were bad meant one of two things: Either everything
was business as usual and he was being dramatic, or the world was coming to an
end. There was only black or white with his father, which is why Remy found
himself comfortably in the gray most of the time.

And
really, things were always going badly for Remy Senior, and calling T-Remy, as
he was known affectionately around these parts, was like calling in his own
personal cavalry. Navy style. Except that Remy had resigned his commission last
month and had taken his final leave from his SEAL team seven days earlier,
something he was not looking forward to telling his father.

Following
in the old man's footsteps
, Remy
Senior had told him proudly eight years earlier, then signed the papers
allowing his son to enlist on his seventeenth birthday, right after he
graduated high school.

The
Navy had been T-Remy's way out of the bayou, and joining the SEAL teams had
been one of the hardest things he'd ever done. Leaving them had been as well,
but he'd always known, on every level, that he wasn't meant to be a team
player.

So
really, there was no excuse on God's green bayou not to visit and check on his
father. Family was family, and all that crap, even though this was the last
thing he wanted to do.

Still
no answer. Not even a damned machine on the other end of either the house or
cell line a full three days and seven hours since Remy senior's last call. He
threw the phone down and pushed his truck forward on the muddy road leading to
his old man's house. Hurricane season had hit the bayou hard this year, and he
couldn't be sure if that's why his father had called.

Last
night, Remy had been drawing again in his sleep—the same picture he'd been
drawing since he was six years old, the same picture he'd been drawing every
single night for the past six months, the fist against a background of clouds,
clutching a handful of lightning bolts in a firm grasp—and he knew the
hurricane that stirred from nowhere late last night was going to follow him
inland from the coast. He'd always been a lure for storms. A human weather
vane. Rumor held he'd been born during a hurricane, born and then left on the
church's doorstep while the night winds howled around him.

There
was no denying that there was something about him and weather. He could predict
it, ride it out, always knew when Mother Nature was going to piss on his
parade. His former teammates called him Storm, as more of a joke than anything
and mainly when he wasn't around to hear it, because Remy never did take well
to jokes.

Lately,
Mother Nature had been working her magic over-time on him, necessitating the
early retirement, and today was no exception. Especially when the bridge
started falling away behind his truck. He tried not to look back in fascination
as the heavy logs that had been there for as long as he could remember broke
like matchsticks under the wailing wind.

Yeah,
this couldn't be good. He didn't feel like taking a swim in the murky water
below. Or losing his truck. Never mind his aching ribs, freshly injured from an
attempted mugging when he'd left his apartment in Norfolk for the bayou.

He
urged the accelerator slow and steady, not wanting to encourage the bridge to
fall directly underneath him. Five more endless feet and he'd be crossed over
into no-man's-land and he could worry about getting back out later.

Part
of him wanted to stop the truck right then and there, stand in the middle of
nature's fury and let her try to kick his ass. But his feeling of
responsibility nagged at him harder.

No
time for play, T-Remy.

But
that didn't mean Mother Nature couldn't play with him in the worst possible
way, and his cock hardened in painful reminder. He'd tried to ignore the urges
that started last night while he slept, the ones that would normally drive him
from his bed, hot, restless and prowling for anything to scratch his itch.

That
wasn't going to happen tonight, and he forced himself to tamp it down, turn it
off and, within fifteen minutes, his truck turned up the dirt path and pulled
in front of the house he'd grown up in.

The
place was still a shithole.

Three
years away and a storm that split the heavens wide open over the bayou hadn't
softened the memories, and he was glad he'd made the drive at night. Broad
daylight wasn't going to be any kinder and he hadn't been expecting much
anyway.

His
truck moved easily over the pitted driveway and stopped just short of the
ancient garage that had long since lost its door. He strapped his knife onto
his left bicep with a black band of Velcro, because the local gators tended to
get riled up during a storm, especially when they were displaced from their
bayou home. More than a few times during his youth he'd been surprised by one
or two lost ones that were just as pissed to see him as he was them. He'd
learned how to alligator wrestle the hard way, a necessary survival skill
around here.

He
got out, grabbed his bag and went toward the back door before he lost nerve and
turned tail. And the more he thought about it, the angrier he got, until it
balled in his gut and hung there as he reached the door.

He'd
lost the keys to the house, and tried to lose his way back too, years earlier.
Of course, his father never locked the door. Hell, he couldn't pay a thief to
come through this place.

The
first thing he noticed when he flipped on the light was that it worked.
Admittedly, he'd flipped it on out of habit, but he'd figured it was a sure bet
the electric, and other bills, hadn't been paid in months. The only thing he
knew for sure was that his father had called him from the house and now there
was no sign of the guy to be found.

The
next thing he noticed was that the kitchen was clean. Scrubbed clean. No dishes
anywhere but in the cabinets, and there was even a cheerful yellow dish towel
hanging on the stove handle.

The
third thing he noticed was the sound of water running. His thoughts immediately
went along the lines of a broken pipe or a leak in the roof. He dropped the bag
and moved toward the bathroom.

A
simultaneous burst of lightning and crack of thunder made the power flicker and
then putter out as he reached the bathroom doorway. The storm illuminated the
small bathroom briefly, just long enough for him to get a very good look at the
beautiful, naked woman in the shower.

Beautiful
and naked, but not friendly. Screaming like a swamp cat caught in a coon trap,
she hurled a bottle of shampoo at him. He ducked a split second before it could
hit him, and it bounced off the wall behind his head.

Welcome
home, Remy
. This was going to be
worse than he thought.

Haley
Marie Holmes loved surprises. She did not, however, love strange men surprising
her in the shower. In the dark. That she'd been expecting the strange man at
some point didn't matter. He could have knocked.

"Get
out of my bathroom!" she shouted as she pulled the cheap plastic shower
curtain around her. The
clear
cheap plastic shower curtain.

"
Your
bathroom? This is my goddamned house, so I think you're a little mixed up,
lady."

The
voice was a low, controlled drawl, the sentiment behind the words anything but,
and the man she hoped was Little Remy stood outlined in the light from the
storm, dripping wet in the middle of the small bathroom, wearing a T-shirt,
cargo pants and flip-flops, like he was coming in from a day at the beach
instead of the outer bands of a hurricane. Except she'd never seen any man wear
a lethal-looking knife to the beach.

She
shivered, raised her gaze to the strong, masculine features of his face, then
upward to his hair. She'd always been a sucker for dark hair, and he wore his
short but longer than the ate-up military guys she'd known, and he'd slicked it
back from his face, his fingers leaving wild grooves.

This
was definitely Remy, that uniformed SEAL in the photo from the dossier she'd
been given by her agency. The knowledge should have put her at ease. Instead,
his alert stance, the way he seemed primed for battle despite the casual
clothes he wore, set her even more on edge.

"Can
you give me a minute here?" she snapped, then forced herself to not look
away from his eyes, which narrowed into slits as he stared.

"I
don't give intruders anything. And where the hell is my father?"

She
shut off the water, glad she'd already finished rinsing, and took a deep,
calming breath of steamy air. "I'm not an intruder, and if you'll get out
of here I'll explain everything."

Everything
but the truth. He wouldn't learn why she was really there. Or how, after her
contact at the National Weather Service had forwarded Remy Senior's letter to
her, she'd bribed him into calling Remy to beg him to come home, something that
turned her stomach because she knew firsthand how much power parents had to
hurt their children.

The
old man had all the bad qualities of a used car salesman and only half the
charm, and she hoped his son was different. Personality-wise, though, T-Remy's
charm wasn't quite coming through the shower curtain.

In
the bright glimmer of nearly continuous lightning, he studied her, the rigid
lines of his brows framing an expression as hard as the man himself seemed to
be. "I don't mind the view from where I'm standing. So why don't you start
explaining now—because I'm not all that patient."

God,
she hated military men. She'd hated them even when
she
had been in the
military. No way would she roll over in submission like some trembling, green
recruit just because a big, tough ex-SEAL suffering from an excess of testosterone
barked an order at her.

"I'll
explain when I'm dressed," she said in a defiant tone that was probably
lost to the storm.

She
gathered the shower curtain more securely around her—for all the good it
did—and stretched toward the towel bar, but Remy was faster. He snared the
towel and dangled it just out of her reach. In the flickering shadows that
played on his face, she could make out a smirk—a smirk that shouldn't be sexy,
but for some reason was. The storm must be getting to her.

Or
maybe the stories about Remy were true.

Discounting
that last thought because it was ridiculous, she made a grab for the towel, but
he yanked it away. "Tell me who you are."

She
hesitated, not because her cover identity was a secret, exactly, but because
his military-clipped order chafed at several sore spots. Which was why she and
the Air Force had been a disastrous combination.

"My
name is Haley. Haley Holmes. And," she said, wringing water out of her
long hair, "I'm not saying another word until I'm dry."

She
shoved the shower curtain aside because it was useless anyway, the sound of the
rusted metal rings scraping the equally rusted rod barely audible over the
sudden roar of wind through the trees. Water trickled down her face, dripping
off her chin and onto her breasts, and Remy's eyes, glittering in the flashes
of light, blatantly took it all in.