Page 9 of The Spirit of Love
The rain falls more steadily, drumming the pebbles on the shore. Goosebumps dot my arms. It’s getting colder. I think back to the pneumonia that hospitalized me when I was ten. I should get into my tent and dry off. I spill out of the hammock, soaked. A gale of wind assaults me as I struggle back across the beach. It’s strange that Edie downplayed the ferocity of this wind. Her tendency is usually to oversell a storm’s potential. I duck inside my tent, take off my raincoat, and towel off. I click on my lantern and pull out my camcorder. Maybe I’ll film myself practicing a pep talk for Buster, to see what ideas flow. I draw my sleeping bag around my shoulders.
The tent poles bend sharply as the wind around me howls. I make sure they’re secure, then I pick up my camcorder and press Record.
“Hey, Buster, it’s me. I’ve been thinking about your performance, and—hold on…What the hell?”
Someone—something—is unzipping my tent!
My free arm darts out to freeze the zipper, to tug it in reverse and keep myself sealed in here. To keep whoever that is out there.
The zipper unzips again, a swift hand’s width this time, before I catch it and meet it with equal, opposite force.
“Let go!” I scream as the terrifying tug-of-war ensues. Whoever’s out there really wants to get inside.
Suddenly, there’s a horrible shredding sound as the zipper falls away from the tent fabric.
A bright light blinds me, and a blast of rain assails my face.
“Aughhh!” I scream, scurrying backward.
“Aughhhh!!!” the light screams back, louder and deeper than me.
Wet sand slams into the back of my skull. It takes me a moment to realize I’ve fallen out of what’s left of my tent. I’m defenseless, vulnerable, and blind.
“Damn, you okay?” a low voice with a hint of southern twang asks as the garish light disappears. “Ma’am?”
I blink up at the figure crouching beside me. He wears an orange helmet with a miner’s light attached, and somehow his hand is holding mine. I’m about to whip away my hand when he pulls on it so gently, I don’t realize he’s helped me all the way up until I’m standing in front of him.
A flash of lightning affords me a better view. This might be the largest human I have seen up close. He’s far north of six feet tall, with broad shoulders and rippling forearms.
He finds my lantern on the sand and holds it up, illuminating us both.
He’s handsome in an extreme way, and that’s really not what I need right now. His soaking raven hair wings out from the back of his helmet. His eyes are a melty chocolate brown, downturned at the corners, set beneath a robust pair of brows. His mouth is full and slightly open, showing two rows of straight white teeth.
“Are you hurt?” he asks as rain hammers us with biblical force.
“Not as hurt as you’re about to be!” I say and jerk my hand out of his. “Who the fuckareyou?”
He smiles. And there are dimples. Great, now I’ll need to put up my dimple shield. They’ve been known to mess with my head.
“Catalina Search and Rescue,” he proclaims.
“Not interested.”
“I’m…not soliciting. I’m here to save your life.”
I laugh. “I don’t need to be saved. I don’t need to be searched, nor rescued. I need to be left alone!” I grab my lantern from him and spin away to look for my raincoat and my camcorder. “And I need a tent that zips!”
The rain is freezing, hard, and mean. My sister can really be full of shit sometimes.
“Let me help you,” Search and Rescue says, turning his miner’s light back on. His voice is honeyed, even when shouting over the rain.
Now soaked to the bone, I wrap my arms around myself and nod at the ruins of my camp. “Yes, you’re off to a wonderfully helpful start.”
A gust of wind almost lifts me off the ground. S&R catches me with both arms. In the fraction of a second that he’s holding me, my body betrays me. Despite the situational impossibility, something inside me acknowledges that he’s giving end-of-summer-college-fling-best-sex-you’ve-ever-had vibes.
“Let go!” I decide to tell him. “You are wreckingeverything.”
“Look,” my brave and bumbling hero says. “I have one job, and I take it seriously. In extreme conditions, like this storm, events often fail to unfold according to plan—”
