Chapter 9

Sorry I didn’t answer your call. I don’t really use my cell phone for that.

-Winnie to Steel

Winnie

After checking once more on my children, I put my phone in my pocket and walked into the hospital with my name badge clipped to my scrub pants and Steel at my back.

He was directly behind me mostly because the halls of the hospital were jam packed with people. The halls had been turned into makeshift hospital wards. People were literally in every single inch of available space.

Some guy flew out from behind one of the hastily put together paper partitions and nearly knocked me over.

Steel had me before I so much as stumbled when the man nearly took me out.

“Sorry, sorry,” the man, obviously a harried nurse, apologized.

Then he saw my name badge and grinned. “Hi! My name is Tex!”

I blinked. “Hi, Tex.”

“Who are you?”

His eyes went from mine to Steel’s, and then back again. “Yum.”

I started to grin as I said, “I’m here to meet up with the hospital staffer who is doing the emergency staff orientations. Do you happen to know where I should be going?”

Tex snapped his fingers.

“Oh!” Tex said. “That’s me! That’s so me! I’m here intercepting people to point them in the right direction.” He leveled me with a look. “This is a fucking nightmare, by the way. Oh, I’m also not supposed to curse, so we’ll just fucking overlook that, okay?”

My lips twitched, and I felt Steel’s hand tighten on my hip.

I looked at him over my shoulder.

His beard was dotted with raindrops, and I wanted to lick them off.

I turned back around and sighed.

“So, what do you want me to do, and where can I put my stuff?”

Tex’s smile was wide.

“You can put it in the breakroom, but honestly, we really don’t have anywhere for you to put anything. Just remember what hours you work and write them down. Send them in when you leave to the email address that we sent out to all the volunteers. Make sure you specify what you do. Now, where I want you is more of a tough question. You’re a paramedic?”

He eyed my name badge. “Yes, sir.”

Tex’s grin was wide. “Not sir. I prefer just Tex. I’m a California guy. We don’t say sir and ma’am there. Now, you have your own escort?”

I looked over my shoulder at Steel again.

“Well,” I turned back around, trying to ignore the way Tex wouldn’t take his eyes off of Steel. “He’s a cop and is here because he’s helping with search and rescue…”

“What would help tremendously is for a person to be out in the field triaging these patients, directing them to where they need to be.” He looked at the man at my back. Steel didn’t say a word. “Could you take her? You’re going to be in the rescue epi-center anyway. It would work. You could tell the responders whether any of the patients actually need to go to the hospital. And if they don’t, then you can direct them to a shelter where they can be checked out there. Would that be okay?”

Would spending more time with Steel be okay? Hell yes!

Did Steel want me to be spending more time with him? Hell no.

I could tell that he was on edge. Something was bothering him, and I didn’t know what.

“I don’t know…” I hedged.

Just then, a fight broke out behind Steel’s back between a mother of a child on one side of the hallway, and the patient in the bed directly across from them.

“No!” one woman screamed. “I will not allow you to be seen in front of my son. You cut us off on the way into the parking lot. My son has a broken arm.”

“I have a fucking broken leg!” the man countered.

Then he emphasized his anger by picking up the IV pole and launching it.

Steel was there before the pole could make contact with the woman.

He had it in his hand and was turning to the man who’d thrown the pole. “I realize,” Steel said with a deathly silent voice. “That you are hurting. I realize that you’re scared, but you’re arguing with a woman over a child. You’re packed in here like sardines, so unless you want to be tossed out on your ass, I suggest you stop actin’ like a dumbass and control yourself. Capiche?”

The man nodded once, and Steel placed the IV pole back where it was before turning to the woman.

“Your son may have a broken arm, but this man has a goddamn bone sticking out of his leg.”

The woman’s eyes widened.

“That’s a medical emergency.”

The woman didn’t say anything.

“Stay away from him. Wait your turn.”

Then he turned back to me.

His face was hard and unyielding.

“You’re coming with me,” he said through clenched teeth. “This place is a disaster. There’s no way in hell you’d be able to protect yourself in all of this. If he lets you come with me, and you still get paid, I think you should do it.”

I licked my lips, then turned back to where Tex was standing in the middle of the cluttered hallway, eyes wide. “That’s fine with me. I’m going to give you my number, though, so we can coordinate, okay?”

And that was how I found myself going along with Steel.

Let’s just say he wasn’t very happy about it.

***

An hour later, and we found ourselves in the middle of a partially flooded parking lot after spending hours trying to get into downtown. The roads were terrible. Most of them were unpassable. There was so much debris, and crap in the road that the ones that weren’t blocked by water were still nearly impossible to utilize.

And this parking lot was one of the better parking lots, according to the man who was directly in front of me, talking strategy with Steel.

“You’re one of the first ten boats here in this area, so we’d like to get you out on the water as soon as we can. We’re always going to have someone staying behind since the water is still rising. If it gets too close to your truck, we’ll have someone move it.”

Steel nodded. “Fine with me. How are they getting the boats into the water?”

“Some are just backing them up there,” he pointed to the parking lot’s entrance that almost descended straight into the water like a boat ramp would.

Only, it wasn’t a boat ramp. It was really one of those god-awful driveways that you’d normally scrape the bottom of your car on as you were pulling into it.

“Sounds fine…” he looked over to me. “You know how to drive a boat?”

I shook my head. “Negative.”

His lips twitched.

That ‘negative’ had come straight from his mouth every time I’d asked to stop on the way down here.

The one and only time he’d deigned to stop was when I told him I was going to pee on his leather seats if he didn’t find me accommodations pronto.

And I was fairly sure he hadn’t even gotten out of the truck to pee at all our entire trip.

In fact, I was eyeing the waders he’d slipped on as we’d gotten out of the truck and wondered if he’d gone at all since we’d left. Maybe he had a catheter placed, who knew?

“You got somewhere she can stay?” Steel suddenly asked. “They told her to go to the command tent. That this one?”

The man nodded and then gestured for us to follow.

We did, and I tried not to look down at the disgusting water.

At least I’d brought boots—at Steel’s urging.

They were cute, pink, and neoprene. I’d spent about eighty-five dollars on them the week before I’d found out about my husband cheating on me. I’d also bought the kids a pair—which had been the last big purchase for them that I’d been able to make since.

“Yeah, here’s as good as any,” the man informed me. “That’s what we have set up so far. This is the central hub, so they’re bringing everyone here first. If you want, you can set your stuff up in that corner and we’ll start funneling them toward you.”

And that was how the next four hours went until another paramedic, this one from Texas, came to relieve me.

I’d had to pee for the last hour, and it was the best thing ever to see the beautiful redhead.

“Hi!” she chirped. “I’m Winter. Where do you want me?”

I quickly explained what was going on, and then I bowed out. “I have to pee something fierce. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to head out and find a bathroom.”

Winter gestured with a thumb up. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

I quickly hurried out of the tent and found the first official person I saw. It was a man in a cowboy hat.

“Excuse me,” I said.

The man turned, and I was struck with a feeling deep in my gut.

Holy shit, the man was hot.

Like a Viking. And oh, man. His beard! That cowboy hat! Yum. A Viking cowboy. I never knew I had those kinds of fetishes, but here we were. I had the hots for a biker cop, and now there was this really yummy looking Viking cowboy…who also happened to be a cop.

The shiny badge pinned on his shirt said so.

Texas Ranger.

Rawr.

“Yeah?”

“Do you know where the nearest bathrooms are?”

He studied me for a few short seconds, then nodded.

“Yeah, they’re that way.” He pointed across the parking lot that we were in.

I grinned. “Thank you, Mr. Texas Ranger.”

The Texas Ranger winked. “Griffin.”

I held up a thumb.

It didn’t matter how hot the guy was. I had to pee, and peeing trumped checking out hot guys…at least at this stage in my life.

I rushed as fast as my legs would allow me to rush in the direction that he’d pointed, and made it about halfway across the parking lot to the Boot Barn front doors when I nearly went down flat on my ass.

A man that was leaning against the glass doors started to chuckle, causing me to look up from my crouch.

I’d been able to save myself from hitting the water, but just barely.

By doing so, I’d had to plant my hands onto the grimy asphalt that was covered in about an inch of water.

I grimaced and stood up, carefully checking out my legs.

I felt fine.

In fact, the entire day, my legs had done exactly what I’d wanted them to do—move.

I had no weakness, which was a miracle in and of itself, and I was able to hold my weight.

I would’ve fist pumped had the guy not still been watching me.

As I shuffled more carefully to the front doors of Boot Barn, I stayed as far away from the man—who seemed vaguely familiar—standing at the door as I could.

He didn’t look creepy, really, but he gave off a creepy vibe, which meant that I would stay away from him as much as I could.

I opened the door and felt my heart fall when I saw that there was water inside as well as outside.

“Hi,” I said to the man behind the counter. “I need to use the facilities.”

The older man smiled.

He was old enough to be my grandfather.

“All the way to the back of the store and to the left. If you’re hungry, I have some food out on the counter, too,” he said. “Cajun food, jambalaya, red beans and rice. Shrimp. You name it, it’s in there. I told my Mimi to cook it all up since it was going to go bad anyway with the freezer being off. You’re more than welcome to a cup.”

I grinned and gave him a heartfelt smile. “I’ll take a look. I can smell it from here. It smells amazing.”

The old man winked. “Go on, dear.”

I did, stopping first at the bathroom before washing my hands and pulling out my phone.

Me (7:12 PM): Are you back yet?

Me (7:16 PM): I’m gonna grab a cup of this yummy smelling jambalaya for you. I’ll have it in the tent with me if you get back before I decide to eat it.

Smiling to myself, I looked around for something to serve the food with and realized there wasn’t anything.

I eyed the cups that were standing in a stack next to the metal tins of food and shrugged.

Scooping it up in the cup, I juggled both cups and made my way out into the main room again.

This time the creepy man was there talking to the older man.

My stomach clenched as I made my way past the racks of clothes to the front doors.

I smiled at the old man whose eyes were on me.

I intentionally kept my gaze from skittering to the creepy dude.

“Thank you so much for the food. It’s amazing.”

The old man nodded and waited until I was nearly out of the door before returning his gaze back to the man in front of him.

“Time to go, son,” I heard as the door closed fully behind me.

I shivered as I made my way back to the parking lot.

I’d just decided that I would need to wear some better socks in the morning with the boots I was wearing—wondering if Steel had any that he’d let me borrow—when I heard water sloshing behind me.

My stomach started to roil.

I hastened my steps, coming to the conclusion that I shouldn’t have come all the way over here in the dark, alone, without an escort. That was rather stupid, and I knew better.

When I was younger, a few weeks shy of nineteen, and walking home from school with Conleigh, I’d had a similar experience.

I’d gotten off shift and had immediately walked over to pick my daughter up from the campus daycare. It was nearly six in the evening, and it being the first or second day after daylight savings time ended, I’d forgotten how dark it got so early.

I’d walked with Conleigh as fast as I could, and had managed to make it three quarters of the way home before realizing that we were being followed.

The man doing the following had been slick. I hadn’t even heard or seen him until we were turning the street to our apartment complex.

Instead of going inside my own apartment and leading him to the front door of where I stayed alone with my young child, I went into the laundry mat where quite a few of the young residents had been doing their clothes at the time.

I’d swallowed my heart when I’d arrived inside to find the man standing there watching me.

Two days after the incident, I’d found out that the same man had raped another young mom on a walk home much the same as I had been. I’d been crucial in identifying him during the investigation, and he’d gone to jail for ten years.

Shivering at the thought of him getting out soon, I chanced a look behind me to see that no one was there any longer.

Then I looked forward and stopped.

The reason he wasn’t behind me any longer was because he was now in front of me.

What the fuck?

I froze a few inches away from a useless light pole that was about eighty yards away from the command tent and stared, heart in my throat.

“I’m sure you don’t remember me…”

I shook my head. “No.”

He laughed then. “Funny, because you’re all I’ve been able to think about for a very long time.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

I didn’t know the man standing in front of me. But then again, the only part of him that I could see was a silhouette from the lights around the command tent at his back.

My stomach was churning.

When I’d gone through that incident with that rapist all those years ago, I’d made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t ever put myself into a situation similar to that ever again.

Yet, I’d done it.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“I don’t know who you are,” I admitted. “I’m sorry.”

He may seem vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him at all.

“I guess you wouldn’t know this face,” the man continued. “Not since it’s been put through the ringer these last few years.”

I opened my mouth to say something but couldn’t find the words.

The more he spoke, the more he became familiar to me, yet I couldn’t quite place why.

“Well, I have to be getting back to work,” I gestured, moving slightly to the side to try to avoid him.

He stepped with me.

Fear shot down my throat as I tried to calm my breathing.

“I’m not done…”

“Yes,” a cruel voice replied behind the man. “You are.”

Steel.

Everything inside of me loosened.

I was okay. I was going to be okay.

I looked over the man’s shoulder to see not just Steel standing there, but the man with the cowboy hat, too. The Texas Ranger.

While the Texas Ranger wasn’t paying attention to me, but instead the man, I hurried around him and bee-lined straight for Steel.

Steel caught my wrist the moment I made it to him and practically shoved me behind him.

The move jostled the food in my hands, and I suddenly realized that throughout the encounter I’d managed to hang onto it and not drop it.

And that, right there, was the telltale sign of just how comfortable I was with Steel. I knew, from the bottom of my heart, that he would protect me. If he was there, nothing, and I do mean absolutely nothing, would happen to me.

He’d protect me to his last dying breath if he had to.

I chanced a look up at the man at Steel’s side, and my belly tightened. He didn’t look too happy, either.

“Who are you?” Steel rumbled.

I pressed against Steel’s back almost automatically. Then thought better of it.

Before I could pull away from him, though, he reached around and placed his hand on my thigh, right under my butt, and stilled me.

The two cups of still steaming hot food were now pressed against his back—which I just now realized he wasn’t wearing a rain slicker any longer—and he had to feel it. Yet he held firm as he spoke to the man that had downright terrified me. His hand never strayed up or down, but the position his hand was in was almost intimate.

Other things inside of me started to throb.

I licked my lips, then placed my forehead against the soft material of his t-shirt, directly in the middle of his shoulder blades.

Then I inhaled and forgot what I was doing.

He smelled so good.

Laundry detergent—Tide, the same as mine—a spicy smell that was likely his deodorant, and sweat.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Yet, it did things to me inside that I hadn’t felt in quite a long time—not even with my husband.

Matt, after a while, had always felt like a job for me. Something I had to do to keep him interested—which obviously hadn’t worked, so who was I kidding?

But just standing there, pressed against Steel’s body while he spoke to a man in front of him, I realized what I was missing with Matt after a while.

The intense attraction.

This feelings that I had for Steel? They had the potential to be overwhelming.

Hell, it was damn near at that point already, and I’d only just realized my desire for him over a few weeks.

None of those times that I spent with him, though, were anything I could quite point my finger at as to why I was feeling this for him.

There had been no overt advances on his part, and hell, sometimes I wasn’t even sure he liked me.

Yet, the longer he stayed there, his hand on the curve of my ass, the more I realized that the attraction to him was only getting stronger and stronger.

The man at Steel’s side shifted, and I heard him start to speak.

“Civilians are being moved out by bus to a different location,” the Texas Ranger, Griffin, explained. “The next bus out, you’re on it.”

“I’m a volunteer,” he argued.

“You’re not a volunteer,” Griffin countered. “You’ve been standing outside the tent all day, and at first I thought it was because someone you knew was here, but there’s not. You’re alone, and you haven’t done a damn thing to help all day. The next bus that leaves, you’re on it.”

The bus under discussion pulled up as if Griffin had called it.

They were using the city buses to haul the people out, taking them to a temporary holding facility. Once they made room at the shelter, they’d be moved from the temporary holding facility to the newest shelter.

“I’m here with my sister.”

“Who’s your sister?” Steel questioned.

The man opened his mouth, then closed it.

“Get on the bus now,” Steel growled.

The man narrowed his eyes, his gaze scanning from the tips of Steel’s toes to the top of his head. Then took note of the arm that he had around my ass and the eyes that I now had aimed at him.

Then smiled.

“Yes, sir.”

Then he walked to the bus and got on it, all the while whistling an upbeat tune.

“Fucker has been creeping me out all damn day,” Griffin growled.

Suddenly Steel turned, and I had to raise the cups up high in the air to keep him from knocking them to the floor with the suddenness of his movements.

“Whoa,” I said, swaying slightly.

He caught me around the hip and his hands came to a rest on my sides, which were now exposed due to me lifting my arms in the air.

He squeezed lightly, making sure I was steady, and then let me go.

His eyes, though…those eyes of his said he’d rather do anything but let me go.

But the look was gone in a blink of his eyes, and his careful expression was back on my face.

“Are you okay?”

I felt his concern in the pit of my belly, and I wanted nothing more than to launch myself into his arms.

I was scared.

That man…he brought up terrible memories.

I was so lost in my own mind, my hands still in the air, that I didn’t realize when Steel’s face turned from assessing to concerned.

The cups were removed from my hands, and Steel handed them over to Griffin.

“Winnie?”

He took my arms and brought them down, curling one hand around both of mine with room to spare.

I blinked, coming back to myself, and said, “Yeah?”

That’s when I realized he’d flattened both of my hands to the hard plane of his chest.

Jesus Christ.

Now my mind was lost for an altogether different reason.

I knew that Steel was older. Hell, it was hard to miss the silvering gray hair, and the way his beard was more gray than brown at this point.

But I hadn’t really realized how in shape he was—now I knew differently. Steel was just that…steel.

His muscular chest didn’t have an ounce of fat on it.

I wondered what it looked like when he had his shirt off…

“Winnie.”

The hard, even tone of Steel’s voice had me blinking. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Are you okay?”

I nodded once, my fingertips itching to run along his chest.

“Are you sure?”

I swallowed, then nodded. “When I was nineteen, I had a close call. That guy reminded me of it is all.”

“A close call.”

I nodded.

“What kind of close call?”

“The kind where someone followed me and Conleigh home, but he didn’t actually get anything accomplished before I ducked into the laundry room of our apartment complex. The next day, the same thing happened to another girl, only she wasn’t as lucky as me.”

His eyes studied my face.

“What was his name?”

My stomach started to churn despite having Steel right there.

Every time I thought about what could’ve happened to me—to Conleigh because he hadn’t just stopped at women—my belly started to protest.

“Anderson Munnick,” I answered. “He was a…”

“A serial rapist that they could only pin one rape on,” Griffin answered. “You remember that case that rolled through Texas a few years back? Those ones that we called every single chief of police in the state of Alabama to warn?”

Steel’s hand tightened on my wrist.

“You testified.”

I nodded. “I did.”

His eyes warmed. “Good girl.”

A moment passed in between us where we stared at each other. His praise made me feel light and airy, and I wanted to bury my face in between his two perfect pecs.

“What is this?” Griffin suddenly asked.

I looked over at him studying the contents of the cup.

“Jambalaya,” I answered. “The man up there had his wife cook the contents of their freezer since their power was out and the meat was going to spoil. She cooked jambalaya, stew, and about ten different kinds of meat.”

Griffin grunted. “Smells fucking divine.”

“You can have it,” I offered, then turned to the man still holding my hands to his chest. “I brought you one, Steel.”

“Thanks,” he said, finally realizing that he was still holding me and letting go. “Are you sure you don’t want it?”

I nodded. “My appetite is gone.”

Steel studied me for a few more seconds before he nodded.

“They’re likely about to move this to higher ground,” Steel suddenly said. “The levees that are holding back the lake in town are about to break. That means when it does, this parking lot is going to be underwater. Are you ready?”

Wide-eyed, I nodded.

“But what about everyone else in the tent?”

I looked over my shoulder at the tent and noticed that there weren’t nearly as many people around as there had been when I’d first left for the bathroom.

“They’re shipping out. The new central evac point will be about a mile and a half up the road. Higher ground,” Griffin muttered, taking a cautious bite of his food.

Then he moaned.

“Oh my God. This shit is the bomb.”

He brought the cup of food up to his lips and started to drink it like one would when they chugged a beer.

I started to laugh, then shook my head and turned my gaze back to the man that was still studying me.

“I’m ready when you are.”

He nodded once. “Right.”

Then we spent the rest of the night and way into the early hours of the morning helping.

An hour after six in the morning, we finally hit Steel’s truck.

“I’m dying,” I moaned, shucking my wet boots and setting them carefully into the floorboard of the backseat.

Steel grunted. “Fucking rain. If I never see another goddamn drop of it again it’ll be too soon.”

Another raindrop hit the windshield then, causing me to laugh.

“You were saying?”

He sighed.

“These pants are fucking wet as fuck.”

He’d taken his waders off before he’d gotten into the truck, but at some point during the night, Steel had sunk into the water past his waders as he tried to rescue an elderly woman from her car.

He’d spent the rest of the night wet, but he hadn’t once complained.

Until now.

“Take them off,” I suggested. “I’ll close my delicate eyes.”

He scoffed as he reached for the waistband of his jeans. “They’re coming off whether I had your permission or not.”

My heart rate skyrocketed as I slapped my hands over my eyes.

I heard the clink of his buckle and the slide of his zipper before he cursed while he shoved the wet pants down his legs.

“Shit,” he cursed. “Can you reach my bag?”

Could I reach his bag?

“Where is it?” I questioned, still keeping my hands over my eyes even though I wanted to do nothing but open my eyes and stare at him.

He had to be naked at this point. Had to.

“It’s behind the back seat. You’ll have to crawl back there and reach behind the seat for it.

I carefully started to crawl back there without opening my eyes.

“You so owe me,” I informed him.

He started to chuckle.

“Duly noted.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how I got my first good look at the man who was, indeed, sitting in his seat buck naked.

I’d had to open my eyes to see what I was doing, and I’d turned only to get an eye full of naked Steel.

Wet, naked Steel.

Wet, naked Steel who was looking at me in his rear-view mirror.

Shit!

“Sorry!” I squeaked. “I forgot!”

He started to laugh. “I’ll take my peek at you when you change out of your wet clothes.”

And, ten minutes later when we were both dry, I wondered if he did indeed peek.

The expression on his face was void of anything telling, however.

Leaving me only to guess.

My guess is that he did look but that might only be my hopes and dreams talking.