Under the Magnolia (8 page)

Wes awoke with Addie sprawled across
his chest, snoring lightly. Every exhalation tickled his neck, and he
smiled as he shifted her slowly and carefully until he could
extricate himself without disturbing her.

There were no windows in the break
room to help gauge the passage of time, and he wasn't sure he trusted
his internal clock, not under the circumstances. A glance at his
watch told him that it was just after six, and he tilted his head,
listening to the quiet. It would seem the storm had blown over.
Assuming they could quickly find a seaworthy boat, they could be back
on the mainland in an hour.

He watched the gentle rise and fall
of Addie's chest as he pulled his boots back on and tightened the
laces. She was gorgeous, smart, and so stubborn she'd argue with a
fence post. It was a deadly combination, and all of the reasons he'd
had for not asking her out before now seemed ridiculous and
overblown, especially in light of the way they'd spent the night. He
hated to think of the time they'd missed, time he could have spent
figuring out everything she ever wanted and giving it to her.

Of course, his mother would say he
was counting his chickens before they'd hatched, assuming that they
were going anywhere at all. Twelve hours of moony, longing looks and
one night of scorching sex didn't make for matrimony.

He stifled a choking cough and stood
abruptly, reaching for his pants.
Matrimony
?
They hadn't even started the
dating
yet. Sure, they'd known each other forever and a day, but he didn't
know what her favorite color was, or how she felt about kids, or any
of the things she wanted to do before she died.

The woman had broken his head.

A soft noise drew his attention back
to the couch, where Addie stirred sleepily. Both hands went over her
head as she stretched, her eyes popping open when her hands
encountered the arm of the couch. Her gaze darted around the room
before falling on him, and her expression cleared. "Hey."

"Good morning," he smiled
as he tugged on his boots then glanced up. "Sounds like the
storm might be over. Want to go up and have a look?"

Addie tossed the blanket aside and
laughed self-consciously when she realized she was still naked. She
snatched up the discarded bathrobe and wrapped it around her body
with a shiver. "Maybe I should get some clothes on, first. My
shoes, especially, if there's glass up there."

"Go ahead and gather all of
your stuff," he told her, strapping on his belt. "If it's
cleared up, we're getting out of here. With the amount of rain we
probably got, the bridge will still be flooded out, but there's no
reason we can't take a boat."

"If we can
find
a boat." She rose to her feet and smiled. "I'll meet you
upstairs."

"I've got a better idea. Why
don't you look through the emergency supplies and have an energy bar
while I fetch your clothes?"

She opened her mouth—to
protest, it looked like—but she closed it again and smiled.
"Okay. Thanks."

"Excellent. You'll need your
strength for later, I think." He grinned and left before she
could throw something at him.

Wes found himself whistling as he
walked down to the laundry room. Getting Addie to agree with him
might have been a small victory, at best, but he'd take what he could
get. He checked the dryers, finally finding the one with her clothes
in it. They were still a little damp, but the electricity didn't
appear to have been restored yet.

"You might have to go naked,
after all," he told her as he nudged the door back open upon his
return. "Your clothes didn't get dry."

The look Addie gave him was
downright dangerous. Her hands landed on the belt of her recently
donned bathrobe and started to untie it again. "Naked, huh?"
The fabric gaped open a little at the neck, revealing the smooth
swell of one breast. "Really?"

Maybe the clothes weren't dry, but
his mouth was. He turned his back and barely glanced over his
shoulder at her. "You can check them," he told her, moving
back far enough to lay the bundle of clothing on the couch. "But
they're still pretty...damp."

Her robe landed over his shoulder.
"I guess I'll just have to live with being a little bit wet."

He fought a groan. The last thing he
needed was to get caught up in her again, especially when he had work
to do. "You could make a preacher cuss, you know that?"

At least the rustle of fabric
attested to the fact that she was getting dressed, damp clothes or
no. "What do you mean
could
?
Don't you remember when I got chased out of the church for the frog
fiasco?"

Wes laughed. "Brother Daniels
always
was
a little too worldly. You weren't living here when he ran off with
the church treasurer, were you? I'm sure your granny told you all
about it."

"She might have," Addie
agreed, sounding amused. "You know she called me every week with
all the gossip."

Which meant Granny must have told
her why Wes had moved from Atlanta back to Carter's Bay. "Then I
guess you've heard all the tragedy of my broken engagement and the
heartbreak that led me to flee big city life in favor of a simple,
small-town existence." He rolled his eyes.

"Heartbreak?" Her voice
was light as she walked around the couch, fully clothed. "Gran
said you couldn't bear to be away from her pecan pie. Seemed
believable to me, considering that you can eat a whole damn one by
yourself."

He gave her what he hoped was his
most dashing, knee-melting grin. "It's likelier she didn't want
you to know I was seeing other women."

Addie gave an unladylike snort. "How
could you
not
have been? They always threw themselves at you, and I never noticed
you doing much dodging."

Wes
had
done his fair share of dodging, but Addie seemed to like the idea of
him as a lady-killing Lothario, so he let it lie. "I had to find
some way to kill the pain of your rejection," he teased.

She bent down to tighten the laces
on her boots and then rose, picking up her bag as she did. "I'll
soothe your ego later, sweetheart. For now, let's go see how much of
this island is left."

He made a face at her and lifted the
bright red emergency bags from the table. "You're a smartass,
Addie Jo." He held the door open for her. "It's probably
been at least twenty-four hours since you've heard that, though,
right?"

Addie just winked at him and started
up the stairs.

The devastation in the lobby was an
indication of how bad things would be on the rest of the island.
Addie picked her way across the broken glass, her eyes taking in
debris that had blown in through the decimated windows. "The
fact that the building's still standing is a good sign." She
poked carefully at the wobbly front door. "The winds must have
dropped down before it hit."

Wes snorted. "Either that, or
it veered away from us, and there are worse places up the coast."

"It could have." She moved
out onto the front porch, and her brown eyes surveyed the
sand-scattered drive and the downed trees around them with a cool,
scientific detachment. "Damn, I should have been at home with my
equipment."

"You were busy, Addie." He
stepped past her, his boots crunching on glass and small, sodden
branches. A wrought-iron café table rested, upended, against
one edge of the porch, and he tapped her shoulder and pointed to a
golf cart sitting low in the branches of a live oak. "Finding a
boat that'll still float might be trickier than I thought."

"The fact that the water
probably rose a half mile won't help things." She sighed and
glanced at him. "Ready for a long morning?"

He raised an eyebrow at her as he
tried to puzzle out her words. "The water doesn't look half a
mile higher today to me."

"Half mile inland," she
clarified. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if the storm surge
height on the island was ten feet. If this plantation weren't so high
above the high-tide line, it would have been wiped out decades ago."

"Ah." That made more
sense. He took a deep breath and nodded his head toward the small
marina. "We can check over here first. If we have to try the
park, then we're probably out of luck."

He waved Addie down the steps in
front of him, being careful to watch her steps, ready to catch her if
she lost her footing on the glass-strewn path. Part of him still
wanted to be alone with her, but he knew they needed to get back to
the mainland. They both had work to do.

Chapter Five

They found a boat that had probably
started out a good half mile from where they ran across it. Wes
seemed confident it would get them across the bay.

And the fact that I'm ready to
start bailing doesn't mean I don't trust you, Wes.
She watched as he maneuvered the boat toward the mainland with
practiced ease, using the sight of him struggling with the barely
sputtering motor to distract her from the fact that her beloved Jeep
was still behind them, possibly wrapped around a tree.
If
it's lucky.

The storm surge hadn't been nearly
as bad as she'd feared, which made her think the hurricane had
decreased in intensity instead of simply veering off course. Wes was
even able to find a place to steer and land the boat, though the
usual docks were, for the most part, completely submerged under the
water.

He climbed out with enviable grace,
taking a moment to tie off to a small tree before reaching out a hand
to her. "Up you go."

She handed him the heavy bag at her
feet instead and scrambled out of the boat by herself. "I'm
going to need to find someone to give me a ride out to my house to
check on things."

Wes peered the stand of trees in
front of them. "It's not that far to the station. I could pick
up another car and drive you home. Or get Howie or somebody to do
it."

It was tempting to agree, but she
wasn't sure she'd be willing to let him leave again. Nothing short of
her house being leveled was going to distract her from the temptation
to strip him naked again and try to recreate her vision, this time in
her bed.

Picking up her bag, she shot Wes a
smile. "I'll find a ride. You've got things to do, and I want
you to get right on about doing them. You can come over to my place
tonight. There probably won't be electricity, but you requested
candles anyway, didn't you?"

"Mmm, and sexy music." His
answering smile was sinful. "I'll handle the flowers and wine."

"Skip the flowers," she
advised with a laugh. "Chocolate is better."

"Done."

Wes led her through the trees,
though she knew the way herself, and gave her one last, lingering
kiss when they reached the east end of Birch Street. "Be
careful."

"I will."

"Call me if you need me."

"I will."

Wes headed off toward the police
station while Addie continued down the street, passing by Mr.
O'Malley's drugstore. The evening janitor from the local high school
stood outside, smoking a cigarette. "'Mornin', Miss Gardner."

"Hey, Stu." Addie smiled
at him. "Don't suppose you've got your truck around here,
somewhere? Officer Saxon saved me from the island, but we left my
Jeep to die a horrible death somewhere in the state park."

He nodded and dropped his cigarette,
crushing it under his heel. Then, with a quick glance at her, he
knelt and picked up the extinguished butt. "Yes, ma'am." He
brushed his lank brown hair out of his eyes. "I'd be happy to."

"Thanks." She followed him
past the drug store to the little parking lot behind the hardware
store. Most of the windows were still boarded up, and debris littered
the street and sidewalk, but on the whole it wasn't nearly as bad as
she'd feared.

She waved to one of her students as
she turned the corner, smiling at the half-hearted wave he threw her
in reply before returning to his task of gathering up branches from
the sidewalk in front of his mother's hair salon. Stu's beat up old
blue truck was parked in the corner of the lot closest to the
hardware store.