Windswept (10 page)

“Straighten up! Straighten up! Ten degrees to port!” Mia cried from the bow.

He waited for the crunch of hull against reef.

“Ten degrees to port,” Meredith echoed in a shaky voice.

The reef was thundering now, swallowing them up, the boat bouncing in the turbulent waters of the narrow pass. He gripped the chart table with both hands and watched the depth-sounder plunge. “Thirty feet…twenty…” he called out. “Fifteen…”

Serendipity’s
keel was five feet deep, and the chart showed ten feet at low tide. Plenty of water — theoretically.

“Back five!” Mia called.

The stern lurched sideways with an errant wave. It was like stumbling into a boxing ring where two prizefighters — the ocean and the reef — were duking it out, and all
Serendipity
could do was duck the punches — or try.

“Mia!” Meredith yelped.

He didn’t hear Mia’s answer because the fight escalated until they were in a deafening arena. The waves rushed. The rigging creaked. The wind moaned and—

Shhhhmmm.
From one moment to the next, the noise faded to a murmur astern.
Serendipity
was through the pass and into the sheltered bay.

“I see the mooring!” Mia called with a heaven-be-praised note in her voice.

The boat glided forward, and he popped up onto the deck just in time to see Mia catch a white mooring ball. The boat glided to a graceful stop as Meredith let the sheets loose, and that was it. They were in.

He sat down hard, heart still pumping in double time.

Mia clutched the mooring line so tightly, it dug into her palms. Long after she looped it around a cleat in a double figure eight, she kept right on clutching, because they had made it.
Serendipity
was safe.

She tipped her head back, found Orion in the sky, and muttered a little thank you to whatever god or ghosts had let them squeeze into that tiny, sheltered bay. Pretending her heart wasn’t beating halfway out of her chest, she examined the bay as if she sailed through narrow passes with no engine as backup in the middle of the night all the time.

God, they’d done it. They really had.

The bay was theirs, and theirs alone. A high ridge of land curved around that little scoop of water, protecting
Serendipity
from the wind, the waves, and from the view of casual passersby.

She’d barely dropped the mainsail and jumped into the cockpit when her sister caught her in a hug.

“We did it,” Meredith murmured. There wasn’t a trace of triumph in her voice, only relief.

“Yeah, we did it.”

The two of them stood there, hanging on to each other like they hadn’t done since first or second grade, and it struck her that this was what her granddad meant by getting back in touch. Not just with the big, wide world, but with each other. Ever since college, they’d taken two separate paths, but now… It was like coming home after a long, long time away.

Home.
Serendipity
. She sniffed a little into her sister’s shoulder.

“Grandpa would be proud,” Meredith whispered. Her eyes shone when she pulled back.

Mia nodded. Yeah, he would be. “Of both of us.” That part was important to say, because Meredith, for all her accomplishments, still needed every reminder she could get.

Then Mia remembered it wasn’t just her and her sister standing there. Ryan stood quietly to one side, looking a little bashful and a lot curious, like a merman studying human ways.

A very buff, very quiet merman with emerald eyes that said,
Mortal sailor, you have done well.

Time jumped a little, and suddenly she was wrapped around him in a hug that had no beginning and no end. And for the first time since the craziness of the day started, eons ago, she felt like maybe, just maybe, things would be all right. Which just went to show how muddled her mind was, because things were absolutely, positively, not all right.

Something shifted by her elbow, and she drew reluctantly back from Poseidon — er, Ryan — to find her sister lowering the inflatable kayak over the side.

“What are you doing?”

Meredith walked the kayak to the stern. “I’m going ashore.”

“You’re what?” she and Ryan cried at the same time.

Meredith tied the kayak off and headed to the cabin, stuffing a few things in a backpack. “The boat is safe here, and you need to rest. But I need to find out what’s going on.”

Mia blinked. Her sister had just undergone one of those superwoman transformations she managed from time to time, going from uncertain, second-guessing Meredith to cool-calm-and-collected Meredith, the way she did when she headed out to work. Typical Meredith: a woman who could handle anything — blood and guts, crying babies, anything but the mess of bad memories in her mind.

“I’ll call Celeste,” Meredith started, already dialing, “and ask her to pick me up. She’ll know what to do, who to go to.” She held up a hand and spoke into the phone. “Hello, Celeste? It’s Meredith…”

Mia glanced toward shore. It wasn’t very far, and there was a narrow track up the bluff they’d been up last time they were here. She could barely think straight. Maybe Meredith was right. But if her sister left now…

She glanced at Ryan. Maybe he was thinking along the same lines, because the minute she looked up, he looked away. A few renegade nerve endings tingled, but the rest just lurched. If Meredith left, the two of them would be alone together, and sooner or later, they’d have to shovel away the dirt pile she’d allowed to build up between them. God, was she really ready to face that?

“Come on, hop in.” Meredith strapped on her backpack and motioned to the kayak.

Mia blinked.
She
was supposed to be the one who could come to snap decisions while her sister wavered between a thousand pros and cons.

“Paddle me to shore, then paddle back so you have the kayak, just in case,” Meredith said.

Which made sense, given that the dinghy had been sunk by criminals intent on killing her a couple of hours ago.

Suddenly Mia’s whole body felt like lead. God, she was tired. Really, really tired.

“I’ll go,” Ryan said, putting a hand on her arm.

She closed her eyes, feeling so, so close to saying yes. But getting her sister to land was her job. After all, she was the one who had gotten them into this mess. She’d better be the one getting them out, no matter how tempting it was to look for a hero to do the dirty work.

“I got it,” she said.

“You sure?”

The same question she asked her sister once they’d paddled ashore and stood on firm ground once again. “You sure about this, Mer?”

Meredith nodded. “I got this, and Celeste will help. But what about you? Are you sure?” She tilted her head toward the boat and Ryan, who stood sentinel at the stern as he had from the second they’d pushed off.

“I’m not sure of anything right now,” Mia sighed, trying not to look his way.

Meredith studied her. “I’m worried about you.”

“I’m worried about the boat.”

“The boat will be fine. But you’ve been through a lot.”

Mia nearly laughed, because her sister didn’t know the half of it. “I’ll be fine.”

“I suppose you do have a bodyguard,” Meredith said with a sly smile. “A pretty formidable one, too.”

She sighed, not quite sure if Ryan was a problem or a solution.

“Plus, I figure you guys can use a little space,” Meredith added.

“Space?” Things had seemed clearer when Tall, Dark, and Hunksome was a thousand miles away and much, much easier to hate.

“He is a cop, right?”

“A cop out of his jurisdiction by about five thousand miles.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Meredith whispered, catching her in a goodbye hug.

Mia wondered whether her sister meant she’d figure out what to do about the bad guys after her, or what to do with the good guy she wasn’t sure she was ready to face. But either way, she allowed herself a minute of comfort, too. This was the closest they’d gotten to a sisterly heart-to-heart in a long time, and it felt good.

“Get some sleep,” Meredith said. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

And just like that, her sister was off, up the hill and out of sight, leaving Mia blinking back an out-of-the-blue wave of tears and clutching the kayak paddle like it was an anchor or compass or something — anything — that would get her out of this mess.

Ryan watched Mia paddle back the same way he’d watched her paddle to shore: like a hawk, because all she needed now was another stroke of crap luck, like the inflatable kayak popping a hole or a submarine attack or God knows what other challenge might crop up in her day.

And man, it had been a hell of a day.

She’d hugged her sister goodbye like they were parting for a lifetime and not for a night. He knew that feeling well — that we’ve-been-to-hell-and-back feeling he’d always assumed only cops and military guys got after really close calls. That feeling of having run a gauntlet and barely making it out the other side.

But from the looks of it, civilians could get that feeling, too. Sisters.

He watched Mia glide silently back through the water, a dark splotch in the silvery bay, wondering the whole time how he’d ever been fool enough to let her out of his life. Wondering how the hell he was going to get her back into it, too, because what woman could climb into a kayak and flip her ponytail over her shoulder like she lived this kind of adventure — or misadventure — every day?

The kayak bumped the hull of the little sailboat, and he reached down for the line.

“You been here the whole time?” she asked, climbing up the stern ladder.

“Nah,” he lied.

Technically, he could argue that he’d spent most of the time pacing, or at least as much as a man could pace across thirty feet of deck. He didn’t like her being out alone in the dark, even with the moon providing some light. He’d popped into the cabin once, too, just to take it all in: the idea of two sisters living in a tiny floating home, thousands of miles away from everything familiar and safe. He’d thumped a couple of bulkheads, too, assuring himself the boat was sturdy. When you were used to hundreds of feet of solid Navy steel, a little boat like
Serendipity
seemed ridiculously fragile. His palm bounced back, though, telling him the little boat was plenty solid, all right.

The pictures hung around the cabin said the same thing. They were like a timeline that showed where the little boat had been and with whom. The wise old salt in the big picture hung in the salon must be the grandfather, and the couple of smiling guys in the more recent pictures must be the cousins who’d brought the boat down to the Caribbean. There was a capable-looking chick wearing a bikini under a half-zipped foul weather jacket, and though the waves in the background looked bigger than a house, she was grinning like it was the greatest day ever. It was one of those big smiles aimed not so much at the camera lens but at a special someone’s heart.

Kind of like the way Mia used to smile at him, once upon a time.

Right now, though, Mia was biting her lip, keeping her head down, and avoiding his gaze.

“You okay?”

“I’m good,” she mumbled.

Right. Good. That’s why her hands were shaking as she tied off the line.

He took her by both hands, sat her down in the cockpit, and sank down opposite her, wondering where to start.

“You want to talk?” he tried.

“No.”

Mia shook her head but didn’t budge an inch, which he figured meant this was one of those no-means-yes moments. Not a good thing, because talking… Well, he had a lot in common with a brick wall when it came to that kind of thing.

He scraped his fingers through his hair. Rubbed his face. Wished he could grab a quick shower, or shave, or even swim — anything to avoid the inevitable Talk.

Mia started to rise. “I better check the mooring line.”

He tugged her back down. “Mia—”

“Really, I better—”

“We have to talk, Mia.”

She stared silently at her feet. He stared, too, because
We have to talk
was about as much as he could summon up. He looked around, wishing for a Cyrano who might whisper the right lines in his ear.

No Cyrano. No buddy, which figured, because it was his buddies who’d gotten him into this mess to begin with.

Which made as good a starting point as any, he supposed.

“That morning in New York…” The morning that started so well and ended so badly. He’d kissed her goodbye, ending their fourth perfect weekend together, and headed off to face yet another Monday, yet another week in what had become a crushing grind. “I wasn’t expecting you to be the instructor at that refresher course.”

She laughed, low and bitter. “Believe me, I wasn’t expecting it either.”

He hung his head a little. Obviously, his bright idea not to bring work into their precious time together had been a mistake, because she had no idea he was a cop in the dive squad and he had no idea she was an instructor until they found out the hard way.

He’d hauled his ass into work, replaying her soft touch and her
Hurry home to me, sailor
look all the way. They’d squeezed in another half hour of lovemaking that morning and only forced themselves apart after the snooze alarm went for the fourth time, because who needed breakfast when you could start the day like
that
?

But work was work, and a guy did what he had to do. Which meant meeting his unit and heading over to a pool for one of those useless refresher courses deemed necessary in the wake of the accident a month before.

“Like a refresher course would have saved Lou and Dennis when the shit hit the fan,” Ken had said as he stripped down in the locker room and pulled out his trunks.

Everyone had murmured in agreement, except maybe Ryan, because he was leaning back against a locker, eyes shut, only half there because he was still basking in the glow Mia always left him with.

“At least the instructor is cute,” Ken sighed. “Did you see her?”

“I think Hayes is dreaming about her right now,” Murphy joked.

He cracked one eye open. “Hmm?”