The Stormriders Page 4

  The cold literally took Meg's breath away. She drew her scarf up over her mouth and immediately felt it go stiff with frost. Only a few dry snowflakes whirled through the air, but the wind was strong enough to threaten to knock her off her feet when it gusted. Someone had strung a lifeline—a length of bright yellow marine rope—between the office complex and the Blue Jay, which was also part of the emergency plan. In the event of a prolonged siege, the Blue Jay could be their only source of food and bottled water, and it was not impossible for a man to get lost within three feet of his own front door without a lifeline. Meg gripped it gratefully to pull herself along against the wind, and noted with a small measure of surprise that the men had managed to remember this detail without being told. Then again, considering that the Blue Jay was their only source of a great deal more than food, perhaps it wasn't surprising at all.

  She entered the vestibule of the bar, gasping and working her stiff fingers, routinely stamping her feet to restore the circulation. The drone of a country-and-western tune and the sounds of laughter were only slightly muffled by the thick door that guarded the interior. She peeled off her outer clothing, found a hook on which to hang her coat and pushed open the inner door.

  The room was thick with cigarette smoke and cooking grease, the female singer on the jukebox wailed her heart out about the man who'd done her wrong, and fully half her staff was gathered around the pool table, laughing and joking and lifting mugs of beer. Among them, of course, was Red Worthington. Meg just stood there, planted before the door with her arms crossed and her mouth set, until they noticed her.

  It took approximately thirty seconds. Then somebody began to whistle under his breath "Ding-Dong the Witch Is Dead" from The Wizard of Oz; in a moment another picked it up, and then another, until everyone around the pool table—those who weren't choking back laughter, that is—was whistling.

  Meg let them go a full chorus and then she said coldly, "I'm in no mood, gentlemen. Would someone like to tell me why, in the middle of a Phase One Emergency, I have to go combing the bars for my staff?"

  Lewis chalked up his cue. "Well, for one thing," he said, "we're not exactly your staff anymore. For another, it's lunchtime."

  Meg looked at her watch. "It is precisely 11:45 a.m. Lunch, as I recall, doesn't officially begin until noon."

  Red said, "Eight ball in the center pocket," and bent to make his shot.

  Meg reached the pool table in two strides and caught the ball before it hit the pocket. It stung her hand and elicited a loud clamor of protest from the players, but she ignored both. She faced Red with anger straining in her muscles.

  "And maybe you can tell me who gave you the authority to declare an emergency behind my back," she said.

  Red straightened up lazily. "Please, dear, not in front of the children."

  "You did it on purpose," she accused, lowering her voice only fractionally. "You knew my office would be the first to be cut off and you thought it would be cute!"

  He tried to look innocent, but it was difficult with mischief glinting in his eyes. "Hey, I didn't make the rules."

  "And I wouldn't care to bet that you're not the one who saw fit to declare an early lunch hour, too!"

  "Man does not live by bread alone. Put the ball down, sweetheart. You're holding up the game."

  Meg's hand tightened on the ball while she mentally reviewed several creative possibilities as to where to put it, and Red's eyes danced with amusement as he read her mind. Then with amazing self-control, she swept the group with a measured glance and said, "I hope you enjoyed it, fellows. Because in approximately one hour, we go to Phase Two and anyone who isn't at his post gets his walking papers. I don't care if I have to fly back from Washington personally to deliver them."

  She pushed the ball toward Red with a force that caused it to bounce off the side of the table, then she turned and stalked to the bar.

  She sat down on a stool and Maudie placed a glass of bourbon before her. Maudie, manager and proprietor of the Blue Jay, was a big woman of indeterminate age whose native heritage was evident in her broad forehead and dark skin and eyes. They said she had been a beauty in her day, but now she was merely formidable. She wore a skinning knife strapped to her waist and kept a sawed-off shotgun under the bar. Needless to say, there was very little trouble in the Blue Jay.

  Meg took a deep swallow of the bourbon, wincing a little as it went down. It was early to be drinking, but time had little meaning in this place. "Did you ever see such a bunch of shiftless, worthless sots in your life?" she demanded. "If they worked for free, we'd be overpaying them. What the hell's the matter with them, anyway?"

  Maudie, who was not known for her reticence, looked as though she'd be glad to tell her, but just then Red slid onto the stool beside Meg. "For one thing," he supplied easily, "they don't like you."

  She shot him a dark look as she lifted her glass again. "Thank you for that late-breaking news flash."

  Red slid his empty beer mug across the bar, and Maudie immediately supplied him with a fresh one. "You've got a good crew working for you, Megan," he said. "Your trouble is you just can't leave them alone and let them do their jobs.''

  She made an incredulous gesture toward the pool players.'' This is doing their jobs?"

  Red said, "Look, we've got a killer storm coming. Nobody'd blame those men if they packed up and went home to their families right now, and you couldn't stop them. But they won't. They'll stay, all knight, all day and who knows how much longer until the next shift can get in. A dozen men cramped together in that rabbit warren you call a compound for God knows how long.... If you'd just stop to think about that, you'd be ordering them to let loose and have some fun while they can, instead of giving them hell for taking an early lunch."

  And that, of course, was why Red had taken matters into his own hands. Meg's grip tightened on her glass as she tossed down another swallow of bourbon. She hated it when he was right, particularly since, when it came to people, Red was almost always right.

  Meg Forrest could work a complicated logarithm in her head, she could recite enough facts and figures to fill an encyclopedia, and she could look at a malfunctioning piece of circuitry and tell at a glance what was wrong, but when it came to the human race she was forever baffled. She did her job; she expected other people to do theirs. She saw every problem in black and white; she did not understand why no one else shared her vision. Subtlety was not a characteristic she had been born with; persuasion to her was a waste of time. She wished she had Red's ability to understand people, his humor, his charm—whatever it was about him that made people like him so much—but she simply didn't. And that hurt her as much as it frustrated her.

  But she certainly was not about to admit that to Red.

  She said, "You certainly don't make it any easier, flying in here and encouraging a mutiny in the middle of a crisis."

  He was unfazed as he lifted his beer. "Lighten up, sarge. You're not running a military barracks here, and no matter what Daddy says, not everybody was cut out to be a soldier."

  Meg scowled. Her father, the General, had been the axis about which many an argument had revolved, and Red knew he could always get to her by bringing that up. She was not going to fall into that trap today.

  She wished that bar stools were not made to fit so closely together, or that Red did not take up quite so much of his in that comfortable, sprawling way he had. His feet were hooked around the rungs on either side of the stool and his knee pressed quite unselfconsciously against hers. When she lifted her glass to drink, her arm brushed against his, and though she could have shifted away, she would not.

  She wished Dancer had never said what she had about the quickest way of getting Red out of her system. Because now, when she glanced down pointedly at Red's knee pressing against hers, all she could really see was the way his thighs strained against his jeans, and the way the denim faded over his fly. And even when Red politely rearranged his feet so that he was no longer touching her, she could s
till feel his warmth. Not even the bourbon could erase the memory of the way his skin tasted against her tongue, the tangy bite of his after-shave.

  He sipped his beer, and the movement of his arm brought his shoulder into contact with hers again. She thought he did it on purpose.

  "What are you doing drinking beer at this hour of the morning, anyway?" she said. "You know it gives you heartburn."

  "Easy to see you don't have that problem, slugger." He glanced meaningfully at the glass of bourbon. "Better eat something or you'll be falling over your own feet. Might be a while before you get another hot meal."

  Meg took a swallow of her drink. "I'm not hungry."

  "Hey, Maudie, bring us a couple of those buffalo burgers, will you? And go easy on the onions." He grinned at Meg. "Seeing as how we're going to be spending so much time in close quarters."

  ''In your dreams." She lifted the glass again.

  Red's eyes followed the movement of her hand, and she saw he was looking at her wedding band. She put her glass down quickly and fought the urge to hide her hand in her lap. "I tried to get it off," she told him. ' 'It was stuck. My finger must have swollen.''

  He smothered a grin. "Yeah, that happens in these damp tropical climates."

  She glared fixedly at his own hand, and he shrugged. "Hey, no excuses. I'm keeping mine. I hear it wards off the sharks, and it makes bad women badder to think they're doing it with a married man."

  "You're disgusting."

  He saluted her with his mug. "You taught me everything I know, babe."

  She started to push away from the bar, but he caught her arm. "Hey," he said.

  Nothing but the look in his eyes stopped her. It was quiet, sincere, stripped of all facetiousness or malice; a rare look lately but heartbreakingly familiar. He said, "I was faithful to you. All the time we were married. Even now."

  Meg's heartbeat switched gears abruptly, pumping out a slow heavy rhythm. She stared at Red, wanting to examine his eyes, but he turned his attention back to his beer and released her arm. The pressure of his fingers left a gentle imprint on her flesh beneath the sweater, like the memory of a caress. She had never had any doubts about Red's fidelity during their marriage; she knew him too well. But they had been separated six months now. He had been free, and she had endured agonies, wondering...

  He wanted her to know there had been no one else. That was what made her heart start beating so strangely, swelling so heavily in her chest. That was the first personal thing he had said to her since.. .since he had said goodbye. He wanted her to know.

  Meg forced her muscles to relax, and she settled back down on the stool again. She took another sip of bourbon to clear her tight throat. Still, it was a moment before she could speak. "Why did you tell me that?"

  He looked embarrassed, even sorry, that he had. "I don't know. Just didn't think I deserved another bum rap. No point in being blamed for something I never had the fun of doing."

  He was trying to needle her and doing a fairly good job of it. She fought back her temper. "I never," she said deliberately, "accused you of that."

  "No, just everything else you could think of. You would've gotten around to it eventually."

  "Oh, so now I'm a screeching shrew! That's a refreshing role."

  There was satisfaction in his glance. "Typecasting."

  Meg lifted her glass again, but it was empty. She set it down on the bar, hard.

  Maudie appeared at that moment with two hamburger platters, complete with a pile of greasy French fries and one limp pickle apiece. Meg nudged her glass, and Maudie took it away for a refill.

  "Water it down," Red called after her. "The lady seems to be getting a little testy."

  "You haven't seen testy yet," she warned him.

  He laughed and picked up his burger. "Believe me, I could write a book on the subject."

  Meg looked with disgust at her plate. The hamburgers weren't really made of buffalo meat, of course; they had simply earned that nickname for their tough consistency and gamy taste. But as much as she hated to admit it, Red was right: it might be a while before she got another hot meal. She picked up the hamburger and forced herself to eat, grateful when the bourbon arrived to kill the taste.

  "The first thing I'm going to do when I get home," she muttered after a time, "is check into the Georgetown Hotel and order the biggest, thickest, juiciest steak on the menu from room service."

  "Yeah, well, have one for me, babe."

  He said it casually, lifting his hamburger to his mouth again, and there was no reason the words should have gone through her like a knife. Except that in all the times she'd had that particular fantasy in the past two years—the plush, modern hotel room, the big bed with crisp white sheets, room-service trays stacked on every available surface—this was the first time she had pictured herself doing it alone. He was supposed to have been there.

  There was a lump in her throat suddenly and she put down the hamburger. Damn it, he was supposed to have been there.

  He said, "It'll be spring in Washington. Cherry blossom time."

  She struggled to put the emotion aside. It was stupid to miss a man before he was even gone. "Not for another month yet. It's still cold in March sometimes."

  "I guess so. It's been so long since I was in the lower forty-eight forget. You still going to Hawaii?"

  Another fantasy. Sun-drenched beaches, the smell of coconut oil, his naked legs beside hers on the beach blanket, sunshine glinting off his chest... That was supposed to have been their honeymoon. Was she going to spend the rest of her life stumbling over dreams of which he was a part, dreams that had never come true?

  "Yep," she said, and determinedly picked up her hamburger again. "I've got plenty of leave coming, so as soon as I check in with the office and get my gear together, I'm off to the South Pacific."

  She could feel his eyes on her, and she wondered if he was remembering, too. She did not know how she would react if she looked at him and saw her own sad memories reflected in his eyes, or worse, if she looked and saw nothing at all. So she kept her eyes fixed straight ahead.

  Silence fell.

  When she couldn't stand it anymore, Meg put down her burger, swallowed hard and said, "You're doing it again."

  "What?"

  "The look."

  "Oh. Sorry." He turned his eyes away and picked up his beer. "I was just thinking, you'll need to buy a whole new wardrobe.''

  That was not what he had been thinking and Meg knew it. But she was grateful, in a way, for the lie.

  She pushed her plate away. "If I have to smell this another minute, I'm going to throw up. Maudie, is there any pie?"

  "No pie today. I only got two hands." Maudie came to take the plate away, but not before Red helped himself to the remaining fries. "You want pie, you send that no-account girl over here to help me bake."

  "Dancer?"

  "She's late."

  "I doubt she'll be coming in today. There's a storm on the way."

  Maudie snorted. "You think I don't know that? She's cuddled up cozy somewhere with some man, that's what she's doing, instead of over here earning an honest living. We got some banana bread left from yesterday, that's all."

  "Where'd you get the bananas?"

  Maudie looked at her as though she must be the stupidest woman in the world. "From a mix, all dried up in little chunks. You want some or not?"

  Meg tried not to grimace. "Sounds tempting, but I guess not. Thanks."

  Maudie turned away with another snort.

  "What's the latest weather?" Red asked between bites of French fries.

  "Looks like a big one," Meg admitted. "A lot of wind damage in Little Falls, and they closed down Highway 12. Sixteen inches of snow in the past hour."

  "That'd build a hell of a snowman," Red said, and Meg smiled in spite of herself.

  To cover it, she turned to Maudie. "How are your supplies?"

  "Red brought in a shipment just this morning. Got plenty to last."

  "We might
be needing some before this is over."

  "How do you think I make my profit? You pay for it, you got it."

  "At suitably inflated prices," Meg murmured.

  Maudie's sharp ears missed nothing. "You whine about it, you get nothing."

  The corners of Meg's lips turned down in a dry apology. "Mind if I check out the supply room?"

  Maudie looked at her suspiciously. "What for?"

  "To see what you've got," Meg explained patiently. "How else can I know what to buy?"

  Maudie still looked skeptical. Then she decided reluctantly, "Red'1l show you. He knows where stuff is."

  "What do you think I'm going to do, steal it?"

  "Red will show you," she repeated firmly, and turned her back.

  "Oh, for Pete's sake," Meg muttered, pulling a couple of bills from her jeans pocket to pay for lunch. "I never met a more disagreeable woman."

  "I have," Red said cheerfully, and swigged the last of his beer. He pushed the money back across the bar to her and stood. "This one's on me, ace. Come on, let's check out that supply room."

  *****************

  Four

  Red draped his arm around her shoulders as they pushed through the door to the kitchen, and Meg was sure he did it just to irritate her. Knowing that did not stop the warmth that tingled through her with his touch, however, nor the tightening of her stomach muscles that was the inevitable result of his closeness. And she waited a few moments longer than she should have before she shrugged away.

  "What do you want?" Red inquired, gesturing broadly toward the two doors that led off the kitchen. "Dry goods or refrigerated?"

  She moved toward the door on the left. "How do you know where things are, anyway?"

  "I unloaded most of them myself."

  She slanted him a dry look as she pushed open the pantry door. "You never unload anything for us."

  "That's because you're not a helpless female."

  They stepped into a large room, two walls of which were lined floor to ceiling with canned goods while the remaining space, with the exception of a few narrow aisles for walking, was packed just as tightly with cartons of every description. "Good God," Meg exclaimed softly. "She's got enough here to see her through World War III."