The Stormriders Read online

  "That's Maudie," agreed Red affectionately. "Always prepared."

  Meg edged between a stack of what appeared to be military-surplus blankets and a tower of cartons marked Napkins. Red followed closely—so closely, in fact, that Meg could feel his warmth against her back. She tried to ignore it.

  "Do you think we could talk her out of some of these blankets?" She nudged the stack with her toe. "If the guys are going to be stuck overnight, sleeping space will be at a premium."

  ''Like the lady said, for a price." His voice was just as casual as hers, but it seemed to Meg he had moved closer. She refused to turn around to see.

  "I was hoping she'd loan them to us."

  "Not likely.'' He leaned his arm on the shelf in front of her, trapping her between the napkin tower and wall-to-wall corned-beef hash. "Kind of cozy in here, isn't it?" he commented. She could hear the mischief in his voice. "Remind you of anything?"

  Meg knew exactly what he was referring to, and her cheeks went hot with the memory. The first party they had attended as husband and wife had ended up with the two of them in a coat closet much smaller than this making love.

  She said curtly, "No," and pushed his arm aside, edging down the aisle.

  "Come on, Megan, where's your sense of romance?" There was laughter in his voice as he caught her hips and turned her around. Then they were face-to-face and thigh-to-thigh, and the teasing on his face faded.

  Her pulses pounded as though struck by an electric charge; her entire body felt electrified, as it so often was with Red, as it almost always was when they touched. She could feel her breath grow shallow in her throat and her stomach tighten with the surprise of sensations she had almost forgotten—awareness of him, the closeness of him, the possibility of him.

  And she could see it on his face, too: naked surprise, something not planned that had gotten out of hand. Desire. Awareness. Need.

  Possibilities.

  She said a little unsteadily, "Take your hands off me."

  He agreed huskily, "I guess I'd better."

  But he made no move. He just kept looking at her. Her skin began to tingle and dance with the power of his eyes moving over her.

  She swallowed hard. "Red, let me go."

  "Okay."

  His eyes were dark and glinting with specks of jewel green; she could see his chest rise and fall with slow steady breaths. His scent seemed to creep into her pores, warm and familiar, making her fingers tingle with the need to touch him. It would be so easy just to lean into his arms, to melt into his embrace, to drown in him one last time.

  She jerked her head away from his hypnotic gaze and abruptly turned to push past him. But she didn't push past him at all. Somehow her hands were on his waist—perhaps she had meant to push him out of the way—soft flannel against her fingers, tight muscles beneath the material, and her pelvis was against his, her breasts brushing his chest and she knew she wasn't going to move another step.

  She drew in a deep breath that was meant to be steadying but was in fact helpless, wondering, resigned. She felt his gaze on her, drawing her in, but except for the slight quickening of his own breath he did not move. Her hands slid upward along his torso and she thought dizzily, One last time...

  His mouth met hers as she lifted her face, and she was lost. His fingers tightened on her hips, pressing her to him; she felt his hardness and smothered a moan at the sudden responsive ache between her own legs. His breath swallowed hers, and weakness throbbed through her limbs.

  He pushed his hands inside her sweater and they were warm even against her flaming skin; bis hands were always warm. Rough, calloused caresses over her torso, deftly unsnapping the catch of her bra... She couldn't breathe. Her heart was shattering her rib cage. She whispered, "Stop. This is crazy...."

  "I know." His lips pressed kisses along her neck, his unsteady breath like waves of fire on her damp skin.

  Her hands moved urgently over his back, her chest, his waist and the shape of his buttocks, and he pulled her closer, smothering her with his mouth again.

  "We can't!" she gasped, yet her fingers were now working the buttons of his shirt, tugging at the soft knit of his undershirt, seeking the heated flesh beneath.

  "We're married...."

  "Someone—" she gasped as his hands slid inside her jeans, fingers tightening on her naked bottom " —could come in...."

  He hesitated only long enough to drag her forward a step, reaching out with one arm to pull the door closed, and then his mouth was on her neck, the hollow of her throat, pressing heat and moisture into the tightening flesh of her breast through the material of her sweater.

  "We can't do this...." she whispered weakly one last time, and he agreed breathlessly, "No, we can't," just before his mouth covered hers again and they both knew it was too late.

  One last time, she thought. One last time for all those lonely nights ahead, for all those dreams that never came true, for what should have been and never could be. One last time, that's all....

  And when their mouths separated she whispered, "We can do this...." Her fingers were already tugging at his belt, working the snap of his jeans.

  ''No one will ever know...."

  "It doesn't mean anything. We're adults...."

  "Lord, Megan..."

  "Nothing will change...."

  "Nothing."

  "Just sex. We can do that."

  "Liar."

  She looked into the dark, heated blur of his gaze, his flushed, passion-softened face, and she whispered,"Yes..."

  And somehow their clothes were pushed aside and she felt the soft-scratchy texture of the blankets beneath her and she was lost in him, dissolved by him into a melange of heat and color and glorious purpose. His breath, his taste, the blur of his face, the brilliance of his eyes, and all she could think was his name, over and over again, with a kind of desperate, grasping certainty. Red. The way it was meant to be. The only time she was complete. Red, who would never be any thing but a part of her. Red...

  A long time after the shudders of explosive fulfillment had left them, they remained gasping for breath, thundering heartbeats shaking in their chests, their arms locked so tightly around each other the grip was painful. Meg's mouth was open against Red's shoulder, her fingers pressed into his back, her eyes squeezed tightly closed in a desperate effort to hold on, for just a moment longer, to what would never be hers again. She could feel his face, hot and damp against hers, and his unsteady breath, and she thought fiercely, Don't leave me, Red, don't...

  But in the end it was she who forced her muscles to loosen and who shifted away. Silently, with shaking hands and jerky, hasty movements, they began to rearrange their clothing. Maudie would be wondering what had happened to them. Someone could come in at any moment.

  There was no sound except his breathing and hers, and the muffled movements they made as they dressed. Meg's hands were shaking, and she felt shattered inside, stunned. This was it, then, their final farewell: a frantic tumble in a musty storeroom, dressing hastily before someone found them. They deserved better than that. They used to be better than that. She pressed her lips together against a sudden urge to cry, and she couldn't look at him.

  This was supposed to have made things better, but it hadn't. Instead the hurt was deeper, the longing more intense, the loss more acute. She kept thinking, Say something Red. Touch me, hold me, say something, anything. And then fiercely, No, don't. Don't say anything. Don't do anything. She did not know how she could stand it if he did.

  What was he thinking? What was he feeling? Was he hurting, too, was he missing her, was he wishing it could have been different?

  Of course not. Men didn't react that way after sex; they weren't bothered with those foolish sentimental feelings, and in that way they were a lot smarter than women. They took everything in stride, they accepted whatever came their way at face value, and that was the only sensible way to deal with something like this. That was exactly, Meg resolved, determinedly swallowing back the thickness in
her throat, what she was going to do.

  What they had done was crazy, reckless, almost adolescent in its irresponsibility, but Meg refused to be embarrassed by it. She refused to feel regret. They were consenting adults. It meant nothing. People had sex in storerooms all the time and the world didn't change. She wasn't sorry. It had meant nothing. Men got up, put on their clothes and walked away every day of their lives; why couldn't she do the same?

  She could. She could.

  She belted her sweater, missing the notch twice, and ran her hands over her hair to smooth it. "Is my hair okay?"

  He took a moment to answer. "Yeah. Fine."

  She stood up. Her knees felt weak and she was still shaking, quivering inside. Her face was hot, abraded from the contact with his, and his heat was still inside her, everywhere. But she was managing, with a great effort, to bring her breathing under control.

  She said, "I'll go out first." She still couldn't look at him.

  Red stood up. His voice was curiously blank as he said, "So that's it, then?"

  She didn't know why those words pierced her so, why they jangled across her nerves like pieces of broken glass. She didn't know what she had expected from him, nor why she had any right to expect anything at all. But she could be just as cool as he was. She could.

  Her voice sounded brittle and a little too high as she replied, "What do you want me to say? That it was good? It was always good with us, Red." She gave him a forced smile. "That's why I married you, remember?"

  For a moment there was something in his eyes—a flash of anger or even hurt—but it was gone so quickly she might have imagined it. Casually, he looked around for his hat, found it, and his smile was perfectly natural as he arranged his hat on his head. "Well, hell, sweetie," he replied lazily, "if I had known that, I would've made sure I was getting paid by the hour."

  Meg turned sharply for the door.

  "Wait a minute."

  She caught her breath as she felt his touch, but he only straightened the twisted belt of her sweater, then stepped away.

  Her voice was husky, but she managed, "Thanks."

  "Anytime."

  She waited, stiff-muscled and aching, for him to say something, or do something—what, she didn't know. She only knew that she wanted, and the wanting was big enough to fill an Alaskan plain.

  But he only stepped in front of her, made a deep bowing gesture and opened the door. "After you," he said.

  Meg swallowed hard, squared her shoulders and walked through.

  Red waited until the kitchen door swung closed behind her, then he drew a deep, unsteady breath, swung around and did his best to put his fist through the wall. The wall was less resilient than he had supposed, and the blinding pain was enough to cause him to choke back a shout and, for a moment, almost blotted out the deeper pain she had left the minute she pushed him away. But not quite.

  He screwed up his face against the throbbing in his hand, squeezed his eyes closed and leaned his head back against the wall. "Damn!" he whispered. Damn her, and him, and whatever crazy gods had brought them together in the first place. How long were they going to keep doing this to each other? Would it everget any easier?

  He had handled it all wrong, he knew that. He never should have let it go this far, he never should have let himself be alone with her, he never should have come back to Adinorack for that matter. What was it about him that wouldn't leave well enough alone, that insisted on finding new and improved ways to torture himself?

  It was simple. With Meg, common sense deserted him, good judgment was a thing of the past, and he never, ever managed to do the right thing. Maybe, when it came to the two of them, there was no right thing.

  But he had set himself up for this one. Maybe he had thought, if he had been thinking at all, that making love to her would make things better—if what they had done could be called making love. Still, he could have done something, or said something afterward to make her feel less bad, to draw her close again. He knew he could have. But when she looked at him, so crisp and in control, as though what had just happened between them was nothing more than a minor interruption in her day... Didn't she know by now that every time he made love to her he left a part of his soul inside her?

  Didn't he?

  "Damn," he whispered again, and opened his eyes, looking bleakly around the room. His hand was throbbing less severely now, but the ache inside his chest was there to stay.

  And the storm that trapped him here had not even begun yet.

  The Arctic wind was searing, numbing, and for the three and a half minutes it took Meg to cross the street she couldn't think anything, or feel anything, except the cold. She slammed the door behind her and went through the routine of trying to work circulation back into her limbs as she pulled off her outer garments. But as soon as the bite of the icy air had left her she could smell Red on her skin again and taste him, still, against her tongue.

  But if her face was flushed it was only from the cold, and the brightness of her eyes could very well be due to the sting of the wind. No one seemed to notice anything unusual. There was a card game going on in the common room; apparently the television reception had gone out. At any other time she would have upbraided the men for their goldbricking, but when she opened her mouth she heard herself saying, "Gilly, you guys take the next couple of hours off. It looks like it's going to be a long night. And send somebody back when you get over to the Blue Jay so I don't have to run this place by myself."

  The six players gathered around the card table stared at her as though they weren't sure they had heard correctly, then there was an abrupt scramble of chairs and tossed-down cards.

  "Whatever you say, boss."

  "But what about..." Joe gestured toward his radio equipment, looking uncertain.

  "I'll monitor it. Go on."

  "Well, sure." He disentangled himself from his headphones and stood, still looking a little unsure—or perhaps just surprised.''If you say so.''

  At the door he turned back. "By the way, we brought your stuff in." He gestured toward the corner. "We didn't know where you wanted it."

  Meg glanced at her luggage, two suitcases and a cardboard box, all that was left of the past two years of her life. And the cardboard box wasn't even hers.

  She had to clear her throat before she could answer, "Thanks, Joe."

  "Sure thing."

  He closed the door behind him, and Meg unplugged the radio earphones, turning the volume low, so that she could monitor messages without being tied to the station. She checked the radar and the satellite internet, which seemed to have died along with the telephones. None of that was unusual in an isolated spot like Adinorack, particularly with a storm approaching. This part of Alaska was for the most part still a vast and brutal wilderness, and technology fought an ongoing battle trying to tame it.

  At last she turned, as though drawn by a magnet, to the luggage in the corner. The two suitcases were leather, expensive and embossed with her initials, MPF. She ignored them. Instead she knelt beside the cardboard box and, hesitating only a moment, lifted the flaps open.

  A few days after Red had left for the last time, before she fully realized that he really wasn't coming back and while she was still angry enough to be spiteful, she had gone through the apartment and gathered up everything he had left behind, everything that reminded her of him, and dumped it all into the box, planning to present it to him at the door if he ever showed his face again. He hadn't, the box had been consigned to the back of a closet, and she hadn't thought about it in months. She looked into it now half fearfully, half longingly, but with a compulsion she couldn't stop.

  There wasn't much. He had always traveled light and he had taken his clothes and most of his personal belongings when he left. A fishing lure, a crumpled hat, a paperback adventure book he had been reading about spies and lost Nazi treasure. A photograph of the two of them taken at Sadie's Christmas party. He was leering at the camera and she was laughing. She looked at the snapshot until her
eyes stung, trying not to remember, and then she hastily put it away.

  There were other things. A single sock, a comb, an unmatched glove. A golf ball she did not know where he had picked up or why he kept, because he didn't play golf. A screwdriver, a pocketknife with a broken blade. The discards and forgotten junk of a man's life, the things he had left behind as easily and as carelessly as he had abandoned their marriage. Or maybe all that had been left of the marriage by that time were bits and pieces, like the junk that filled this box.

  At the bottom of the box was a shirt, red-checked flannel. She used to sleep in it because the feel of it against her skin reminded her of him and because it always, no matter how often she wore it, seemed to smell of him. Warning herself not to, knowing she would regret it, she slowly pulled the shirt out. And then, because she simply couldn't help it, she brought the material against her cheek.

  It was as soft as she remembered, and as warm. Red was a tough man, his body was hard and his hands were rough; there was nothing gentle or muted about him at all. But whenever she thought of him she remembered softness, like this shirt. And the only time she had ever been warm in the past two years was in his arms.

  The shirt still held his scent—and hers. The two of them, intermingled and interwoven, so that she couldn't tell where one left off and the other began. The same scent was in her clothes now, and in her hair, and on her skin. Helplessly, shamelessly, she buried her face in the shirt and let the memories come.

  She did not even realize her face was wet with tears until she heard the door open behind her. She quickly turned her back to the door, stuffed the shirt into the box, and stood.

  "Uh-oh," Dancer said. "He made you cry. Men are such pigs."

  "Don't be silly." Meg surreptitiously wiped her hand across her face and turned, moving in a very businesslike way toward the radio center and knowing perfectly well Dancer wasn't fooled. "Maudie was looking for you. You'd better get to work."

  "Yeah, I'm going. I just stopped by to see if you wanted to walk over with me, maybe have some lunch."