The Stormriders Read online

  "Your socks are a little damp, slugger," he said. "You should've taken care of that before now."

  "Sorry. I've been busy."

  He took her right foot in his hand, massaging the ball with his thumbs, stroking her toes, rotating the ankle with familiar expertise. Nothing had ever felt quite so wonderful as one of Red's foot massages, and he knew how much she loved it. The pleasure spread up from his touch in one low, long wave, and Meg could barely repress a moan of delight.

  "I feel guilty," she murmured after a time, "getting all this attention when there are others who need it more."

  He switched to the other foot. "Baby, you couldn't pay me to massage any of these guys' feet.''

  She laughed softly, and his eyes smiled back. It was a good moment between them, warm and secure, the way they used to be. The way, it almost seemed, they had always been. Meg leaned back and closed her eyes, thinking how strange it was that good things were so often found in the most unexpected places. And how different everything seemed now than it had this morning.

  And how sad it was that it probably wouldn't last.

  Then Red said quietly, "Meg, somebody's going to have to go back for supplies before long. What we've got isn't nearly enough."

  She stiffened and opened her eyes. "Not you."

  The fierce adamancy in her voice did not surprise him, and he simply looked at her patiently. "Who then? Who are you going to send?''

  "I don't know. I don't care. Just.. .not you. You've done enough." The stubborn resistance that seized her was childish and unprofessional, but she couldn't help it. He had been lucky so far—they both had—and against all odds. That storm could kill, and she could not go through it again. "You're not going back out there,'' she repeated firmly.

  He dropped his eyes. "I guess we can wait awhile. Nobody's going to be very hungry tonight, anyway, and maybe the wind will die down by morning."

  She tried to relax. "What's coming in on the radio?"

  He rested her feet in his lap, covering them with his hands. Warmth tingled through her, lush and rich. "The frequencies are scrambled by the storm. Lewis picked up Chicago some time ago, but he can't get Brownsville, sixty miles down the road." He smiled at her. "Your hair's a mess. You really ought to do something with yourself."

  "You don't look so hot yourself, ace."

  Meg wished she could stay like that forever, smiling at him, being comfortable with him, feeling strengthened by his warmth. I'm glad you're here, Red, she thought. I don't know how I would have made it without you.

  But somehow she couldn't bring herself to tell him that.

  She lowered her eyes and reluctantly withdrew her feet. "I guess I'd better check the control room. With the temperature dropping like this, the last thing we need is to blow a fuse."

  "Change your socks," he advised easily, and got to his feet.

  She reached for her boots. "Yes, Mother."

  "Meg."

  He touched her waist lightly as she stood up, and when she turned there was an expression on his face that made her nerves flutter in surprised anticipation. She waited, trying to read what was in his eyes and knowing it wouldn't matter unless he said it, and then he simply shook his head.

  “Nothing." He gave her a crooked smile and a pat on the bottom as impersonal as the one he had given Dancer. "Get back to work."

  *****************

  etched out the canned stew, with generous use of an expander Meg strongly suspected was Maudie stretched out the canned stew, with generous use of an expander that Meg strongly suspected was alcoholic, to feed all those who felt like eating. There was plenty of coffee, and Red produced a carton of chocolate bars—frozen but edible—from his plane. He had always had a weakness for chocolate; Meg should have known he would have had a cache stored away for traveling.

  They gathered in the common room, sitting on the floor and the few available raised surfaces, and for a short time the meal was a distraction from the anxiety that, Meg knew, was the biggest threat to morale. Someone had even discovered a portable CD player, and though the heavy metal music grated on Meg's nerves, it seemed to cheer everybody up.

  She sat beside Joe on the sofa and tried to get him to eat something. He was too weak and in too much pain. He kept worrying about the radio.

  "We've got someone on it all the time," Meg assured him, and forced a smile. "You may be indispensable but not completely irreplaceable. We'll manage."

  "What a bummer," he mumbled, and sank back onto the cushions again. "I’m real sorry, Miz Worthington..."

  She smoothed his damp hair away from his forehead and tried to tell herself that his skin really wasn't any wanner than hers, at least not much, and they were doing everything for him that they could... and it wasn't enough. He was so young. Why wasn't he home with his family where he belonged? Safe in some nice obscure farmhouse in the Midwest with nothing on his mind but girls and cars. What was he doing here? What were any of them doing here?

  She felt Red's eyes on her, even though he was across the room and had done nothing to draw attention to himself. When she turned there was an odd, thoughtful expression on his face, and when he saw her watching him he quickly dropped his gaze.

  "You know what I miss most about home?" Red said casually to the man next to him. "Charcoal. The way it smells on the backyard grill on the Fourth of July just before you throw that steak on. It never smells quite the same here.''

  "Hell, I'd settle for a good charbroiled hot dog," said his companion. "I damn near set my apartment on fire year before last trying to get a good barbecue going."

  "With me, it's swimming pools," put in somebody else. "There's not a decent outdoor pool in this whole state."

  "My wife's cooking," Gilly said, looking dubiously at a spoonful of stew. "That's what I miss.'' ,.

  Meg stared at him. "You're married?"

  He looked a little surprised, not by the question, but by the sound of her voice. Meg realized this was a conversation that had not been meant to include her, the way so many were not meant to.

  He turned back to his stew. "Sure."

  "But... where is she? Why...?"

  "She wouldn't make it through a winter up here." He shrugged.' 'Triple pay is hard to turn down, and I figure in another year we'll be able to afford that little house in the San Fernando Valley we've got our eyes on."

  Somebody joked, "Hey, I know that house. I'm going to buy the one next door."

  They went back and forth, talking easily about their plans and their dreams, their homes, their backgrounds, the ones they'd left behind—or in some cases, brought with them. Occasionally, when the thread of the conversation threatened to take a depressing or demoralizing turn, Red would nudge it back on course with some unobtrusive comment, deftly manipulating them to forget their troubles for a while, to remember who they were and why they were here; to make it, somehow, all seem worthwhile.

  Meg listened, amazed and subdued, as bits and pieces of the life stories of the men she had worked with for two years began to emerge, and they began to take shape before her very eyes as full-blown, three-dimensional human beings. Shark had been kicked out of West Point. Reese had once worked with NASA. Most had been married, many had girlfriends "back home." Some of them considered this home, but even among those who did not there was a common thread. They had come here for the money, true, but they had stayed for something else. It took a special kind of man to make his way on the frontier, to deal with the isolation and the hardships and sometimes the deprivation; they knew that and took satisfaction from it. They knew what they had signed on for and they stayed because they liked it. They were all misfits, stubborn independent spirits with no intention of ever submitting to authority, but that was exactly the kind of person it took to survive here. People like Red—and like Meg.

  Dancer touched Meg's shoulder. "Why don't you go get something to eat? I'll sit with him for a spell."

  Meg tried to shake off the disturbing feeling that settled over her as she looked u
p at Dancer. "Are you sure you're up to it?"

  "I can sit here as well as I can over there," Dancer said, taking the bowl of stew from her. "I'll try to get him to eat if he wakes up. Go on."

  "Okay, thanks."

  Red watched Meg leave the room, and he determined he would not follow her. He had made sure that he chose a place to sit well away from her and had kept the conversation going so that no silences would fall during which he'd feel compelled to go over to her, but all the while he had not been able to keep his eyes off her. You think you know a woman... he thought dimly. Meg Forrest was the only woman in the world he had ever wanted to know, to study, to absorb and memorize inside and out, and he thought, after the past two years, that he knew her better than anyone in the world. Perhaps he did. But she could still surprise him, and watching her with Joe, watching her grow smaller and smaller inside herself as she listened to the other men talk around her... she surprised him.

  It was not that he had not known her capable of the kind of tenderness she showed to the injured boy; he knew that side of her, shown so rarely, all too well. Nor was it her capacity for compassion that intrigued him; he had seen her struggle to hide just that emotion far too often. It was her vulnerability that reached out to him, for that was something he found completely unfamiliar. Her face was pale with exhaustion, her eyes circled, her shoulders tired. And as she listened to the good spirited banter that went on around her she looked alone and unsure for the first time that Red could remember. And watching her made him want to find a private corner somewhere, draw her into the protective circle of his arms and legs and just hold her until they both were strong again.

  After a moment he got up, crumpled his paper plate into the trash and followed her into the kitchen.

  Meg did not glance around; she didn't have to. She always knew when he entered a room, just as he did with her. She was sponging off the counters, tossing out empty cans and generally trying to straighten up the mess Maudie had left.

  "Well, well," Red said. "First a nurse, then a housewife. What other talents do you have I don't know about?"

  "Can't you do something about that music?" she complained. "It’s giving me a headache."

  "It's good for you. Gets the blood pumping, keeps the adrenaline going. Everybody knows that."

  "I think we've got enough adrenaline pumping. Let's switch to elevator music and put these people to sleep."

  He chuckled.' 'You might have a point.''

  She turned to look at him and leaned against the sink with her hands braced behind her. "How do you do it?" she inquired earnestly. "Here we are in the middle of a disaster, people are hurt and bleeding and we don't know where our next meal is coming from, and you've practically got them singing around the camp fire. How do you do that?"

  He leaned his hip against the counter, folding his arms. "I don't know. Natural talent, I guess. No big deal."

  She shook her head in subdued wonder. "I never knew those guys. I practically lived with them, day in and day out for two years, and I didn't even know anything about them. But you did."

  He shrugged, feeling a little uncomfortable for no specific reason. "We've got different styles, that s all."

  "No, it's more than that." Her voice sounded tired. "I mean, I took all those management courses, I know the right things to do, but I just don't seem to be able to do them. It's not that I don't want to. I just can't."

  "Hey," he told her lightly, trying to coax a smile. "It's hard being a tough broad in a man's world, and you do it better than anybody I know. That was one of the first things I liked about you."

  She did smile, though weakly.' 'You're the only man I've ever known who liked me because of what I am, not in spite of it."

  He held her gaze as gently and as carefully as be held on to that moment of unguarded truth between them. He said softly, "I still do."

  The distance that separated them in the small kitchen was less than four feet. If either one of them had moved they would have been in each other's arms. Red could feel the need stretching between them as distinctly as he could hear the music and the voices from the room outside. And he stiffened himself against it as instinctively as she did. Because this time it would be more than an embrace, and they both knew that. And they were both afraid.

  Meg turned to dry her hands on a paper towel. "I'd better relieve Lewis on the radio so he can get some chow."

  "Honey, you're never going to raise anybody on that radio." There was a note of frustration in Red's voice. "And even if you do, so what? Medevac can't even get a chopper in the air until the storm clears, much less land it here. What do you expect to do, call in the marines? Daddy's not going to come riding to the rescue this time, believe me.''

  She glared at him, but she was too tired to display more than a semblance of the anger such a remark would have customarily evoked. "Daddy," she told him, "is in the army."

  "I know that."

  She tossed the paper towel in the trash. "Why do you hate him so much, anyway? You've never even met him."

  "I don't hate him," Red answered. "I hate what he's done to you. Making you think you've got to be better than everyone around you, refusing to let you give yourself a break, setting up this standard that no one could ever measure up to—not you, and certainly not me."

  She looked startled, confused, as though she was searching for something to say but couldn't quite find the words. Red held his breath, feeling as though they were on the verge of a breakthrough he wasn't even sure he wanted to make.

  And then the wind blasted against the shuttered window, rattling the saucepans and glasses that were stacked in the sink, and the moment was gone.

  "God, I hate that wind," Meg muttered, moving toward the door.

  "Of course you do," Red replied, forcing his muscles to relax as he leaned back against the counter. "It's one of the few things in life you can't control."

  She gave him a sharp look and pushed past him.

  "Hey." He caught her arm and took a chocolate bar from his pocket. "Eat this. It's going to be a long night, and you need the energy."

  She glared at him for a moment, but she took the candy. And then she left him.

  Eight

  Red knelt beside Dancer, who was holding Joe's head in her lap, stroking his hair. "How's he doing?"

  "Quieter. Gilly gave him something."

  The whole building was quiet. The lights had been dimmed and those who could were sleeping. Maudie sat behind the desk with her feet propped up, her chin sunk into her chest, snoring loudly. Even Gilly had dropped off. Red hadn't seen Meg in hours.

  Dancer followed his gaze toward the radio room and smiled.' "That woman's really got you tied up in knots, hasn't she?"

  Red looked down at his coffee cup. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "You made a big mistake coming back here, you know," Dancer went on easily, stretching a little to rub the small of her back.''Once a woman's got her hooks into you the worst thing you can do is give her a chance to get a better grip."

  Red sipped his coffee. "Well, I wouldn't doubt you're right about that."

  "'Course I'm right. Whatever happened to you two, anyway?"

  He gave an uncomfortable laugh. "That's a dumb question."

  "No, it's not. You stuck it out for a year and a half, and the pool around here said two weeks. You must have had something going."

  "We had a lot going."

  "So?"

  Red looked at her. "Tell me something, Dancer. What is it about women that make them marry a man and then try to change him? Why couldn't they just marry somebody that's already the way they want him?"

  "I could ask the same thing about men." She shrugged. "Nobody gets to pick who they fall in love with, I guess."

  "I guess not." He dropped his gaze again. "I don't know. She had these ideas about me that were all wrong. She wanted me to be a commercial pilot, teach at flight school, something... Hell, if I'd've wanted to do that, I could've stayed in Arkansas. And I got
tired of arguing about it, so finally I just left."

  "She wanted you to build a nest. Same thing all women want."

  Red was surprised. He had never thought of Meg as a nest builder. Automatically he shook his head. "No, it wasn't that. Meg doesn't think like that."

  "Of course she does," Dancer said impatiently. "Everybody does. Why else do you think we put up with you men? God knows you're not good for much, but if a woman's going to have a nest, some man's got to build it. That"s just the way it is."

  Red shook his head again, half amused, half disturbed. "Well, all I know is she picked the wrong bird. I wasn't about to let her—"

  "Clip your wings?" Dancer suggested.

  He frowned into his coffee. "Yeah."

  Dancer smiled. "I got news for you, sweet thing. She already has."

  Red looked at her, steadily and unamused, for a long time. Then he got to his feet. "See you, Dancer."

  He went to refill his cup and couldn't help glancing toward the radio room again. Lewis was asleep, and Meg hadn't come out to wake him. She had probably fallen asleep, too. Red shouldn't disturb her.

  He picked up his sleeping bag, started to spread it out on the floor, then changed his mind and slipped the carrying strap over his shoulder. He opened the door to the radio room.

  She was sitting at the desk, her head resting on her folded arms. Her hair was loose and spread out over her shoulders, hiding her face, glimmering with soft highlights of red and gold in the fluorescent light. But she wasn't asleep. She sat up immediately when he came in, pushing her hair back from her face.

  "Brought you something." He offered the coffee cup to her.

  "Thanks." Her voice was hoarse with fatigue as she took it.

  "And this." He tossed the sleeping bag into the comer. "If you want to get some sack time, I'll watch the radio."

  Meg grimaced as she sipped the coffee. "What is this? Tastes like bourbon."

  "Good guess. I brought you a little present from Maudie's after lunch. Almost forgot about it until now."

  "It's awful."

  "I know." He sat on the edge of the desk. "Whatever it takes to get you through the night."