Safe Harbor (10 page)

“No, you idiot, I’m talking about Mike.”

The next moment, she was struggling to bank the warm feelings that were flaming inside her. “Why would he stay on?”

Cris pointed out the obvious. “Silvio did. Dorothy did. Jorge just took this as a temporary job and he’s been here for three years now. The inn is kind of a haven for lost souls, so I thought that maybe, if it turns out Mike was trying to get away from something, being here might give him a fresh start—and he’d stay.”

“I’m sure once he pulls himself together and fills in the blanks in his memory, he’ll go back to his life,” Stevi told her sister, doing her best to sound as if she didn’t care one way or the other.

But she did.

* * *

T
HE
SEED
THAT
Cris had planted with her question quietly took root within her as Stevi walked back to her room. She needed to take some of her things and move them—and herself—into the adjoining room the way her father had tactfully suggested just before she left his office. But that wasn’t the foremost thing on her mind right now.

The idea of Mike remaining, of his staying on as someone who contributed in some way to the inn’s day-to-day existence, became more and more captivating with each step that brought her back to her room.

Back to Mike.

For pity’s sake, get a grip, Stevi. Your Adonis probably has a Mrs. Adonis, or at least a significant other, waiting for him someplace, maybe even looking for him right now. When he gets his memory back, he’ll be back to his old life like a shot. And you are going to be left out in the cold with a lot of wistful thoughts and a handful of memories, if you’re lucky.

She knew that. Impulsive though she was, she was also practical if that was called for. She knew the odds were against his remaining at the inn; knew, too, that the odds of regaining his memory were in Mike’s favor.

But until then, she thought as she opened her door and slipped back into her room, her eyes drawn to the sleeping man, she was going to enjoy every second.

Until it was over.

CHAPTER TWELVE

H
E
WASN
’
T
SURE
what woke him.

One moment, he was in the midst of a dreamless sleep, the next his eyes were wide open, his brain trying to process whether the noise he’d heard had been in his sleep.

Or in his room.

Mike had bolted upright before he knew what he was doing, reaching for the gun beneath his pillow—that wasn’t there.

Then he remembered where he was.

The room wavered just a little. Or maybe that was him. He’d been mending slowly these past few days, far slower than he’d wanted to. Yet, he had to admit, progress was being made and at least he was still alive.

Whenever he became impatient or frustrated with himself, all he had to do was remind himself of the alternative.

He still had no idea what it was that woke him, but he took it as a sign that he was finally getting back to normal. Because of the nature of his work, he’d trained himself to instantly wake up if a strand of hair landed on a rug.

He’d done it because his life could very well depend on it.

At least, it had until he’d found himself on that cabin cruiser with Larry Crenshaw and the cartel kingpin, Ortega, not to mention a full complement of men on Ortega’s payroll.

And then it came to him. He knew what had woken him up.

Rain. The sound of rain hitting a windowpane.

Sitting here in the dark bedroom, listening to a rare summer storm wind down, it was almost hard to believe that people like Crenshaw and Emilio Ortega even existed.

It was as if he’d fallen down a rabbit hole and wandered into a storybook land where kindness and manners counted and a person was measured by the way he could make someone else’s day better rather than by sales figures quoted in kilos and the number of drugs exchanging hands.

He didn’t bother turning on the light. The dark was soothing and he’d gotten accustomed to using it to his advantage.

Getting out of bed carefully, Mike made his way over to the small, sliding back door and opened it. A fine mist greeted him, landing like small, welcoming kisses along his face.

The miniscule balcony looked out on the back lawn and beyond that, he could make out the ocean. It looked like undulating velvet from where he stood.

The water seemed restless tonight, he noted.

“Welcome to the club,” Mike murmured under his breath.

“Something wrong?”

Her voice startled him, but he kept his reaction in check, another habit he’d picked up, thanks to the cartel. Instead, he looked calmly in the direction the voice had come from.

“What are you doing up?” he asked Stevi.

Wearing an oversize Chargers jersey, she was standing on the balcony in the room next to his. Her smile seemed to weave itself under his skin. He chalked it up to his somewhat fuzzy brain.

“Funny, I was just going to ask you the same thing,” she said.

He tried not to notice how short her jersey was, but it wasn’t easy. “Something woke me up. You?”

“Same. Except I think that most likely my something was you.”

He was rather certain that he hadn’t made any noise, but he wasn’t going to argue the point with her.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you up. I thought I was being quiet.”

“Quiet tends to make me uneasy,” she confided, aware how strange that probably sounded to him, especially when she added, “Noise puts me to sleep.” Stevi grinned at him. “So, are you up for the night?”

The answer was probably yes. “Why?”

“Because if you are, I’ll come in. We can play cards. Or raid Cris’s refrigerator. Or, if you’re up to it, we could go for a walk along the beach. The rain’s stopped,” she pointed out. “We might need a flashlight. Although given the sky tonight, we might not.”

The last suggestion had her grinning. Or at least her voice sounded as if she was grinning, because he couldn’t quite make out her face. She was in the shadows.

“It might be nice to see you upright on the beach,” she said.

He smiled. “I’m up to it,” he told her. “Might be kind of nice at that.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you outside my—your room,” she corrected herself, “in five minutes.”

Mike changed, putting on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that one of Stevi’s brothers-in-law—Wyatt—had given him. Changing into them now reminded him of all the hand-me-downs and donated clothes he’d worn as a kid. When he got a job and earned enough money to finally buy himself his own clothing, he’d felt as if he was on top of the world.

Nothing had beat that feeling—or had matched it—since.

Running his hand through his hair in lieu of combing it, he slipped out of his room—and found Stevi standing in the hallway in front of the room, waiting for him.

“You’re ready,” he said in surprise, not bothering to hide it this time.

“I said five minutes.” Stevi glanced at her watch. “It’s closer to five and a half now.”

He laughed and shook his head as he fell into place beside her and they headed out the back way, across the veranda.

“Listen, I know I’m the one who suggested going on this walk, but the second—the very second—you start to feel tired, or even anticipate getting tired, I want you to tell me, understand?”

“And what? You’ll carry me back to the hotel on your shoulders, piggyback style?” he asked.

As they walked, the ebbing and flowing waves seemed to be playing a game of tag with their footwear.

“No, we’ll turn around and go back to the inn. Unless you’re suddenly too exhausted and then we’ll sit it out until you feel up to walking back.”

He wasn’t used to anyone concerning themselves with his welfare or his comfort. It made him somewhat uncomfortable—because he found himself responding to it. “Don’t you have anything better to do than be my babysitter?”

“Nope, not at the moment,” she said cheerfully. “Certainly not at two in the morning,” she added. Then, in case he thought that he was ultimately keeping her from something, she explained exactly where she was in her life when she’d found him. “I’d just graduated college and was busy finding myself when I tripped over you. Right now, I’m leaning toward thinking of you as my senior thesis.”

He didn’t so much as break into a smile.

“Don’t tell me that you broke your sense of humor when you washed up on the beach.”

“Why, would that be a bad thing?” he asked absently, staring down at the water as they walked, thinking about that night when it had all gone drastically wrong.

“It would be a disaster,” she said without any hesitation.

Mike looked up, her tone bringing him back to the moment.

Abruptly, Stevi stooped down to pick something up. He almost tripped over her but caught himself just in time. The woman should have come equipped with turn signals and hazard lights.

“Nothing sees a person through hard times better than a sense of humor,” she continued, straightening again. “It’s what differentiates us from animals. We can laugh at ourselves.”

“Hyenas laugh,” he pointed out.

She shook her head. As she spoke, she brushed sand off the object she’d picked up. “Hyenas make a noise that sounds like they’re laughing. We are the only ones who can actually laugh.”

“I stand corrected,” he acknowledged. Idle curiosity had him nodding at what was in her hand and asking, “What’s that?”

“It’s a seashell,” she told him, holding it out to him. “Here.”

He took the small shell from her and used what little light was available to examine it. The shell, appearing grayish in color, was rather small and compact. Not the most exotic seashell he’d ever seen.

He handed it back to her and she put it in her pocket.

“What are you going to do with it?” he asked.

“I’ll add it to my collection.”

“You collect very plain seashells?” he asked. “Why?”

“Well—” she hesitated “—maybe it’s something to remember tonight by. It’s better than having nothing, in the end.”

He shook his head. Stevi had a romantic nature and that was something he’d never been able to indulge in. Though he’d lived in the state all his life, beaches had not been part of his childhood. Learning to swim had been a sudden, last-minute needed skill before he’d gone undercover. Lucky for him, he now thought. Otherwise he would have been somewhere far below the surface by now.

“You know what? You keep this one,” she said, fishing it back out of her pocket and forcing him to take it. “Marvel at the resourcefulness of the sea creature that used to live inside it. Like you, this seashell washed up onto the beach from somewhere in the ocean. Or just toss it back into the ocean and forget all about it. Maybe you don’t need a keepsake to remember me—us, the inn—when you leave.”

Mike looked at the shell. It was more intricate than he’d first realized. There were swirls and tiny ridges along its outer sides. He ran his thumb over it several times.

“It’s rather pretty,” he commented. “Might be good to have something pretty to remind me of...this place.”

“I think so,” she agreed. They began walking again and she noticed that he slipped the hand with the shell into his pocket. “There was a time I had an extensive seashell collection, but Alex got on my case, saying that if I kept on picking up every shell I came across, pretty soon there wouldn’t be any room for me in my room. About the tenth or eleventh time she brought it up I knew that I either had to stop collecting seashells—or go on listening to her lectures.”

She shrugged, thinking that maybe she should have stood her ground—it was the principle of the thing more than the shells themselves. But like a lot of things, that was in the past. “It was easier to stop. After that, I lost interest for a while and scattered the seashells, sending them back into the ocean.” An amused smile curved her mouth. “Who knows? Maybe the one in your pocket used to be one of mine.”

He could just about make out the curve of her mouth in the light from the half-moon. His fingers curved into his palm as he suppressed a desire to trace the curve with his fingertips.

“Is Alex the oldest one?” he asked.

“Yes. Alex is also the control freak of the family. You’re laughing,” she said, surprised. “Why?”

“Because I have a feeling that if anyone else called her that—me, for instance—you’d be all over them.”

Stevi shrugged. She thought about denying his assumption, but then, looking back, she knew that she couldn’t. They had always had each other’s backs when it came to outsiders, even in the middle of an argument. “I guess you’re right. An outsider hasn’t earned the right.” She didn’t think she was saying anything unique. “Isn’t it like that in your family?”

He laughed shortly, then shook his head. He looked straight ahead, focusing on the ocean and the way it shimmered beneath the crescent moon. “No.”

Was it her imagination, or was there hurt in his voice? “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound as if I was prying.”

“You’re not,” he said, absolving her. “And there’s nothing to be sorry about. I don’t have one.”

Stevi came to an abrupt halt and looked at him. “You don’t have a family?” she questioned. “Or is it that you don’t remember having one?” He did, after all, admit to having trouble remembering some details. Maybe his childhood was part of those details.

“I don’t have one,” he clarified.

“What happened to them?” The question tumbled from her lips before she could stop herself.

He avoided her eyes, mainly because he wasn’t certain how he would react to sympathy or pity and he now knew her well enough to know that both would be there for him to see. He wanted neither. So he looked over the top of her head as he answered, “I have no idea. As far as I know, I was always alone.”

That almost sounded as if he’d raised himself on the streets. Someone must have seen him and taken him in, or had the system look for a home for him, right? “Were you placed in foster homes?”

He’d been placed, all right, but as far as the word
home
went, that took more doing than just putting up four walls.

“Same thing,” he replied.

“I am sorry,” she said.

Why did she feel this need to douse him with sympathy and apologies? Served him right for giving in to a weak moment and sharing this with her. He shouldn’t have said anything. The problem, he acknowledged, was that she was very easy to talk to. He was going to have to watch himself more carefully.

“Why?” he asked. “You didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“I can still be sorry,” she pointed out gently. “Sorry that you didn’t grow up having siblings to fight with and to love.” A couple of steps later, she stopped walking again. In the darkness, he could just make out her serious expression.

Mike looked around, curious what had caused her to stop this time. Everything seemed completely the same. “What’s the matter?”

“I think we should turn around and go back.” They’d been walking for a while now. “I don’t want you getting tired out.”

Now that he was finally outside, he wasn’t quite ready to go back. Inasmuch as he was very accustomed to being a loner and did better on his own, he liked this new feeling of solitude—solitude with her.

“I’m fine,” he assured her.

She wasn’t all that sure. She knew the male of the species didn’t admit to fatigue—until it was painfully obvious and present. “Until you suddenly find that you’ve run out of energy and then I’ll have to find a way to get you back to the inn.”

“I’m not tired,” Mike insisted. He’d never had anyone fuss over him like this before and it felt strange, unusual and just the slightest bit...warming. Actually, he realized that there was a lot about this exuberant woman with the flashing blue eyes that he found rather appealing.

He watched her mouth as she spoke and found himself captivated by the movement rather than by what was being said.

Accustomed to digging in when she was trying to prove a point, Stevi did just that. “Well, I say you are and since you have no way of proving that you’re not, you’ll just have to—”

She didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence.

One minute, she was standing toe to toe with Mike, the next, their toes were not the only things that were touching.