Rory collapsed against his chest. His good arm wrapped around her as she turned her face into his neck. She inhaled the scents of the fragrant, perfumed air and sex, felt his thumping heart beneath hers, the rough texture of his chest hair beneath her cheek.
This place, here in his embrace, was the place she felt safest. Happiest. The place she most wanted to be.
Dammit.
* * *
Mac had always liked hurricanes. The power extreme weather contained was thrilling. He’d experienced two storms on the island before and neither had done much damage. He expected this storm would be more of the same.
He stood on the veranda and watched the sky darken. The wind was picking up and he mentally took inventory of his hurricane supplies. They had enough water and food for three days, adequate lighting for when the power went off and he had, and knew how to use, his extensive first-aid kit. They were ready for the storm; the boards were up courtesy of a couple of young guys from the village who’d made short work of the task. They’d also moved the outside furniture into the store rooms next to the garage and generally made themselves useful. They would be fine and if it was just him, he’d jump into bed with a good book and let the storm do its thing, but Rory was acting like it was the hour before the world ended. He turned his head and saw that she sat where he’d left her, in the corner of the couch, her arms clutching a pillow in a death grip, her eyes wide and scared.
“Relax, we’ll be fine,” he told her.
“We’re on the edge of a beach with a hurricane approaching...which means big waves and big wind. I think I’ve got a right to panic,” Rory retorted. “Will you please come inside?”
Mac lifted his face to the sky, enjoying the rain-tinged wind on his face. “I built this house to be, as much as possible, hurricane-proof.”
“Don’t you have a shelter?”
“That’s for tornadoes, not hurricanes.” Mac told her, walking back into the room. He lifted a bottle of wine and aimed the opening at her glass. “Have some wine, try to relax.”
“Huh.” Rory gulped from her glass and her anxious eyes darted to the rapidly darkening sky.
He needed to distract her or else she’d soon be a basket case. The wind howled and the lights flickered. Rory pushed herself farther into the corner of the couch. He sat down next to her, put his feet up onto the coffee table and placed his hand on her thigh beneath the edge of her shorts. More sex would be a great distraction, he thought, but Rory’s white face and tense body suggested she might kick him if he proposed that. Besides, they’d done it three times since noon. She needed some time to recover.
And that meant talking. Dammit. Not his best talent. Maybe he’d get lucky and she’d start.
He was given a temporary reprieve when his cell phone buzzed. Picking it up, he saw a message from Quinn, checking whether they were okay, and he quickly replied. He picked up Rory’s cell phone and tossed it into her lap. “I suggest you let your friends and family know there is a hurricane and you are safe. They tend to freak if you don’t. And the cell towers sometimes go down during storms so we might lose our signal.”
Rory nodded quickly and her fingers flew across the keypad. Within thirty seconds her phone buzzed and she was smiling at the message on the screen. “It’s Shay, suggesting I climb under a bed with a bottle of vodka.”
Shay...now there was a subject they’d been avoiding. He sipped his wine and rested his head on the back of the couch. “Did you take flak because we almost kissed?”
Rory tapped her finger against her glass. “You have no idea. She refused to talk to me for six months and it took us a while to find our groove again.”
Mac frowned. “Look, I admit I wasn’t exactly Prince Charming that night, I messed up in numerous ways but, God, we were young, and nothing happened!” Mac waited a beat. “Even if that open-mic incident hadn’t happened, she knew we were on our way out—”
“She’d mentioned she thought she was approaching her expiry date,” Rory interjected, her voice dry.
Mac winced. “Look, I can understand her thinking I’m a douche, but why couldn’t she forgive you?”
Rory’s eyes flicked to his face and went back to studying her wine. “The reason why Shay has such massive insecurities and the reason why I am not good at relationships is the same.”
Wait. Why would she think that she wasn’t good at relationships? She was open and friendly and funny and smart, who wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with her? Well, he wouldn’t...but he didn’t want to be in a relationship with anyone so he didn’t count. She had to be better at relationships than he was; then again, pretty much ninety percent of the world’s population was. “How do you know that you are bad at relationships?”
Rory’s laugh was brittle. She looked him in the eye and tried, unsuccessfully, to smile. “I can date, I can flirt, I can do light and fluffy, but I suck at commitment. I drive men crazy.”
He couldn’t imagine it. Here he was, the King of Easily Bored, and he was as entranced with Rory as he’d been from the beginning. “How?”
Rory waved his question away. “When I think things are getting hot or heavy or too much to deal with—when I get scared—I take the easy way out and I run. I just disappear.”
There was a message in her statement and he was smart enough to hear it. When she thought their time was over she’d make like Casper and fade away. Good to know, he thought cynically. Thinking back, he remembered what she’d said earlier. “You said there was a reason why you and Shay act like you do. Will you tell me what it is?”
He was as surprised as she looked at his question. He hadn’t intended to ask that. Did he really want to know the answer? It seemed he did, he reluctantly admitted. Rory was, when she let go, naturally warm and giving, and he wondered why she felt the need to protect herself.
“Well, that’s a hell of a subject to discuss during a hurricane,” Rory replied, tucking her feet under her. “Actually, it’s a hell of a subject at any time.”
“We can talk about something else, if you prefer.” Mac backtracked to give her, and him, an out of the conversation. He stood and walked over to the open balcony doors, holding his flashlight in his hand. Unable to resist the power of the approaching storm, he stepped outside and let the rapidly increasing wind slam into him. He leaned forward, surprised that the wind could hold him upright as the rain smacked his face like icy bullets.
Hello, Hurricane Des, Mac thought as he stepped back into the house and closed and bolted the doors behind him. The lights flickered and he checked that the hurricane lamp and matches were on the coffee table. They would probably lose power sooner rather than later. Mac resumed his seat, linked his hands across his stomach and looked at Rory. “Want to talk about something else?”
Rory shrugged and pulled the tassels of the pillow through nervous fingers. He knew it wasn’t only the crazy wind slamming into the house that made her nervous. The power dropped, surged and died.
“Perfect,” Rory muttered.
Within a minute Mac had the hurricane lamps casting a gentle glow across the room and smiled at Rory’s relieved sigh. “My parents are hugely dysfunctional...”
“Aren’t they all?”
Rory cocked an eyebrow at his interruption but he gestured for her to continue. “When I was thirteen, I was in the attic looking for an old report card—I wanted to show Shay that I was better at math than she was.” Rory tipped her head. “Strange that I remember that... Anyway, I was digging in an old trunk when I found photographs of my father with a series of attractive women.” Rory pushed her hair back with one hand. Her eyes looked bleak. “It