Sheltering Dunes Read online

  Just that morning, Mica had been her patient, and Flynn wasn’t the kind of paramedic who followed up with patients for any reason—social or medical. She didn’t track down ER staff to find out what happened to the injured she’d delivered to the hospital or to discover the fate of the babies she’d transported in the back of the medic unit on a wild ride through dark streets at night. She was happier walking away, doing what she could in the moment and then letting go. She didn’t need to know. She couldn’t change the outcome. She needed a clear beginning and a definite end that had nothing to do with her, except for those few critical moments when she was certain she was doing the right thing. In this one area, emergency care, she trusted her instincts. She trusted herself.

  Unlike a few of the others, she’d never once tried to date anyone she’d met on a call, even when their injuries had been minor or nonexistent and the call had turned out to be more social than medical. She’d vowed never to let her personal and professional lives bleed into each other again. Walking Mica home was almost an exception to her rule, but as long as she was only being friendly… She caught herself up short, wondering if she was lying to herself the same way she had lied to herself about Evelyn.

  At first she’d denied her attraction, then called her growing desire friendship, and only when she’d confessed her feelings had she been abruptly reminded she’d willingly misread everything. If she hadn’t been so involved with her own personal anguish over Evelyn, maybe she would have seen Debbie’s pain more clearly. Maybe everything would have been different. If Evelyn had been her only mistake, she might have been able to forgive herself.

  Flynn closed her eyes and let the pain wash through her on the familiar crest of guilt and remorse.

  “You ready?” Mica asked, sliding up next to her.

  Flynn hadn’t seen Mica come around the end of the bar. She hadn’t seen anything as she’d looked inward and backward, replaying what she hadn’t said—what she should have done—and how the outcome might have been different if she’d had better instincts. If she’d had the instincts she’d needed and once believed she’d had. If she’d been a better priest.

  “Yeah, sure.” Flynn stood.

  “You okay?” Mica didn’t move and Flynn ended up standing very close to her. So close the scent of dark spices and a hint of chocolate surrounded her. Mica’s eyes were soft and warm, as open and welcoming as Flynn had ever seen them. Mica’s fingers trailed lightly down Flynn’s arm. “You looked like something was…bothering you.”

  Flynn flushed. She didn’t confide in people easily, but the unexpected tenderness in Mica’s gaze made her want to confess. She almost laughed. How had the tables turned so completely, and when did she start believing absolution might be found on earth? “I’m fine.”

  Mica shrugged and stepped back, the sliver of warmth in her eyes chilling. “Suit yourself.”

  “Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  Flynn shoved her hands in her pockets. They walked side by side to the door in silence and the gulf between them widened. Every step made Flynn panic just a little, as if she needed to get back to solid ground before she sank beneath the weight of her own memories. “I’m not usually moody.”

  “No?” Mica kept walking and didn’t look at her. “What are you usually?”

  “You ask hard questions.”

  “You like bullshit better?” Mica slowed on the narrow wooden sidewalk that led from the club to the street. She seemed to be looking around, but the dim, narrow alleyway leading to the street was empty. At the far end, people strolled by on Commercial even though it was close to midnight.

  Mica waited, her silence a challenge.

  “I don’t know what I am anymore,” Flynn said. “I like my job. Keeps me busy. I don’t think about much of anything else.” Even as she said it, Flynn saw her life for what it was—a highway to nowhere, and she was taking it as fast as she could. She was running away every bit as much as Mica seemed to be. “And no, I can do without the bullshit. I’m sorry I can’t—”

  “Look,” Mica said sharply, “forget I asked. Your business.”

  Flynn nodded. The walls were up again. Just as well. She needed the walls too. “Have you had anything to eat tonight?”

  “I’ve been busy too, you probably noticed.” Mica headed toward the street.

  “I noticed.” Flynn caught up to her. “How’s the headache?”

  “Can we leave off talking about my head and my stomach and any other part of me,” Mica grumbled. “I took a spill, I didn’t get hit by a subway train. I’ve had worse injuries dropping my bike.”

  “Harley?” Flynn pointed to Mica’s T-shirt.

  Mica grinned, pure pleasure lighting up her face. “Yeah. A sweet little classic Softail.”

  “So why were you on a bicycle this morning?”

  “I sold it.”

  Flynn heard the message in Mica’s clipped words. An off-limits topic—at least for right now. “Look, I could use something to eat. Want to stop at the Post Office and grab a sandwich?”

  “No.”

  “My treat.”

  Mica stopped in the middle of the street across from Town Hall. “Message time, Flynn. I asked you to walk me home, and if you get lucky, maybe I’ll ask you up to my room. But if I do, it’ll be on my terms because I want to get laid, not because I owe you anything.”

  “Mica,” Flynn said quietly, “you don’t owe me anything and you never will. If I offer something, it’s because I want to do it. Maybe because I’m hungry, maybe because I’d like your company.”

  “Yeah, sure. Why would you like my company?” Mica ran her hand over her chest, slowly tracing the outline of her breast until her fingers trailed down her belly and angled across her crotch. “This kind of company, I get that. But like I said, that’s not for sale.”

  Flynn blew out a breath. “Okay. We have a little problem here.”

  “No, we don’t. See you around.”

  Mica moved so fast she was halfway up the block before Flynn got her ass in gear and jogged after her. When she caught up, she said, “I don’t pay girls for sex, cash or otherwise. I don’t take girls out to dinner and expect them to sleep with me afterward. I don’t even expect a good-night kiss after taking a girl to a really good movie.”

  “Then you’re a loser,” Mica muttered.

  “Yeah,” Flynn sighed. “That might be why I never get laid.”

  Mica laughed. “You are some kind of weird chick.”

  “I think you told me that already.”

  “So you’re not looking to get laid?” Mica cut Flynn a disbelieving look.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “So what do you really want?”

  There it was, the question she’d been trying to answer ever since she’d left the seminary. What did she really want? Some things she knew for certain. She needed to feel useful. She needed to know that her life meant something. The best, the finest way she knew of doing that, was to make someone else’s life a little better. She’d grown up believing from as far back as she could remember that the way for her to serve was to minister—to provide a safe place to speak, to listen without prejudice, to guide without judgment—that had been her goal. She had never felt the need to convert others. She believed people came to God in their own way, in their own time. Her mission was to help, and if she was truly lucky, to heal. In the months since she’d left the seminary, she’d cared for the body instead of the soul. She should have felt more satisfied. She should have felt if not peace, at least solace. But she didn’t.

  They’d slowed until they were barely moving. People streamed around them, laughing, talking, making plans, living. Irrepressible humanity. Flynn tried to remember the last time she’d felt like she was living, and she remembered Allie in her arms. She took a deep breath.

  “I’d like some company,” Flynn said. “I don’t feel like being alone right now.”

  “Wow, your lines really do need a little work. That doesn’t exactly
make me want to let you jump my bones.”

  Flynn laughed. “I was thinking we’d have a late dinner and then I’d walk you home. Like we agreed.”

  Mica chewed her lip, glanced behind them, and lifted her shoulder. “Sure. Why not?”

  Why not? Strangely lighthearted, Flynn decided not every question needed an answer.

  *

  Allie leaned against the corner of Vorelli’s restaurant, shielded by passersby, and watched Flynn and Mica carry on a conversation in the middle of the street as if nothing else was going on around them. Flynn had a way of doing that—zeroing in on you until you felt like the entire world disappeared and all that mattered was what was happening in that instant between the two of you. Allie couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to church, but she remembered what it felt like to confide in Flynn, to expose herself. To let herself be comforted. She’d felt safe. Flynn must have been an amazing priest.

  Flynn had given her shelter. No one had ever made her feel quite that safe, not personally, not in her heart—except Ash. Allie could easily have given her heart to Flynn if Ash hadn’t already owned her, body and soul. Still, a little bit of her heart tugged every time she saw Flynn. She didn’t want to sleep with her, she didn’t want to claim even a little bit of Flynn’s heart, but she wanted to see her happy. She loved Flynn like she loved Bri—like she loved few people—all the way deep down inside.

  Every time she saw Flynn, she wondered what could have possibly made Flynn give up being what she must have been so good at. That was a question she was going to get answered one day soon. But right now, she wondered what the hell Flynn was doing. They bumped into each other regularly on shift and off, and she’d never seen Flynn pick up anyone before. She’d had to make the moves the few times they’d gone out. And now Flynn was getting all tangled up with exactly the wrong kind of girl.

  Even if she hadn’t known Mica was hiding something, she wouldn’t have wanted Flynn to hook up with her. Girls like that played girls like Flynn—teasing them, stringing them along, using them. That little dark-haired cutie was a hardcore badass, and if she wasn’t in trouble with the law already, she was headed that way. She would probably use anybody and anything to get what she needed. And Flynn was such a goddamn sucker. So sweet. So kind.

  Damn it, Flynn, what are you doing?

  Flynn and Mica started off again, cutting through the crowd, and Allie fell in behind them. She wouldn’t have called Reese if she hadn’t been certain something was off with Mica, and talking to her for a few minutes in the Piper had made her even more certain. The girl had been skittish, more than skittish—she’d looked like the hounds of hell were after her. That would’ve tripped her trigger even if Mica hadn’t been hanging around Flynn. She wasn’t about to stand around doing nothing and watch Flynn get dragged into something that might get nasty. If she had to traipse around town in the middle of the night, every night, to find out what the hell was going on, she would.

  And first thing in the morning, if the computers didn’t give her a lead as to the girl’s identity, she’d have to go at it the old-fashioned way. She’d convince Reese to let her bring the girl in for questioning. Reese had said to trust her instincts, and her instincts were telling her trouble, big trouble, was waiting right around the corner.

  Chapter Nine

  “So,” Mica said, “this is it.”

  She slowed in front of a ramshackle building that once must have been an elegant captain’s house. Now, even in the weak light cast by the moon ducking in and out of the clouds, the shabbiness was hard to miss. Peeling paint, sagging porch, shutters hanging askew. She’d been lucky to get the apartment—more like a big room, really, with the bonus of having a private bathroom, and she’d used the last of her money paying the first month in advance.

  “Thanks for dinner,” Flynn said.

  Mica shook her head. “You paid, remember? So that’s my line.”

  “Tell you what,” Flynn said. “Let’s make a deal—no lines. I won’t if you won’t.”

  “What does that leave us with?” Mica asked, looking for the con.

  “The truth.”

  “Yeah, right. But why not?” She tossed the ball back to Flynn. Her play. Let’s see what she called truth. “So why the dinner?”

  “Like I said before, I enjoy your company.” And she sounded like she meant it. Looked it too—her eyes glinting in the moonlight, an easy smile making her look sexy and sleek.

  For a crazy nanosecond, Mica contemplated asking Flynn upstairs with her. She’d had a good time at dinner—a really good time. Flynn was easy on the eyes, easy to talk to, easy to be with. Too easy. She made Mica forget for minutes at a time to be careful, to be wary. Flynn even made her forget now and then to pay attention to who walked by, who followed in the near darkness, who might be waiting up ahead. Dangerous. Stupid and dangerous, all because Flynn made her forget her own rules. And now she was thinking about asking Flynn upstairs? Yeah, right.

  “Are you working tomorrow?” Flynn asked.

  “I work every day, if I can,” Mica said.

  “Then you probably have to get up early. I should let you go.”

  Flynn didn’t move away, and neither did Mica. Nothing waited for her upstairs. A silent room, an empty bed, another night when she kept the loneliness at bay by replaying the alternatives in her mind. Hector’s mocking laugh, his rough hands, the wild, crazy gleam in his eyes.

  “You want to come up?” Mica blurted. When she looked into Flynn’s eyes, she couldn’t see Hector’s.

  “I think we should stick to the original plan,” Flynn said seriously. She cupped Mica’s chin and kissed her on the cheek before Mica could jerk her head away. “Thanks for tonight.”

  Mica stiffened. Flynn’s lips were soft and warm. She smelled like autumn in the park, with just a hint of sweetness beneath the rich scent of burning leaves. Mica hadn’t walked in the park since she was ten and her mother took her and her brother and sister to the playground on the rare Saturday or Sunday she wasn’t working. Then her mother had lost her job and gotten hooked up with a man who’d put his hands on Mica’s ass one too many times, and she’d found a new family. After she’d joined MS-13, there were no more late-afternoon walks in the park, not even the little scraggly one along the waterfront across the highway from the high-rise where she lived. Mica pulled away from the kiss before her body asked for more. “What the hell was that? If you don’t want anything—”

  “I don’t.” Flynn backed up. Her blond hair silvered in the moonlight. Her lanky body, all dangerous edges and teasing curves, shimmered like a blade. “You’re beautiful, you know.”

  Mica’s breath snagged on a lump in the middle of her chest. “Flynn—”

  “Night, Mica.”

  Her name whispered on the wind and Flynn was gone.

  Mica waited, holding her breath, her belly tight and aching, anticipating the instant when Flynn would reappear. She touched her fingertips to her middle, felt her muscles clench—an unfamiliar longing swirled in her chest. Flynn didn’t come back, and after a minute, Mica sucked in a breath, spun around, and climbed the porch. She let herself in and hurried up the dark stairs to the second-floor rear apartment. The room smelled musty and abandoned, but underneath the heavy scent of loss, she detected a hint of the sea, and hope. Leaning back against the closed door, she shut her eyes. Her face tingled from the touch of Flynn’s lips. That ache in her belly was bigger, part loneliness—that she was used to—and another part so unusual she hadn’t recognized it at first. The slow burn of desire flickered and flared. Her breasts tightened, her nipples pebbled underneath her T-shirt. Her belly quivered.

  None of the girls she’d played with, not even the ones she’d kissed in the shadows when the loneliness got too big, had made her want so much. She’d been crazy to ask Flynn to come upstairs. She couldn’t afford to let anyone inside her defenses. Especially not someone who made her forget for minutes at a time that her life was not her own.

&n
bsp; *

  Allie let herself into her garden apartment between Commercial and Bradford a little after one. Her cell phone finally caught a signal and she saw she had voice mail. She dropped her keys onto the table that doubled as a dining table and desk and scrolled through the short list, her heart kicking up when she spotted Ash’s number. She slid her thumb over the Listen icon.

  Hi, babe, I guess you must be asleep. Sorry I didn’t call sooner—I’m in some kind of a dead zone and can’t get a signal half the time. Talk to you in the morning. I love you.

  Allie replayed the message. Ash’s husky voice cut through her as if she hadn’t heard it hundreds of times before, leaving her awash with joy and desire and old fears. Ever since Ash had come back into her life a few weeks ago, the old wounds had started to heal, but she still had moments when she walked into the empty apartment and nearly drowned under the crushing memory of the long, lonely months after Ash left her. God, she’d been miserable. She’d very nearly slept with Flynn to push the pain away. She didn’t regret having met Flynn, having gotten close to her, but a small part of her worried she might have been using Flynn, and the guilt burned. She hit Call and waited, her stomach jittery with anticipation.

  “Hi, baby.” Ash sounded wide-awake.

  “Hey,” Allie said, moving through the living room to her bedroom without turning on a light. “Sorry, did I wake you up?”

  “No, I’m watching TV,” Ash said. “I’ve been in the car so much I needed to unwind a little bit before trying to sleep.”

  “How’s it going?” Allie pushed the speaker button, set the cell phone on the dresser, and pulled off her T-shirt. “Are you almost done?”

  “Getting there. I’ve got a couple of sites to visit tomorrow morning and then I’ll hit the last ones on my return leg. I ought to be back soon.”

  Dancing from foot to foot, Allie pushed out of her jeans and the rest of her clothes until she was naked. She grabbed the phone, carried it to the bed, and slid under the covers. The sheets were crisp and cool, too cool without Ash. “That’s good.”