“So who’s this old friend you’re going to visit?” Olivia asked, wanting to linger on the porch a little longer.
Flynn didn’t answer. Instead, he got up, walked to her, and gently pulled her out of her chair. Pressing her against him, thigh against thigh and hip against hip, he cupped her face in his hands and whispered, “Hmm, a personal question. Are we taking our relationship to the next level?”
Olivia stiffened in his arms. “What does
There was a smile in Flynn’s voice as he murmured his reply in her ear. “It means that you’ll stay for breakfast. Try it just once and see how it feels.”
Relaxing, Olivia sought his lips. They were warm and inviting. “All right,” she agreed, her voice low and deep with need. “But no stacks of pancakes or three-egg omelets. I prefer lighter fare.”
“The best I could scrounge up would be bread and jelly,” he said with a low laugh as he led Olivia inside.
The next morning, Olivia and Flynn ate toast with strawberry jam and drank coffee in front of the television. Ophelia had picked up speed overnight and was likely to make landfall just after dawn on Monday. As they watched, the program was interrupted by an emergency announcement. The screen turned cardinal red, and white letters appeared, alerting those throughout the county that the mayor was calling for voluntary evacuations.
“Wow,” Flynn breathed, his coffee cup frozen midair. “This is serious.”
Olivia carried her dishes to the kitchen. “You should get going. The roads will get crowded quickly.”
Seeing that his mistress had no leftovers for him, Haviland moved to the door and waved his tail, obviously eager to leave.
“I need to go home and feed the Captain anyway. He’s too much of a food snob to settle for toast.” Olivia gave Flynn a little smile.
He put his mug down and walked her to the door. Taking her hand he said, “Are you sure it’s safe to stay out on the Point?”
“Why? Do you want me to evacuate with you?” It had meant to be a jest, but Olivia saw a look of alarm dart across her lover’s gray eyes. Fiddling with Haviland’s collar, she turned away and gave Flynn time to decide whether he wanted to open up about his destination or keep the identity of his ‘old friend’ private.
Several seconds passed and she could sense a gulf widening between them. In that stretch of silence, they’d each taken a step away from one another.
Olivia was ready to go. She pasted on a carefree smile and said, “I’ll be fine. See you soon.” She watched Flynn relax and reach for an umbrella.
“Let me accompany you to your car. It’s raining buckets. Geysers. Veritable tsunamis.”
Waving off the umbrella, Olivia gave Flynn a peck on the cheek and left without looking back. Pulling the hood of her raincoat over her hair, she tried to avoid the deeper puddles polka-dotting the road, poignantly aware that whatever progress she and Flynn had made last night had been lost. The look on his face when she mentioned accompanying him to Raleigh told of secrets Flynn wanted to preserve. If he had truly wanted to let her in, he would have spoken up, but the moment had passed and he’d been returned to bearing the label of casual lover.
“It’s better this way. Less complicated,” Olivia told her rain-speckled reflection in the rearview mirror.
She vowed to never wake up in Flynn’s bed again.
At home, Olivia fed Haviland and printed out Millay’s chapter, intending to save the critique work as a means of entertainment during the inevitable power outage.
The rain had increased in tempo since Olivia’s return. No longer the gentle and steady precipitation of last night, it fell in a disharmonious staccato. By early afternoon, the wind gained a voice, fluttering like heavy curtains in accompaniment to the rain. By four o’clock, however, it dominated the noise of the ocean and begun to rush around the sides of the house and over the roof like a low-flying airplane, growling and hissing. Soon, Olivia knew, it would sound less like an angry witch outsmarted by a fairy book child and more like the enraged howl of Jack’s giant.
As the afternoon waned, Olivia’s lights flickered several times but did not go out. She kept near the television, watching in awestruck fascination as the storm hurtled toward the North Carolina coast. The recommendation to evacuate continued throughout the day and Olivia received several calls from her staff at The Boot Top as well as from members of the Bayside Book Writers asking after her welfare. The person she wanted to hear from most, however, did not call.
For dinner, Olivia ate beef stew and fresh bread slathered with butter, then returned to the sofa with a glass of red wine. She had to turn the volume of the television higher in order to compete with the clamor of the rain- laden wind. A sodden journalist reported live from the Outer Banks where widespread power outages had occurred minutes before their broadcast. Hearing the news, Olivia checked the placement of her battery-powered lamps.
“It won’t be long now,” she told an anxious Haviland.
She also had her raincoat, hat, and waders waiting by the front door in preparation to start the small generator hidden behind a wooden screen on the side of the house. It could only power the refrigerator and the kitchen lights, but Olivia planned to run an extension cord from the outlet behind the fridge to the countertop, ensuring the continued use of her coffee machine.
“Ophelia may huff and puff and try to blow the house down, but nothing will stop me from having coffee,” Olivia had declared to Haviland earlier that weekend.
She also had a waterproof radio and TV unit to switch on once her main set went dark, but the little emergency television had a tiny screen and a flimsy antenna and Olivia doubted it would be of much good. Still, she turned it on and flipped between the three available stations until she was able to get a grainy picture of an anchorwoman’s face. Shortly afterward, a powerful burst of wind shook the walls from roof to foundation and the house fell into a state of semi-darkness.
“I’ll be right back,” Olivia spoke soothingly to her agitated poodle. “I need to start the generator.”
Outside, the sky had a surreal, white gray glow, as though Ophelia were exhaling wet smoke. Even dressed in her foul-weather gear, rain pelted Olivia’s face and crept under her collar. The wind was nearly strong enough to knock her flat, and when she had to use both hands to grab the wooden screen surrounding the generator to regain her balance, a strong gust snatched her hat away.
“Damn!” Olivia tried to shout as she yanked on the generator’s pull start, but her words were stolen before they could even leave her mouth. The generator roared into life and Olivia felt an exaggerated sense of triumph.
Her smugness was short-lived, however, for when she climbed into bed, she found it impossible to sleep. Ophelia pounded on every surface with fists of wind and water. It didn’t help that the last report Olivia had seen on her tiny television in the kitchen had been of a missing fishing boat and the plight of its five-man crew.
Lying in the dark with Haviland burrowed under the covers at her feet, Olivia couldn’t push away the memories of her final night with her father. She was tired of remembering his wild eyes and raised fist, of imagining him falling overboard and his body sinking to the cold depths where no sunlight penetrated, of wondering if the fog and sea had ruined her or rescued her. But the memories wouldn’t leave her room.
Shortly after midnight, she decided that the only way she’d sleep was by downing a few fingers of Chivas Regal. She’d just poured a glass when someone knocked hard on the front door.
Olivia blinked but didn’t move, a shiver rippling up the skin of her back.
“Who’s there?” she shouted a challenge and was stunned when Chief Rawlings bellowed in reply, “It’s Sawyer! Open the door, Olivia!”
She immediately complied. “What are you—”
“Pack a bag,” he ordered, stepping in out of the rain. Turning, he used both arms, locked at the elbows, to close the door behind him. “You can’t stay here. The worst is yet to come.”
Water dripped from the chief’s regulation rain cape and boots. His face was pinched with anxiety and exhaustion and his presence filled up Olivia’s spacious kitchen as though he were ten men, not one.
“But I’m fine,” Olivia managed to protest. “Aren’t there people who need you more than me? Those living near the shore or in trailers by the river? This house was built to withstand this type of storm. I’ve got—”
Rawlings reached her in two strides. Grabbing her arm, he gave her a rough shake. “Don’t be a fool! I know you’re capable and tough and independent, but this”—he pointed out the kitchen window—“is more than even
