Not today.
Today, Lizzy was alone on the roads, the beach void of the surfers and tan seekers.
She turned onto Dustin’s street, water spraying up on her windshield from the already flooded curbs, blinding her for a second. The only car in his driveway was a Jeep she didn’t recognize, but Dustin had a huge garage. If he was home, and she hoped like hell that he was, he’d be parked inside. Pulling up the hood on her thin hoodie sweatshirt, she opened her car door.
And stepped into several inches of water.
The icy wetness seeped up into the hospital scrubs she hadn’t taken the time to change out of, the thin cotton clinging to her calves and sucking the breath out of her lungs. She eyed Dustin’s house, which, like her own, was on a raised foundation, as were most of the other houses on this street, and therefore elevated off the ground. Hopefully, the concrete footings would be enough to keep them from flooding.
Unfortunately, Santa Rey sat squarely between a set of low, gently rolling hills on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west, in a little nature-made bowl of a valley.
Now with fifteen-foot swells threatening to rise even higher, and the heavy rainfall steadily sliding down the mountains with no growth to stop it thanks to last year’s tragic wildfires, that bowl was filling up.
Leaving the town in serious trouble.
By profession, Lizzy was good in an emergency. Her job depended on it. She was strong of mind and body and spirit, and she knew how to be cool, calm and collected.
Or at least appear that way.
But right now, she was having a hard time. She just needed to see Cece, and then she’d relax.
Sloshing through the water up Dustin’s front path, the driving wind nearly knocked her off her feet. At the door, she pounded her fist on the wood to be heard over the unbelievable din of the storm raging around her, and reached for the doorknob at the same time, surprised and relieved when it turned in her fingers. “Hello!” she called out into the dark house. “Dustin? It’s me…”
The living room and kitchen lights weren’t on, but she saw a light coming from down the hall. She turned back and fought the front door closed. “Dustin? Cristina?”
In answer, a shadow came along the hall. A very tall, built shadow, over six feet. But here was the thing-Dustin wasn’t six feet. Plus he had a long, lanky runner’s body that tended toward skinny.
Truth was, Dustin looked like Harry Potter all grown-up, complete with the sweet and kind characteristics-
Such as the one heading toward her.
Uh-oh.
He kept coming at her, in tune to the house shuddering and moaning around them, like something out of a horror movie, and she reminded herself that horror movies made her laugh. But she instinctively moved back a step, tripping over her own two very wet feet and-
Landed on her ass.
She’d been doing Tae Bo for at least five years. She should be able to kung fu his ass-all she had to do was stand up and execute a roundhouse kick-
Except the shadow crouched down to her level. “Are you okay?”
The question only further scattered her brain. Why would a bad guy ask her if she was okay? “Keep your mitts off me.”
“Okay.” He lifted them in surrender. “Are you the woman who called here? Do you need help?”
Dawn had barely broken and, with no lights, he was still nothing more than a dark outline of a man. A very tall, built man that she blinked up at. “How did you know I called?”
“Because I was trying to get to the phone. I couldn’t find it, and then when I did, the battery was dead.”
He didn’t sound like a bad guy. He sounded like a sleepy, slightly irritated guy who’d been woken up, his voice low and raspy.
“You hung up too fast,” he told her.
Yeah, definitely irritated.
And also, oddly familiar.
2
“CAN YOU HEAR ME?” he asked her. “Are you okay?”
Lizzy knew that voice. How did she know that voice?
The guy straightened to his full height. She heard a click, and then the room was filled with light from a lamp next to the couch.
Her bad guy was wearing a pair of army-green boxer briefs.
And nothing else.
Well, except a gorgeous body that appeared to have been chiseled with the same care and build of a Greek god, layered with sinew and sleek, tanned skin and dipped in testosterone for good measure.
Holy smokes. “Um.” She shoved back her hood. “I’m looking for Dustin-” But as she focused in on him, specifically on the tribal band tattoo on his biceps, she broke off her words. He had a tat on his pec, too, a military troop number, which was new, but the one on his arm was not, and her gaze jerked up to his face.
His voice had been familiar for a reason, and her confusion vanished, replaced by shock and surprise, and not a happy one at that. Yeah, she knew him-as the bane of her existence.
At least that’s who he’d been in high school-Jason Mauer.
Dustin’s brother.
He was staring at her, as well, full recognition on his face. “Wow. Lizzy Mann, all grown up.”
“I was about to say the same.”
At her bring-on-the-icicles tone, his lips curved. “So you’re still uptight and pissy, I see.”
“I have my moments. You still an ass?”
He laughed, the sound low and rusty, as if maybe he hadn’t laughed in a long time. “Have my moments.” He eyed her scrubs. “Dr. Mann now, right?”
Everyone in Santa Rey had known she’d gotten a full ride scholarship to UCLA to follow her childhood dream of becoming a doctor. Apparently he didn’t know that she hadn’t actually gone, that she’d stayed here and raised Cece, and was only now pursuing that dream again, thanks to a grant her hospital had just awarded her to go to medical school in the fall. “No. Just Lizzy. What are you doing here? I thought you were in the National Guard.”
“I am. Was.”
“You’re out?”
He spread his hands and lifted his shoulders, as if not sure. “In between gigs, I guess you could say.”
Because their last names had both started with M, she’d sat next to him in every single class from elementary school all the way through to graduation. She hadn’t talked much-she hadn’t been able to, what with tripping over her tongue every time she so much as looked at him.
Which hadn’t mattered because he hadn’t looked at her in return. He’d been far too busy being both a football and a basketball star. Oh, and being popular. And going after every girl in school-except her.
Yeah, when it came to Jason, her teenage memories were all some variety of the same theme-humiliation and resignation. That wouldn’t be the case for him. He’d been a restless student, far more into his sports than his studies, but it hadn’t mattered. Not with his easygoing, laid-back charm. The teachers had fallen all over him, always making Lizzy help him catch up when he missed school for a game. That she’d been so shy as to make that nearly impossible had amused him to no end. He’d spent endless hours entertaining himself at her expense, either making her repeat a lengthy explanation just to watch her trip over her tongue, or playing dumb until she’d lose her patience with him.
