Deeper Than The Ocean by Julie Ann Walker

 

 

Chapter 7

 

11:17 PM…

 

With hot tears standing in her eyes, Chrissy watched her stepfather pack his suitcase. Her mother sat quietly on the edge of the bed, not making a sound.

Chrissy desperately wanted to scream, “Make him stop, Momma! Make him stay!” But the words lodged in her throat like they were weighted down by anchor chains.

Didn’t Momma love Doug anymore? Or had Josephine gotten tired of eating the lasagna he cooked on Wednesday nights? Or maybe she was finally fed up with the way he never managed to get both dirty socks into the bathroom hamper? Or could it be she was over how he yelled at the TV when the Miami Dolphins were playing?

Even if all of that were true, Chrissy still loved Doug. She still liked his lasagna, although sometimes he added too much salt. She didn’t mind stepping over his one dirty sock. And even though he was too loud during Monday night football, she thought it was funny when he called the refs bad names.

Didn’t any of that count? Didn’t she count?

Doug zipped his suitcase and dropped it on the carpeted floor. With one last, longing look at Momma, he said, “For whatever it’s worth, Josephine, I am sorry.”

Chrissy’s mother sat stony-eyed. “If I’m being honest”—her voice was as hard as her expression—“it’s not worth a thing.”

A sad look came over Doug’s face, but it was swiftly replaced by resignation. Taking a deep breath, he turned to Chrissy and knelt in front of her. “You’re a natural fisherwoman Chrissy, my girl. Don’t give up on it.”

Her throat clogged with tears, making her voice hoarse. “But who’ll take the fish off the hooks for me when you’re gone?”

Doug had been the one to teach her to tie on a lure. To cast a line. To untangle a backlash. They’d spent hours fishing the surf around the island, or watching their corks bob in the water at the end of the pier. Chrissy cherished each and every one of those quiet adventures. But maybe she would’ve cherished them more if she’d known they’d come to an end.

“You’re big enough to do that yourself.” Doug chucked her under the chin.

She’d never known her biological father, so even though Doug had only been married to her mother for a little over two years, he’d quickly become the dad she never had.

And now he was leaving.

The pressure in her chest was too much to bear.

Is this what a broken heart feels like, she wondered? But if it was her heart that was shattered, what was wrong with her lungs? Why was it impossible to breathe?

“Just because I don’t want to wake up to your cheating face every day, that doesn’t mean you can’t visit Chrissy,” Momma said quietly. “She’d love to see you.”

Doug scratched his head. “Sure. Of course. But here’s the thing. I kinda promised Marla I’d move to the mainland. I’m not sure how often I’ll be coming back to the Keys and—”

“Then say your goodbyes, Doug,” Momma interrupted. Her tone was back to being rock hard and cold as ice. “And make them good.”

Doug’s throat made a funny clicking sound when he swallowed. He returned his attention to Chrissy, and his expression reminded her of the time Momma had caught him pulling money out of the “Rainy Day Fund” cookie jar.

“Come here, baby girl.” He dragged Chrissy in for a hug.

She hiccupped on a sob when he patted her back. Even her eight-year-old brain was mature enough to realize this was the last time she’d smell his comforting sunscreen and aftershave scent. The last time she’d hear his deep, melodic voice that hinted at the mainland. The last time she’d feel safe inside the circle of his strong embrace.

Before she could wrap her arms around his neck and cling to him like a barnacle on the underside of a boat, he stood and grabbed his suitcase. She was helpless to do anything but watch him push through the bedroom door, his wide shoulders nearly touching the jamb on either side.

“Guess it was too much to expect a man that pretty to stay true to one woman,” her mother muttered as he made his way down the hall with its peach-colored walls and photos of the three of them as a family. Photos Momma would surely take down now that he was leaving. “Too many women willing to offer up too much temptation,” she added.

Doug paused at the front door, turning to stare back at them. Chrissy lifted her hand to wave a final, tearful farewell when his face began to change. At first his features simply faded, leaving nothing familiar. Then his flesh morphed and molded until another man stood in his place.

Doug had become Wolf.

Which meant he was even more handsome than before. His mouth was fuller, his square jaw more defined, his gaze more direct and piercing. Even the harsh scar near his temple didn’t detract from his striking beauty and—

“Chrissy?” A smooth, deep voice echoed through her head. But she was looking right at Wolf and his lips weren’t moving.

“Chrissy? Wake up, darlin’.”

That sure sounded like Wolf. All slow and twangy and sensual without trying to be.

“Atta girl. Come on now.”

Chrissy emerged from the dream slowly, inch by inch, breath by breath. But even as her mind registered it had been a dream—or at least part memory, part dream—her body still felt weightless. As if she’d been caught up in a high tide and set adrift.

“Mmm,” she heard herself murmur. Her eyelids weighed ten pounds each, and it took all her concentration to lift them.

Then it was like she was back inside her memory/dream. Wolf’s ridiculously appealing face filled her vision as he leaned over her. All high cheekbones and slashing eyebrows and skin that reminded her of the old bronze penny she kept for good luck.

His hard, beautiful features matched his name. He looked like a wolf, sleek and fierce and dangerous. But then he smiled, and the expression was so sweet and pure it slipped past her drugged-up haze and sank deep inside her heart.

Tough and tender don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

He’d taught her that.

Too bad he’d also taught her that her mother had been right when it came to pretty men.

They never stayed true.

“There are those baby blues that torture my dreams.” He offered her a teasing wink.

Ever since she’d told him she only wanted to be friends, he’d cranked up the charm. We’re talking a magnitude 9.0 on the Richter scale. The kind of charm that shook the ground beneath her feet until her knees felt as sturdy as jellyfish tentacles.

She acted like it annoyed her, but the truth was she secretly loved it. What hetero woman wouldn’t want that kind of laser-focused attention?

Although loving it felt masochistic since she couldn’t take him up on what his flirtation offered.

Once bitten, twice shy, baby.

“The part of hovercraft doesn’t suit you, Wolf.” Whoa. Was that her voice? It sounded like she’d been eating beach towels for dinner.

Dinner…

The warehouse.

Winston!

It all came back to her in a blinding flash. The truck. The men. The shooting. The blood. “Winston!” She bolted upright.

The sudden move brought a sharp pain to her shoulder that made her vision crackle around the edges and coated her tongue with a metallic taste.

She hadn’t realized she’d cried out until Wolf gently pressed her back into the mattress. Dragging in a shuddering breath, she nearly gagged at the combined scents of marina water, iodine, and blood. She realized she was smelling herself.

“I’ve reached the highest levels of krav maga,” Wolf said quietly. “I’m rated in every weapon that holds an edge or shoots a projectile. And I’ve done combat tours on just about every continent on the planet. But I’ve never found a way to handle a woman’s tears. So, darlin’, I’m askin’ you to do me a favor and stay still so you don’t hurt yourself.”

Slowly, without opening her eyes, she took a mental inventory of her body. Her left shoulder had a thick bandage taped across it, and her arm was secured in a sling.

Her memory came in fits and starts. There were vague images of a paramedic with a red ponytail bending over her. The harsh sound of a siren as she rode in the back of an ambulance. The bright lights of the emergency room.

The prick of a needle.

The hot rush of anesthesia.

The welcome embrace of darkness.

“The bullet missed anything vital,” Wolf’s assured her. “But you’ll be mighty sore for a week or so, I reckon.”

Her mind’s eye once more returned to the carnage inside the old warehouse. To Winston lying in a pool of his own blood.

Sore for a couple of weeks was nothing compared to being dead forever. He was dead, wasn’t he? He had to be dead.

A low, keening sounded inside her head.

No. Not inside her head. That terrible noise came from the back of her throat.

She covered her eyes with her good hand as scalding hot tears soaked her palm. She thought she heard Wolf curse long and low, but couldn’t be sure since her own sobs drowned out the world around her.

She had experienced grief plenty of times in her life. When her dog Charlie got hit by a speeding scooter. When Doug left. The year her mother got sick, and those first terrible, lost, lonely months after Josephine died.

She recognized this physical ache, the painful pounding at her breastbone.

Hello heartache, my old friend.

“Winston.” His name was barely a whisper, and she wasn’t sure if she said it as a prayer or in penitence.

Winston never would have gone into that stupid warehouse if it weren’t for her. If he hadn’t felt obliged to walk her to the bar because, no matter how many times she’d tried to tell him she didn’t need an escort, he hated for her to be out on her own after dark.

Oh, god! Winston’s dead! The little boy who’d taught her to ride a bike, the teenager who’d given her a bouquet of flowers on her twelfth birthday, the man who’d held her hand as she stood over her mother’s grave.

“He’s alive,” a soft voice whispered.

She sucked back her sobs, sure she’d misheard or else was having a morphine-induced hallucination. But upon opening her eyes, she saw Mia and Romeo standing at the foot of her hospital bed. Mia grabbed her toes beneath the blanket, giving them a soft squeeze. “He’s alive, Chrissy,” she repeated in that whisper-soft voice of hers.

Chrissy turned to Wolf. A desperate question in her eyes.

He took her hand and held it between both of his. She realized her fingers were freezing when his big, callused palms nearly burned her.

She might not trust him with her heart, but she definitely trusted him to tell her the truth. If there were two things Ray “Wolf” Roanhorse wasn’t, it was a liar and a bullshitter.

The man didn’t know how to do anything but shoot a person straight.

“It’s true.” He nodded, and she choked on a hard sob of relief that made the pain in her shoulder throb anew. She didn’t care. She could withstand two bullet wounds right now because…

Winston’s alive!

“You gettin’ to me and tellin’ me where to find him, where to send the paramedics, is the only reason he’s still breathin’. You saved him, Chrissy.” Wolf brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve seen trained soldiers who didn’t have the wherewithal to do what needed doin’ when push came to shove. But you nailed it.”

She didn’t know about that.All she knew was she hadn’t felt the pain of her wound. She hadn’t felt the cool wetness of the water. When she pulled herself out of the marina, she’d been laser-focused on getting to Wolf. She’d known if she could get to him, he’d know what to do. He’d make everything better.

And no. That didn’t mean she’d changed her mind about him. Wolf might be the first person she ran to when bullets started flying—duh, the man was a Navy SEAL—but he was still him.

She wasn’t a big believer in there being deep, dark meanings behind dreams. Sometimes a pickle is simply a pickle, Sigmund Freud. But there was no mistaking the significance of the one she’d had as the anesthesia loosened its grip on her mind.

That old saying monkey see, monkey do?Well, in her case it was more like, monkey see, monkey learn hard life lessons, monkey do everything in her power not to make her mother’s mistakes.

“Can I see him?” she asked.

Silence met her question.

Romeo and Wolf had pretty good poker faces, but remind her never to pick Mia as a card partner.

Chrissy pinned Wolf with a look. “Tell me.” The words were cold and clipped, which was the exact opposite of the hot blood rushing through her veins until it pounded like surf in her ears.

“Winston was shot in the chest,” he said carefully.

That much she knew. The memory of Winston’s shirt blooming like a red flower had her gorge rising.

“The bullet split in two as it tore through one of his lungs. A piece of it exited near his breastbone, but the other fragment is still inside him. He’s lost a lot of blood. Too much. The doctors gave him transfusions, but they’ve had to put him in a medically induced coma until he’s stable enough for surgery.”

She didn’t want to ask this next question, but her mother had taught her never to shy away from a cold, hard truth. “What are his chances?”

Wolf dropped his chin and stared at the thin blue blanket that covered her lower half and kept her modesty intact despite the flimsy hospital gown that was printed with…are those snowflakes?

The irony of the pattern given nary a flake nor flurry had ever graced the island wasn’t lost on her.

After a deep breath, he glanced back at her and admitted, “Not good. They’re tellin’ us it’s less than fifty-fifty.”

Her heart sank so fast she was surprised it didn’t bust through the skimpy mattress and fall onto the tile floor beneath the hospital bed. Wetness once again welled in her eyes and slipped unencumbered over her lids.

“Hey now.” Wolf used his thumbs to wipe away her tears. “A wise man once said we should laugh at the odds and live so Death would tremble to take us.”

She knew he was trying to reassure her. In his Wolf way. And so she pasted on a wobbly scowl since that’s what he expected. “What have I told you about the fortune cookie thing?”

Just as she’d known it would, one corner of his mouth hitched up. That beautiful mouth she knew tasted like damnation and salvation all at once. “Your brass is comin’ back.” He dipped his chin. “That’s good.”

Was it? She couldn’t say for sure. All she knew was succumbing to the breakdown she so richly deserved wouldn’t help Winston or anyone else.

She had learned what not to do from her mother when it came to men. But Josephine had also been a role model on what to do when the world went pear-shaped. Namely, take a deep breath, square your shoulders, and keep on keeping on.

“Speaking of brass.” Romeo spoke for the first time. “A detective named Dixon would like to ask you some questions about what happened tonight.”

Chrissy frowned. “I don’t know how much I can tell him.”

“Every little bit counts,” Romeo assured her, taking a business card out of his hip pocket. “I’ll call and let him know you’re ready, eh?”

When she nodded her agreement—she’d do anything to catch the bastards who did this to Winston—he headed toward the door to find a phone. Wayfarer Island was hell and gone from the nearest cell tower, so those who lived there had given up using the devices.

“Here.” Mia pulled an iPhone from her hip pocket. Obviously she hadn’t been on Wayfarer long enough to cancel her cellular plan. “You can call on mine.”

No sooner had the words exited her mouth than her phone chimed. Mia glanced at the screen, shook her head, and then handed the device to Romeo as the two of them ducked into the hallway to make the call.

Speaking of cell phones… Where was Chrissy’s? Someone needed to call Winston’s parents. “Has anyone told Maryanne and Curtis Turner what happened?”

“The hospital called them when Winston came in,” Wolf assured her. “They poked their head in here for a bit, but you were still out. They’re with Winston now.”

“That’s good.” She nodded, comforted by the thought. “I’m glad they’re with him.”

“And I’m glad you’re okay. When I saw you walkin’ up the dock, wet as a drowned rat and bleedin’ a river down your arm, it’s a wonder I didn’t go tits up then and there. I can’t imagine a world without you in it, darlin’. It’d be a darker place. That’s for certain.”

His expression was so raw and open. It slid past the hard shell she wore like a hermit crab and hit her smack dab in the middle of her vulnerable heart.

The truth was, despite him being a playboy, he was still a good guy. The best guy in many ways. Strong but sweetly sensitive. Smart without being too much of a smart-ass. Capable of acting equal parts serious and silly.

“T-takes a lot more than a little bullet to put me down.” She’d tried to sound brave, but her stammer gave her away. Heaven help her, she liked him. As a person. As a man. As a friend. Which made it that much harder not to want him for more.

Again, he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. This time, a chill followed the path of his fingertips. Even when he pulled back, she would swear she could feel his flesh against hers. A seductive warmth lingered.

“How are you really feelin’?” His ink-black eyes were penetrating.

“Fine as a fiddle.” She mimicked his accent.

He wasn’t fooled. “You’re a terrible liar. It’s one of my favorite things about you.”

“Yeah, well, talking about how I can feel my heartbeat in my shoulder doesn’t help distract me from it, sooo…” She made a rolling motion with her hand.

Immediately, a teasing gleam entered his eyes.

Uh oh. She knew that look.

“If it’s distraction you’re after.” He reached for the hem of his T-shirt. “I’ve been known to do a pretty good striptease.”

She wouldn’t have thought it was possible to laugh on a night like this, but that did it. Or, at the very least it brought a wobbly smile to her face.

“I need you getting naked in the middle of my hospital room about as much as I need a third nipple.” The instant she said the word “nipple,” his gaze dropped to her breasts.

“Nope.” She lifted the blue blanket higher and held up her hand when he opened his mouth. “Not a word. I knew it was a mistake as soon as it left my lips.”

A deep chuckle rumbled up from the depths of his chest. It was a sound so sweet and sexy, it made a gal want to slap her momma.

Her momma…

Something Josephine had said came to Chrissy’s mind.

“That man is a downed power line. He looks harmless. But get too close and he’s capable of causing you pain like you wouldn’t believe. The kind of pain that cracks you wide open. You can heal from it, but you’ll always carry the scar.”

Her mother had been talking about her third husband. But the truth in those words applied to Wolf too.

Chrissy would do well to remember that.