Page 15 of Against the Wind

Of course she had.

Abandoning her cleaning rag, Bree headed behind the bar. The distinct crack of a bottle cap preceded her sliding a beer my way. “We’re mostly shut down until after the storm, but we’ve still got bottled. Sit a bit and get your feet back under you.”

“Appreciate it.” Now that I was here, my case of the willies seemed stupid. But that wasn’t why I’d come to begin with. Isank down into a chair and took a long pull on the bottle.“So you know that situationship I mentioned yesterday?”

“The one that you thought was a real relationship until something went sideways?”

“That’d be the one.” As briefly as possible, I explained Seattle. The promotion. The end of things.

By the end, she’d sat down herself at the table I occupied.“Okay… what about him?”

I took another long pull on my beer. “He’s here.”

Bree blinked. “Here? On Hatterwick? Why?”

“Coast Guard hurricane prep. And apparently...” I began to pick at the label on my bottle. “He’s here for me.”

She leaned forward on her elbows. “Tell me everything.”

So I did. Once I’d finished, her face darkened.

“The audacity. He chose Seattle over you. He doesn’t get to just show up months later and claim he’s here for you.”

Her instant feminine outrage was exactly what I needed. Some of the disquiet settled. “That’s what I thought.” I traced patterns in the condensation on my bottle. “I’m just going to ignore him until he leaves.”

“On this tiny island?” Bree snorted. “During a hurricane? Good luck with that plan.”

“It’s going to be chaos. Everyone running around preparing. The community center setup. Storm response. How hard can it be?”

“Gabi.” She fixed me with a look. “You’re the only doctor on the island. He’s Coast Guard. You really think you won’t end up working together before all this is over?”

“I think we’re both going to be too damned busy dealing with the aftermath of this storm to worry about anything else.” Not that I was wishing disaster on my island but facts were facts.

Bree crossed back to the bar and grabbed another beer for herself. “Look, I get it. But you can’t just keep avoiding him.”

I gave her the side eye. “I don’t know. You’ve been doing a pretty admirable job avoiding Ford for the past decade or so.”

“The fact that he’s been deployed on the other side of the world for most of it helps. I’m just saying, it seems like you’re gonna have to face him, eventually. If for no other reason than for a little bit of closure. A guy doesn’t show up making claims like ‘I’m here for you,’ and then let a little thing like a hurricane get in his way. Even if he has to wait until cleanup is over, I somehow doubt he’s going to just leave without at least talking to you again.”

Could I handle that? A civil conversation to get some kind of closure on our relationship?

I had no idea.

“I really like my plan better.”

Bree arched a brow and smirked. “Good luck with that.”

TEN

DANIEL

I hefted another box of emergency supplies onto the stack, my shoulders protesting the movement. The ibuprofen I’d taken at dawn hadn’t touched the deep ache from hours of holding binoculars steady in the pre-dawn darkness.

“These the last of them?” Martinez passed me another box from the truck.

“Two more.” I blinked hard against the grit in my eyes. The coffee maker in the fire station’s kitchen had been working overtime since 5am, but caffeine could only do so much.

My night watching Miller’s wreck had been a complete bust. No boats, no lights, no suspicious activity—just choppy water and increasing wind. The storm’s outer bands were already hitting the coast, creating white-capped waves that had made it impossible to spot anything smaller than a cruise ship without proper equipment. Either there’d been nothing, or we’d already missed our window.

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