LITMIR.BIZ

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“I couldn’t be happier that we did, love.”

      Love. Yes, she liked the sound of that a shade too much. Olivia gripped the handle of the door and had opened it only slightly when he said, “Wait a moment.”

      She looked around, and her breath snagged. He was closer now. Jesus, what was this hold he had over her? She didn’t know how to handle it.

      His eyes narrowed on her face. The lines of his mouth were tense now, his jaw squared as he searched her expression. He reached out and took the door but didn’t shut it. She was free to go if she wanted, but his gaze and the urgency she saw there hooked her and made her knees buckle. “I’m ashamed to have to ask you,” he said, “but can I have your name? It seems I’ve forgotten it after last night’s tequila-fueled debauchery.”

      She pursed her lips. “Why would you want to know? I mean, let’s be honest. We’re clearly never going to see each other again....”

      Gerald lifted his shoulders and shook his head. “Not likely.” He stilled and the urgency blinked into his eyes again, heightened. “But you never know, do you? Maybe...one day I’d like to find you. Or you’d perhaps like to get in touch with me. I don’t know....”

      As Olivia searched his eyes and the moment between them stretched, the link between them humming, she weighed his request. Weighed him. Reaching out, she touched the arm he was using to hold the door open. His muscle tightened at her touch. She slid her fingers up to the back of his and squeezed them warmly as she memorized his face. She would be glad of it later, when she returned to her hometown in Alabama. She would remember him and her night with him in the Bellagio penthouse fondly. “Olivia,” she said finally. “My name is Olivia.”

      “Olivia,” he said, smiling softly.

      She nodded, then stepped back, pulled away and broke his spell. “I think we should leave it at that.”

      His lids came down halfway over his eyes, hiding resignation, or disappointment perhaps. “Right. It’s enough. For now.”

      As if there could be a later. She cleared her throat and backed away from him, through the door into the hallway. “So long, Gerald.”

      “Goodbye, Olivia.”

CHAPTER TWO

      GERALD PARKED THE rental car at the bottom of a steep incline on the main drag of Fairhope, Alabama. He frowned through the light drum of rain and the protesting whir of the windshield wipers at the barricades in front of his headlights.

      It was nighttime on the snug shoreline of Mobile Bay. And according to all the local radio stations he’d scanned during the drive from the airport in Pensacola, there was apparently a large and ominous hurricane headed in this general direction. The woman at the rental car company had told him he was lucky to have found an available flight from New York to the Gulf Coast at all.

      When Gerald told her he’d be driving west toward Mobile and farther into the possible cone of impact, the woman had eyed him balefully and reluctantly handed over the keys.

      The inclement weather didn’t faze Gerald too much. The rain was coming in bands and though the wind did slap the rain against the car at a sideways angle and tug at the wheel a bit, it was all spotty at best. Nor did the fact that he’d lost his way worry him too much. He grabbed the map from the passenger seat and flipped on the cab lights to scan it. He’d gone on drives in the New York countryside with the purpose of getting lost—lost in the scenery, lost in his head. Getting lost was nothing new to him.

      What did give him pause was the fact that he had just driven through the downtown area and Fairhope appeared to be a ghost town. As he drove farther and farther away from the Florida-Alabama line and toward the bay, he had come across fewer cars on the road. By the time he got to his destination, the streets were all but deserted.

      He wasn’t the worrisome sort, but he would be glad for a familiar face right about now, as well as the warm, homey lights of companionship.

      What better place to find it than Tavern of the Graces where he had finally tracked down Olivia Lewis, the woman who had so captivated him in Las Vegas three weeks ago. Nearly a month had passed and Gerald still couldn’t get her out of his head. It might have been foolish to go flying off impulsively to Alabama when he had a manuscript due to his editor in New York very soon.

      But he’d needed to see her. Something had driven him here to this small Southern town he’d never heard of, and he wouldn’t rest, much less write, until he got to the bottom of it.

      Gerald brought the map closer. If he was reading it right, the tavern Olivia owned and operated on South Mobile Street was only a few blocks to the south. All he had to do was turn the car around, go back up the hill, then turn right and drive a half mile. He had made the mistake of going down the hill, which led into a park and a long pier overlooking the moody bay.

      Brows raised in interest, he peered over the steering wheel, squinting through rain and wind, trying to see beyond the roadblocks. The rain was down to a light patter now. He pulled on the long wool coat he’d brought from New York and grabbed the emergency flashlight from the glove compartment. Led by that foolish, towering impulse that had brought him here to begin with, he fought the wind to open the driver’s door and left the car running. He curled one arm over his forehead and bent over slightly as he walked into the brunt of the wind.

      Gerald squeezed between two roadblocks. He could see why everyone had been chased into the stillness of their homes. The hungry gale wolfed off the bay, the balmy breath of Mother Nature itself. The water that he imagined was usually calm, presently chopped and slapped the eastern shore of the bay in whooshing crests. The rain seemed to slacken off as he neared the entrance to the pier and the edge of the seawall that dropped straight into briny waters. Even without the rain, the air kissed the skin with salty residue. Licking his lips, Gerald tasted it on himself already.

      The wind whipped at his coat, grabbing and tugging. A gust hit him in the middle and pushed him back from the edge of the long plunge into the bay—a fair warning. El Niño was bitter and hungry and, despite the fact that it was now getting on into fall, it wasn’t giving up its hold of the Gulf Coast quite yet.

      A particularly large gray wave came rolling toward the seawall and him. Gerald took several quick steps in retreat but the water sprayed up and drenched him as the wave pounded into the wall below.

      Gerald laughed, rubbing a wide-palmed hand over his wet face. “Bloody marvelous,” he murmured, grinning like the fool he was.

      Yes, he had been right to come here. He hadn’t seen it in the light of day yet, but Gerald knew without a doubt that he could write in this sleepy little bay town. Turning regrettably away from the storm’s impressive display, he walked back to the rental car.

      Now, to find Olivia and get the answers he’d been desperately scrambling for since she left their honeymoon suite in Las Vegas.

      * * *

      BLENDERS BUZZED, BOTTLE tops sucked and hissed, and glasses clinked. Speakers blared, pool balls clacked and hearty conversation all joined the tavern chorus to drown out the wind rattling the windows facing the listless bay. Only a handful of days away from Halloween, the wooden walls of the tavern were strewn with faux cobwebs.

      “Jimmy Buffett, eat your heart out,” Olivia announced with a wink to the gentleman on the other side of her bar who’d ordered a tall margarita.

      “Hold on to your hat, newcomer,” one of her regulars, Charlie, muttered, giving the gentleman a supportive pat on the back.

      “How much do I owe you?” the newcomer asked her.

      Olivia beamed. “On me. Didn’t you hear? That storm is headed for N’Awlins. We’re celebratin’.”

      “Though God bless all those poor Cajuns,” Olivia’s part-time waitress Monica Slayer said. “First Katrina. Then Gustav. Now this. They can’t ever seem to catch a break.”

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