Page 2

Chapter two

Shelter

P oppy tried not to stare at her new acquaintance, but… Well, there wasn’t anything else to look at, was there? Other than the bouncing hailstones and the sopping ruins of her shopping run, and she was not at all ready to confront either piece of reality just this second, thank you very much.

Rai-not-Ryan was taller than her by just a few inches, with tan skin and blue-black hair, longer than her own—wet, it went past his shoulders and fell in the sort of smooth waves she would have killed for when hers had been long, rather than the frizzy tangle she’d opted out of with her pixie cut.

She hadn’t caught the color of his eyes—he’d been smiling every time she’d looked, laugh lines crinkling merrily—but he had bold, dark eyebrows and high cheekbones, and his smile was wide and rogueish.

He was wearing a white button-down and dark slacks, all of which clung to a lean, rangy body she was absolutely not ogling but had definitely noticed.

Especially with the way the rain had turned his shirt translucent.

She’d thought her leggings and Ramones shirt fine for her walk to the store, but now she felt like a bedraggled hobo standing next to a rom-com movie star.

Any second now, his straight white teeth were going to actually gleam. She was sure of it.

He was looking out at the hail, his expression strangely intent. “Do they always bounce like that?” he asked.

It took her a moment to realize he meant the hailstones. “I guess so. At least when they hit hard surfaces.” She peered at him more closely. “Is this your first storm?”

He snorted then laughed fully. “No. It is not my first storm.”

Poppy giggled, embarrassed. “I guess it wouldn’t be. Unless you were locked away from the world your whole life.”

He was still riveted on the bouncing hail. “I have not seen it this close before.”

“Well, most sane people stay safe inside when it gets like this.”

His eyes shifted over to her, crinkled with mirth again. “And why didn’t you?”

“I did specify sane people, right?” Poppy waved over her shoulder at her dripping bags. “No, I just needed some things that couldn’t wait till tomorrow. And the weather app betrayed me with false promises.”

He frowned slightly. “Did you not see the clouds?”

“Says the other person trapped by the Niagara Falls of thunderstorms,” she quipped back, a little stung.

He blinked, then smiled brightly again. “Yes. I also am trapped because of the…weather app’s vile lies.” He turned to face out into the rain again, raising his fist and shaking it. “Curses be upon you, weather app!”

“Curses indeed.” Rai sure was a cheerful guy—she had never seen anyone this happy at being stuck in a miserable situation. But it was kinda nice, too. Most people gave Poppy weird looks when she made sarcastic, overblown jokes about her life, rather than joining in. “So, are you new in town?”

He turned wide eyes to her, and oh , she hadn’t expected them to be a stormy, pale gray. “How did you know?”

Because you’re watching a nightmare monsoon storm like a kid in a candy store. “Lucky guess. Where are you from?”

He made a vague gesture. “I came up from Brazil.”

“Oh, wow. Were you there for the flooding during Carnival? It was so sad, seeing it on the news.”

He looked away sharply. “Yes. Very sad.”

Whoops, obviously a touchy subject. “We get flash floods here, but mostly that’s just in the washes.” She leaned back against the wall again. “I’ve lived here for a year now, and this is my second monsoon, but I’m still not used to this.”

“It is spectacular,” Rai said, reaching a hand into the rain.

“It is.” Poppy looked down at her dripping bags. “Honestly, if I were home and sitting on my mom’s porch, I’d be enjoying this.”

“And yet you are not.” He focused back on her, intent. “What troubles you?”

“Well…” She sighed and pulled the package of toilet paper out of her bags.

She had accidentally ripped the plastic when she was going through the self-check but shrugged it off, not expecting it to be a problem.

The formerly crisp rolls of paper now sagged with saturation, and a stream of water dripped steadily from a corner of the package. She winced at the sight.

Rai tilted his head. “This is a problem?”

She rolled her eyes. “Did you know that your jokey voice sounds just like your real voice?” She shook the package, sending excess water flying.

“Not to get all TMI, but unless I can salvage this toilet paper, I’m gonna be wiping my butt with air until payday.

” It was a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit.

Not to mention how her mother was likely to react.

Not that she’d be cruel, or unkind, just…

Rai grinned at her pathetic attempt at humor. “That’s quite unfortunate.”

She dropped the sodden package back into its bag.

“Yeah, I’ll spare you the rest of the carnage, but about half my groceries are trashed, too.

I am so fucked.” She winced again and cast Rai a quick glance, but he either hadn’t heard or didn’t care about profanity.

She hoped it was the latter, because cleaning up her language was a long-lost cause.

And then he met her eyes and smiled again, slow and wicked.

“ Are you?” he asked, his voice sinking deep as the thunder about them, and holy crap, was he hitting on her?

Oh, god, did he think she’d been hitting on him ?

Had her subconscious been hitting on him?

Or was he one of those guys who heard the word fuck and thought it was an invitation?

“Metaphorically!” she squeaked. “Because I can’t… I don’t usually talk like this to strangers.”

His brow furrowed in apparent confusion. “Like what?”

“Like… I don’t know.” False alarm . “I’m telling you all my problems, and I just met you five minutes ago. ”

“Ah.” He leaned his shoulder against the thick pillar that supported the veranda roof.

“I do not mind hearing your troubles.” He had a faint smile on his face, but his expression was intent in a way that was both flattering and a little awkward.

His shirt still clung to him like Saran Wrap, even though he’d been safe out of the rain for several minutes. Not that Poppy was complaining.

“That’s nice of you, but I’m good.” She looked around at the rain, dismally aware that somewhere along the line she’d started blushing. Down, girl. The storm had let up a bit, almost down to a drizzle. “How long do you think it’s going to go?”

“Perhaps all night.” His voice was cheerful.

She looked at him, then out at the drizzle again. It’s not too bad now , she lied to herself. “Maybe I should just make a run for it. It’s only…a mile or so.” Ugh. A mile in the rain, even at its current rate, and she’d be lucky if she didn’t disintegrate like wet toilet paper.

“Why must you leave?”

She managed a brave smile as she gathered her bags and slung her purse over her shoulder. “Joys of my job. I’ve got deadlines that can’t wait.”

“At night?” He made no move from his slouched pose, just watching her.

“Yes, at night.” Poppy tried not to get annoyed—most people with normal jobs didn’t get her life. But it would take time to explain, so she channeled her inner Elsa and let it go. “And my mom is gonna worry.”

“Perhaps you should stay,” Rai said.

“No, I’d really better go.” She gave him a wide smile. “Rai, it’s been nice meeting you, even under these miserable circumstances. I hope the rain lets up soon so you’re not trapped here forever.” She took a deep breath. Once more into the breach…

There was a loud crack of thunder overhead and the drizzle transformed into a wind-driven torrent, followed by a renewed onslaught of hail. Poppy jumped back just as the hailstones started bouncing in at her again.

“Fuck!” she squeaked, her back hitting the wall again.

“What a shame,” Rai said, leaning against the wall beside her.

There was something in his voice that niggled at her, and she assessed him. He was grinning again. “You don’t think it’s a shame at all.”

He started in surprise, and then his grin widened. “No,” he said. “I do not. I am enjoying speaking with you.”

Poppy’s cheeks were hot enough to turn the rain to steam. “You could have just asked me to stay. ”

“Would you have stayed?”

“For a few minutes, at least.” What the hell, she might as well admit it. “I’m enjoying talking to you, too.”

“Then perhaps we should thank the rain,” he said solemnly.

She rolled her eyes. “Thank you, rain!” she sing-songed sarcastically.

“It sounds,” Rai said, “like you were saying fuck you to the rain.”

“I was.” She laughed. “Actually, before you got here, I yelled it at the storm.”

“Perhaps that is why it came back.”

“Yes,” Poppy said. “The storm absolutely came back just because I yelled at it. I hurt its feelings, and now it is going to follow me wherever I go so it can torment me.” She snorted.

“Either that or it’s fallen madly in love with me and now it’s going to follow me everywhere I go so it can water me.

” She’d read something like that in one of the Hitchhiker’s Guide books she’d found on her mother’s shelves when she’d moved in. It had inexplicably made her cry.

Rai laughed out loud, and god , it was a crime how good his laugh was. Totally unashamed and uninhibited, almost musical. It was worth having to wait around a little longer, just to have heard it again.

“So,” she said when his laugh ended, “what brings you to Tucson?”

He slanted her an amused glance. “Work.”

“What do you do?”

“I…travel,” he said with a shrug, glancing away.

“Yes, I got that with the whole came to Tucson for work thing.” She waved a hand in the air, shoving down her disappointment. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer. I’m just nosy.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I will answer.” His gaze flickered to her grocery bags. “I am a purveyor of toilet paper.”

“Oh, like a sales representative? That’s, um…

interesting.” Or super boring. No wonder he didn’t want to tell me.

Traveling toilet paper salesman seems like the punchline to a bad joke.

“So, you visit the local grocery stores and…try to get them to stock your brand?” Could she ask what brand he represented? Or was that too nosy?

“That is indeed what I do,” he said brightly. “And you?"

“I do freelance transcript editing.” When Rai frowned in confusion, she elaborated.

“Captions for things like news, TV shows, college lectures. The companies I work for run the videos through voice-recognition software, and then I watch the videos and make sure they’re good English with correct punctuation, and that they’re timed right with the video.

” He still looked confused, but she couldn’t blame him—it wasn’t the sort of job most people even knew existed, much less thought about the logistics of.

“And you do it at night.”

“And in the morning, and in the afternoon… Each job has its own deadline, and I claim the ones I want and can do by the deadline. But speaking of which…” She unzipped her purse and dug for her phone.

It seemed to have escaped the worst of the rain, though the lining of her purse was slightly damp.

Hopefully the cracked screen hadn’t let in enough moisture to cause any problems. She had three months of payments to go.

Rai peered over her shoulder. “Interesting.”

Poppy quickly swiped out of her lock screen before Rai could judge her.

So what if she liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer .

The weather app was still up; on a whim Poppy swiped down to refresh.

“Can you believe this thing still says fifteen percent chance of rain?” She scrolled to look at the Doppler radar image.

“Ugh. It looks like the rest of Tucson has almost dried up. Meanwhile we are that red dot right there.” She pointed at the image.

He leaned further over her shoulder. “That is quite strange indeed.”

Oh, she was going to hell, because Rai smelled as amazing as he looked, fresh and lightly musky.

The scent of the rain around them even seemed to intensify with his closeness.

Maybe she’d hallucinated him in her misery, or she was on some candid camera show and her blushing face was going to show up on TVs nationwide.

She hastily exited the weather app and went to the web browser.

“Sorry, I just need to request a deadline extension.” She gave Rai an apologetic smile and angled her phone away from him so she could type in her password.

Not that she thought he was going to login to the transcript site and screw with her job; it just felt weird, letting someone watch that.

Not safe at all. No matter how cute his cloud-gray eyes were.

He wandered off while she was tapping at her screen, peering out to look at the storm clouds, then reaching out a hand to let rain gather in his palm. A few hailstones bounced off his arm and he laughed in surprise.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Poppy asked as she switched over to text messages.

Her mother had to be freaking out. Either that or she’d found something else to stress over.

Everything had seemed in order when Poppy left, but that didn’t mean anything in their reality.

Would a call be better? Ugh, probably, but then she’d have to answer questions, and those would definitely make things worse .

She kept it simple. Safe. Waiting for the rain to slow down but I’ll be home soon. Love you!

“It does hurt,” Rai said, letting out a little laugh. “Like a bee stinging.” He kept his hand out in the hail, watching as more hailstones struck him.

“Well, you don’t need to get all macho just to prove something to me.” Poppy thumbed her phone back to sleep and tucked it back inside her purse. She’d check for a reply later, when she had an idea when she might get home. The long walk had already used most of her charge. Best not to waste it.

Rai drew his hand back, turning toward her again. “What would I be proving?”

“I don’t know. That you’re a manly man who laughs in the face of pain?”

He smirked at her. “I do.”

“Well, you can expect your manly man award in the mail in a week.”

“Excellent.” He came back to stand beside her. “So, what shall we discuss now?”

Poppy shrugged. “We could talk about the weather,” she said in her most deadpan voice. “Tell me, do you think it might rain tonight?”

Rai burst out into more of that delicious laughter, and she joined him, letting the ridiculousness of their situation wash away her worries, just for the moment.

She would deal with everything else later.