Page 5 of The Spirit of Love

Wind ripples across the beach, carrying a misty drift of harder rain.

In the distance, thunder cracks. I sway in my hammock, my clasped hands a pillow under my head.

I think of Zombie Hospital ’s child actor, Buster, somewhere out there, on the far side of this forty-mile stretch of sea.

Is he wondering, like I am, what it will take for him to give the performance of his life next week?

What will it take? That’s always the question. An actor gets to wonder. A director needs to know.

The rain falls more steadily, drumming the pebbles on the shore.

Goosebumps dot my arms. It’s getting colder.

I think back to the pneumonia that hospitalized me when I was ten.

I should get into my tent and dry off. I spill out of the hammock, soaked.

A gale of wind assaults me as I struggle back across the beach.

It’s strange that Edie downplayed the ferocity of this wind.

Her tendency is usually to oversell a storm’s potential.

I duck inside my tent, take off my raincoat, and towel off.

I click on my lantern and pull out my camcorder.

Maybe I’ll film myself practicing a pep talk for Buster, to see what ideas flow.

I draw my sleeping bag around my shoulders.

The tent poles bend sharply as the wind around me howls. I make sure they’re secure, then I pick up my camcorder and press Record.

“Hey, Buster, it’s me. I’ve been thinking about your performance, and—hold on… What the hell? ”

Someone—something—is unzipping my tent!

My free arm darts out to freeze the zipper, to tug it in reverse and keep myself sealed in here. To keep whoever that is out there.

The zipper unzips again, a swift hand’s width this time, before I catch it and meet it with equal, opposite force.

“Let go!” I scream as the terrifying tug-of-war ensues. Whoever’s out there really wants to get inside.

Suddenly, there’s a horrible shredding sound as the zipper falls away from the tent fabric.

A bright light blinds me, and a blast of rain assails my face.

“Aughhh!” I scream, scurrying backward.

“Aughhhh!!!” the light screams back, louder and deeper than me.

Wet sand slams into the back of my skull. It takes me a moment to realize I’ve fallen out of what’s left of my tent. I’m defenseless, vulnerable, and blind.

“Damn, you okay?” a low voice with a hint of southern twang asks as the garish light disappears. “Ma’am?”

I blink up at the figure crouching beside me. He wears an orange helmet with a miner’s light attached, and somehow his hand is holding mine. I’m about to whip away my hand when he pulls on it so gently, I don’t realize he’s helped me all the way up until I’m standing in front of him.

A flash of lightning affords me a better view. This might be the largest human I have seen up close. He’s far north of six feet tall, with broad shoulders and rippling forearms.

He finds my lantern on the sand and holds it up, illuminating us both.

He’s handsome in an extreme way, and that’s really not what I need right now.

His soaking raven hair wings out from the back of his helmet.

His eyes are a melty chocolate brown, downturned at the corners, set beneath a robust pair of brows.

His mouth is full and slightly open, showing two rows of straight white teeth.

“Are you hurt?” he asks as rain hammers us with biblical force.

“Not as hurt as you’re about to be!” I say and jerk my hand out of his. “Who the fuck are you?”

He smiles. And there are dimples. Great, now I’ll need to put up my dimple shield. They’ve been known to mess with my head.

“Catalina Search and Rescue,” he proclaims.

“Not interested.”

“I’m…not soliciting. I’m here to save your life.”

I laugh. “I don’t need to be saved. I don’t need to be searched, nor rescued. I need to be left alone!” I grab my lantern from him and spin away to look for my raincoat and my camcorder. “And I need a tent that zips!”

The rain is freezing, hard, and mean. My sister can really be full of shit sometimes.

“Let me help you,” Search and Rescue says, turning his miner’s light back on. His voice is honeyed, even when shouting over the rain.

Now soaked to the bone, I wrap my arms around myself and nod at the ruins of my camp. “Yes, you’re off to a wonderfully helpful start.”

A gust of wind almost lifts me off the ground. S&R catches me with both arms. In the fraction of a second that he’s holding me, my body betrays me. Despite the situational impossibility, something inside me acknowledges that he’s giving end-of-summer-college-fling-best-sex-you’ve-ever-had vibes.

“Let go!” I decide to tell him. “You are wrecking everything .”

“Look,” my brave and bumbling hero says. “I have one job, and I take it seriously. In extreme conditions, like this storm, events often fail to unfold according to plan—”

“Who wrote that?”

“Wrote what?”

“You memorized that nonsense, I can tell.”

“It’s not nonsense,” Search and Rescue says, sounding almost hurt. “And allow me to remind you, ma’am, that I’m responding to your distress signal.”

“Stop calling me ma’am!” I say, backing farther into the rain, playing off how I’ve just tripped over my hammock in the dark. “I assure you that I became distressed only after your arrival.”

Search and Rescue’s fantastic eyebrows furrow. He’s cute when he’s confused, which is lucky for him, because I’m guessing it happens a lot.

“A flare went up eleven minutes ago,” he says, looking around as if suddenly he’s doubting his side of the story. Which he should.

“Dude, the last time I packed any flare was when I waited tables at BJ’s Brewhouse.”

He stops walking and rubs his bicep, thinking. “Maybe we should start again.”

“Do you want me to get back in the tent?” I deadpan.

“I do owe you a tent,” he says.

“And a priceless, irreplaceable camcorder,” I say. “And a weekend of spiritual restoration. And—”

“We can tally it all up later.” For some reason, he’s smiling at me now. “Right now, it’s time to seek higher ground. This storm is getting unfriendly—”

“Look, cowboy, I wanted this storm. I called it in. Not only that, but I was in a flow before you bodice-ripped my tent.”

“You called in this storm?” he shouts over earth-rattling thunder.

“Okay, a storm!” I shout back, wiping my face with my hand. “Not this one necessarily. This one is…a lot. Perhaps more than I anticipated.”

“That’s the whole point of my speech! Which I wrote, by the way.”

“Yeah, well, Search and Rescue needs an editor.”

“The name is Sam,” he says. When he turns his head, his profile in the helmet, with rain streaming off it, is something I wouldn’t mind capturing on film.

Very quickly, while Sam is looking at the steep path up from the beach, I lift my viewfinder to my eye and frame him. It would make a beautiful shot.

“Do you see that rock formation?” Sam shouts over the rain. “The one that looks like a serpent’s head?”

“Of course.” My protector. My good omen.

“Listen,” he says, holding up a finger.

I do. “All I hear is rain.”

“That prehistoric natural sculpture is about to become a contemporary rockslide. Any second now, the levee up the trail is going to give way. So, flare or no flare, I’m not asking. You either walk with me up that path to my Jeep so I can drive you to Two Harbors—”

“Here comes the authoritarian threat—”

“Or I toss you over my shoulder and carry you. I’d prefer your consent, but saving your life comes first.”

For a second, I picture this: Sam actually tossing me over his shoulder. Something warm pulses inside of me, which I dispel with a laugh that turns into a full-body shiver.

He notices, and a moment later, his vest comes off his huge chest and drapes around me. It should be soaking wet and freezing, but his body heat has kept it warm. There’s no masking my gratitude.

“Thanks.”

“I can heat my Jeep’s interior in three minutes,” he says. “I can have you checking into a fireplace room at Banning House in under twenty. I’m out of your hair in twenty-one.”

I gaze up at the path I’d trekked down so optimistically only hours earlier. I look down at the beach and sigh at the sight of my busted tent. “Just let me find my raincoat and my camcorder.”

“There isn’t time.”

I ignore him, flinging aside impractical underwear and storm-soaked books. I find my raincoat and put it on. But I don’t see the camcorder anywhere.

Where is it?

A sepulchral groan sounds above me. As I look up, it’s suddenly a little too easy to imagine myself being taken by a real-life rockslide, swept away like a feather on a wave.

Then giant arms are scooping me up and Sam’s voice is in my ear. “We’re getting out of here, ma’am.”

“I said stop calling me that,” I say, even as his strong arms and firm chest are putting me in an almost grateful state of mind.

“Then perhaps you should tell me your name?” he says.

“The name’s Fenny,” I tell him, just as the serpent’s ancient hooded head crumbles onto the sand.