Beautiful Storm (Lightning Strikes Book 1) (12 page)

Despite his weariness, she couldn't help thinking how attractive he looked with a shadow of beard on his cheeks, the waves of his hair deliciously mussed. She wouldn't mind running her hand through those thick strands, maybe offering a kiss to soothe his furrowed, worried brow. Then she might see something else in those amazing blue eyes of his besides exhaustion. A pack of butterflies flew through her stomach at that thought.

What on earth was wrong with her? She felt suddenly nervous, restless.

If she leaned across the table, and if he did the same, she could make this tantalizing daydream come true.

And then Michael's voice broke through her reverie.

"Can I use your shower?" he asked.

"What?" she asked, still a little dazed by the sexy thoughts running through her head.

"To clear my mind. I need to wake up. Or, I could run home and come back."

"You don't have to do that. You can shower here. There are clean towels under the sink."

"Thanks."

After he left the room, she let out a breath, thinking maybe she was the one who could have used a shower—a cold shower.

She looked at her computer, yawned and then decided to take her laptop over to the couch.

She settled in among the comfortable cushions and then realized she'd made a huge mistake. Her eyelids seemed suddenly extremely heavy.

Maybe she'd take just a short nap. Then she'd come back at full strength.

* * *

Michael turned the shower first to hot and then to cold, needing something to douse the unexpected attraction he'd felt for Alicia a few minutes earlier. For a second there, he'd thought about kissing her, and the expression on her face seemed to support that possibility as a good idea. But it wasn't good; it was bad, very bad.

Alicia was one of the few people who believed in his innocence and was trying to help him get to the truth. The last thing he needed to do was ruin that. He needed her.

It was an odd thought to have about someone he'd met only hours earlier, but deep down in his soul, he felt like she was going to be the answer to all the unanswered questions. She was going to be the way out of the darkness.

Shaking his head at the ludicrousness of that belief, he stepped directly under the spray, letting the cold water run through his hair and over his shoulders.

Alicia was just a photographer who'd happened to be in the right place at the right time or maybe it was the wrong place at the wrong time—who knew? She thought the lightning had shown her something she needed to see—the ID tag. It didn't make sense to him, but he couldn't argue with the results. Nor could he discount all the little connections between Alicia and Liliana.

There was the Texas connection for one; the Navy for another. And what about the similarities between her father's background and his? Her dad had had a Hispanic mother and a Caucasian father. He'd had just the opposite, but they'd both grown up in families that had a clash of cultures.

He and Alicia were one step removed from the clash, but he often felt like he still had a foot in each world. He didn't think Alicia had been so profoundly impacted by her ethnic background, probably because her parents had provided a stable home until she was a teenager. Although she still liked to think that lightning had some mythical powerful quality, a belief she traced back to her Mayan great-grandmother.

There was something else they had in common. Alicia had lost her father, and he'd lost his mother.

So it wasn't that uncommon for people to suffer loss, but when he put that similarity with all the others, he felt goose bumps run down his arms. Maybe there was something to her idea that the lightning had brought them together for a reason.

Or maybe her craziness was rubbing off on him. He usually relied on his brain not his emotions. In fact, he preferred not to have too many emotions. In the past, they'd always messed up his life. So he'd chosen logic and reason, which made his life more solid, less unpredictable.

Perhaps a little boring…

Had he gotten complacent? Had he started to turn into his grandfather, a man who had never done anything on a whim in his life? Had he turned so far away from his father and his father's values that he'd lost all the color, all the excitement, all the joy?

That was a disturbing thought.

What was also disturbing was that he was even questioning his life. He'd thought everything was pretty damn good until he'd come back to Florida.

That had certainly changed.

His thoughts turned back to David. He had had no idea that David's father had been in the Navy, or that he'd been injured, or that Liliana had looked into the case.

But even if David and Liliana had hated each other, so what? Liliana wouldn't have tried to stop her sister's wedding. Unless…

Was there something she'd found out about David? But what could she have found out? That David was cheating on her sister? That his business wasn't on the up-and-up, that he was a liar? What?

He could be completely off base. Maybe she hadn't wanted his advice. Perhaps she'd just wanted to see him and thought those few days would be their best chance at catching up in person for years to come.

That seemed more likely.

One thing he'd always known about Liliana was that she was headstrong. She went after things. She didn't wait for someone else to take action; she stepped up when she needed to. If she thought her sister was making a terrible mistake, she would have said so.

Unless, she hadn't had the chance. Which brought him back to David being a person of interest, at least in his mind. He needed to find out more about the man.

Shivering, he stepped out of the shower and dried off. He dressed and then headed back into the living room, ready to get to work.

Alicia wasn't sitting at the kitchen table anymore, nor was she looking at her computer. She was stretched out on the couch and fast asleep.

He sat down in the armchair across from her and smiled to himself at the pretty picture she made. Her dark hair tumbled around her shoulders. Her cheeks were pink, her lips slightly parted as she breathed in and out, her soft breasts moving with each inhale and exhale.

There was a part of him that really wanted to lie down next to her and dream whatever dream was making her look so peaceful. She'd managed to escape the anxiety and tension of the past twenty-four hours. He wished he could do the same.

But he was awake now. And he couldn't undo the cold shower he'd just taken, so he turned her computer toward him and decided to do a little digging himself.

He went onto various social media sites, looking for personal photos and information. He finally got lucky when he linked through mutual friends to find David's personal profile.

He flipped through the photographs, many of which had been taken during the past year: the engagement party, bachelor party and other wedding-related events.

He scrolled down the page, clicking on the previous year. He wanted to go further back in time. He didn't know exactly when David and Isabel had gotten together, but he thought it had only been a year ago. He distinctively remembered someone telling him that they'd fallen in love hard and fast.

Sure enough, there was David getting cozy with a redhead a year and a half ago, and there were other photos of women and friends that he didn't recognize. He was beginning to realize that in his mind David had just been an appendage, Isabel's fiancé. He hadn't thought much about who he was outside of that role.

David loved hunting and fishing. He apparently spent a great deal camping as well, which surprised him. Isabel didn't seem like much of an outdoor girl.

But what did any of it mean? Nothing, as far as he could tell.

He clicked through several more photos, his breath catching in his throat when he saw David standing in a bar with another man. They were raising their beer glasses to the camera and appeared to be very good friends. "Damn," he said aloud.

"What?" Alicia woke up with a start, jolting into a sitting position, her eyes dazed and startled. "Did you say something?"

"Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."

She blinked a few times, then said, "I didn't realize I fell asleep."

"You were out like a light."

She ran a hand through her hair, tucking the strands behind her ears. "What are you looking at?"

"A picture of David Kenner." He turned the computer screen around, so she could see the photograph of the two men holding beers at a sports bar. "Look who he's with—Brad Harte."

Her jaw dropped. "They're friends?"

"Looks like it. I'm surprised. Harte is at least nine or ten years older than David. This was taken over a year ago."

Alicia stared back at him with puzzled brown eyes. "What does it mean?"

"I have no idea, but we just came up with another question to ask Brad."

Nine

Two hours later, Michael had come up with quite a few more questions he wanted to ask Brad, but first Brad had to show up. They'd arrived at Javier's, a trendy, touristy bar in South Beach ten minutes before eight and it was now almost eight thirty. They were already finishing up their first round of drinks, mostly because they were both impatient for the time to pass.

"I don't think Brad is going to show," Alicia said, running her finger around the rim of her wine glass as she scanned the crowd.

"Let's give him a little more time."

He lifted his beer bottle to his lips and took a swig. If Harte didn't show up, Michael didn't know what the next move would be. They would have to go to David, but that wouldn't be easy. If they started asking him questions, the Valdez family would no doubt circle the wagons around him.

"This is a beautiful bar with beautiful people," Alicia murmured. "Not really my scene."

He raised an eyebrow at her words. "You don't like beautiful?"

"Not when it feels fake. I prefer raw, natural beauty, the kind that's unexpected."

"Like the kind you find in lightning."

She smiled back at him. "Exactly. There's nothing more incredible than nature showing what it can do."

"A lot of what nature does is destructive."

"I know."

"Do you?" he challenged. "Because it seems to me like you have a rather idealized view of storms. The aftermath of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and flooding can be devastating. Or maybe you don't stick around long enough to see what the lightning brings with it."

She frowned and set her glass down on the table. "I stick around. I've volunteered many times to help people displaced by storms. I don't just take my pictures and vanish into the wind. I wouldn't do that. I
couldn't
do that. And you should know that better than anyone."

"I do. Sorry. I definitely know that you don't disappear when someone is in trouble. I don't know why I said that."

"Because you think my obsession with storms is a little weird, and that's okay, because it is. But it's part of me, and I'm not interested in pretending that it's not. I already tried that, and it didn't work."

"What does that mean?"

"I lost a pretty serious boyfriend because he didn't like the way I dropped everything when the weather changed. I hid my passion at first. I didn't rush off when the weather changed. I tried not to care. I stopped taking as many photographs. I just went to work and tried to be a good girlfriend. But I wasn't happy. I wasn't me. There's something about the lightning that speaks to me. It calls me to come. It wants to show me something. I really believe that."

He was beginning to believe it, too. "So you broke up with your boyfriend so you could chase storms?"

"No, he broke up with me. I left him in the middle of a party, and he didn't like it."

"Well, you can see why he wouldn't."

"It was a hurricane, Michael. It wasn't just any storm—it was the storm of a decade."

"I didn't think lightning came with hurricanes."

"Not usually, but sometimes it does. And besides that, my boyfriend had left me plenty of times when he needed to work. He just didn't view my lightning photography as work. He thought it was a stupid hobby. But you know I actually make more money selling my photographs at the gallery than I do working at the newspaper."

"That's impressive. And the boyfriend doesn't sound like he was the right man for you."

"He wasn't. Not that I know who the right man is," she said with a little sigh. "It's so difficult to find someone you really connect with, where it's instantly easy. You're not trying to talk yourself into anything. It's just good."

He nodded, her words resonating within him. He hadn't felt that kind of connection in a very long time…until now.

The unexpected realization unsettled him. He chugged down the rest of his beer.

"So what about you, Michael? I know you've had some bad dates, but what about serious relationships? When was the last time you had a girlfriend?"

He had to think about that. "Three years ago."

"What happened?"

"The usual stuff."

"As in…"

"She thought I cared about my work more than her. And she wasn't wrong. I've spent the last several years committed to getting ahead in my grandfather's company. I was usually thinking about my job instead of her."

"Or maybe she just wasn't the woman to make you think about her instead of work," Alicia suggested.

He met her gaze, thinking that he hadn't thought about work at all since he'd met Alicia. "You're right."

"Did you always want to be a builder?"

"No. When I was a lot younger, I wanted to be a baseball player. I was a great Little League shortstop."

"That's a hard position."

"I liked the challenge. But baseball wasn't really an option at prep school. And summers after that were spent working at one of my grandfather's job sites. I ended up getting a master's degree in construction management and then worked my way up through his company. It's good. I like building things out of nothing. Every project has different challenges, and my grandfather's company has sent me all over the world."

"That sounds great, but it's still just a job, and you know what they say—a job won't keep you warm at night."