Radclyffe - Wild Shores

Austin nodded. “I do. So, this Atlantic Flyway—I’m assuming that’s not a euphemism.”

“Not at all. There are quite a number of flyways traversing North America, well-traveled migratory pathways with established stopovers for various species. It’s made it easier for conservation groups to protect endangered species by identifying and preserving sanctuaries.”

“Like Rock Hill Island.”

“Yes—the Audubon Society has been the big mover and shaker there, but plenty of smaller groups and institutions do the same thing.”

“I remember when I was a kid,” Austin said, “watching the geese fly south in huge V-shaped formations. The sound was so amazing. I always felt a little sad—I don’t know why.” She shrugged. “Maybe I just wanted to be somewhere else too.”

The melancholy in Austin’s voice tugged at Gem’s heart. “Where was that?”

“Vermont,” Austin said. “My mother is a trauma surgeon at UVM.”

“Is that where—” Gem trailed off.

“Where I had my surgeries? Yes.”

“And now?” Gem didn’t have the right to ask, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted—needed—to know in some deep primal place that Austin was safe.

“I’m good. Perfect health.”

Austin grinned and looked more like the charming rake she’d appeared when teasing Gem in the diner about the buxom and seductive waitress. Had that only been half a day ago? Time seemed to have fractured into before and after the kiss , and the universe had taken on a whole different color. Despite the fog, the before-kiss time had been suffused with sunlight and blue skies, at least in Gem’s imagination. The after-the-kiss was a deep purple morning sky on the edge of the sea as storm clouds rolled in. Reminding herself she loved both and never feared a gale, she went with her instincts. “It must have been really hard as a kid, though.”

The silence surged back and Gem held her breath. Their truce was so fragile, like a fledgling first attempting to fly.

“I didn’t have the stamina of other kids, so sports were out. In my family…that was tough.”

“A competitive lot?”

Austin’s laughter was sharp-edged and humorless. “About everything. My father was active Air Force and flew fighter jets in the Gulf. He met my mother there—she was Navy reserve and got called up as a medic. She got out between wars when my brother was born, but she never left the front lines. My brother’s some kind of athletic savant—he never met a sport he didn’t excel at. Got drafted to both a Major League Baseball team and the NFL. Played both for a while and finally settled on baseball. Plays for the Yankees.”

“Richie Germaine is your brother?” Now that she thought about it, she could see the resemblance. Germaine was a star on and off the field—smart, handsome, and mega-talented. He also had a world-famous model for a wife, and they were frequently the subject of media attention.

“Yep, that’s my big brother. I never could catch up in the physical arena—by the time I was finally done with the surgeries, it was too late for me and school sports.” Austin grimaced. “Or much of anything else my family valued.”

If they hadn’t been in the car and weren’t still mired in the after-kiss awkwardness, Gem would have hugged her. She could so easily see the child who, through no fault of her own, hadn’t fit in a highly aggressive, competitive, physical family. Austin seemed to be the last person in need of protecting, but Gem ached with a well of protectiveness all the same. “Well, you’ve made up for it now. You’re pretty damn famous yourself.”

Austin laughed, and this time her obvious pleasure softened her features, making her seem younger and far less cynical. “Yeah, that’s me—crowds follow me wherever I go.”

“Told you,” Gem said, inordinately happy just to have made her laugh. Maybe the after-kiss strangeness would fade away now too.

“So,” Austin said, “enough about my uninteresting past. Tell me what kind of birds you’re expecting, and when.”

“I’m mostly interested in waterfowl—ducks, geese, swans, pelicans—especially since many of them overnight on pastures en route where they might come into contact with domestic fowl. And of course, all the shorebirds are key to follow. Many of them endangered.” Gem stretched, beginning to feel the stiffness in her back and thighs from the long hours of inactivity. “The saltmarsh sparrow is a favorite of mine. And don’t try to tell me you’re dying to know more.”

“Come on,” Austin protested. “It’s interesting. Do you band them or something?”

“Some, yes. We also document the flocks through satellite tracking, geographics, and sometimes with little tracking devices called geotrackers. And we ask birdwatchers to call a hotline if they sight a banded bird.”

“I had no idea,” Austin muttered, and she really should have. She’d dealt with environmental rescue teams more than she’d like, but she’d never talked to the biologists—usually just the incident commanders. She needed to get a lot closer to the ground to understand the personalities involved and what was at risk. “How long do they stay?”

She hoped the answer was not very long. If the spill was ongoing but slow, even if they couldn’t contain it immediately, they might be able to set up enough blockades to stop or divert the movement of the surface contaminants to shore. Then if the birds were gone, the impact would be far less. Cleanup procedure would be a lot less complicated if they didn’t have to deal with wildlife salvage.

“They don’t all arrive at once, of course,” Gem said. “We’ll be seeing nesting flocks for the next few weeks.”

“I see.” Of course she couldn’t catch a break. But then, maybe she would. Maybe Ray Tatum would give her good news. And she needed to contact him soon to get a sit rep. “We’re still a good three hours from the island at the speed we’re going. If the weather clears a little more, I’ll be able to make better time, but I’m not counting on it.”

“Whenever you’re ready, I can eat,” Gem said.

“Let me know when you’ve got some kind of signal again too. I need to make some calls.”

“I’ll keep checking.” Gem remembered Austin had mentioned there was no one she was meeting, but she didn’t pry. It was none of her business who Austin needed to call, a stark reminder she didn’t really know anything about her. Or rather, what she did know were not the things one ordinarily learned on first meeting. Sure, she knew where Austin lived, more or less, and she knew what she did for a living, and she’d learned a couple of things about her family. But she didn’t know her age, she didn’t know her taste in music, or her favorite food, or her favorite color, or, God—if she had a girlfriend. Weren’t those the things you were supposed to talk about when first getting to know someone? Obviously, she was failing at Relationship 101. But she did know some things about her—she knew she was confident, capable, a good listener, protective, a little possessive, secretive at times, and, beneath the strength, plagued by sadness. Austin was fascinating, alluring, and a fabulous kisser. And about that kiss…

“What happened back there,” Gem said before she could second-guess herself, “was pretty unusual for me.”

Austin cut her a look. “The tire changing or the kiss?”

Gem smiled fleetingly. “I’ve done both a few times before. Actually the kiss more than the tire thing, but I usually wait until, you know, we’ve had a date or three or so to jump. So to speak.”

“We had breakfast at the diner. That’s kind of the date.”

“It was.” At a loss, Gem searched for exactly what she wanted to say. She didn’t want to apologize. She wasn’t sorry. The kiss had been everything she hadn’t realized she wanted—exquisitely sensual, passionate, a tangle of sensations that disengaged her mind and left her with nothing but feelings. Wonderful, wild feelings she wanted to recapture. Of course, she wasn’t about to mention she wanted to do it again. That and more. She needed to examine those emotions a lot more carefully before she found herself in way too deep. The kiss was one thing. Sex with a near stranger was something else again.