He snorted, was thankful he didn’t have a drink in his hand or he’d feel the burn of the alcohol in his nose.

“You laugh,” she said. “You know I’m right.”

“I get on a plane and fly to crazy places and do what I do. That doesn’t make me a hero.”

She lowered her gaze to her shoes before slowly lifting it back to his. “I’m the writer, Doctor. A hero is anyone willing to give of themselves without anything in return.”

His smile fell. “I get plenty in return.” The smiles of his patients, the knowledge he made a difference. It was why he went into emergency medicine.

Noise from the television filled the room and they both turned to see a crew of Florida weathermen and -women covering the storm.

“The tropical depression has now been upgraded to a tropical storm and is spinning off Cuba and picking up speed.” The reporter on the news stood against pelting rain, the effect of drops slapping against his otherwise perfect face, dramatic enough for the evening news.

“A tropical storm isn’t as bad as a hurricane, right?” Mary asked.

“Just shy of a hurricane,” Trent told her. “Makes a difference in smaller countries, but aren’t that dramatic here. Unless they linger and cause unexpected flooding.”

“Or power outages?” Dakota asked.

Monica moved beside her, placed a drink in her hand. “The hotel is prepared for this kind of thing.”

“As much as they can be,” Dakota said. “Anything past the what . . . the eighth floor . . . won’t have water if the power goes out. It takes power to pump water.”

Intrigued, Walt wondered if Dakota’s statistic was correct.

“You’ve been watching way too much of that prepper show, Dakota.”

“It’s either a fact, or it isn’t. Bottom line, here on the twenty-eighth floor, or us on the seventeenth . . . we won’t have water if the power goes down.”

Walt considered himself an observer in life. He watched, listened, and made executive decisions when the time came. Preparing for anything other than long stints at work wasn’t part of his life. If the storm got worse, those in the room could just leave if they needed to. Helped to have a couple of pilots with access to private helicopters and airplanes. Sure, he could add Dakota and Mary to that exiting mix, but what about the others in the hotel?

“We have drinking water and enough food to last awhile in the fridge,” Monica told them.

“And flushing the toilet?” Dakota wasn’t letting this go.

Walt found himself smiling.

Monica’s face fell into a frown. “I didn’t think of that.”

Dakota lifted her glass to Monica. “Fill the tub now. Worse case, you drain it in the morning.”

Glen looked over his shoulder. “That’s not a bad idea, Dakota.”

Rain continued to pound the massive windows in the suite, Monica disappeared toward the bathroom, and the sound of running water filled the room.

Chapter Four

The water in the tub was drained the next morning and the tropical storm didn’t manifest into anything. The power flickered once, forcing Dakota and Mary to take the stairs back down to their room sometime after one in the morning. Their new friends, Monica and Trent, suggested they stay in their suite, but with a room only a few flights down, they decided to take the walk.

A slight edge of discontent sat under Dakota’s skin as she made her way through the early hours of the next day. She hadn’t managed much of a conversation with Walt outside of a joint one with their small party the night before.

When she found him standing outside the room where she finished her morning class, a smile met her lips and her heart skipped. Today he was dressed in a casual pair of pants and a simple pullover shirt, no suit, no sleek shoes, and no briefcase.

“Hi.”

“Hey. Flying home today?” she asked, knowing perfectly well he wasn’t scheduled to leave for two days.

“Flying, but not home.”

Dakota forced the smile to stay on her lips. “Excuse me?”

“The storm,” he tilted his head to the side as if the entire weather event stood next to him. “It’s a . . . it provided an opportunity to take a few of us off to triage some of the islands in the Keys.”

She blinked, twice. “You’re leaving?”

“Trent is flying us down. We’ll probably fly back to the West Coast from there.”

A twinge stuck somewhere between her brain and her lungs and caught. “Oh.”

“I, ah, thought I’d say good-bye before I left.”

His gaze met hers and held.

At a loss for words, Dakota sputtered. “The islands? Are they . . . is there anything serious going on there?”

Walt shook his head. “I doubt it. A good training exercise. Something we can use since we have a couple of pilots and plenty of experienced staff with us.”

“It’s what you do . . . right?”

“Yeah. I thought . . .”

He let his words die off and she thought right along with him. Thought maybe they’d have an opportunity to get to know each other a little better before they both returned to their normal lives.

Dakota reached over to the table outside her room, found several copies of her latest book sitting there. From her bag, she grabbed a pen and opened up the cover.

She handed him the book and offered a smile. “My schedule is more flexible than yours, Doc.”