Storm Warning - By Kadi Dillon Page 0,36
I’m a kid again. I’m playing in the backyard. I see it happen just the way it did. Over and over. In another, it’s beautiful out. I’m not in the dream, or I can’t see myself like I do in the other, but it’s beautiful—then the storm comes and it chokes me.”
Gabe absently ran his fingers through her loose hair and laid his lips on her brow. “How often do you have them?”
“A lot during the season. Not so often on down time. I don’t know, we’ve been here at the house for a few days and this is the first night I’ve had one. This is where everything happened.”
She wanted to believe he was the reason she hadn’t had the nightmares. She wanted to believe the safety of his arms around her each night was the reason for her peace. Yet she was afraid to hope for that because she would eventually be sleeping alone again.
“Maybe they’ll stop.”
“I hope so,” she murmured absently.
Every night since they’d arrived at the house, she’d anticipated a nightmare. But each night, they made love until neither of them could move and drifted off to sleep wrapped around each other.
It was another reason she shouldn’t be in love with him. He’d be leaving soon and she would be left with nothing. If she were smart, she’d pull back now. She’d end things slowly and part as friends.
But she feared it was already too late for that.
Humming softly to herself, Tory stuffed her notes into a black three ring binder and started tidying up her desk. After three cups of coffee, she had managed to finalize her articles and dress up her speech on Tornado Precautions before anyone else woke.
She glanced over at the bed where Gabe was sleeping soundly, his forearm thrown over his eyes and the cream colored hotel sheets riding low on his hip. She’d awoken there n hour before and couldn’t help but feel contented—like the cat who’d gotten into the cream. It had unnerved her a little how comfortable she felt turning to him—waking up to him.
To distance herself, she’d gotten up and showered, focusing solely on the seminar that day and the speech she had to give and toying with the gold necklace he’d given her the night before—just because, he’d said as he’d presented it. He had seen it, and thought of her. She sighed at the romance.
Rising with her cup of coffee in hand, she walked to the window and peered out. Only a couple of days ago she had been able to look out her old bedroom window and watch her field dance in the breeze. As she had as a child, she’d made pictures out of the waving wheat. Now, she saw concrete and brick.
She enjoyed Tulsa. It’s fast pace kept her busy. She enjoyed being there with Gabe. The team had gone to dinner the night before, then to a movie. Tory had been shocked that Gabe Wills could fit in so easily with the norm. He seemed so sophisticated and extraordinary that it was almost surreal seeing him with a jumbo bucket of popcorn on his lap—extra butter. Her heart had done a slow roll in her chest remembering the way he’d slid her hand in his and held it throughout the entire movie. He’d stroked his thumb over her knuckles, she recalled, and he didn’t even seem to know he’d been doing it.
She would never know anyone as sweet as him, she thought sadly.
Since her thoughts were taking a morose turn, Tory dressed and brushed her hair out. She pocketed the key to the suite and left the room before she was reduced to a melancholy, lovesick puddle of depression.
The conference room was closed, so she detoured around it and took the stairs down to the main floor. She liked the waterfall stationed in the lobby and she thought about grabbing some breakfast in the hotel’s café.
The crew would be up soon. The sun was just beginning to rise, casting the lobby in shades of purple and amber. The water running off the rocks calmed her. She took a seat at one of the small tables beside it and watched the light bounce off the steady trickle.
Propping her chin in her hand, she leaned over and smiled at the tiny goldfish swim in the makeshift pond. She was thankful for the peace and quiet. Since the beginning of the chase—despite the extra downtime she was forced to take—things had been moving along