said, knowing it was useless but giving it the old college try, anyway.
“I was just telling your dad the other day that I just knew you two would work things out eventually!”
Karen groaned, and lifted one hand to rub the sudden throb that had leaped up dead center of her forehead.
“Now, the way I see it,” Sam said, stalking around the tiny room like a caged tiger, “we’ll each have our own areas.”
“We will?”
“Yeah.” He glanced at her, sitting on the bed with her back up against the headboard and her long legs crossed at the ankle. Even in the dim light of the pitifully low-wattage bulbs in the bedside lamps, Karen’s blond hair shone like sunlight. Her blue eyes watched him, and one corner of her mouth lifted in a half smile that teased him with memories of other times. Happier times.
Instantly, he remembered lazy Sunday mornings in her bed. Waking up with her cuddled up beside him. The soft hush of her breath on his chest, the lemony scent of her hair, the tantalizing magic of her touch.
“Sam?” she said, loudly enough to tell him it wasn’t the first time she’d called his name.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” He shoved one hand across the top of his head and reminded himself that those days were over. Karen had called a halt to what they’d had, and if he had an ounce of sense, he’d remember that and forget all the rest.
Or at least try to.
“Anyway,” he said firmly, “I figure you can have the bed. I’ll take the floor.”
“Deal.”
One eyebrow lifted. “That was fast.”
“Well, the feminist in me wants to argue that we should at least take turns sleeping on the floor. But…”
“Yeah?”
“The girl in me thinks the bed is pretty comfortable and really hates sleeping bags.”
He laughed shortly. “I remember. You really weren’t much of a camper.”
“It rained.”
“We had a tent.”
“Yeah, and every bug in the county came inside to get out of the rain.” She smiled, and just for a moment the problems between them dissolved in the memory of their last good weekend together.
They stared at each other for a long, tension-filled moment, then Karen abruptly ended the spell by leaping off the bed to grab up one of her bags. “Might as well settle in, huh?”
“Right,” he muttered, and mentally pushed his desire for her into a tight, hard knot deep into a corner of his soul.
A half an hour later, their respective “camps” were set up. At the foot of the bed, Sam studied his area, making sure all was as it should be. Against the wall, he’d stacked his MREs—meals ready to eat—bottled water, a battery-operated radio and a lantern. His sleeping bag lay open on the floor in front of his supplies, and he kneeled on it while he unrolled his poncho.
“What are you doing now?” Karen asked.
He glanced at her over his shoulder. Both of his eyebrows lifted as he said pointedly, “I’m getting ready for a hurricane. Unlike some people…”
“I’m ready,” she argued, not looking at him.
“Yeah,” he said wryly. “I can see that.”
Once she’d finished painting the last of her toe-nails, Karen looked up to meet his gaze. “Hey, I finished unpacking twenty minutes ago.”
“You unpacked your cooler.”
“I was thirsty.”
“Karen…”
“Lighten up, Sarge,” she said. “It’s not like there’s anything we can do beyond sitting in this room and waiting for the darn storm to hit.”
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