you. I didn’t realize you were up.”
“It’s all right,” she whispered, her heartbeat choking her. “I…didn’t know you were awake.”
Light filled the dark house like sunshine, then was snuffed in an instant as thunder crashed and rolled, the noise deafening and interminable.
Susan wasn’t sure whether to cover her ears to block the sound or her mouth to hold back the scream. She decided to cover her ears and bite her lips.
Aaron flipped off the garage light, stepped into the kitchen and pulled the door closed.
“Are you afraid of—?” Lightning flashed and thunder struck again, sounding as though a truckload of cymbals had overturned on the roof.
All pretense of courage gone. Susan wrapped her arms around Aaron’s chest and held on. It helped considerably when he enfolded her, providing a haven against the next barrage of sound, and the one after that.
SEPARATING HER FROM HIM, Aaron speculated with a smile in the darkness, would probably require surgery. She was holding him so tightly, it felt as though she would join him in his skin if she could, as though their bodies may already have fused in a few places.
“I don’t like…thunder,” she said against him in a quiet moment, her fingers still clutching the back of the T-shirt he’d pulled on with his jeans.
He ran a hand gently between her shoulder blades. “And I thought this was just a very bold seduction,” he teased.
She raised her head long enough to give him a scolding look, then lightning flashed and she buried her face against him again as the harsh sound followed.
He noticed she was trembling and felt sure it was due as much to her mid-thigh-length nightshirt as it was to her fear of the storm.
He swung her up into his arms and carried her to the sofa bed in the family room. He sat down with her and pulled the blanket over her.
“You’re probably thinking,” she said in a frail voice, “that it’s ridiculous for a grown woman to be afraid of thunder.”
“No,” he said. “I was just wondering if you’re warm enough.”
She sighed and let her head fall against his shoulder. “I’m fine. You’re very warm.”
“Mmm.” Actually he was getting a little hot. Hotter than was really safe under the circumstances.
“I can’t believe this hasn’t awakened the boys,” she said. “They were sleeping soundly when I checked, but it wasn’t this bad then.”
“I’m sure they’ll come looking for us if they wake up.”
“Are you comfortable?” she asked.
That was a tricky question. His body was comfortable. The blanket covered him, too, warding off the nighttime coolness of the house. But the softness of her in his lap, the loop of her arms around his neck, the silken skin of her cheek against his throat was making him decidedly uncomfortable.
She wasn’t his type; he’d concluded that already. And she considered him a failure at familial relationships.
But his traitorous body seemed unaware of that. It was reacting to a scenario going on in his brain that involved stretching out on the soft sofa and making the best of a promising situation.
Then she lifted her head off his shoulder and looked into his eyes at the same instant that lightning lit the room. He saw that complicated need in her worried gaze.
And he realized he’d been wrong earlier when he’d thought that she needed him out of the way.
It wasn’t that at all. It was that she’d wanted him out of the way for some reason he didn’t entirely understand, but she really needed him to stay. He felt it in the arms around his neck, in the trusting inclination of her body against his.
Suddenly he had a clearer understanding of her. He seemed to be feeling the very same things, only in reverse.
Whatever this was between them, he didn’t need it. But he realized now in the quiet darkness that he wanted it.
He really wanted it.
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