She towel-dried her hair then wrapped it around her, making sure she was decently covered. She stepped out of the bathroom and almost ran right into a chest. A very warm, muscular chest.
That t-shirt should be illegal. How the hell had he hidden his muscles under those dress shirts?
She felt herself staring and heat washed through her cheeks. She looked up and saw that Jared was just as surprised as she was. A drop of water fell from her hair and land on her shoulder. She watched as Jared’s eyes followed that drop of water until it was absorbed by the towel wrapped tightly over her chest.
She cleared her throat. “Sorry I took so long. I’ll just get dressed and help you cook.”
His eyes met hers and she could tell he was embarrassed to have been caught staring. She knew how that felt. Considering she had just done the same thing; she couldn’t really fault him for it.
Jeez, this was awkward.
“Oh. Yeah, sure. I mean, we’ll just make a salad or something to go with the steaks. I’ll uh…I’ll be in the kitchen,” he said pointing in that general direction.
“Okay.”
They finally got moving and she went into her room to dress. She yanked on a pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt, cringing a little at the Minnie Mouse on the front. She hadn’t meant to grab that particular lounge shirt. She pulled her hair back with a hair tie and draped the towel over the closet door to dry a little.
When she made it to the kitchen, Jared was already heating the countertop grill. She felt the steaks; they had only a hint of coolness left from the fridge. She washed her hands and looked around.
“I took them out to warm before I got in the shower. They won’t be as good as on the charcoal grill outside, but I didn’t think it was a particularly good time for a cookout,” he said with a smirk.
“I’m sure they’ll be great.”
“Good, because I’m fresh out of pureed chicken.”
“Pureed chicken?”
He jerked a nod toward her shirt and grinned. “I had no idea you were so young.”
She threw the hand towel at him and he chuckled.
As he seasoned the steaks, she found a cutting board and knife. In the fridge, she pulled out two heads of romaine lettuce and some freshly shaved parmesan. She chopped the lettuce into bite-sized pieces, tossing it into a large wooden salad bowl. She sprinkled some parmesan on top.
“Croutons?” she asked.
“Um, I don’t have any fresh, but there is probably a bag in the pantry back there.” He pointed behind his back with the spatula, and she opened the wooden door he indicated.
And stepped into heaven.
This pantry was a woman’s dream…well, her dream anyway.
Glass cannisters lined the tops shelves, neatly labeled and full of spices and cooking staples. Seasonings and other basic necessities were alphabetically organized on a large rack. Pre-packaged foods and canned goods were alphabetized and stacked neatly on a lower shelf.
There must be months’ worth of food here…maybe years!
“About six months’ worth actually, for one person,” a quiet, warm voice said at her back. She felt the heat of him behind her, though he wasn’t touching her.
She turned slowly in the space, her shoulder brushing his chest lightly. He didn’t step back. She looked at his serious face.
“I’m in love with your pantry,” she whispered.
He glanced down at her mouth as she spoke, and she had the sudden thought that he wanted to kiss her... which was stupid, of course. They were friends only. He had never given her any indications that he wanted more than that, aside from some friendly teasing that meant nothing.
He rested his hand on the doorframe next to his shoulder, and his bicep twitched with the movement.
Would it be an awkward friendship faux pas to melt into a puddle right now?
“I’m in love with my pantry too,” he whispered back. His movement had caused the air to stir, and she smelled the soap he used. It was fresh and wild, and she loved it. Or maybe that was just him. He leaned fractionally closer to her, or maybe she just imagined it. Her breath caught and she felt lightheaded. Probably just from lack of food.
A loud hissing caused them both to jump. He spun, expecting an attack.
“Shit,” he cursed. “Just the steaks.” He grinned at their reaction and grabbed the bag of croutons from the shelf near her head. She followed him back to the kitchen and finished the salad.
“I know it’s a Caesar salad, but you might want to throw some of these veggies in there. They won’t stay good much longer and I’d hate to waste them. I’d like to use as much of the refrigerator stuff as we can. If the power goes out, I have a generator, but I’d rather not use it. The noise might draw people in.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, and started to dice the cucumber and tomato resting on the counter.
When the steaks were finished and the food was plated, they took their meals to the table. It was an intimate meal. They sat beside each other in the dim light from the range.
“This steak is fantastic, but I’m confused…if you are such a good cook, and I can tell you are by your pantry…why the heck do you eat so much fast food?!”
That really bewildered her. In all the years she had known him, he hadn’t never brought in his own lunch. He never even hinted that he could cook beyond boiling water.
“First, my decorator designed the pantry and filled it. I don’t like cooking for just myself. Sometimes I do, but I can eat out more cheaply.” He shrugged and took another bite of his steak.
“But it’s so unhealthy!” she said.
“Are you saying I’m not healthy?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
She eyed his muscles. “No! I just mean, well…I’m just surprised is all. This is the best steak I’ve had in a long time. Maybe ever.”
He grinned at her. “Nothing is too good for my work wife.”
"Does that still apply? Technically we don't have jobs anymore."
"I think it’s a forever thing. Now you’re like my survival wife. It’s kind of a lateral shift on the job ladder.”
She rolled her eyes and returned his grin. “Yeah well, I guess that means half your house is mine. In which case, I’m never leaving. I really like the décor.”
“Thanks, I had it done professionally. Just don’t look in the basement.”
She wrinkled her forehead in confusion.
“Sorry, it’s an inside joke.”
“Oh? Inside joke with who?” she asked.
“Uh, myself?” he said, as if it were obvious and she was just being difficult.
“Um, Jared. That’s not how that works,” she said, slowing her cadence like she would with a toddler.
“Lay off our jokes, Collinses.”
“What ever happened to Mrs. Collins-Carson?” she said, perturbed.
“We’s divorced her because she kept making fun of our jokeses, didn’t we Precious?!”
She snorted with exasperation. That’s what she gets for having Jared as a survival partner.
“Anyway, without a decorator, I’d probably have just thrown in a microwave, a recliner, and a big screen T.V.” She shook her head at him in disgust and finished off her food. She didn’t know if he was joking or not. Probably not.
“I can’t believe you have a decorator,” she said. "She did an excellent job.”
“Thanks. I wasn’t going to let her, but she kept pestering me about it.”
“Your decorator basically forced you to let her decorate your house? Those are some high-pressure tactics, right there.” Secretly, she felt a small pang of jealousy of the woman, whoever she was.
“The decorator is my sister,” he confided with a grin. “She’s a pain in the ass sometimes.”
“She’s a professional designer?” Whew.
“Nah, not yet. She’s an art student. She interns with a design firm for now. They’ll probably offer her a position when she graduates…I mean…if this all gets…yeah.” He frowned at his
mistake.
She couldn’t believe they had just forgotten about it.
“Really though, I think we should stay here for as long as we can. We have plenty of food, including what we brought from your apartment.”
“I really wanted to check out the stadium. I mean, if there are National Guard troops there it could be safer right? There would be other people there too, and we could get news. They also have doctors.”
“Anna…I don’t think it’s a very good idea,” Jared said with a sigh. He put his fork down and pushed his plate away. She could see the exhaustion on his face and knew it was mirrored on hers. “We need to find my mother and sister and get out of there as soon as possible.”
“We can just go and see what it’s like when we go find your mom. We don’t even have to stay. I just need to see…”
“See what?” he questioned.
“See if this is all real. I need to know this is really happening, that everything we knew is over. Gone. If it is, then we need to find the safest place possible until…”
He sighed again and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Alright, but we don’t stay. We check it out, get whatever information we can, and leave. We have to make our own safe place, Anna. Don’t forget what happened in those cities. Just because we didn’t see much of that here doesn’t mean that it can’t or won’t happen. For all we know, those people in the stadium are…” He stopped and rubbed his eyes. “We’ll go get my family, and we’ll check it out.”
“Thanks,” she said, meaning it.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said, and she had no idea what he meant.
Chapter Twelve
Going Back
“Um, Jared?” she called out, holding a plate upside down near the cabinet.
“Yeah?” he answered quietly from the hallway.
“Why is your name written on the bottom of all these plates with a Sharpie?”
“Just in case,” he said enigmatically.
“Just in case, what?”
“Someone steals them,” he said, as if it were a basic concept and a commonly accepted practice. He came into the living room with an armload of stuff.
“You know, I used to think that you made up goofy stuff at work just to make me laugh. I’m getting the feeling now that a lot of that wasn’t actually made up.”
He tossed his stuff down on the coffee table and came over to where she stood. He put his arm around her shoulder companionably and walked her toward the couch.
“Of course I make up stuff to make you laugh. I like hearing your laugh. I would have been a fool to let Donnie move in and steal the best-looking sales team support specialist II in the office.”
“I was the only sales team support specialist II in the office, besides you,” she pointed out.
“And? I said you were the best looking, with me coming in at a close second. Also, don’t be bitter because you didn’t think to put your name on your plates. If you play your cards right, you can one day have your name on my plates too.”
“Okaaayyy.”
She sat on the couch and decided to change the subject. “What’s all this stuff?”
“My life’s work.”
“I thought building famous architectural structures out of trash was your life’s work?” she replied.
“Keep it up, Collins. Keep it up. You know, for someone who keeps a scrapbook full of grocery coupons, you are being preeettty judgmental.”
“It’s not a scrapbook!” she said.
“Is too,” he said calmly.
“It’s for groceries. It saves me money!”
“You have coupons glued into a scrapbook binder and you decorate the pages. I’ve seen the little stickers of miniature groceries in your desk drawer, Anna!”
She raised her eyebrows and said nothing. He obviously didn’t know how to appreciate frugality. Or arts and crafts. “Why were you looking in my desk?”
“I needed your ibuprofen bottle, remember?”
“It’s not a scrapbook,” she repeated and crossed her arms.
“When’s the last time you used one?” he challenged.
She tightened her lips and though about it. “Three weeks ago,” she retorted.
He didn’t need to know it was a duplicate laundry detergent coupon that she couldn’t double, and that the original was still nicely pasted into its place in the laundry section of the book with a little laundry detergent bottle sticker close by.
Everyone needs hobbies.
“Anyway, before you so rudely interrupted me. I want you to take this.” He handed her a small pistol. “It’s just a small .38 revolver. It’s your weapon of last resort. I’m going to show you how to load it, and unload it, and how to fire it. Don’t ever point it at anyone or anything that you aren’t willing to kill. Do you understand?”
He was serious now, and she nodded.
“And you keep your finger off the trigger until the weapon is pointed at the target and you are ready to kill. You need to always know where you are pointing it, no exceptions.”
“Okay, I get it,” she said. She knew that much at least.
He showed her a bit about the weapon, including loading, firing, and how to hold and stow it safely. She practiced it herself without loading it until she felt like she had the processes memorized. Afterward, she loaded it and put it in the holster on the coffee table.
“So, a pistol is your life’s work?”
“No actually, I just made that up. You were right. Building trash structures is my actual life’s work.”
◆◆◆
She and Jared slept in turns. He insisted that it was safer, that one of them needed to be awake to keep an eye on things. He was right. She slept well, waking when Jared shook her at seven. The sun was starting to rise, and she could see that he was already showered and dressed.
“You don’t want to go back to sleep for a bit?” she asked him.
“No. I think we should go to town early so we can get back before dark.” He didn’t sound happy about going, and she felt bad that he had to. They had no other option though. He needed to find his family and she couldn’t exactly go check the place out alone.
“I hope we find your mom and sister. Who knows, maybe it’ll be safe there. If not, we should be fine staying here however long it takes until this thing is over.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment, just made his coffee with his back turned to her. When he finally did speak, his voice was solemn and serious. It almost made her change her mind.
“I think we are going to regret going there today. I just have a bad feeling about it. If there are survivors there, imagine them all packed in to one place. Who is to say they are all healthy? What if one or a bunch of them suddenly turn, then what? My mom was sick…many people were. They could turn. They could have turned last night. It could be like the movie theater, only worse.”
“Or everything could be fine. They could have a set up a safe place, and maybe even started clearing the town of those crazy people. Everything could be better than it was yesterday."
He took a sip from his travel mug and stared out the window. He didn’t say anything.
The sun was shining brightly through the trees. It looked like a normal day. She could hear the birds chirping as she ate a quick breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast that he had already cooked.
How could she stay here without knowing exactly what was going on back in town? Everything could end soon, and they wouldn’t even know it. They would have to make regular trips just to see what was happening.
“What about the T.V.?! I haven’t even thought about it since we got here, but I bet they’ll have something.” She jumped up to go back to the living room, but his voice stopped her.
“Already tried it. There’s nothing. No cable channels at all, just static.”
“You don’t have satellite?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Internet?”
“Only ethernet. It’s down too.”
“Same recording as last night. It was on a couple of other local stations, but the rest of th stations were off the air,” he explained.
“So, as far as we know, that shelter at the stadium is fine. If something had already happened there, they wouldn’t still be broadcasting it, right?”
“Maybe,” was his answer.
She paced the short distance between the living room and the kitchen. The T.V. was out. That meant there was probably still some sort of disruption, but was it still too dangerous to travel to the National Guard shelter? Wouldn’t they be safer with an actual army guarding them than staying here alone?
“Maybe you should wait outside the stadium while I go in. I can try to find your mom and sister and get a look around. That way you can—"
“The hell I will!” he said, suddenly angry. It shocked her. “If you think I’m going to let you go anywhere alone, you are out of your damned mind! What kind of man would I be to let you go out there with those freaks running around? No way. If you’re going in, then so am I.”
She stared at him, open mouthed and shocked at his outburst. She had never seen him so…vehement. It was kind of sexy.
No, no. Don’t go there.
“Um, okay. It was just a suggestion. Let me get my shoes on and I’ll be ready,” she stammered out.
He gave her a short nod and she escaped to the bedroom.
◆◆◆
They were in the truck and headed back down his driveway by eight-thirty. She was nervously biting the edges of her fingernails. She had broken herself of the habit a long time ago, or thought she had…apparently not. She scanned the trees on either side of the gravel drive but saw nothing out of the ordinary. As in, no bloody, insane people trying to kill them.
She was wearing casual clothing, but had a knife tucked inside her waistband and hidden under her t-shirt. She wasn’t comfortable carrying the pistol on her belt yet.
The knife made her feel a little safer. She just hoped she would have the courage to use it when or if the time came. Her bat rested against her leg, and she gripped it nervously.
She glanced over at Jared’s face. It was uncharacteristically hard. He was frowning, obviously thinking deeply about something. He was wearing casual clothing too. She knew he had a pistol or two concealed on him somewhere. He told her that the Guard was probably confiscating weapons from people who took their offer of refuge. It didn’t sit right with him, and honestly…it didn’t sit right with her either.
The Salvation Plague | Book 1 |The Turning Page 11