by BETH KERY
He turned his chin and rubbed his whiskers against her skin, making her shiver.
“I wish I could trust my personal experience at the moment,” he said in such a low rumble that she drew closer to him in order to hear him. He gave her a brooding glance before he dropped his forehead to hers. “All I know is that I’ve never wanted another woman the way I want you. I can’t seem to make it stop.”
“Stop trying then,” she whispered against his lips. “Please. I’m not your enemy, Thomas.”
He abruptly opened her robe and pressed her naked body to his. He wrapped his arms around her, shielding her in his encompassing embrace. Sophie held him tightly, giving him her warmth when he shivered in the chilly room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sophie tried the Dolans’ phone again after they ate lunch, expressing her frustration to Thomas over the fact that their phone line was still dead.
“I hadn’t realized,” Thomas said after he closed the dishwasher. “Their electricity never went out, so we didn’t notice. The phone lines are separate from the electric though. It’d be easy for a tree or a branch to fall on the lines in this weather.”
According to the news, the incessant rain was nearing an end, but severe damage had been done throughout central Illinois and Indiana. Roads were flooded, and several major interstates were closed as crews worked overtime to clear the huge amount of debris that clogged the drainage routes, exacerbating the flooding. Sophie was relieved that Haven Lake, although bloated with water, was being well controlled by the dam and drainage into the spillway, and then the Little Wabash River.
They watched the weather channel together, Thomas lying on his back on the couch and Sophie curled up on her side next to him, her knees bent on his thighs and her head on his chest. He seemed to crave her nearness. He couldn’t stop touching her.
Sophie didn’t mind, because she felt the exact same way about him.
Still, the thought that his singular attraction toward her was made exponentially more potent by his emotional turmoil hovered in the back of her mind like a dark cloud. Anguish and anxiety as acute as Thomas’s couldn’t last indefinitely.
His need for her, his desperate craving, would diminish once his memories returned and he began to deal with his grief. The constant pressure, the internal emotional friction that he alleviated—at least in part—through making love to her with such focus and intensity would inevitably come to an end.
Later that afternoon, Thomas volunteered to venture out into the soggy yard to bring Guy some food and milk. Sophie was in the kitchen preparing a chicken casserole for their dinner later when her cell phone rang. Her brows furrowed quizzically when she saw the Chicago area code, but didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
“Sophie?”
She set down the wooden spoon she was holding. “Sherm? Is everything okay?” she asked, alarmed by the edge of panic in her neighbor’s voice.
“It’s Daisy,” he gasped. “She insisted on going down into the basement to check on the flooding, and on the way back up the stairs, she got winded. She started having chest pains, and our damn phone line is dead. I didn’t have any idea until I tried to call you.”
Sophie’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement. How was Sherm calling her if the lines were dead? she thought fleetingly, but then her mind raced to the far more critical matter of Daisy.
“Is Daisy conscious? Have you had to do CPR?”
“No, she’s awake and lying on the sofa. We’re both scared to death.”
“Has she taken her nitroglycerin?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, listen to me, Sherm. I want you to hang up and call nine-one-one.”
“But the roads—”
“The roads are improving. It may take some doing, but they’ll be able to get an ambulance to your house. And in the meantime, I’m on my way this very second. Just try to keep Daisy comfortable, okay? Everything is going to be fine, Sherm,” she ended with firm assurance, attempting to steady him.
Sophie shoved her cell phone into a sealable plastic bag and rifled quickly through her spare bathroom cabinet, stashing a small bottle of aspirin in her jean pockets—just in case Daisy was running low on her nitroglycerin tablets. She hurried into an old rubber pair of boots that used to belong to her mother that were shoved into the back of a closet. Thomas was returning from the boathouse when she ran around the corner of the house, her feet sinking into the muddy ground. Miraculously, the rain had slowed to a steady drizzle.
Thomas pulled up short some thirty feet away when he saw her.
“It’s Daisy’s heart. Sherm just called. I need to get over there right away,” she shouted through the rain and mist.
“Okay. Let’s go,” Thomas called out tersely as he jogged toward her.
Sophie noticed when Thomas left the nurse’s station and came to join them in the waiting room. He gave her a small smile of reassurance and she smiled back, thankful for his presence in these difficult circumstances.
“The nurse says the bed next to Daisy’s is free, Sherm. It’s yours for the night, if you want to stay,” Thomas said.
“Thank you for arranging that, Thomas,” Sherm murmured. He looked pale and shaken. Sophie patted his hand where it rested on the armrest of his chair. Both Daisy and he had known about the weakness of Daisy’s heart, but it was the first time Daisy had ever actually had an emergency situation because of it. Sherm’s safe little world had been punctured, and Sophie knew the Dolans had some difficult choices to make. She adored having them as neighbors on Haven Lake, but as a physician, she knew it was advisable for them to move somewhere where emergency service was always easily accessible.
“Dr. Hanlon says Daisy is going to be fine, Sherm. It was a relatively minor heart attack. You decide if you want to stay here or if you want Thomas and me to drop you off at home. Either way, I want you to try to get some sleep. You’re exhausted.”
“I’ll stay here with Daisy,” Sherm said. “I can’t thank you two enough for all you’ve done.” He glanced up at Thomas. “And you . . . that’s twice you put your neck on the line for me in twenty-four hours.”
Thomas shrugged. “I didn’t do much of anything but take a dip a time or two,” he said wryly, glancing down at his damp clothing. He and Sophie had had to wade through several feet of standing water to get to the Dolans’ house that afternoon.
“Well, I surely do appreciate all you did,” Sherm said in a reedy voice. He grabbed Sophie’s hand and squeezed it.
“It was nothing, Sherm. That’s what neighbors are for. And friends,” she added.
“It made all the difference in the world having you there while we waited for the ambulance, Sophie. You calmed Daisy, and you calmed me just with your presence, and Lord knows that’s what we most needed at the moment. Now you two go home, and get yourselves warm and dry. You’ve been here for hours, soaked through the whole time. Michelle will be coming as soon as I-57 opens, along with Tad, so don’t you two worry about us anymore,” Sherm said, referring to his daughter and son-in-law, who still lived in Beverly, on the South Side of Chicago.
Despite Sherm’s protests to the contrary, Sophie insisted she’d be back the next morning with some clothing and other supplies.
The flooding had receded minimally on the country roads on the way back to her house, but Sophie was infinitely glad it was Thomas driving through the water and not her. He never flinched and never hesitated as he plowed into the miniature ponds, seeming to have an instinctive understanding of what his car could withstand. When they reached the standing water between the Dolans’ house and Sophie’s, however, Thomas came to a stop thirty feet away. Sophie glanced at him, and he just shook his head. The water was still too high for them to drive through.
So he parked his car in the Dolans’ driveway and he and Sophie resignedly waded through the deep water once again.
Sophie was showing signs of exhaustion by the time they stripped out of their wet clothing on the side
porch. Thomas immediately guided her into the bathroom for a hot shower, ignoring her protests that she wanted to finish her interrupted preparations for the chicken casserole.
When she came into the cheerily lit kitchen a half hour later, Thomas was reading the instructions on the back of a frozen pizza box. He’d already showered, she realized as she stared, a little dumbfounded by the sight of him leaning against her counter wearing a pair of low-riding jeans and an unbuttoned cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled back to his elbows. His hair hung damp on his forehead, creating a parenthesis around his eyes.
“What about my chicken casserole?” she asked lamely, her gaze glued to the appealing sight of his forearm dusted in brown hair. Several veins popped from the surface, highlighting his strength. He lowered the pizza box and Sophie found herself staring at his tanned, ridged abdomen instead.
“I’m cooking,” he said resolutely. “And since I can’t cook, we’re having pizza. You just sit right up there at the counter, and I’ll pour you a glass of wine, and you can watch the chef at work.”
Sophie laughed and sunk onto one of the counter stools. She’d rather have eaten chicken casserole, but it was too much of a temptation to resist watching a beautiful man cook for her.
Thomas made a salad to go with the frozen pizza. The meal tasted wonderful, maybe because she wasn’t used to having someone else prepare a meal for her, or maybe because she was starved.
Or maybe because she was submersed in the first, heady rushes of falling in love.
After they’d cleaned up the dishes, they watched television while lying on the couch, embracing each other as they had that afternoon. It occurred to her, as it had done countless times since Thomas had come to her lake house, that she needed to confront him, encourage him to talk about what was troubling him . . . haunting him.
But she recalled only too well what had occurred when she’d forced him to talk about Rick and Bernard Cokey last time. He’d left. He’d returned, but maybe next time, he wouldn’t.
Thomas wasn’t the only one who seemed to want to take shelter. It was becoming increasingly easy for Sophie, as well, to try to ignore the harsh realities of the world outside Haven Lake . . . to find sanctuary in Thomas’s arms.
She fell asleep during the last part of a suspense movie, the sensation of Thomas caressing her scalp and running his fingers through her hair lulling her.
She awoke later to find herself in Thomas’s arms as he carried her down the darkened hallway to her bedroom.
“I didn’t understand the plot of that movie in the slightest,” she said. She barely made out his small grin in the shadows.
“That’s because you kept falling asleep.”
“Umm, that could be it,” she murmured as she nuzzled his chest with her mouth.
Sophie didn’t say anything when Thomas set her on the edge of the bed and began to undress her. In fact, they only spoke with their bodies for the following moments as they made love, and Sophie was stunned anew by the intense, blazing quality of Thomas’s desire.
Afterwards, they held each other, Sophie becoming hypnotized by the sensation of Thomas’s warm breath falling on a patch of her left breast.
A thought penetrated her languor. She opened her leaden eyelids.
“I kept forgetting to ask Sherman how he called me today with the phone lines down,” she said groggily.
But Thomas didn’t respond, and Sophie realized as he continued to breathe evenly that he’d fallen fast asleep. She rubbed her cheek against his chest, inhaled his scent deeply, and quickly followed him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The morning dawned crystalline and golden, making a mockery of all the gloom that had dared to come before its splendor. Sophie walked into the still boggy yard after getting dressed, squinting in the bright summer sunshine as though she’d been secluded in a dark den for weeks. She paused in the front yard and called out in amazement.
Thomas didn’t turn at her shout; he was busy at the moment.
Sophie watched as he overturned the submerged canoe next to her dock with a flex of powerful, gleaming shoulder, back, and arm muscles.
“I heard it hitting the dock the night before last,” she said as she walked onto the dock. She recalled how eerie the cracking sound had been when she’d been in the house all alone while the rain fell ceaselessly around her. “It looks like it’s in perfect condition.”
“It is,” Thomas said from where he stood in four feet of water next to the dock. He found a frayed nylon rope on the bow of the fiberglass craft and clambered up onto the dock. Sophie noticed he was wearing his newly purchased swim trunks and once again admired the way he filled them out.
“With all the drains being opened to the spillway to keep the water level from getting too high in the lake, there would have been some strong currents. The canoe must have broken free and gotten snagged. I saw the underside of it beneath your dock when I came back from my swim. We’ll figure out who owns it, but in the meantime—” He flashed her a grin. “We’re going to borrow it. It’ll help keep us dry.”
“What do you mean?” Sophie murmured, her gaze glued to his mouth. He was an extremely handsome man, but Thomas became nothing less than riveting when he smiled. The radiant sunshine following days of oppressive gloom didn’t even compare.
“I saw some old paddles in your boathouse when I was checking on Guy this morning. He’s doing fine, by the way. That paw is on the mend. I’m thinking your patient is getting used to all the food and hospitality, though. He’s going to take up permanent residence in your boathouse, the little freeloader.”
He chuckled when he saw her mock scowl at his disparagement of Guy. He finished deftly tying a knot in the rope and stood. “Anyway, you said we should take Sherm and Daisy some supplies this morning, so we’ll take the canoe in the lake versus wading through floodwater.”
“Brilliant.” Her eyebrows went up when he put out his arms for a hug. He was teasing, since he was soaking wet, but Sophie went anyway. He laughed, low and soft, when she pressed tight to him, soaking her jean shorts and T-shirt. She wrapped her forearms around his neck. His skin felt smooth and sun-warmed.
“I’m getting used to you being wet all the time,” she said as she urged him down for a kiss.
His hand moved between their bodies and settled between her thighs, cradling her sex possessively.
“I’m getting addicted to the same thing about you,” he murmured gruffly next to her lips before he seized her mouth in a toe-curling kiss.
Later that morning, they paddled the canoe over to Sherm and Daisy’s dock and made their way up to the house. Thomas walked down the road to check on the status of the flooding while Sophie gathered some clothing and personal items.
A night’s rest appeared to have done Sherman and Daisy a world of good, Sophie decided a half hour later when they walked into the hospital room. Daisy was sitting up in bed and she and Sherm were working on a crossword puzzle together, bickering good-naturedly about answers.
They only stayed long enough to drop off the supplies and exchange news. The doctor had given a good report to Daisy after she’d made her morning rounds. Thomas assured the couple that their daughter and her husband should have no trouble making it to Haven Lake, as the water had receded to safe levels on the roads between the hospital and the Dolans’ lake house. When a nurse came in to alert Daisy that she’d be going for some testing, Thomas and Sophie said their good-byes.
Sherm turned his good ear toward the hallway. He’d been waiting for Daisy to return from her testing, steadily working his way through the crossword puzzle they’d started together. He’d just heard a man’s voice coming from the direction of the nursing station saying Thomas Nicasio’s name.
Sherm set down the crossword puzzle book and stood. The gruff baritone hadn’t really sounded like his son-in-law’s voice, but who else would be asking for Thomas Nicasio? Sherm had told Michelle and Tad about Sophie’s and Nicasio’s invaluable assistance over the past
few days.
When he walked out of the hospital room and down the hallway the short distance to the nursing station, however, he knew immediately that the large man with the jet-black hair and thick stubble on his jaw was most definitely not his son-in-law. The man turned toward him when he called out.
“Are you looking for Thomas Nicasio?”
Sherm realized the man was wearing dark glasses. Well, the sun was exceptionally bright today, after all, following all that God-forsaken rain.
“I am. I’m an old friend. I thought I saw him here earlier, but he didn’t hear me when I called out ...”
“You did see him. You just missed him. He and Sophie were just here . . . oh, twenty minutes ago?” Sherm said as he checked his watch. “You say you’re an old friend of Thomas’s?”
“Yes, from the Navy,” the man said, smiling as if in reminiscence.
Sherm noticed the flashing Rolex watch and the suppleness of the man’s thigh-length leather coat. It was a tad strange to wear a coat on a summer day—even a lightweight one like the man wore—but Sherm supposed the air-conditioning in the hospital could get chilly. Thomas’s old friend must have done well for himself since leaving the military. He practically exuded power and money. The guy had fifteen, maybe twenty years on Thomas, but like Thomas, he appeared to take excellent care of himself. His shoulders and chest were thick with muscle, and there wasn’t a sign of a paunch on his belly. Well, the military taught a man the value of keeping fit, Sherm thought with a trace of good-natured envy.
“Does Nicasio live around this area? I’m visiting an aunt here in the hospital, but I’d love to be able to catch up.” The man’s voice had a slight nasal quality to it, and Sherm noticed his nose was swollen, like he’d been hit.
“Oh, no, no. He’s just staying with Sophie.”
“Sophie?” the man asked with a wide smile. “Don’t tell me Nicasio finally tied the knot. He was the youngest officer of us all, but we all said he’d be the last to dangle on the noose.”