She replied immediately. Up and at ’em, his girl.
EMILY: 3849 Yellowhaven Drive. How’s 6? I’m making you dinner. Hope you like it!
REEVE: See you at 6. And don’t worry, I’ll feast on you if I’m not satisfied.
It was getting ridiculous, how much he liked this woman. He thought about her constantly. Played back their times together in his mind. Even that kiss at the country club. He was still shocked that she’d done it, expecting full well for her to maintain her distance from him in that setting.
He shouldn’t have confronted her in front that of that asshole like he had. He knew better than to interfere with places of business while working, especially at the damn Sunset Country Club. It was a brand-new contract, for shit’s sake. But when he’d looked over and seen her walking toward that group of men, he’d been thrown for a loop. While he hadn’t known or expected Emily to be a member there, it didn’t surprise him too much. He’d known from the start that she was well out of his league. But watching that dickhead put his hands on her, step into her personal space—it had enraged Reeve and he couldn’t help it, just found himself stalking toward them unsure what was going to come out of his mouth.
When she’d led him away to talk, it had settled the raging beast inside him. Pleased him way more than it should have, and then when she’d actually kissed him . . .
Reeve closed his eyes and slid his hand down his bare torso. Since it was morning, he wasn’t surprised to find his body in accordance with his thoughts. Gripping tight, he stroked himself a few times. How often had he done this with the image of her in his mind?
Nearly once a day since they’d met. Today would be no different.
Five minutes later he got out of bed and into the shower. He had plans to work out with Tyler at the gym, and the guys were going to hang out at his house tonight as they usually did on duty weekend. Meanwhile he would be with Emily. He hadn’t told them yet, but he knew they wouldn’t mind. Matter of fact, he could already imagine the ribbing he would get when they all found out. Maybe he’d be the first one of them to finally have a healthy relationship with a woman.
* * *
Emily got out of the town car she’d taken from the hotel to the airport. Dave had called early this morning and delayed their nine o’clock flight back home due to some thunderstorms rolling across the Rockies. She’d learned to trust Dave’s expertise and she knew him well enough to understand that when he gave an advisement he really meant “please don’t question me.” So here they were, hours behind their original schedule.
It was fine, though, even if she’d had to cancel her lunch with Amanda. They’d have to get together the following week. She’d felt a little better after squeezing in a coffee date with one of her long-time general managers and had even gotten a pedicure at her favorite spa in Chicago. The change in plans and being a little behind today were worth it to make sure she and Dave were safe.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Phillips,” Dave said, holding a hand down to her from inside the plane. “I’m sorry we’re so delayed, but we finally found a window. I’m hoping to avoid the worst of it.”
“I always trust your judgment, Dave. You know that.” Emily ascended the small stepladder and took his hand. “What time do you think we’ll be home?”
“Approximately four fifteen.”
“Okay, thank you.”
He gave her a wink as she shuffled herself and her bag onto the small aircraft. Letting out a deep sigh, she tossed her things onto one of the four seats and sat down on another. She was glad that the rest of her passengers had flown home commercial last night, and now she was alone.
Within twenty minutes they were taxiing down the runway and Emily closed her eyes tightly, trying to focus on all the things she needed to do today to prepare for this evening. It would now be very tight to get it all accomplished. Once they were at altitude, she pulled out her phone and started making out a quick grocery list to shoot over to Daniel. He’d never purchased groceries for her before, but she knew he wouldn’t question it.
Sure enough, within minutes of sending the email he’d responded with an efficient, “On it.”
With that settled, Emily pulled up the reading app on her phone and settled back into the book she’d been reading for the past week. It didn’t escape her notice that since she’d been having sex with Reeve the books had fallen by the wayside a bit. The real thing was infinitely better than reading about it.
She was a few chapters down when Dave called back to her from the cockpit. “Please make sure your seat belt is on, Emily.”
The fact that he’d used her first name was alarming, and she knew because of it that her stalwart pilot was feeling stressed. Wonderful.
“I have. Is everything okay?” Now that she looked out the window, she noticed how dark the sky had gotten on the horizon. It was amazingly frightening and beautiful at the same time to see a thunderstorm from above the clouds.
“Just a storm. I’m hoping we will miss it, but there will be some turbulence.”
“Don’t worry, Dave. I trust you.”
She said it for both of their sakes.
“I couldn’t live with myself if I had to enter the Pearly Gates having to explain to your grandfather why I allowed anything to harm you.”
They chuckled, but there was unease in the air. Emily looked back out at the storm. She suddenly wished Reeve was with her, and that thought surprised her. She was incredibly independent, relied on only a handful of people, her pilot and her assistant being the bulk of that group. But right now, nothing sounded better than having him by her side. Holding her hand. Telling her everything would be okay.
She decided on the next best thing.
EMILY: Are you busy?
REEVE: Busy thinking about you.
She smiled down at her phone.
REEVE: You’d better say you’re thinking about me.
EMILY: I texted you didn’t I?
REEVE: Yes you did. Working?
EMILY: Flying home. Delay.
As she hit SEND, the plane began to rock lightly. Emily grabbed the armrest with her free hand, squeezing it tightly.
REEVE: From where?
EMILY: Chicago
REEVE: It’s storming here. Everything okay?
EMILY: Everything’s fine. Just a little turbulence.
REEVE: It will be fine. Pilots can handle that.
EMILY: You’re right.
REEVE: You scared, Whip? I wish I was with you.
Tears sprang to her eyes as she read his words again. How had this man dug so deeply under her skin in such a short period of time?
EMILY: I do too.
REEVE: It’s a short flight. Think of me babe. Imagine us joining the mile-high club. We could create our own turbulence.
He had added two emojis, an airplane and an eggplant—the unofficial symbol for penis. A large purple penis. Emily laughed quietly to herself. If only he knew that they could do whatever they wanted in her plane. Not that she would, considering Dave was like a father figure to her, but still. That reminded her of all the things about her that Reeve still didn’t know.
He would tonight. She could only hope that after she told him everything he would still want her.
She typed out a reply, but when she tried to send, she got a MESSAGE FAILED notice. Her cell coverage showed zero. “Damn.”
After waiting a while she tried sending the text again, but it still didn’t budge. She got another failure message so she put her phone away, stared out the window, and began to worry. Reeve was a good guy. She’d accepted his past, understood his feelings about it. Surely he would do the same for her.
The flight went on for another forty minutes, the turbulence going from mild to frightening. Several times she felt the need to start praying, but they finally seemed to be past the worst of it.
“We’ll be in landing in five minutes, Ms. Phillips. But I’ve just been notified that Riley County is under a tornado watch. Do you have someone picking
you up?”
“My car is at the airport. Do you know how late the watch lasts?”
He spoke into his headset and then called back to her. “Seven fifteen.”
“Damn.” Living in Kansas, a tornado watch unfortunately wasn’t normally a cause for too much panic. They happened often. This time of year the conditions were frequently ripe for funnel clouds on the plains. They rarely caused destruction, so most people were complacent.
Emily, however, hated tornadoes. Even a watch made her feel stressed and want to be home in the basement.
When they landed, she quickly gathered her things. Before stepping off the plane, she gave Dave a long hug and thanked him for keeping her safe.
“It’s always my pleasure,” he said with a warm smile. “Now get home and find your flashlight.”
“You do the same, Dave.”
The sky looked fairly normal as she made her way to the parking lot, but darkened slowly as she made her way through town. In record time she was pulling into her driveway, just in time to see Daniel locking up her front door.
“You made it,” he said.
“I did. Thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. Have you been watching the news?”
“No. Why?” He asked.
“Daniel, we are under a tornado watch.”
“No kidding? It’s been storming all day but I hadn’t checked.”
They looked up to the sky, which had turned an odd shade of gray-green.
“Do you notice how quiet and still it’s gotten?” she asked.
“That’s not a good sign.” Daniel looked as nervous as Emily felt.
She glanced up and down her street, noticing a few neighbors standing on their front steps and in their driveways. Typical Kansans, heading outside instead of taking shelter. One man even had his camera out, snapping photos of the ominous clouds heading their way.
“Daniel, how far do you live from here?” she asked.
“I live up north with my mom.” He looked a little embarrassed to admit that.
“How far north?”
“Just south of Tuttle.”
“That’s too far, please hang out here for a little bit. Till this storm passes.” Emily asked him to unlock the front door again and they headed inside. She rushed to her bedroom and put all her things on the bed. She’d unpack later. It was already a quarter till five and Reeve would be there at six. If she started now she could possibly have dinner ready by then.
Heading back downstairs to the living room, she found that Daniel had turned on the television so they could watch the weather forecast. The meteorologist stood in front of the green screen, the entire area covered in giant red, orange, and yellow blobs. The incoming storm. The woman pointed out the affected cities, noted what time the worst of the storm would arrive, and talked about the areas that had already been hit. It appeared to be a massive system, producing golf-ball-sized hail. Two funnels had already been spotted near Fort Riley.
“Shit.” Daniel looked at Emily. “You do have a basement, right?”
“I do. Is your mother safe? Should you call her?”
“She’s actually in Texas this week visiting my sister.”
“Well, good. Then sit tight. Everything will be fine.”
Emily headed for the kitchen to begin preparing her chicken Marsala. It was one of her favorites and while she didn’t fix it often, she always enjoyed the process. She cracked open a bottle of wine to sip on while she chopped vegetables. As soon as she poured her first glass and took a sip, the hail started outside, pounding on the windows and her back deck. Within five minutes the electricity went out.
“Seriously?” she called out to no one.
Daniel came into the kitchen. “It’s not dark yet, but do you have flashlights?”
“Hall closet, top shelf,” she instructed. She silently apologized to Dave for not following his one instruction.
Without the option of cooking, Emily ran back up to her bedroom and changed her clothes. She slipped on some capris and a striped boat-neck top. Might as well get comfortable if she was going to be hunkering down in the basement with her assistant. Outside, the trees beyond her bedroom window had begun to whip around violently, setting her nerves on edge.
Pulling her phone out of her purse, she turned it on so she could call Reeve. It wouldn’t come on. “Shit.”
The battery had died and now without electricity she had no way of charging it. She headed quickly back down to the living room to find Daniel. The minute she stepped off the last step, the tornado sirens sounded.
“Daniel?” she called out, fear sizzling through her body.
He came around the corner, a flashlight in each hand. “I’m here. Where’s the basement?”
Emily’s heart was thumping in her chest as she ran toward the door that led downstairs. “Follow me.”
They carefully navigated the stairs in the dark, and all Emily could think was that she might never get to tell Reeve who she really was.
* * *
“Goddamn it.” Reeve slammed his phone down on the couch. He’d been trying to call Emily for an hour and now the tornado sirens were going off.
She’d never responded to his last text, so the last thing he’d heard from her was that she’d been experiencing turbulence on an airplane. During a thunderstorm. His skin felt tight and his chest burned from the tension of worry and stress.
Reeve tried calling his mother.
“Hello?”
“Mom, can you go in the basement?” The can was necessary since he wasn’t even sure if the basement was accessible anymore.
“Yes. Mr. Boo and I are sitting on the steps.”
He was tempted to argue that that wasn’t quite the same thing as down in the basement, but he didn’t bother. It was obviously the best she could do.
“Do you have power?”
“No, it went out about fifteen minutes ago. But my phone has a flashlight.”
“Okay. Mom. Be careful.” That was really about as sentimental as he could get.
“I will, Reeve.”
He ended the call and sighed. As frustrated as he was with her, he would be devastated if something ever happened to his mother, but he couldn’t deny that the thought of her house being torn to bits in a tornado held some serious appeal. Feeling guilty, he pushed that thought away.
Besides, his main concern right now was Emily. Stepping out on his back deck, Reeve looked around at the sky. The hail had stopped, but the sirens were still sounding and the wind was definitely picking up. Despite dark clouds, he still hadn’t seen anything resembling a funnel.
He tried texting and calling Emily one more time, furious when it didn’t produce a different result than the last time. It wasn’t smart, but he was just going to have to drive over to her house. Surely she was home by now.
He went back through the house and out the front door, heading for his truck. And that’s when he saw it.
“Holy fucking shit,” he whispered.
A massive wall of black clouds was not three or four miles from where he stood in his driveway. He’d never seen anything like it. It was terrifyingly menacing. He knew without a doubt that Manhattan was not going to weather this storm unscathed. The greenish sky to the west was brighter, letting him know somewhat how fast and in what direction this was heading.
On instinct he ran to his truck and got inside. Pulling his phone from his pocket he pulled up Emily’s address from her earlier text. Yellowhaven Road, Yellowhaven Road. For the life of him, he had no idea where that was. He tried using the map on his phone but the service was slow and probably overloaded. With a tornado on the outskirts of town, he could not just start driving aimlessly.
“Shit.” Reeve got back out of the truck and looked to the west. Dread filled his chest. There was a clear funnel now, massive. Despite his years of living in the Midwest, it was the first time he’d seen one in real life rather than being reported on the news.
It was the most horrifying thing he’d ever wit
nessed. Even from this distance, probably several miles away, he could see the debris whipping around the circumference, items spitting from inside the cyclone to and fro. He couldn’t tell what they were, but it was undoubtedly tree limbs, housing materials, and God knew what else. He glanced down the street to see trees bending nearly in half. Shingles flew from roofs, and someone’s trash can literally flew down the road a foot off the ground.
A car came down racing down the road and went screeching into the driveway next to his. The neighbor to his right. Reeve was certain he recalled her name being Beth. They’d recently moved here. Her husband was an army transfer to Fort Riley. Reeve didn’t really know them well yet, but what the hell was she doing out? He watched, stunned, as she scrambled from the car—and that’s when his instincts kicked in. He raced across the yard, watching as she began to pull a baby out of the backseat.
“Do you have a basement?” he yelled over the hood of the car.
“No!” Her expression was frantic, full of fear.
He nodded to the baby she was still trying to free, her hands shaking. “You get him, I’ll get her. Then follow me.”
Reaching into the backseat of her small sedan, he unbuckled the car seat of a crying toddler with shaking fingers. In normal circumstances, she may have feared an unfamiliar man pulling her from her seat, but as it was, she held her arms out for Reeve, sobs escaping her mouth, tears running down her face.
“Come here, darling. Everything’s going to be okay.” He pulled her from the car as gently as he could. Once she was plastered to his chest, small fingers gripping his neck, he headed for his house, Beth running beside him with the baby.
Glancing over his shoulder he saw that the funnel cloud was closer, probably right on the edge of town, and he was thankful he hadn’t locked his front door when he’d left to find Emily. Oh God, Emily. Please be safe.
Holding open the door for Beth, he quickly led them through the house and down the basement steps. Compared with the outside, the basement seemed quiet, but the howling of the wind was loud enough to let him know that the worst of this was yet to come.
The little girl in his arms had stopped wailing but her face was smashed into Reeve’s neck. He patted her back gently, trying to reassure her as he quickly tried to decide the best course of action. His brain went into military mode, shutting down panic and switching into action. He glanced around the room. His basement was practically empty, of course. But he had a couch and a pool table. He knew instantly what he had to do.
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