“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.