CHAPTER EIGHT
His girl was going to do herself damage if she didn’t calm down.
Ali paced the top floor of the two-story brick house they had found in the middle of nowhere. Inspecting, staking out her territory, pacing her prison cell. Daniel wasn’t sure which. Her shoulders twitched, and she wrapped her arms around herself, hanging on tight.
Downstairs, people had died. They saw lots of dried gore, though no bodies. He had ushered her through and up the stairs to the dank lounge at double speed. Ali hadn’t spoken a word since their arrival, didn’t even comment on the carnage.
He was terrified she would change her mind, demand he take her back to the pastel cottage in the burbs with its bedroom done in blood.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded, shoved her hands back to her sides. Inside him the worry escalated. He rubbed his fingers together, wanting to grab her but holding himself back. Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed to move on so fast. It wouldn’t have cost him to give her more time.
She crept up on the sliding glass door that led out onto a balcony. A timid hand reached out and slid the door open a hands-breadth, but left the curtains drawn. The setting sun gave him glimpses of a golden halo above her head as she peeked out through the gap. They were safe for the night.
“Careful,” he cautioned.
Another nod.
Outside, the climbing jasmine turned the balcony railing into a tangled tropical garden. It also blocked out the worst of the smel from downstairs. The garden didn’t warrant this level of fascination. Though clearly, his girl thought otherwise.
The highway close by made this place just a pit stop. There was nothing more than a couple of houses and a petrol station attached to a mini-mart named Creek’s Bend. The mini-mart had long since been wrung dry and set on fire, leaving the inside a charred, black wreck.
They would need to restock soon, tomorrow perhaps. But tonight they were fine and dandy, if only she would speak. Sometime soon would be good.
A whole day of nitpicking and now nothing, his girl loved extremes. And to reach a time and place in his life where he was desperate for a woman to talk to him about her day, mood, choice of shoe color, whatever she wanted to discuss – he would do his best by the topic.
“You hungry?”
She shook her head.
“Thirsty?”
Another negative turn of her head.
Ali sunk down onto the carpeting, sitting cross-legged before the split in the curtains.
Maybe it was the novelty factor. She had only been on the road for a day. For him, the great outdoors had boiled down to flies during the day, mosquitoes at night. There’d been summer storms that whipped up the dust and debris and turned the earth to mud, making the going slow. The glare of sunlight toasting him throughout the day, followed by the long, long nights on his lonesome.
At least he had his girl. Something was going on with her, however. Something he hated to be left out of, needy f**k that he was.
Daniel crouched down behind her, not touching uninvited, though hovering damn close. “Quiet, isn’t it?”
Another nod. A desperate mind might see it as gaining ground.
“What are you doing?”
She glanced over her shoulder, swallowed, and licked her lips with the tip of her tongue. “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.
Right?”
Ah. Right. Sort of. “You’re afraid?”
One terse nod. “Terrified. Have been al day.”
“Oh. That’s what the snarky was about. Got it. Okay. Now I’m understanding.” He shuffled closer, daring to storm the fortress. He lined up the back of her arm with the front of his, leaning in til his mouth was next to her ear. “Keep talking. I’m listening.”
She turned back and her eyes flew open. Her brows shot up, startled at finding him right there. But she didn’t move away. Score one for his team. “It wasn’t all me being snarky. You were being unnecessarily stubborn and pushy at times.”
“I humbly apologize. Keep going.”
“I’m starting to think it’s just your nature.” His girl almost smiled, the corner of her mouth compressing. “Uh … I don’t know. It felt so exposed out there on the road but now, stuck in this place, I feel weird. This was someone’s home. And they probably died here.
It’s … it’s all so messed up now, isn’t it? The whole world. Or what’s left of it.”
He nodded and smiled.
The brows descended further than necessary. “Why are you smiling?”
“Because, for the first time in my adult life, I’m getting where an equally adult female is coming from without bursting a blood vessel or something. It feels like a breakthrough. You’re talking to me. I love it.” Daniel ignored the scrunched-up face his honey dealt him. He dropped his shoulders with a sigh and smiled some more, relaxing into the conversation. “Yes, it’s all messed up. And no, my nature is delightful. More importantly, however, this place has a flat roof. Once the sun sets, we could climb up there, star watch. Get a different perspective. What do you say?”
“The roof?” Her throat worked and her eyes searched the floor. “Ah. Wow. I don’t think I could do that. Be out in the open again.
Shit.”
“Okay.”
An infected stumbled onto the street outside; a long, low groan echoed across the empty landscape. A shiver slid down her back.
Her hand, fingers trembling, fished for the shotgun sitting by her side.
“Ali, it’s okay,” he said, earning another nod. Actually, it was closer to a jerk, and far from convinced.
He had searched the place thoroughly, barricaded the door downstairs and the stairwel both; he’d junked them up with furniture.
Nothing was getting near.
“You really think we could go up on the roof?” Her plush mouth was set in a super straight line of disbelief. She stirred up all sorts of tender in him. It shouldn’t have been a surprise.
It had been a long day, and apart from riding him on each and every decision made, she had been a trooper. She questioned, but she didn’t whine. A delicate line to tread, but one he’d begun to appreciate.
Especially since she kept checking him out when she thought he wasn’t looking. Talk about life affirming. Turning around to find her focusing on a lower level, say where his ass had been. It made everything much more than all right. He loved it. The hitch in her breath and the telltale spike of those ni**les through her t-shirt made life superb.
On the bike she had settled against him more with each passing kilometer. She held on good and tight, leaning into his back as they wound through build-ups of once upon a time traffic. He doubted the cuddling was conscious on her part, but it meant she was relaxing.