“You could leave around six o’clock,” he said, putting his phone next to him on the couch. “The roads to South Shore should be fine by then, and the next storm won’t come until morning.”
“And you?”
“If it’s still available, I’d catch a red-eye at midnight.”
It was still morning. They hadn’t even had breakfast yet, but six o’clock seemed as if it were minutes away, not hours. There was so much she’d wanted to do. “What happens if you don’t get the red-eye?”
“Then I stay until tomorrow afternoon.”
“Just you?”
He gave her a look that she couldn’t misinterpret. “I know how I’d vote,” she said, itching to dissuade him from tonight’s flight. “But let’s try to be responsible and get you safely back home. I can get a ride anytime.”
“I’m not crazy about this being-sensible nonsense. You’re right, of course. But there’s something else to consider. If we did stay here, we’d be helping Sam out by testing more features. Like that big whirlpool bathtub.”
Jenna was already nodding. “Plus, we should have at least one more great meal.”
“Four, if we can.”
She reached for her coffee, but it was cold. There was a perfectly fine microwave that could zap it back to the right temp, or she could make a fresh pot. Maybe try another kind of coffee. “Oh, I found a waffle iron in the cabinet. How about I make waffles while you cook bacon. Sound good?”
“Sounds great.”
Forty minutes and a pretty big mess in the kitchen later, they were still in their bathrobes, sitting at the dining room table. Of course there was real maple syrup, and the waffles were the old-fashioned kind, more dense and flat—her favorite.
Jenna put her fork down even though there was a perfect mouthful of waffle on the tines. “Did you ever check on the red-eye flight?”
His wince answered the questions. He whipped out his cell phone and went through the messages. “Antwan got me seats on both flights. We still have an hour to cancel before things get pricey.”
She ignored the rest of her food, her appetite as gone as they would both be in just a few hours.
“We can still take that bath,” Rick said.
“That’s true,” she said, wondering if this counted as a necessary time to pout.
“And there’s...” His words fell somewhere short of his lips as he stared at her.
“Yes?”
“I didn’t expect this. Since we got here, it’s been—”
“Wonderful?” She knew she was putting herself out there, making a leap like that, but the way he looked at her made her warm from the inside out.
“Yeah. Wonderful.” He kept looking at her. “So?”
“I don’t know. Do you think we could still be in shock?” She blinked, and then stared right back. “I mean, from the moment we kissed it was like—I don’t know. I didn’t expect to—” She inhaled through her teeth. “That it would be forever seared in my memory. I remember how when I just let go, let it happen, it was as if we were alone in that hotel. But for that feeling to last all this time?”
Worry lines marred his forehead, and she couldn’t figure out which thing she’d said that had caused them. “Please don’t get the wrong idea, but I think I’m going to miss this apartment as much as I’ll miss you.”
He laughed and finally looked away. He wasn’t worried anymore, which she realized would have been the true moment for a pout. But she smiled instead.
In fact, she probably needed to dial it down a whole bunch of notches. Once that door opened to the outside world, she’d have to face her real life. A life without truffles or Prendimé dark chocolate with almonds. That second one actually made her want to weep. She’d never tasted anything better.
Wait. There was one thing—kissing this gorgeous man while he still tasted like maple syrup.
* * *
HE WASN’T WORRIED about catching the red-eye. He’d make it to the airport just fine, sleep on the way home. Staying longer than he had to was unprofessional. Keeping Jenna here an extra night just because he wanted her company wasn’t like him at all. He loved his job, his career, and he never missed a day if he didn’t have to. If this was tornado season, he’d fly out the minute he could, but—
“What made you so interested in tornadoes?” Jenna asked, her head cradled against his chest as she occupied herself by twirling his chest hair around her fingers.
After breakfast, they’d meant to clean up the kitchen, then take a bath in the whirlpool tub, but one kiss had led to another and they were still in bed, still catching their breath from yet another astonishing round of sex. He was propped up by a few pillows, his arm around her.
Soon they’d be returning to their regular lives, and his life was all about tornadoes, so the question wasn’t a surprise. Yet it wasn’t an easy one for him to answer.
The short version was the one he told most everyone. It consisted of two words: Tornado Alley. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to make light of what he knew now was his calling. Hell, she’d probably get a kick out of what had happened to him.
He’d never told Antwan, and he never told the storm chasers he was in charge of. His father knew, of course, and so did Faith, but he hadn’t told her until they’d been living together for two years.
“Rick? Is that too complicated for your sex-addled brain?”
He smiled, although she couldn’t see. “Smart-ass,” he said, giving her shoulder a little squeeze. “Do you want the short version, or the long?”
“Long, of course.”
“Why?”
She looked up at him, her finger hovering a quarter of an inch from his right nipple. “Come on. You know I’m interested in learning new things. And you’re definitely something new.”
He’d have been disappointed if she’d answered any other way. “Okay, but you have to understand, I don’t tell many people what really happened to me. Can I trust you to keep it a secret?”
“Not for a minute. I’ll probably call the Boston papers as soon as I get home.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Just checking.”
She pinched him. Not hard, and not in any supersensitive place, but she got his attention.
“All right,” he said. “Jeez. I’ll tell you. Everything.”
She gave him a look before settling down.
“I was fourteen years old,” he began, “and I lived in the most boring town in Oklahoma, right in the middle of Tornado Alley. Which, when you think about it, could explain everything.”
“A lot of people live in the middle of Tornado Alley and I bet they aren’t all storm chasers.”
“Excellent point.” He smiled. With Jenna, the short version would never have cut it. “Anyway, I was kind of a mix of jock and nerd, heavy on the nerd, and I didn’t have the kinds of friends that you might expect a kid to have in a small town. My closest friend had moved to Texas when I was six, so I spent a lot of time alone, playing ‘Mortal Kombat’ and dreaming about becoming an FBI agent like Fox Mulder.
“My mom had died when I was ten. It was cancer and really quick. At the time I was furious that we didn’t have more warning, but now I realize how lucky she was. She hardly suffered at all.
“My dad’s a pediatrician. He worked long hours back then, and I don’t think he was prepared to take care of the house and me. Mom had done most everything. To be fair, though, I always knew I could talk to him and that he wanted what was best for me. We didn’t have a tornado shelter or anything. We hadn’t ever had a tornado where we lived, so most people didn’t. Although, I doubt anything could have stopped what happened.
“It was June. I was off for the summer and one morning I woke up in my attic bedroom to the sound of a thousand trains coming straight at me. I couldn’t scream or anything, it all happened too fast. I just gripped my twin mattress as hard as I could, and the next thing I knew, it was eerie and quiet and noisy as hell all at the same time. The world was spinning faster than any carnival ride and I was sure I was gonna die any second. I didn’t know where I was, or what was happening. I might have passed out, no way to know, but there were a few seconds, maybe a minute, where I realized I was in the tornado. Me and my mattress.”
Jenna had brought her head up and was staring at him with huge horror-filled eyes. He bent and kissed her nose.
“You can’t stop there. Go on.”
He smiled and rubbed her arm. “Shit was flying by me so fast it was like this crazy dream. I saw a refrigerator, the sign from Wallander’s farm and a tree. A big tree. Something hit the other side of the mattress hard. Turned out I’d nearly missed being impaled by a chunk of fence.
“The next thing I knew, I was being wheeled out of my dad’s office, which still had a roof on it, and into an ambulance. The paramedics kept me breathing on a trip that was evidently epic. Half the roads to the closest standing hospital had been shredded. Everyone made a hell of a fuss when I told them what had happened. My father had actually seen me flying away, never thought he’d see me again. Not alive.
“I was hurt, though, pretty bad. Compound fractures in one arm and one leg, three cracked ribs and one doozy of a cut on the back of my head. For a long time after, every time I fell asleep, I was in that tornado again.”