I didn’t want to do anything with the woman in the shower like she was my sister.
My sister was my sister.
The gorgeous redhead was captivating, and though I’d keep it PG this week while she was grieving, I wasn’t sure that I could still treat her like my sister, no matter how hard I tried.
There just wasn’t any denying what she did to me.
CHAPTER 4
I can’t really talk the talk or walk the walk. But if you need anyone to drink the drinks, I’m on it.
-Sabrina to Price
SABRINA
“I’ll take care of her like she’s my sister,” I heard him say as I opened the door.
I snorted.
Always with the sister stuff.
What was it with me and men?
Before I’d met Cole, I’d always been the friend. Never the one dated.
That’s why, when Cole actually showed interest in me, I’d been so captivated.
I was the weird witch girl in high school. Then in college, I’d been the girl that studied her ass off to graduate in three years instead of four.
Then, when I started my job at a tech company and worked from home, I’d never needed to make friends in work because I worked from home.
Hence the reason I only had Faye and nobody else.
I’d never needed to make friends.
Now…
Well, now I was friendless, fiancéless, and pretty much a sad sack.
“Yes, sir,” I heard my rescuer say. “I’ll make sure she… oh, shit.”
I didn’t have to know what he meant by oh shit.
Mostly because the same time he said oh shit the lights went out, and a gust of wind shook the house so badly that I felt the house itself sway.
“Rain’s comin’ down hard,” he said. “And there’s no power.”
There were a long few moments when I could only hear the wind outside howling, and then he said, “I’ll keep her with me until it’s over, yes, sir.”
I sighed, pulling the door open wider and heading to the door where it was left open a small crack.
From there, I looked out to see that there wasn’t a single light that could be found.
“Um, hey!” I called.
There was a pause in the house as if someone took a breath, and then, “Yeah?”
“Do you mind, um, bringing me your phone? Or possibly my phone? I need a light to get dressed by,” I called carefully.
There was a short pause, and then I heard the man’s bare feet walking toward me.
He sounded like he had really big feet.
As in, really big.
That, or maybe we were just so far up in the air on the stilts that the floor didn’t act correctly when walked on.
I didn’t quite notice how it was when I’d walked in here, for obvious reasons, but now I was more than aware of each step he took toward me.
“Here,” he said gruffly, and handed me a phone.
I knew instantly it wasn’t mine.
It was too big and I could feel cracks in the case and the screen that indicated it’d been dropped multiple times.
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “I’ll be out in a few minutes. Just gotta find some clothes.”
Though I couldn’t see his eyes, I could make out his outline.
And I had no doubt that he could see me seeing as there was a window at my back—it wasn’t quite dark outside yet, but it was getting there with the clouds and the rain hampering the sun’s effectiveness.
“Okay,” he rumbled, making me shiver deliciously at his tone of voice.
Then an ice-cold bucket of water felt like it was poured down my spine, and I remembered the last two hours in vivid detail.
My best friend had died.
This man currently standing in front of me had helped me carry my dead best friend off the beach.
Through the middle of a hurricane.
The tears were back, and now I was so freakin’ tired that I could barely hold my eyes open.
It wasn’t until the door clicked shut that I realized that the man—I didn’t even know his name yet, but he’d just become a rather large part of my life—had left me alone with his phone.
I tapped what I thought was the front screen, and was rewarded with a picture of a… grasshopper?
Shaking my head as I pulled up his flashlight app, I couldn’t even urge myself to smile.
God, what a day today had been.
I’d been scrambling all week to find a place that was open this week due to the availability thanks to the hurricane—surprisingly, people didn’t want renters in their houses when there were major storms rolling in.
Not that I blamed them or anything…
Thunder boomed, and a gust of wind once again shook the house.
My heart started to pound a little bit faster as I snatched up a pair of pajamas—ones that Faye had gotten me two Christmases ago—and a pair of underwear.
I didn’t bother with a bra.
A, because I’d just thoroughly soaked the one and only one I’d brought with me, and B, I planned to put a sweatshirt on over my outfit when I got where I was going.