Page 51 of The Law of Attraction
“Where’s that?” Adam asked.
“Another five miles down the highway, on the other side of the river that’s out of its banks.”
“So we can’t go that way either,” Olivia said.
“Not right now you can’t. ’Fraid you’re stuck here for the time being. But don’t worry, hon. The water always goes back down eventually.” The waitress swept Adam’s credit card off the table and carried it away with their dirty dishes.
“Fuck,” Adam said, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Maybe we’re almost through the worst of the storm and it’ll stop raining soon?” Olivia pulled out her phone to check the weather, but the cellular signal was crap and she couldn’t get her weather app to load.
“Or maybe not.” Adam pointed to the TV behind her.
It was showing another weather bulletin. The radar was pretty much solid red all around them, with more rain bands headed their way from the southeast. The crawl at the bottom of the screen announced a flash flood warning and a severe thunderstorm warning in effect until six the following morning.
“What now?” Olivia asked numbly. She shouldn’t be surprised, the way the rest of this trip had gone. They really were cursed.
Adam shrugged helplessly as he stared at the flooded parking lot. “I guess we wade back to our rooms, get a good night’s sleep, and wait for it to stop raining.”
Even with Olivia’s umbrella, the dash back to their rooms left them both soaked to the skin. Adam left her at the door of her room, and she went into the bathroom to strip out of her wet clothes and dry off.
She changed into pajamas and crawled into bed with her laptop, but the hotel Wi-Fi wasn’t working. Not surprising, she supposed, given the strength of the storm. The wind had increased in the last hour, and thunder rumbled ominously in the distance. Her phone still didn’t have a signal either, and when she tried to turn on the TV she found the cable was out too.
There was nothing to do but try to get some sleep and hope things would be better in the morning.
Someone was pounding on Olivia’s door.
She wasn’t sure how long it had been going on, because it was hard to hear over the storm raging outside. The wind had picked up considerably since she’d fallen asleep, and the roar of it was punctuated by a deafening crash of thunder.
She grabbed her phone off the nightstand to check the time and saw that it was after midnight. When she tried to turn on her lamp, she discovered the power was out.
The pounding on her door resumed with renewed vigor, joined this time by Adam shouting, “Olivia! Wake up and open the fucking door!”
She used her phone to light her way to the door and fumbled open the locks.
Adam stood outside in the rain, barefoot, in nothing but the work pants he’d been wearing earlier. “Were you asleep?” he asked incredulously. “How the hell can you sleep through this shitstorm?” The parking lot lights were out behind him, as were the diner’s lights and the lighted sign for the motel.
A flash of lightning sliced through the sky, illuminating the rain blowing nearly sideways outside. Olivia stepped back so he could come in out of the elements, which was when she noticed he had his suitcase with him. “What’s going on? Why do you have all your stuff with you?”
He ran a hand through his hair and droplets of water flew everywhere. Several of them hit Olivia’s arm, leaving pinpricks of cold on her skin. “A tree limb got blown down and punctured the roof. Water started coming through the ceiling of my room.”
She went to get him a towel. “Shit. Is your laptop okay?” Priorities were priorities. Clothes could be replaced, but they needed both their laptops in working order tomorrow.
“Yeah, the leak was in the bathroom, so most of my stuff is okay.”
“That’s a relief.” She handed him a bath towel and pointed her phone’s light at the floor, trying not to watch as he dried off his bare torso. “Not that it’s good your room sprang a leak, but it’s good it wasn’t like over the bed or something.”
Adam grunted as he ran the towel over his head, leaving his hair sticking up in spikes. Another crash of thunder rattled the window, and Olivia wondered how she had managed to sleep through all this racket. She must have been dead exhausted.
“Yeah, that’s the good news,” Adam said grimly as he draped the towel around his neck like an athlete in a locker room. “They don’t have any empty rooms because of all the people stranded by the storm.”
“Oh.” Olivia was suddenly, acutely aware of the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra and Adam was shirtless and soaking wet in her motel room—that was now their motel room, if she was correctly interpreting the situation.
“So I need to share with you.” Adam’s eyes drifted to the king-size bed behind her.
Olivia swallowed down a wave of nervous panic. “Of course,” she told him, forcing nonchalance into her voice. “Of course you can.” It was an emergency, and in an emergency you had to make do. Even if it meant sharing a bed with a gorgeous coworker you were totally obsessed with who didn’t like you back.
Poor Adam was the one getting the shit end of this stick. If he’d suspected how she felt about him, he must be feeling mega uncomfortable right about now—even more uncomfortable than she was.
