Page 52 of The Law of Attraction
But what choice did they have? She supposed she could offer to sleep on the floor—or in the car maybe. But she couldn’t imagine him allowing her to do either. If she even suggested it, he’d probably insist on being the one to do it. And she couldn’t let him do that. It would be unfair to let him be so uncomfortable, just because she was having inappropriate feelings about him.
She could do this. It was a big bed. This would be fine.
Belatedly, she realized they’d been staring at each other without speaking for a weirdly long time, and her nervousness multiplied, filling her stomach with a small swarm of bees.
Adam seemed to become aware of the awkwardness at the same moment she did and turned abruptly away, dragging his suitcase into the far corner of the room. Using his phone as a light, he bent to unzip it and rummaged around inside. “I’m gonna go change into dry pants, if that’s okay.”
“Sure. Totally.” She waved him toward the bathroom door. “Make yourself at home. You can just shove my stuff aside if it’s in your way.” As the words left her lips, she suddenly remembered all the wet clothes she’d left hanging in the bathroom to dry. Both her bra and her underwear were hanging from the shower rod, right at eye level.
Adam disappeared into the bathroom, and Olivia waited for the inevitable wisecrack about her display of intimate apparel, but it never came. He was either too polite to comment on her underthings or too tired.
She tried not to imagine him on the other side of the bathroom door, confronted by her lingerie as he unfastened his pants and pushed them down his narrow hips, peeling the wet cotton off his legs, leaving him in nothing but his underwear.
Assuming he even wore underwear.
Olivia shook her head to chase away that particular thought spiral and shined her phone’s light on the rumpled bed. She leaned over to smooth out the sheets on the far side and fluff Adam’s pillow before getting in and turning off her phone, plunging the room into total darkness. She’d been sleeping smack dab in the middle of the bed before, but now she lay so close to the edge of the mattress that her arm kept trying to slide off and flop toward the floor.
Adam emerged from the bathroom a moment later, his phone’s light casting a blue glow around the room. He paused for a second before padding over to the nightstand on the empty side of the bed. His phone went dark, and she heard him set it on the nightstand. The bed shook as he lay down beside her and arranged the sheets, trying to get comfortable.
“I’m sorry about this,” he said, as if the storm and the leak and their current situation were somehow his fault. “Pretty sure the last thing you wanted was to end up sleeping with me.”
It took all of Olivia’s willpower not to laugh out loud. “It’s fine,” she said, struggling to keep the strain out of her voice as sleazy thoughts filled her brain.
“I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself.” There was a hint of humor in his tone, as if the idea of wanting to touch her was hilarious.
Her libido deflated like a punctured balloon. “Great.”
“And you do the same.” He was joking, but the warning went straight to the pit of her stomach.
She attempted to play along. “Right. I’ll try not to feel you up in your sleep.”
There was a long beat of silence before he said, “Every time I think this week can’t get any worse…”
She let out a thin laugh. “Just imagine if Gavin were here instead of me.”
The bed vibrated with Adam’s laughter, and Olivia wished she could see him. She loved the way he looked when he laughed, and it happened so rarely.
“I wonder what Karen in human resources would say about this,” he said.
“I think she’d probably have a stroke.” Olivia felt like she was having a stroke. She was pretty sure she could smell burnt toast. Or maybe it was just ozone from the lightning outside.
“I don’t think there’s anything in the HR manual for situations like this.”
“No, probably not. Although maybe there should be. We should raise it with Karen when we get back to the office.”
Lightning flashed outside, momentarily casting a glow across the ceiling, and Olivia braced herself for the inevitable crash of thunder to follow. When it came a second later, it was as loud as an explosion, and she felt Adam flinch beside her.
“I really don’t like storms,” he said in a tight voice.
“I used to love them when I was a kid. Of course, when you’re a kid they’re not as much of an inconvenience as they are when you’re an adult and you actually have responsibilities and stuff.” Like needing to get back to work.
Every hour that it continued to rain, it became less likely the roads would be clear by morning. With the power out they couldn’t even log in remotely, and who knew how long it would take to restore service. There were probably a lot of downed trees and downed wires, which would take time to fix, and the utility crews wouldn’t even be able to start until the flooding receded enough to let the trucks through.
“Did you ever see the original Poltergeist?” Adam asked, interrupting her anxiety spiral.
“Yeah.” Olivia’s friend Esther was a horror movie nut and had dragged her to a revival showing a couple years ago. It had been cheesy as hell, but still scared the living shit out of her.
“My sisters used to babysit me, and they let me watch it when I was way too young. You know that scene where the kid is in bed listening to the storm and counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder to track the storm’s approach?”
