Page 46 of A Shot at Love
“The two bedrooms up here have a connecting bathroom,” she called from above him. When he looked up she was leaning against the stair rail.
“Do they have, what did you call them? Ricardo beds, too?”
For the first time in hours, she smiled. It was as if the sun had decided to come out in the dead of night. She came down the stairs, her smile still in place. “Lucy and Ricky beds, and no. These are kings, not twins.”
Ky nodded, pushing the thought from his mind of what she would look like spread across a king-sized bed, naked and waiting for him.
“Okay.” He prayed his voice didn’t betray his thoughts. Thoughts he had no call letting slip into his conscious mind. “It’s late. Why don’t you get to bed? I’m sure you’re tired.”
“That doesn’t even begin to describe it.”
He could read the fatigue in the small purple smudges under her eyes. They’d both been awake for over eighteen hours.
“I’ll bunk down here and we can unpack everything and get the lay of the land in the morning.”
“You’re gonna stay down here?”
“Yeah.”
She cocked her head at him. “I don’t mind if you want to be upstairs. The beds are bigger. They might be more comfortable than the twins.”
“True, but from a defensive viewpoint, staying down here makes more sense.”
For a moment he thought she might argue with him. There was a question in her eyes he couldn’t fathom.
Instead, she grabbed one of the overnight bags Josh’s friend had put together for them, since they’d fled the safe house with nothing, and with a shrug, said, “’K.”
“I’ll make sure everything is locked up and secure,” he said to her retreating back.
“No surprise there,” she muttered as she went up the stairs.
*
She’d tried to ignore the rumbling and churning noises coming from her empty stomach for the past hour, hoping they would quiet and let her get back to sleep, but they’d hung on like a feasting leech. In fact, she was hungrier now than she thought she’d ever been before. The chips she and Ky had shoveled in during the drive had quieted her hunger for a while, but now, like a caged beast roaring for escape, it blasted through the silence in the room, demanding relief. Other than those chips, she’d had nothing to eat all day, since she’d been robbed of her breakfast by the gunmen.
Good Lord! How much had happened in a single day. Never in her wildest imaginings would she have thought she’d be stuck on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, miles from civilization, rooming with an armed man sworn to protect her.
The bedside digital clock told her it was three a.m. Too early for breakfast, but she’d never get back to sleep if she didn’t do something to squash the hunger blasting through her.
Gemma slipped from under the covers, thankful she’d donned socks before climbing into bed because she knew the wooden floor would be cold at this time of night. The cabin was deep into the woods, more than half way up a mountainside, and even though it was summer, the night air chilled without the sun’s heat. Wearing only a thin T-shirt and boy-shorts she’d found in the suitcase, Gemma wrapped her arms around herself and went on a mission for something to ease her demanding stomach.
Thankfully, the floors didn’t creak as she crept from the room, out to the landing, and down the stairs.
The light under the kitchen range was on so she was able to navigate around the living room and into the kitchen without knocking into any of the furniture.
She hadn’t unpacked the nonperishables before she’d gone to bed, knowing nothing needed refrigeration, but the counter was free now of the bags they’d brought in from the car.
Ky must have put them away before heading to bed.
Gemma said a silent curse because now she had to hunt through the cabinets as quietly as she could so she wouldn’t wake him. His bedroom door was cracked halfway open and any noise might disturb her sleeping special agent. Something she most definitely did not want to do.
With care she opened one cabinet, found it empty and moved on to the next. At the third she found success. She grabbed the first thing she could reach—a box of crackers. That would get her to breakfast, for sure. She opened the refrigerator, hoping he’d put the case of bottled water they’d brought in it to chill. The fridge looked as new as the rest of the appliances, and when she pulled the door handle to open it, a loud sucking noise barked into the air.
