After the Rain (The Twisted Fate Series Book 1) (9 page)

10

Red, flashing warning signs

Stormy dreamed that she and Marcus were kissing. Not the kind of kissing they’d been doing – the hungry, messy, desperate kissing – but the other kind.

The soft, gentle, slow kind.

The kind loaded with meaning and feelings.

In her dream, they were lying in bed, holding each other like lovers who’d spent the night together. The sun was streaming through the window and onto their faces, and it felt like they could lie there for an eternity. Their eyes were closed and she felt his hands come up and pull her shirt off over her head. She reciprocated, pulling his off too, and their chests were bare, naked and pressing into each other. There was no frantic urgency this time – it was slow, delicious, gentle…

“WHAAAA!” Stormy screamed and went tumbling backwards out of the bed.

“WHAT?” Marcus woke with a start and scrambled out the bed too.

“What the fricking hell!” Stormy screamed at him as she pulled herself up into a sitting position.

“
What
?” Marcus looked confused and frightened.

“You took my shirt off!
And
you kissed me!”

“I didn’t kiss you!” Marcus objected, touching his lips. But Stormy saw a look of surprise cross his face as he realized that he tasted her.

“That was real…. It wasn’t a dream?” he asked. It was obvious that he’d been having the same dream as Stormy.

“NO! You kissed me and tried to undress me while I was sleeping.”

“Excuse me,” Marcus protested angrily. “You were kissing me back, and I’m not wearing a shirt either. You took it off.”

Stormy paused, her eyes slipping down over his chiseled chest. Goddess, she would never get over how perfect his body was. “Okay. Good point. So we both took advantage of each other,” she admitted.

“Jesus, this is crazy, you know that? We can’t even control ourselves when we’re unconscious,” Marcus said, sounding exasperated. She watched as he started rummaging under the blanket for their shirts and tossed Stormy’s back to her.

She nodded and slipped the rugby jersey on. “It is.” She touched her mouth, a sudden and rather horrifying thought striking her. “Eeew, I can’t believe we kissed with morning breath.”

Marcus shrugged. “I can’t believe we kissed at all.”

Stormy suddenly realized that the room was much quieter than it had been the night before. As if reading her mind, Marcus climbed out of the tiny bed and opened the curtains. Bright sunlight streamed in – it was as if the storm hadn’t even happened the night before.

“Well, at least there’s some good news – the storm seems to have passed. Maybe we can catch a flight out of here today after all,” he said, gazing out. Stormy couldn’t help but notice how the sunlight played off the natural highlights in his hair. She was noticing far too many things about Marcus all of a sudden – those eyes, those perfect kissable lips, those really big manly hands, those…
Stop! Think about something else.

Stormy got up and walked over to the window. Even though the sun was out, there were signs of the storm everywhere. The streets were littered with garbage and a few more unusual items – a rouge garden chair, a grocery trolley and a mannequin, which looked very disturbing, sprawled on the curb in an oddly contorted pose. A few palm trees had bent and some had even fallen over. Huge puddles of water filled the road and water was gushing like raging rapids out of drainpipes.

“So what’s the plan, then?” Stormy finally asked.

“Go to the airport, and see if we can get a flight out of here. I need to buy a new phone, too. We have the rehearsal dinner tomorrow and the wedding the day after – if nothing else goes wrong, we should be able to make it to both.”

“Careful what you say – don’t tempt Fate,” Stormy said, rapping her knuckles against the wooden window frame superstitiously. “But anyway, that’s not what I meant,” she added, turning to him with a pointed look as she tried to convey the real meaning of her question telepathically.

“Oh!” Marcus finally clicked. “That… I don’t know.”

“Well, we have two options, really,” she declared, holding up her fingers to count them off. “One, we keep doing this. Two, we put an end to it immediately, and make a pact that it will not happen again. A real pact that we stick to, not like before.”

Marcus looked at her like he was considering the options. “Well, we’ve both agreed that we’d never work in a relationship,” he said finally.

“Never,” Stormy nodded in agreement.

“And I don’t want stuff to get complicated between us.”

“Definitely not.”

“So let’s put and end to it. Draw a line in the sand. For real this time.”

“I can deal with that,” Stormy replied.

“So it’s a deal: no more kissing and touching, and definitely no more sex.”

“Right – let’s shake on it,” Stormy said, extending her hand. “But for real-zees this time,” she echoed Marcus’s sentiments. Marcus looked at it hesitantly, and Stormy had a sudden flash of what had happened last time their hands had touched – five seconds later, she’d been straddling him. She quickly pulled her hand back again. “Um, how bout we give that a miss – no touching, starting now.”

“Okay. No touching,” he agreed.

An hour later, they were at the airport, receiving some more bad news.

“What do you mean, no flights today?” Stormy could see that Marcus was getting worked up.

“I’m sorry, the runway has sustained damage from the storm, and we have some communications knocked out,” the battered-looking desk clerk explained. She looked like she had spent the morning being yelled at by frustrated tourists – which she probably had, Stormy thought. Her aura was giving off a distinctive dark non-glow glow. Stormy felt sorry for her.

“I’m sorry, sir, there is really nothing we can do,” she apologized again.

“We have a wedding to get to in Prague.”

“May I make a suggestion?” the desk clerk asked. “Moi airport in Mombasa is operational, and there are international flights taking off from there. A lot of passengers are driving there to catch flights, but you’d better book now as they’re filling up fast. The drive is about six and a half hours and if you leave now, you’ll get there before it’s dark. I’m sorry… We just don’t know when we will be operational again.”

Marcus sighed. “Would you be able to phone and arrange a flight and a car for us?” he asked her, and she nodded.

There were bonuses to being abusiness class passenger, Stormy reflected as the desk clerk immediately picked up her phone – the airline staff were really keen to help you.

Stormy wandered away from the airline counter – after closing her eyes quickly and sending some positive vibey-vibes to the woman behind the desk – leaving Marcus to organize their transport, and looked around the airport. People were camped out on the floor and on chairs, and many of them looked like they’d slept there the night before. She adjusted Marcus’s tracksuit pants, hitching them higher up her waist – they were far too big for her, but she was tired of looking like a stripper, so she’d rolled the legs up and fastened the front with a belt. She was also wearing another one of his shirts.

“Okay, there’s a flight to Dubai tomorrow morning, then a two-hour stopover, and on to Prague,” Marcus reported, catching up to her. “If we do that, we’ll just make it to the wedding rehearsal. We should arrive with a few hours to spare, but that’s the best we can do. I’ve arranged accommodation in Mombasa for the night… separate rooms this time. And in the meantime, let’s buy a phone and some clothes for you.”

“I don’t have the money for new clothes.”

“Here,” Marcus slid a credit card out of his wallet and offered it to her.

“I’m not taking your money,” Stormy said, folding her arms across her chest.

Marcus shook his head. “Stop being so stubborn. Take it. Buy yourself a few outfits.”

“No! What I am wearing is fine, thanks.”

She felt Marcus eye her up and down. “It’s swimming on you, those pants are about to fall off. And if that happens, it might just land us in more trouble.”

“Fine. I’ll see what I can do,” she conceded. Careful not to brush his fingers with hers, she took the credit card he was still holding out to her.

“I’m going to buy a phone, and some food and drinks for the journey. Meet back here in an hour.”

Stormy nodded and headed for the nearest shop.

She hated shopping, but luckily on this occasion, it was easy. She walked in and was met instantly by a rack of summery dresses, a few bright t-shirts and a pair of shorts. She grabbed three items and hauled them over to the register to pay.

A man had never bought her clothes before. It was completely foreign. But Marcus was probably that kind of guy – the dependable husband-type man, who provided for his partner. It was a bizarre concept to her; not even her own father had provided for his family. That’s probably why she’d landed up in two foster homes over the years. Her foster families had been sort of okay (not really)… It hadn’t been easy.

When she was sixteen, she’d gone looking for her mother, driven by a naïve childhood fantasy that maybe she could have a life with her. That dream had soon been shattered, and she’d been left heartbroken when she finally tracked her mother down to a hippie colony on the Transkei coast.

Stormy had been surprised when she’d arrived. The thing looked less like an informal colony and more like one of those compounds you might see in a program on the reality TV channel about a strange religious leader with ten wives and seventy-five children. Her mother was also not what she’d spent so many of her childhood hours imagining. For starters, she was bald – completely bald. In Stormy’s imagination, her mother’s hair was long and thick, the color of bright golden sunshine. Her clothes too were nothing like the colorful, flowing pink thing Stormy had imagined her ethereally wafting around in. Her outfit looked more like a silver astronaut suit.

“Hey, aren’t you my daughter?” her mother had said to her upon meeting. She talked particularly slowly and flatly, with no emotion in her voice whatsoever. “I’ve seen a picture of you.” It was bizarre. Almost robotic.

And when Stormy had asked if she could stay with her and get to know her, her mother – or should she say ‘Andromeda’ – had basically said that she wasn’t mother material. “This parent thing is just not for me.” That was all she’d gotten.

Rejection. Abandonment of the cruelest kind. Especially when she’d seen a young silver-haired boy with piercing emerald green eyes walk up to her and tug on her possessively.

She’d gone back to her foster family feeling utterly heartbroken and more alone and worthless than she’d ever felt in her entire life. But when her father had married Lilly’s mom a few months later, and Stormy had moved in with them, things had finally started looking up. She had a sister for the first time, someone who she loved and cared for, and those feelings were reciprocated. She had finally dared to hope that she would know happiness and stability in her life. But it’d been short-lived, and a few months later, they were divorced and Stormy was on her own with her deranged father again. But she hadn’t lost Lilly, at least – they would always be sisters as far as they were concerned, and that’s why she had to get to her wedding celebrations, no matter what it took.

Trying to shake herself out of her weirdish mood, she went to the bathroom, slipped on one of the dresses and tied her hair back. It was a simple white dress with no patterns or colors – totally not her usual style, but better than leather-studded bodysuits. At least she still had some colorful bangles on. She walked out and saw Marcus was waiting for her right where he said he would be. Mr. Reliable.

Thank God for modern technology, Marcus thought. The guy at the electronics store had shown him how to sync his new phone with the cloud back up system, and the shiny new device had instantly populated with all his contacts, emails and photos. It was like having his old phone back, and it made him feel a little more in control again. Pocketing the phone, he looked up and saw Stormy making her way towards him across the crowded airport terminal, and he found himself blinking rapidly. When she wasn’t wearing loud, distracting clothes, she was gorgeous; with her colorful hair pulled back in a ponytail, instead of all over the show, she was stunning.

He took a deep breath and steadied himself. They were going to be in a car together for the next six and a half hours, and he needed to get a grip on himself. But she was looking better than he’d ever seen her before; in fact, the stripper clothes might have been preferable.

“So, road trip!” Stormy said brightly, handing back his credit card.

“Road trip,” Marcus echoed vaguely, still enthralled with her.

“So, what do you think?” Stormy asked playfully, twirling around so her dress lifted just a bit above her knees.

He nodded and smiled, trying not to betray what he really thought. “Much better.”

“Thank you so much,” Stormy said with a sweet, sincere smile that made her look even more beautiful. “No one has ever bought me clothes before.” Marcus noticed a slight note of sadness in her voice as she said it.