Explosive - Page 88

“Stop trying then,” she whispered against his lips. “Please. I’m not your enemy, Thomas.”

He abruptly opened her robe and pressed her naked body to his. He wrapped his arms around her, shielding her in his encompassing embrace. Sophie held him tightly, giving him her warmth when he shivered in the chilly room.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Sophie tried the Dolans’ phone again after they ate lunch, expressing her frustration to Thomas over the fact that their phone line was still dead.

“I hadn’t realized,” Thomas said after he closed the dishwasher. “Their electricity never went out, so we didn’t notice. The phone lines are separate from the electric though. It’d be easy for a tree or a branch to fall on the lines in this weather.”

According to the news, the incessant rain was nearing an end, but severe damage had been done throughout central Illinois and Indiana. Roads were flooded, and several major interstates were closed as crews worked overtime to clear the huge amount of debris that clogged the drainage routes, exacerbating the flooding. Sophie was relieved that Haven Lake, although bloated with water, was being well controlled by the dam and drainage into the spillway, and then the Little Wabash River.

They watched the weather channel together, Thomas lying on his back on the couch and Sophie curled up on her side next to him, her knees bent on his thighs and her head on his chest. He seemed to crave her nearness. He couldn’t stop touching her.

Sophie didn’t mind, because she felt the exact same way about him.

Still, the thought that his singular attraction toward her was made exponentially more potent by his emotional turmoil hovered in the back of her mind like a dark cloud. Anguish and anxiety as acute as Thomas’s couldn’t last indefinitely.

His need for her, his desperate craving, would diminish once his memories returned and he began to deal with his grief. The constant pressure, the internal emotional friction that he alleviated—at least in part—through making love to her with such focus and intensity would inevitably come to an end.

Later that afternoon, Thomas volunteered to venture out into the soggy yard to bring Guy some food and milk. Sophie was in the kitchen preparing a chicken casserole for their dinner later when her cell phone rang. Her brows furrowed quizzically when she saw the Chicago area code, but didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Sophie?”

She set down the wooden spoon she was holding. “Sherm? Is everything okay?” she asked, alarmed by the edge of panic in her neighbor’s voice.

“It’s Daisy,” he gasped. “She insisted on going down into the basement to check on the flooding, and on the way back up the stairs, she got winded. She started having chest pains, and our damn phone line is dead. I didn’t have any idea until I tried to call you.”

Sophie’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement. How was Sherm calling her if the lines were dead? she thought fleetingly, but then her mind raced to the far more critical matter of Daisy.

“Is Daisy conscious? Have you had to do CPR?”

“No, she’s awake and lying on the sofa. We’re both scared to death.”

“Has she taken her nitroglycerin?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, listen to me, Sherm. I want you to hang up and call nine-one-one.”

“But the roads—”

“The roads are improving. It may take some doing, but they’ll be able to get an ambulance to your house. And in the meantime, I’m on my way this very second. Just try to keep Daisy comfortable, okay? Everything is going to be fine, Sherm,” she ended with firm assurance, attempting to steady him.

Sophie shoved her cell phone into a sealable plastic bag and rifled quickly through her spare bathroom cabinet, stashing a small bottle of aspirin in her jean pockets—just in case Daisy was running low on her nitroglycerin tablets. She hurried into an old rubber pair of boots that used to belong to her mother that were shoved into the back of a closet. Thomas was returning from the boathouse when she ran around the corner of the house, her feet sinking into the muddy ground. Miraculously, the rain had slowed to a steady drizzle.

Thomas pulled up short some thirty feet away when he saw her.

“It’s Daisy’s heart. Sherm just called. I need to get over there right away,” she shouted through the rain and mist.

“Okay. Let’s go,” Thomas called out tersely as he jogged toward her.

Sophie noticed when Thomas left the nurse’s station and came to join them in the waiting room. He gave her a small smile of reassurance and she smiled back, thankful for his presence in these difficult circumstances.

“The nurse says the bed next to Daisy’s is free, Sherm. It’s yours for the night, if you want to stay,” Thomas said.

“Thank you for arranging that, Thomas,” Sherm murmured. He looked pale and shaken. Sophie patted his hand where it rested on the armrest of his chair. Both Daisy and he had known about the weakness of Daisy’s heart, but it was the first time Daisy had ever actually had an emergency situation because of it. Sherm’s safe little world had been punctured, and Sophie knew the Dolans had some difficult choices to make. She adored having them as neighbors on Haven Lake, but as a physician, she knew it was advisable for them to move somewhere where emergency service was always easily accessible.

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