”Uh, I think we’d better leave the light on,” Mariana stated 58
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nervously as she and Mary Lou struggled to get Eleanor into her bunk.
Dar sighed and shook her head, going over to her bunk and sitting down on it. ”I’m sure it was just an isolated thing,” she reassured them.
”C’mon, we’ve got to get some sleep. God only knows what Mary Sunshine has in store for us tomorrow.” She stretched herself out on her cot on one side, crossing her ankles and propping her head up on one hand.Kerry slowly did the same, crawling into her bed after she peered around it nervously, then lying down so her head was close to Dar’s. ”I hate snakes,” she muttered.
”Hmm? How do you feel about lizards?” Dar inquired seriously.
”Um, I don’t know. Why?” Kerry asked, hesitantly.
”There’s one on your leg.” Dar pointed.
Kerry yelled and jumped, leaping across the space between their two bunks and landing practically in Dar’s arms. ”Shit!” She watched the tiny lizard scamper away, then exhaled raggedly. ”Damn.”
Then she realized where she was and peeked at Dar’s face. ”Uh, sorry.” She eased away from the taller woman, whose eyes twinkled.
”Dar, this isn’t funny. I hate these things.”
Dar almost told her to stay where she was, that she would protect her, but Mariana and Mary Lou were watching them. ”Look, just relax, lizards are good. They eat bugs.”
Wrong thing to say. In a split second everyone was in the middle of the room, staring at the beds.
Dar sighed and pulled the covers up over her face. It was going to be a very long night.
Chapter
Six
THEY’D FINALLY GOTTEN to sleep. Dar had convinced them, by sheer force of will, that if they’d turn the lights off and pull the covers up over their heads no bugs would get to them, even if there were bugs.
So they had and now she was snuggled down in her own bunk, waiting for her body to relax in this strange environment and listening to the soft breathing around her.
A low, rumbling sound came from next door and Dar smirked quietly, then exhaled, hoping none of her sleeping companions were prone to snoring.
Kerry wasn’t, she knew, unless she was flat on her back and exhausted. Dar suspected she’d be guilty of that in the same state as well. Usually Kerry preferred to curl up on her side, or against Dar’s shoulder, her breath gently warming the taller woman’s neck.
It was incredible, Dar mused, just how good that felt. She turned her head and gazed into the darkness, barely able to distinguish the huddled figure in the bed next to her. Hmm. Dar inched forward, getting as close to the head of her bunk as she could, then she slipped a hand between the rough two by fours that lined the beds and closed her fingers over the hand she could just see curled over Kerry’s head.
A soft gasp, then the blonde head lifted and the faint light reflected off her pupils. ”Oh” she barely whispered, ”you scared the bejezus out of me.”
Dar smiled and chafed her hand. ”Cold?” She murmured in response.
”Mm.” Kerry squirmed closer until her face was within inches of her lover’s. ”Even with the extra padding I’m still shivering; pretty embarrassing for a northerner,” she admitted. ”Camp wasn’t like this for my younger WASP self.”
Dar grinned, then looked around carefully. ”Can’t have that.” She slipped out of her bunk and into Kerry’s, the darkness shrouding them in safety.
”Dar,” Kerry mouthed, ”What are you doing?”
”Protecting corporate assets,” the executive purred right into her ear as she curled her body around Kerry’s and tucked the cover around both of them. ”Got a problem with that?”
”I don’t, but everyone else is going to, Dar,” Kerry breathed. ”I 60
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thought we were trying to keep this quiet. I think them waking up with us in bed together is going to be just a tad conspicuous, don’t you?”
”Shh, I’ll get out of here before it’s light. Just relax.” Dar reassured her. ”Unless you don’t want to be warm, that is. I can leave.”
Kerry snuggled closer. ”Mmph,” she grumbled, burying her face into a very welcome, very warm neck. ”Well, at least I’ll be safe from snakes.” A pause. ”Legless ones, anyway.”
Dar chuckled softly and felt her body easing into sleep, comfortably tucked around Kerry’s, her hands moving in slow, gentle circles against the smaller woman’s skin.
Kerry’s breathing evened out and slowed, and she dozed off, her hands flexing gently against Dar’s chest. Somehow that made the aggravations of the day ease and float off, clearing her mind and allowing her to drift off as well.
She was seated on a grassy slope, overlooking a river valley. The open, rolling land stretched out before her, split by the deep blue and gray line of water whose rush and rustle came to her faintly. The wind blew against her face, pushing the hair back and ruffling the soft fabric that covered the body of the blonde woman lying curled up, with a pale head pillowed on her outstretched legs.
A hand she recognized as her own gently stroked the soft hair spilling over her skin and she was lazily aware of the soft buzz of a bee nearby, and a songbird trilling overhead.
Her eyes traveled down her companion’s body and she felt the strange blur of surprise and familiarity as she realized the woman nestled against her was with child, her belly swollen under the soft fabric. Her other hand was interlaced with the woman’s, and both were tucked against the surface. As she sat, caught between her dream and the faint memories resting against her consciousness, she felt the soft flutter of a tiny life against her fingers.
A little smile moved the lips of the blonde woman and her eyes slid half open, meeting the blue ones watching her and taking on a quiet, warm sparkle.
She felt the muscles of her face move and knew she was smiling back.
The blonde woman nestled her head back down and closed her eyes, and she tilted her own head back to rest against a tree’s rough bark as the sweet, cool wind lulled her into a dreamy, wonderful haze.
SHE JUST BARELY beat the dawn. Dar’s eyes fluttered open as the first gray outlines were beginning to be seen beyond the trees, her heart pumping as she tried to reconcile the strange surroundings.
Then memory flared and she let her head briefly drop back onto the pillow as she let her heartbeat slow, safe for at least a few minutes more Hurricane Watch
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in the darkness.
She then remembered her dream and her brows knit as she tried to figure out where in the hell she’d imagined a pregnant Kerry. Could it be a premonition? Kerry hadn’t said anything like that had happened during her visit home, but Dar sucked in a breath, remembering finding her lover in the bathroom the day before, white as a sheet, and she wondered. Surely Kerry would have told her if she’d been assaulted at home, right?
Unless it wasn’t an assault, of course. Unless... Dar mentally slapped herself. “Stop it,” she mouthed silently. Kerry had gone over every minute of her visit home from when she’d left Miami until she’d been rescued by Dar in that hospital and there hadn’t been time enough for her to get a bag of fries at Burger King much less anything else.
Besides, she’d had her period since then and she was regular as clockwork. Dar dismissed the thought and frowned again. Just mental housekeeping? Yeah.