Baby Blue Christmas by Kristy Tate

Author:Kristy Tate [Tate, Kristy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eclectic Books
Published: 2017-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

After one more cautious glance at Jamison’s bedroom door, she hobbled over and leaned against the bedpost.

“Luke!” she whisper-yelled.

He moaned and uttered incomprehensible words.

“Luke!” She grabbed his ankle.

He twisted away from her and his moaning turned to shouts of panic.

“Luke!” She matched his volume and shook his shoulder.

He bolted up, staring at her with wide, vacant eyes.

She noticed, with relief, that he wore boxers.

“What are you?” he demanded.

“Good question,” she said before sitting down beside him. “Are you awake now?”

“What are you doing in here?” he asked as he raked his fingers through his hair.

Not exactly the response a woman trying to seduce a man in his bedroom would want to hear, but she wasn’t a woman trying to seduce a man. She edged away from him, even though a part of her wanted to hold him to stop his trembling. “You were having a nightmare.”

He audibly swallowed and nodded his head.

“Are you okay?”

He hung his head and hunched his shoulders. “No, but I will be.”

“Does this happen often?”

He grunted an indecipherable negative or assent—she didn’t know which.

“Do you want me to stay?”

Again, a noise she couldn’t understand.

“Do you want me to get you anything?”

His trembling abated slightly. “Like what? A therapist?”

She laughed quietly. “I have one of those. Her name is Lauren. You’d like her. Although she doesn’t make midnight calls.”

He glanced out the window. “It’s almost dawn.”

“How can you tell?”

“These dreams…they always happen in the early morning.”

“So they do happen a lot.” She paused. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shook his head. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you, not the other way around.”

“But I’m fine, other than the twisted ankle, and you’re—”

“Twisted in other ways.”

“I didn’t say that,” she said, resting her hand on his thigh. Afraid she’d overstepped, she pulled her hand away.

“Do you want me to take you back downstairs?” he asked.

“Will you go back to sleep?”

“Not a chance, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t.”

“I’ll stay with you.”

“Really?”

“But not if you don’t want me to.”

He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. She fought the urge to pat her hair into place or tug her nightgown over her shoulder. She had to look almost as scary as he’d sounded, but that wasn’t what she saw in his eyes. He looked at her with gratitude and an almost heartbreaking relief.

She crawled across the bed and fluffed a pillow before lying down on it. “What’s your scariest dream?”

“You don’t want to know,” he told her as he lay down on the opposite side of the bed. “What’s yours?”

“Well, there’s always the one where I’m back in school and the teacher is handing out a test I haven’t studied for.”

“That’s your scariest dream?” Incredulousness made his voice rise.

She didn’t mention any of the dreams where she was naked in church or in front of a crowd. “Once I had a dream I was standing at a podium in front of a giant auditorium and a gust of wind came along and blew my hair off and did a Marilyn Monroe thing to my skirt.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.