Kissed by the Rain by Claudia Winter

Author:Claudia Winter [Winter, Claudia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503934962
Google: YDUzvgAACAAJ
Amazon: B017BA99PI
Goodreads: 31340791
Publisher: AmazonCrossing
Published: 2017-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

With a sly grin, the dishwasher helped us make our escape out the back.

Callum and Aidan had disappeared, probably to toast their old friendship. To my surprise, I felt a twinge of regret about my aborted date. Still, I had accomplished my mission, if only partially successfully. I shuddered to remember how Li had offered Antoine a taste of her soup. Before long, she would be forced to beat a hasty retreat to O’Farrell’s Guesthouse.

Bri’s medicine chest was both famous and infamous, containing drops, salves, and pills for any malady known to man. To me, it had always seemed like a magician’s closet, but for Charlie, it was confirmation that Bri was really a witch who flew over Frankfurt each night while we slept. It seemed to me now that eight-year-old Charlie hadn’t been too far wrong.

We cautiously stepped outside into a dimly lit backyard. Rain fell in sheets. The wind had knocked over several dustbins and was whipping across the pavement, as if intending to clear up the mess it had made with a celestial high-pressure cleaner. The awning offered no protection at all against the icy downpour. All I wanted was to return inside at once, police or no.

I spun around, but the door had locked behind us.

“Shoot!”

I rattled the doorknob in desperation. Bri hung heavily on my arm while at the same time trying to light a cigarette. Within seconds, my composure collapsed like a house of cards.

“Bri! Lose the cig and stand on your own goddamn feet before I let this storm blow you all the way to Shanghai.”

“Good for you! I never knew you could curse,” my aunt cackled over the howling wind. She waved a soggy cigarette in front of my nose. “This one’s had it anyway.”

Staring at the sad slug of tobacco, I wished Aidan was there—Aidan, who knew how to handle things, who made me feel safe.

But he was off distracting Callum, maybe even sweet-talking the police officer, and our only choice was to hike down to the village and hope to find a charitable soul. I closed my eyes, trying desperately not to cry, and heard Bri’s voice as if it was coming from far away.

“What do you say we get in Mr. Murray’s car before we drown out here?”

I squinted into the rubbish-strewn backyard, and indeed, there was the green truck—lights on, engine running. Aidan jumped out and ran towards us, leather jacket pulled over his head.

“Miladies ordered a taxi?”

Something happened to me in that moment. Aidan took Bri’s arm and helped her to the truck while I huddled against the building, paralysed with surprise at the fluttering in my stomach. So that’s what everyone was always talking about.

He gives me butterflies, Josefine, hundreds of them, an entire army! I could hear Charlie’s voice, see her arms thrown wide like one of those idiots who jump out of planes for fun—Charlie with an otherworldly smile on her face. She was fearless, sure she’d live and love forever. She was like this every time she fell in love.

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