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“Be careful with the pain pills,” the docs had advised when he left the hospital. “You ache, you’re depressed, the Vicodin can become a problem.”
“The hell I’m depressed,” he’d said, and by then, the docs had given up arguing.
The pills hadn’t become a problem. He’d used them the first couple of months, but only when the pain had been unbearable.
Besides, he’d discovered that booze was better.
Drugs sailed him into a never-never land where the world was dreamlike and peaceful.
Booze just took him under, where the world was non-existent.
Much better.
Still, it didn’t work that well tonight. He didn’t drop into exhausted sleep until the old clock downstairs had tolled four, and that sleep didn’t last very long.
He was awakened not by the roar of the returning plane but by the roar of the returning storm, which had doubled back and finally, inexorably, turned itself into a blizzard.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A few minutes after dawn, Lissa stood by the bedroom window, her expression glum as she stared out at the storm that held her prisoner.
She knew it was ridiculous to think of it that way, but she couldn’t help it.
The storm was like a great beast, roaring through the trees and around the house.
The snow was coming down like a thick white curtain adding inches to what had fallen yesterday, and according to the weather service, there was more to come. The wind was as fierce as any she’d ever experienced.
Who knew when she’d finally get away from this horrible place and this horrible man?
You couldn’t go anywhere in a blizzard.
Outside, the trees bent and swayed under the power of the wind. Nothing else moved against the stark white landscape except for a big black shape that had plowed through the snow a few minutes ago.
Brutus.
That, at least, had made her smile.
Brutus clearly loved the snow.
She’d watched as he rolled in the stuff, bit at it, flung it through the air. Then he’d stopped, cocked his head and looked back toward the house. Someone had to be calling him.
Gentry, probably.
At least he hadn’t let the dog out alone.
It was painfully easy to get lost in a storm like this one.
Yes, but Gentry wouldn’t let that happen to his dog. He cared for the Newf. Even more telling, the Newf cared for him. There was a time Lissa had believed that if a dog loved somebody, that somebody couldn’t be all bad.
“To hell with that theory,” she muttered as she turned away from the window, plopped down on the edge of the bed and tied her sneakers.
Gentry was a mean-tempered, nasty piece of work. What had happened last night proved it. He’d been making love to her and he’d fallen. She’d worried that he’d hurt himself, but his reaction—all that anger, how he’d refused her concern as well as her help, his attitude…
Ugly.
And then that vicious crack about why she’d been on the verge of having sex with him—and that was what it would have been, sex, nothing as prettified as making love, assuming prettified was a word and if it wasn’t, it sure as blazes should be.
That horrid remark.
