Page 52 of His Curvy Distraction

“It’s not safe for you to be out here alone. You didn’t know I was here. Anyone could show up and hurt you.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said, ignoring me and going back to her work.

“Natalie, please.”

She spun on me. “What do you want me to do? I can’t afford to hire someone. If I only work within the budget you gave me, we’ll never have this place open. And Amelia wants to do all these other things, and it’s getting bigger and bigger, and if I don’t do it, no one will. So I have to, Mr. Mayor. I have to do this.”

Her words were punctuated by a rumble of thunder that was so close I felt the ground tremble. “Is it supposed to rain today?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea.”

As she said that, the first drops hit the muddy ground hard.

“I guess it is. It’ll make the ground softer.”

“It’s not safe to be out here in a storm.”

“It’ll be fine,” she argued. Another clap of thunder echoed with her words, with a bolt of lightning immediately after and the thunder continuing to roll, alternating with lightning.

“We need to get out of here. We can’t be out in the open.”

“Shit,” she breathed, looking at the sky and closing her eyes to the rain coming down harder by the second. “There’s no shelter out here.”

“What about the camper?”

She shook her head. “It hasn’t been cleaned. It might kill us faster than this storm.”

“Come on,” I said, reaching for her hand. I was not going to leave her behind.

She slid her hand into mine, and we started to run.

We slipped almost every step, forcing us to go slow. She grabbed onto my shoulder when she almost hit the ground. The camper and our vehicles seemed like they were miles away.

“We can get in my car,” she shouted above the roar of the storm.

“Mine’s bigger. I already started it up, too. It’ll be warm. Get in.”

I kept a hold of her hand and opened the passenger door for her, waiting until she jumped in before I slammed the door and rushed to the other side. I slipped going around the SUV and nearly fell, catching myself on the hood. She pushed my door open from the inside, letting me into the warm vehicle before I slammed my door closed, the sound echoing the thunder that chased us the entire way.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

The look in her eyes answered before she spoke. “No. I’m not okay. How can I be okay? I’m about to die.”

I pointed the vents her way, hoping it would help warm her up. “You’re not going to die.”

“Yeah, I am. Because I made a bad decision. I’m not surprised. Last time I didn’t have my phone or my coat with me, and I didn’t have an emergency kit. I thought I was so damn smart. My phone is in my pocket. I had my jacket out there near me. But it doesn’t do me any damn good when I’m trapped out here and freezing to death.”

“You’re not freezing to death. We’re not far from town. We can get home.”

“We can’t drive in that!” she screeched.

“No, we can’t. We shouldn’t. It’s raining too hard to be able to see the road, and we probably won’t make it out of the driveway. But you said people know where you are. We can call for help.”

Thunder boomed outside, making her jump.

“Natalie, it’s going to be okay. “

“No, it won’t. I don’t know why I thought I could do this. I didn’t check the weather, and I would have been stuck out there if you hadn’t come and found me. Again. What is wrong with me? No one is going to trust me with their kids. This place is a failure before it even gets started.”

---