Page 134 of New Storm Rising
“Is it still far?” I mumbled.
“A little. The place is somewhat out of the way from the respecta—ehem, main parts of town.”
“Oh,” I muttered. “Why’s that?”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll be there soon.”
Humming, I leaned further into him, drawing strength from his warmth. He really was an amazing husband.
It was indeed not too long before we reached our goal. With heavy eyelids, I blinked up at the house in front of us. It was really a nice place. A few too many pink lace curtains, maybe, and the red-tinged lamp shades in the windows were a little odd, but all in all, it looked very comfortable. Even the name above the door was welcoming: Mama Dumant’s. It gave off such a comfortable, homey feeling.
“Come on.” Tightening his grip around my shoulders, Mr Ambrose led me towards the door. “Let’s get you inside and up to your room, quickly.”
My heart warmed. He was so good to me.
In a blink, he swept me through the door, past the reception desk and towards the stairs.
“W-wait. Don’t we have to register at the desk?” Yawning, I glanced around at the…rather sparsely clad receptionist. Theverysparsely clad receptionist.
“No need, no need.” Mr Ambrose’s pace increased. “Karim will take care of it. You need to go up and lie down, you must truly be exhausted after—”
“Monsieur Amby?” he was abruptly interrupted by a female squeal from behind us. “Monsieur Amby, is that you? It is!”
Mr Ambrose froze.
As for me, I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears and give them a thorough cleaning.Monsieur Amby?
I turned around. Or at least tried to. Mr Ambrose’s rock-hard arm around my shoulder suddenly seemed not so much supporting as firmly restricting, keeping me pointing the other way.
But someone appeared to have other plans.
“Monsieur Amby!” A tornado of pink, fluffy femininity plucked Mr Ambrose from my arms and enfolded him in a cleavage-squeezing hug. “Monsieur Amby, you’ve come back! Wait till the girls here about this!”
I blinked. Slowly and deliberately. One of my eyebrows rose. “The…girls?”
Ignoring me completely, the tornado—who, now that it had come to a stop, turned out to be an elegant middle-aged lady with the most massively bountiful assets I had ever seen—whirled around without letting go of my husband and hollered: “Sally! Delilah! Sarah! Meg! Come out and look who’s come to visit y’all!”
My eyebrow rose higher. Sally? Delilah? Sarah? Meg?
Slowly, but surely, the warmth in my heart intensified. It was quickly heading towards the boiling point, driving away any hint of weariness.
“Dear?” My voice was calm, sweet and gentle as I stepped towards Mr Ambrose. Or, as I now knew him, prospective murder victim number one. “Who are those four ladies? Why does it sound as if you are familiar with them?”
Mr Ambrose shifted, trying to extract his arm from between asset one and asset two of the middle-agedfemme fatale.
“Well, Mrs Ambrose…as to that…”
“Yes, dear?”
But before I could grab hold of Mr Ambrose’s throat to squeeze an answer out of him, several girlish screams issued from above, and four girl-shaped blurs came dashing down the stairs.
“Hey! Look who it is!”
“Don’t all you grab him at once! I wanna get a piece of him!”
“Ha! First come, first served!”
Four scantily-clad women jumped on Mr Rikkard Ambrose, clinging to him like limpets. Extraordinarily well-endowed, exotically perfumed limpets, decorated with feathers and glitter.
