Her neighborhood wasn’t the worst in town, but it most certainly wasn’t the best.
Several seconds passed—they seemed like freaking eons—and Stormy put her ear to the door. Only silence greeted her now. Great! The jerk had woken her up and now was running scared.
Maybe she should make a recording of her small speech and keep it at the ready for anyone stepping in front of her door before the hour of ten a.m.
Her hands still a bit shaky, Stormy made sure her security chain was tightly locked in place. Finally, she cracked her door a couple of inches. She peered down the hallway as far as she could see and found no one out there.
Had she scared the person off? That thought pleased her immensely. She was one tough girl. Yay for her.
Still, she really wanted to know what all the pounding had been about. “Is anyone out there?” she called out. Not a whisper could be heard in return.
A little bucked up, she slowly removed the chain and opened her door wide enough to look out to the other side of the hallway. The sound of the door creaking open gave her goose bumps, but when she looked down both sides of the hall, there wasn’t a soul in sight.
Her eyes narrowed, and she immediately suspected that the creepy college dropout who lived a few units down might have been playing a prank on her. He never had a shortage of cheesy pickup lines or dirty jokes to share with anyone of the female gender. Perhaps he had just hammered on the door before heading out, thinking that he was being amusing.
Just as she began to turn and close the door, a flat white object on her mat caught her eye. Holding her robe closed with one hand, she reached down with the other and picked up the envelope.
Once safely back inside, with her lock securely in place, she noticed that the return address was the rental office of her building. She walked back to her bedroom, which was little more than an alcove with no wall or door.
Wondering what the management could be sending her, she tore open the letter. She sat on the edge of her bed and hesitantly pulled the piece of paper out. Oh, how she hoped it was simply an announcement about sink repairs. No such luck.
Dear Ms. Halifax:
Remodel to begin in four days. This is your final warning.
You must be out in seventy-two hours.
Stormy’s heart sank in her chest as she crumpled the paper in agitation. She had known this was coming, but still, she’d hoped beyond hope she could get an extension. Finding an affordable place in Seattle wasn’t easy.
But the new management was trying to spruce up the image of the building for some big investors who were coming in. Dammit! When it rained, it poured. Since everything was going wrong anyway, she decided she would just let it all go and try to forget about it—for at least a solid ten minutes.
It was time to get ready for work. Suddenly a loud clap of thunder erupted close by. She could hear a slight tapping on her window that was increasing in tempo. Fall was quickly approaching in Seattle, and the rainy weather was steadily increasing.
Stormy was always invigorated by big storms, not fearful like so many other people. They actually helped to cheer her up, most likely because they were her namesake. She’d been born the night of a great thunderstorm and her parents had thought her name was literally coming to them from the skies. She had to admit, though, she’d rather watch a storm from a warm, safe place and not go out into the middle of it.
She reminded herself again that it was a work day. Maybe it was good the management had woken her. With a sigh, she walked across the cold, broken tile of her bathroom. The bathroom was small and quaint, complete—har, har—with a toilet, a single shower stall, and a vanity that barely managed to hold her hairbrush and a few basic beauty products. It was a good thing she wasn’t into a lot of cosmetics and skin lotions.
She turned the faucet on, then pulled the lever, bouncing on her toes as she waited for what seemed like forever for the small tank to send anything above freezing through the rusty pipes. When the water reached lukewarm, she jumped in, and then sighed when it finally matched her body temperature.
It didn’t take long to get ready, and then she was off. The sooner she faced the wet, cold morning, the sooner she’d be out of it. There was a bright side.
She arrived in the lobby just as the rain picked up to a sheeting downpour outside the old building.
“Are you going out in that, darling?” one of her neighbors asked as she waited for the morning paper to arrive. The widow, Penny, whom Stormy had a soft spot for, had the same routine every single day.
“Yes, I have no other choice,” Stormy replied.
“You know, missy, if you don’t learn how to slow down just a little bit, one day you’re going to find that you’ve let life just up and pass you by.”
Stormy could feel pressure behind her eyes at the words. “I know that. But sometimes you don’t have much of a choice but to keep on running,” she said sadly.
“There’s always a choice, dear.”
Reaching up to grip the pendant from her lost necklace, her hand fluttered away when she came up with empty skin. It had been six years and she still reached for it. The night she’d lost it, more of her dreams of becoming a jeweler had washed away. Sadness filled her at her neighbor’s words, more so than she cared to admit.
“Sometimes, there’s really not a choice,” she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Thanks for being there for me, Penny. Now, stay inside and keep warm.”
She would actually do well to heed the woman’s advice. But she knew she wouldn’t.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The sun’s rays pierced through the overcast sky as the rain began to subside, and the now warming pavement of Seattle’s well-traveled roadways produced puffs of steam that were whirled around by the cars rushing along.
The light at a busy Broadway intersection turned red as a sexy Porsche 911 came to a stop just shy of the crosswalk. Drumming his hands impatiently on the steering wheel was the less than humble airline pilot Cooper Armstrong on his way to Sea-Tac Airport.
Cooper was once again in a mad dash to get to work early. Of course the airplane needed his special attention, and there’d be no flight for the day without his presence. Sure, there were other pilots, but none as good as he was, he thought with a cocky smile.
Within seconds, a car pulled alongside him to his left. Giving little thought to the vehicle, he calmly glanced over and saw the passenger window gliding down.
Cooper waited to see how hot the woman was who was about to offer her phone number. But instead of a sexy brunette or smoldering redhead, Cooper saw his fellow pilot and good friend Wolf Young. Had he not been so distracted, he would have recognized the dark blue BMW M3 immediately.
Wolf could be a little hotheaded, and he had a touch of arrogance. Hell, it was why the two of them got along so damn famously. But one thing they didn’t have in common was their idea of punctuality. Wolf certainly liked to push the envelope when it came to getting anywhere on time.
“Are you still driving that grandma’s car, old man?” Wolf shouted over the sound of his revving engine.
Cooper refused to take the bait—all of it, anyway. He wasn’t about to be late to work because Wolf had goaded him into a race.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Cooper said with a mocking smile.