A Soft Place to Fall by Barbara Bretton

fall
away.
    Tomorrow morning they would introduce
themselves and go their separate ways but until the sun rose up
over the ocean, the night belonged to them.
     
    #
     
    Annie opened her eyes then quickly closed
them. Angry beams of sunlight stabbed her in the retinas, the
temples, across her forehead, and around the back of her head. She
took a deep breath then tried again. This time the room tilted at
an odd angle while her stomach threatened to slide out from under
her. Bad idea. She wasn't about to do that again.
    The vague memory of an empty stomach and a
bottle of supermarket champagne swam into view. That would explain
why she felt like a herd of elephants was learning to tango across
her brain pan. Since when did George and Gracie snore like 747s on
takeoff?
    Just take it slowly. No sudden movements.
All you have to do is get from here to the shower and you'll be
okay.
    Eyes tightly closed, she rolled over
carefully, one little inch at a time, and was about to swing her
legs over the side of the bed when she found herself face to face
with the man she'd met in the Yankee Shopper parking lot yesterday.
He was lying there next to her, bare-chested and in jeans, with his
face pressed deep into one of her pillows. She glanced down at
herself and realized she was wearing his shirt, half-unbuttoned,
over her clearly naked body.
    "Oh . . . my . . . God!"
    He woke up on the last word, just before she
let out a scream loud enough to bring the entire Shelter Rock Cove
police department to her door.
    "Nothing happened," he said. "You're not in
any danger."
    She felt like someone was blowing up balloons
inside her head. "What in hell are you doing in my bed?"
    "I was making sure you didn't hurt
yourself."
    Hurt herself? Just breathing made her
fillings hurt. "Ten seconds," she said. "If you're not out of here
by the time I count to ten, I'm calling the police." He didn't have
to know that her phone service wouldn't be turned on until
afternoon.
    He swung his legs from the bed and stood up
in the hallway. "You got drunk. You took a bath. Your robe caught
fire and then you almost drowned in the bathtub."
    "Please." It was hard to look dignified when
you were nursing the mother of all hangovers. "Do you really expect
me to believe that?"
    He met her eyes. "Yes."
    The smell of scorched fabric . . . the dream
about him carrying a flaming robe . . . the sight of him plunging
that robe into the bathroom sink . . . "I thought I dreamed
it."
    "The robe's hanging over the shower rod and I
used all of your towels to sop up the water on the floor." A grin
tugged at the corners of his mouth. "And don't worry about the
front door. I'll take care of it as soon as the hardware store
opens up."
    She groaned and fell back against the
pillows. "What happened to the front door?"
    "I didn't have a choice," he said. The grin
widened. "Good thing I took kick-boxing."
    Another awful thought, one even worse than
the kicked-in front door and the ruined robe, occurred to her. "You
were in my bathroom last night."
    He nodded. "Yep."
    "And you –" She couldn't finish the sentence.
It was too horrible.
    "I tried not to look," he said as the grin
turned into a downright smile, "but I'm only human."
    She sat up, tugging at the shirt, wishing it
covered her from neck to toes. "Then you got what you deserved,"
she snapped. "I'm ten pounds overweight and I haven't done a sit-up
since 1997." Each word reverberated through her cranium like
gunshot.
    "You're beautiful."
    "You're nuts."
    He said nothing, just watched as she coiled
her tangle of hair into a knot on top of her head. Her fingers felt
disconnected from the rest of her aching, queasy body and she
fumbled about, growing clumsier with each second that passed.
    "Are you going to stand there blocking the
doorway all day?"
    "You had a bad night," he said. "I want to
make sure you don't have a worse morning."
    "I can take care of myself, thank you."
    "You weren't too good at it last night."
    "Listen," she said