Sally: Autumn Storms (F&L Story #4)

Sally: Part 20

Part 20

Sometime in the middle of the night, the power went out.  It didn’t matter.  Sally couldn’t sleep.  She’d been staring at the clock beside her bed, and when the red glare blinked out, she was glad she didn’t have to watch the numbers tick by any longer.  The wind buffeted the sides of her house and the branches of the ancient pin oak in her front yard.  Rain pelted and slashed across the glass panes of her large windows.  Lightening and thunder clashed overhead in a musical display of earth's awesome powers.

Sally sighed and rolled over onto her back.  She hoped Wilson was okay.  The forecast didn’t state a chance of tornadoes tonight, but those buggers could pop up without warning.  This was the kind of night she wished she had someone to snuggle up to in front of a gentle fire, sipping coffee and talking about nonsense.  This was the kind of night she felt the loneliness.  A bitter, heart-wrenching loneliness that consumed her.  This was the kind of night when her bed looked a mile wide with only her lying in it.

Wilson.

What more could she do?  He refused – flat out refused – to talk about anything of importance.  It was almost like he was afraid to open his heart up just a little.  A tiny, miniscule bit.  She wasn’t asking that he bare his deepest, darkest fears to her…only talk.  Oh, his actions spoke a whole library’s worth of volumes.  He came to her rescue with Peter tonight.  He pulled more than his share of work around the farm.  And he was polite, considerate and honorable with almost everyone – even when dealing with Peter, who deserved far less.  So, she knew he had his values and he preferred to let his deeds speak for him, but she wanted more.

She wanted him to care.

Yet, unless he told her, she honestly didn’t know how he felt about a lot of things.  Was it so freaking hard to say what would make him happy?  Was the word even in his vocabulary anymore?  She got him to smile – just a small one – and she heard a semblance of a laugh from him, but where was the true happiness in his soul?  What on God’s green earth would bring that out in him?  It sure as hell wasn’t her.  She tried everything.  She gave him all she could think of.  Short of stripping down to her birthday suit and doing a pole dance in the tractor barn, what else was there?  Even though sex was a strong part of her thoughts whenever they were around each other, it meant nothing if she couldn't make him laugh and be happy.  If happiness and caring about someone were more about the physical relationship and the emotional one took a back seat, then she wanted no part of it.

Closing her eyes against a flash of lightening, she exhaled violently.  There was nothing more she could do for him.  She hated giving up on something.  If a puzzle popped up, she was never satisfied until she solved it.  But Wilson…

The man revamped the word enigma. 

Just as she decided to head downstairs and start a fire in her fireplace, her back door crashed opened, scaring the life out of her, and Wilson’s voice boomed up, “Sally?  Are you alright?”

She hurriedly slipped out of bed and shouted, “I’m fine,” as she grappled around in the dark for something to cover her nearly-naked body.  She preferred to sleep in a tank top and her panties, so some pants would be nice when confronting the spine-tingling, bewildering male downstairs in her kitchen.  Her feet stumbled over her boots, and she reached out for something to catch her fall.  Her fingers touched the post of her queen-sized bed, but they slipped off and she landed on the floor, hitting her side on the trunk that sat at the end of the mattress.

“Oomphf!...ouch!”

“Sally?!”  Thundering footsteps battled with the storm outside as Wilson raced up her stairs.  Toto, her Yorkie who liked to sleep on the treads, began to yelp viciously.  Sally rolled over onto her back, rubbing the sore spot at her waist and called out, “Quiet, Toto!”