With No Warning (Romance/Inspirational)(Complete)

CHAPTER 17: A Peace That Passeth

CHAPTER 17: A Peace That Passeth

The loaded leather tool belt was slung around her waist, and she stood in the midst of the skeleton lumber frame of a house in progress. “I want a steeple over the front entry.” She was pointing dramatically and explaining to Evan, who stood listening, hammer in hand. “A steeple?!” He asked. Not in a deriding way, just confounded. “A steeple.” She reiterated. Evan pulled some boards toward him and began to nail them together, presumably to build the steeple, pounding with the hammer. Pounding. Pounding. Pounding.

Dakota’s eyelids were heavy as she forced them open over scratchy eyes. The pounding, on the door to her dorm room, had been going on for sometime, she realized, integrating itself into her dream, and she fumbled to a sitting position on the edge of her bed. Disoriented, she stared, working to focus her gaze in the dark, and trying to clear her foggy mind. It took a few seconds to remember that she had fallen asleep with the late afternoon sunlight streaming in strips through her blinds.

Stiff legs padded her to the door, and it swung open to Cass, who imediately frowned.  "Um, wow.  You look, you look--"

Dakota stopped her with a shake of her head.  "I don't even want to know."

"Understood.  I wouldn't either if--"  The girl broke off obviously realizing whatever she was about to say was not in her best interest and quickly informed her that Evan was waiting downstairs.

It was all coming back to her now. The long day in her classes after the short night of sleep, because of Lana’s ER trip. Zombie like by the last couple of classes, she had performed the motions, assigning reading and short class essays, to be turned in at the end of the period, instead of her usual lecture. The one night of missed sleep wouldn’t have hit her so hard, if there hadn’t been so many before it. Insomnia had peaked again.

Sending a message through Cass that she would be down shortly, Dakota squinted as she flipped on the light and indexed in her mind the quickest means to dressing for the evening.  Randomly she pulled from her nicer shirts, after shucking her classroom clothes for stylish jeans. In the bathroom, she was doing a quick freshen up at the sink, when another rap came against the door. Toweling dry, she swiftly finished dressing, and crossed barefoot to the door once more. Her lips parted in surprise to find Evan at the threshold.

“I know. There are rules.” His grin was boyish and engaging. Tonight, he was especially handsome to her, his eyes alight with mischief, and a dark, green flannel type shirt, that drew the intense color from those sexy irises.

A playful streak won, in the wager between her prim and proper self, and her impudent, fun spirit. Pulling the door open wider, she declared, “I have no rules, I am the rule maker.” However, she left it ajar a good crack behind his entrance, so that she would be somewhat above reproach with the girls.

“The rule maker is always the rule breaker.” Teasingly voicing the idiotic rhyme, he held her eyes for another few seconds, before surveying her room.

“Can you say that ten times really fast?!” She mouthed the dare, like a small child boasting a tongue twister.

His attention riveted back onto her, surveying her from tousled head, to bare toes, with an intrigued grin. The heat in his eyes made those toes curl reflexively into the carpet, and her stomach somersault. Suddenly self conscious, she fought the flush in her cheeks, apologizing as she pilfered a drawer for trouser socks that matched her ensemble, “I fell asleep, but I’ll just be a few more minutes. Do you have reservations, or is it cool that I am running behind?”

“Take your time.” Folding into the desk chair, he opened her laptop screen. “We don’t have reservations, and Jolee usually runs a few minutes late everywhere they go. Are you sure you feel like going?”