Midnight in Brussels by Rebecca Randolph Buckley Read Free Book Online Page B

heart was melting as she gazed into his handsome face and blue eyes, and feeling his strong hands gripping her arms.
    “Even if I were fifty or sixty, I’d still feel young with you.”
    Amanda suddenly felt nervous. “Well, maybe so. Anyway, I got to go inside; got some things I still have to do before I go to bed.”
    “May I have a goodnight kiss? A little one?” He moved closer to her. He could feel her body heat emanating between them. “Just one?”
    She was mesmerized by his half closed eyes inviting her lips to his, and the mellow hypnotic sound of his voice.
    He kissed her and they both lingered for a moment, their bodies touching in all the right places.
    Amanda panicked. “I have to go in.” She pulled away and ran up the steps, hurriedly unlocking the door. “Thank you for lunch and all,” she said a little too loud.
    “When can I see you again?” he asked with a longing, pleading look.
    “Next time you’re at KC’s, I guess. Good night. Thanks, again.” She closed the door.
    Once inside she took a deep breath and dropped her purse on the cocktail table near the stack of magazines. She plopped down on the small sofa and stared across the room towards the fireplace, thinking about Richard, about the kiss, and how her heart was racing. She mustn’t give in to him, she mustn’t. She couldn’t help but feel that Arlie had run off because of how she was in bed. She must have been awful for him to do that. And she was afraid Richard would drop her if he knew how bad she was at making love.
    Besides, she couldn’t let Richard interfere with her plans. She figured within six months, no later than June, she would be on her way to Belgium, anyway. She would spend at least a couple of months there, maybe more if she could swing it. She might even stay forever. So Richard couldn’t be a part of her life.
    Besides, she definitely didn’t want another man telling her how to live and what to do. She didn’t want another man restricting her comings and goings. She wanted a life of her own, without sex and all the other things a man wants from a woman.
    Nope. She didn’t want a relationship with anybody. Anybody!

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 12
     
    It was a stormy day in February.
    Amanda decided to call in sick. She had never missed a scheduled day of work at KC’s and had always been on call for extra work when Frenchie needed her. But today she had the worst case of the flu she’d ever had. If she wasn’t sitting on the toilet, her face was in it. And to top it off, it was raining hailstones. She could hear the heavy ice rocks hit the roof and occasionally hit a window. The garden was covered with a white knobby blanket of it. If she weren’t so sick she’d be sitting at a window enjoying the view, sipping hot chocolate with a fire blazing in the fireplace. She loved storms.
    She grasped the sink as she rose to her feet from the toilet after another round of dry heaves. There was nothing left in her stomach or intestines. There couldn’t be. She wondered why the convulsing and cramps still went on after the body was empty of all matter and fluids. Didn’t it know it’d expelled it all?
    Feeling too weak to stand, she crawled to the doorway over the wooden floor and leaned back against the doorjamb. She could see through the living room and out the windows and marveled at the beauty of the storm. How she wished she were out in it gathering hailstones. When she was a girl in Arkansas she and her sister would fill buckets with giant hailstones and put them in the ice box in their grandmother’s house. They didn’t have a refrigerator, so a hail storm was a blessing.
    The phone rang.
    Amanda crawled to the table next to the loveseat and reached for the phone.
    “Hello? Oh Paula. I’m so sick. Sicker than a dog. I’ve been up all night puking my guts out and I have a bad case of diarrhea. No. I don’t have any of that. I’ve got some Alka Seltzer Cold & Flu capsules,