She got out of bed buck-ass naked and walked back to her bathroom to fill a cup of water. Jason was over at a friend’s house and it gave her and Bentley a little more free time to be alone. Her son still didn’t know they were dating, Caddy introducing him as a good friend from Jackson who knows his grandfather. There was little friendly about what they’d started doing when they got bored with the movie. Their clothes were twisted and fallen on the hardwood floor, rain tapping against the windowpanes.

“Don’t get up,” Bentley said. “An alert’s not a big deal. We used to have them in Pocahontas all the time.”

“We have them all the time here, too,” Caddy said. “Did I ever tell you what happened to my last house?”

Bentley didn’t answer, sliding his feet to the floor and starting to reach for his underwear and jeans. He was tall and lanky, a good solid body under those loose-fitting clothes he wore. A swimmer, a runner, who kept on trying to get Caddy to train with him for a marathon.

“Have you seen my boxers?” he asked. She could see his naked ass shining in the light from the living room.

“Where’d you take ’em off?” Caddy asked. She stood there, naked, sunburned across her chest and arms and down on her legs. Pale and white across her belly and over her breasts as she tipped the cup to her lips and drained it.

She liked the new place, moving in after Maggie and Quinn had gotten married. The old bungalow had been Maggie’s grandmother’s, only a few blocks from the Jericho Square, with a nice sitting porch and a big old oak to offer shade during the summer. Maggie had been in the middle of renovations when she’d moved out, the woman loving to take on projects herself, and half the kitchen was still torn up.

Bentley zipped up his jeans and walked over to Caddy, pulling her in and giving her a kiss on her mouth. “Damn,” he said.

“You had enough?” Caddy asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“How about you cut the ‘yes, ma’am’ stuff,” she said. “Makes me feel older than I am.”

Bentley laughed and Caddy slipped into a black kimono Maggie had left in the closet. Just like her sister-in-law to have a kimono decorated with dragons and Chinese symbols. The lights flickered on and off in the living room. The idea of a tornado rolling through town still scared the hell out of her. She’d lost everything in the last one, a good quarter of Jericho destroyed in a busted-ass path that ran from south of downtown to damn near up to Tupelo. The town still hadn’t recovered.