Sunny Says (19 page)

“How’s it going?”

“The last I heard, about
sixty-forty, pro Sunny. I’m not sure how scientific it is. Kale and Hulon
called in about five times each.”

“How’d they vote?”

Sunny laughed. “Pro, I hope. I
voted twice myself.” She paused, then said, “I wish you were here. You have a
way of keeping things in perspective. I miss you.”

“I can be there in a shot if you
need me,” Estella said.

“Thanks, but you need to be
tending Eddie. How is my godson, by the way?”

“Growing like a weed. And his
daddy will be home in two weeks. I bought a sexy new nightgown for the
occasion.”

“Better watch out or Eddie will
have a new little brother or sister before his first birthday.”

“Bite your tongue, girl,”
Estella said. “How did your special on gangs go? Have you finished it?”

“Yes. It aired Monday evening to
good reviews, but with all the hoopla about the hurricane, it was sort of
anticlimactic. I was sorry about the timing. I worked hard on that piece, and I’m
very proud of it.”

Sunny and Estella chatted for a
few minutes longer, then said their good-byes. It had felt great to discuss
normal things for a change.

*    *    *

Late Wednesday night Sunny sat
in Ravinia’s tub, sipping a glass of wine. Kale sat behind her, kneading the
tension from her neck and shoulders. She closed her eyes and moaned.

“Feel good?” he asked, working
his thumbs down her spine.

“Delicious. Absolutely
delicious. I may keep you, just for your hands. This has been a horrendous day,
but I have the feeling that it’s going to get much worse before this thing is
over.”

“Umm-hmm.” He trailed a line of
kisses along the back of her neck. “I had the yard man put up the storm
shutters today and store the patio furniture and hanging baskets in the garage.
Did you notice?”

“No, but thanks for the vote of
confidence.”

He wrapped his arms around her,
pulled her back against him, and rubbed the roughness of his cheek against the
softness of hers. “Chloe has done everything you’ve said she would. Anybody
would be a fool to doubt you.”

“I only hope we can convince
everyone. When the skies are clear and the sun is shining, it’s hard to
persuade folks to leave their homes. But if the ones living in low-lying areas
haven’t evacuated by Friday, they’ll be stranded. The people on Padre and some
of the other islands will be cut off by high tides.”

“The mayor is doing what he can.
And the president of the Chamber of Commerce is firmly in your corner. The
schools will be closed Friday. That’s good.”

“I know,” she said. “Could we
talk about something else? I’d like to forget about Chloe for a little while.”

“Did I ever tell you how
beautiful your eyes are? They remind me of a very special taw I had as a kid.”

She laughed as she climbed out
of the tub and reached for a towel. “My eyes remind you of a marble?”

“Let me do that,” he said,
taking the towel from her and rubbing her dry with long, sensuous strokes. “Mind
you, this wasn’t just any marble. It was a honey of a shooter. As clear and
blue as the
Mediterranean
—though I’d never seen the
Mediterranean
at the time. I could knock anything out of the ring with that taw. I was
convinced that it was magic. I was the marble terror of
Tenaha
,
Texas
, and I
always ended up with a pocketful of agates.”

She looped a towel around his
neck, pulled his face down to hers, and gave him a quick kiss. “I had you
pegged as a hustler. You started young.”

“A hustler? Me? Woman, you wound
me. Take that back.”

“Nope,” she said saucily. “I calls
‘em like I sees ‘em, Mr. Network Stud.”

“That’s worse. If you don’t take
it back, I’ll have to resort to drastic measures.” He grinned.

Her eyes widened and she batted
her .lashes. “Drastic measures? I’m quaking in my boots.”

“You ticklish?” He reached for
her rib cage, and she scooted backward, protecting her sides with her elbows.

“Kale Hoaglin! Don’t you dare.
You know I am.”

“Take it back?”

“Nooooo,” she shrieked, wiggling
away from his tickling. She bolted from Ravinia’s room, laughing as she slammed
the door behind her. She sprinted to her bedroom, turned the lock, and leaned
against the door.

“I’ve got you now, Miss Smart
Mouth,” Kale said, grinning as he came through the connecting bath.

Sunny dashed across the room,
putting the bed between them. She snatched up a pillow as he advanced on her. “Don’t
you dare tickle me, Kale Hoaglin. That’s cruel and unusual punishment.”

He only grinned wider, wiggled
his eyebrows, and kept coming. Shrieking with laughter, she leaped on the bed
and whopped him with the pillow. He grabbed another pillow, jumped on the bed,
and whopped her in retaliation. They beat on each other like two kids at a
slumber party, laughing too hard to do any harm.

Suddenly the bed gave way with a
crash, and they fell in a tumble of arms and legs on the mattress, which tilted
at an odd angle.

“Ooops!” she said between
giggles.

Before she could move, Kale
captured her wrists and straddled her body. “You going to retract that crack?”

A bubble of laughter exploded in
her throat.

“Mr. Network Stud, you’re not
only a hustler, but a bad poet.”

“That tears it.” His lips took
hers in an open-mouthed kiss so potent that her whole body went on standby
alert and her toes curled. She tried to move her arms to put them around him,
but he held her fast. “Uh-uh,” he murmured as he moved down her body to lave
and suckle her breasts. “I’m going to torture you, make love to you until you
say ‘uncle.’”

He nudged her knees apart and
moved between them, then circled her navel with the tip of his tongue. He moved
lower and lower until her eyes widened. “Kale!”

He looked up at her and
chuckled. “Row four.” Then he lifted her hips to lave and nip her most
sensitive of spots. Soon she was writhing under his ministrations. She hadn’t
realized her hands were free until she grabbed handfuls of his hair when the
pleasure grew too much to bear. His attentions continued until she sucked in a
deep breath and contracted her back as wave after wave of delicious sensation
engulfed her.

She went limp as a dishrag. “Uncle,”
she whispered listlessly.

“Too late,” he said, starting
again.

*    *    *

Much later, they lay in Kale’s
bed, bodies damp from lovemaking. Sunny yawned as she stroked his chest. “Whatever
happened to your blue marble?”

“I think Billy Wanamaker stole
it. I could never prove it, but I’m sure he did. He’s a state senator now.”

“Figures.” Totally relaxed, she
smiled and nested in the peaceful comfort of his arms, wishing she could stay
there forever.

*    *    *

Sunny was anything but relaxed.
Jessica Martin of Good Morning USA, for all her surface charm, was a tough
interviewer. But Sunny expected no less; she was tough herself. She was
determined to appear cool and professional.

“I understand,” Jessica said, “that
on Tuesday night you made certain predictions about the approaching hurricane.
What were those predictions?”

“I stated that Chloe would pass
over the western tip of
Cuba
, stall, intensify to a category three hurricane, and
then move in a westerly direction.”

“And what happened?”

“It acted exactly as I
predicted. Yesterday at
six o’clock
, the
National
Hurricane
Center
declared Chloe a category three hurricane with a
tightly defined eye and winds of one hundred and twenty-five miles per hour.
After having stalled for several hours, it is now moving slowly in a westerly
direction, approximately seven hundred and fifty miles southeast of
Corpus Christi
,
Texas
.”

“And you believe that it will
hit
Corpus Christi
?”

“No, not directly. The eye will
move over an area to the south of us, but Corpus Christi and the surrounding
areas will feel the effects and can expect extremely high winds and heavy rain,
and tides will run six or seven feet above normal. Our weather will be severe
and damaging.”

“You say this will happen on
Saturday?” Jessica asked, one eyebrow slightly askew.

“Yes. It will begin moving
ashore shortly before dawn.”

“Tell me, Sunny—” Jessica leaned
toward her, and Sunny thought,
Uh-oh, here it comes.
“Tell me how you can predict the path of a hurricane when it befuddles our
finest scientists. Are you a witch?”

Sunny turned her most engaging
smile on the camera. “No. I don’t ride a broomstick.” She chuckled. “I don’t
even own a cat. I’m simply an ordinary person with an odd quirk to her nature—a
talent, some would say, like having a green thumb or being able to fix
mechanical things. I can predict the weather that affects the area where I am.”

“And you’re always right?”

“Always.” Sunny chose to ignore
the single miss when she’d had the flu.

Jessica turned to the camera and
smiled. “And there you have it. We’ve been talking to Sunny Larkin, evening news
anchor for KRIP-TV in
Corpus Christi
,
Texas
, who is defying science and predicting the course of
the hurricane in the
Gulf of Mexico
. Back to you in
New
York
, John.”

Sunny’s blue silk blouse was
decidedly damp under the arms when they finished, but when she glanced at Kale,
he gave her a thumbs-up and winked. She smiled, then made polite remarks to
Jessica and escaped with the excuse that she had work to do.

Kale met her in the hall and
they went downstairs to his office. When the door was closed, she melted into a
chair. “Whew! That lady has sharp teeth.”

“She’s what you can expect if
you want to swim with the network sharks.”

“I think I held my own pretty
well.”

“You were fantastic,” he said. “Made
old Jessica look like an amateur.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,
but you do wonders for my ego, Mr. Hoaglin.”

“And you do wonders for my
libido, Miss Larkin. Come here.” He pulled her to her feet and kissed her, a
long, lingering kiss that pushed everything out of her head. Until his phone
rang.

“Hold my place,” he said,
tapping her lips.

“I really do have work to do. I’ll
see you later.”

The rest of the day was hectic,
spent primarily in the newsroom, tracking the hurricane on radar and preparing
for the periodic updates and the evening news.

Experts from the
National
Hurricane
Center
said
that assuming Chloe turned north, as was characteristic of hurricanes, she
might make landfall along the upper
Texas
or
Louisiana
coast.
Corpus
Christi
was on the outermost fringe of
their probability table. Assuming. Maybe. Perhaps. Might. If. But. The experts
gave a thousand qualifiers. Sunny knew exactly.

*    *    *

On Friday morning, Sunny, her
arms hugged tightly under her breasts, stood at the window of her fourth-floor
office and stared at the bay. The sun shone; the water was calm; it was a
beautiful day. Despondency filled her so completely that her bones ached. Kale
stood beside her, his arm around her shoulders.

“Cheer up, honey,” Kale said. “I
don’t like to see you like this.”

“Cheer up? Only moments ago,
Jessica Martin chewed me up and spit me out. She made me look like a fool.
Several million people across the country now think I’m a raving lunatic.”

During the night, Chloe had
stumbled once or twice, then veered north. Experts had sucked in their guts and
declared that there was a fifty percent chance that the hurricane would make
landfall around
midnight
near
Galveston
. Corpus wasn’t in the range of probability.

Kale hugged Sunny to him. “By
this time tomorrow Jessica Martin will be eating her words. Better yet, around
midnight
we’ll chain
her ankle to one of the lampposts on the jetty and, come morning, Chloe will
give her the thrashing she deserves.”

Sunny laughed and buried her
nose against his chest. “What would I do without you?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you
that I’m indispensable. If I weren’t around, who would keep you out of
mischief? Who would find your car keys?”

She looked up at him. “What if I’m
wrong, Kale? What if I’m wrong?”