Sippet Saturday

I promised on Facebook that I'd start sharing snippets of Storm's Interlude. And a girl always keeps her promises. Right? Enjoy!

     Storm heard off-key singing when he opened the back door. He quietly toed off his boots in the mudroom before stepping into the kitchen.
     An open laptop sat on the wooden kitchen table. Beside it was a mug of steaming tea. On the counter, a loaf of wheat bread rested next to a jar of peanut butter. Protruding from the opened refrigerator was a cute behind, covered by baggy yellow pajama bottoms, wiggling to the beat of the song being sung. “Shot through the heart and you’re to blame, you give love a bad name.”

     The off-tune singing stopped, but that perfectly rounded bottom continued to wiggle. “Pickles...pickles. Surely there are pickles in this huge refrigerator. Maybe some of those sweet little gherkins. Oh, look, cottage cheese. You give love a bad name…” The off-tune singer extracted a container from the crowded contents of the refrigerator, absently reaching out to set it on the counter.
     Sneaking up behind her in his stocking feet, he placed a hand on the edge of the open door of the refrigerator and leaned over her bent body.
     She moved a pitcher of orange juice. “Okay, pickles, where are you hiding?”
     “Check behind the milk.”
     Rachel yelped and spun around, her hand to her heart. Her big blue eyes opened impossibly wide. “You! Wha...what are you doing here?”
     He held out his hand. “Hello, Rachel. I’m Storm Masterson, Sunny’s twin brother.”
     “You…you’re Sunny’s brother? Don’t you dare touch me.” She made a fist and had the audacity to shake it under his nose. He didn’t know whether to laugh or paddle that cute behind she’d been wiggling earlier. “You…you just keep your hands and your lips to yourself. You…you naked, kissing bandit.”
     Storm leaned his head back and laughed. “Well, I’m not naked now. And just how do I classify as a bandit? I didn’t steal anything from you."
     Rachel fisted her hands on her hips, leaned in and narrowed her eyes in such an appealing way he was overcome with a keen desire to kiss her softly and slowly, the kind of kiss that made you sigh partway through it. “You stole a kiss from me.” Her eyebrow arched. “Or have you forgotten?”
     He smiled, his hands itching to touch her. What man walking the face of this earth could forget a kiss like the one they’d shared earlier? “Is it called stealing when the woman gives as good as she got?”
     Rachel shook her fist again. “Back up, buster. I’ll not be kissed like that again.”