Gayle froze. Should she wake him?
Lightning brightened the room again, followed by another boom of thunder. A low moan came from him and he started to fidget, as if trying to escape an unseen menace.
“Mac,” she whispered, touching his face to disrupt the dream.
“No,” he moaned softly.
Stomach knotting at the sorrow in his voice, she took his face between her palms and whispered his name again.
“Ally.” A broken plea so full of distress, tears immediately sprang to her eyes.
Ally. That had to be his wife’s name. Obviously, the man was more traumatized by how she’d died than he let on.
Suddenly, he jerked, and his eyes popped open. While he took a moment to register his surroundings, she scooted away and fought to get herself under control, close to crying. He’d lost so much. Been through so much. Even more than she had. Yeah, she’d had to learn to live life without her family and Sam. Though she and Sam had been planning to get married after she finished her MA, she’d been living in Alabama while he stayed in Kansas. The long-distance relationship had never been an issue for them. As it was, she hadn’t gone to bed with Sam every night. Hadn’t seen him every day. The distance hadn’t lessened the excruciating pain caused by the silence of her phone after his death. The ache to receive just one more “Good morning, sunshine” text from him had been poignant.
And then there was her family and the emotional black hole left behind in the house she had grown up in. She’d only returned to her family home a few times a year since going off to college, but even so, the house had never been the same again, after.
But to have a person who was an intimate part of your daily life ripped from you—Gayle swallowed. It was hard to imagine. And to add to the agony, Mac had his own nightmarish experience to relive over and over again. She had been saved from all that.
Hell, she’d never experienced a tornado in the way Mac had. Not even close.
When he finally focused on her, she was sitting on the end of the couch farthest from him. She forced a playful smile on her lips, “Hey there, handsome.”
She used the nickname intentionally. Anything to make him believe she hadn’t picked up on his nightmare. Those were for him alone. She wasn’t sure how often he had them, but having that kind of nightmare was hard enough to deal with, without knowing someone else had witnessed the ordeal.
She should know.
Shaking his head, he pushed up. “Don’t think I’ve woken up to that before.”
“Really? Never? A sinfully sexy man waking from his slumber is so…rawr.” She clawed her fingers toward him, putting as much playfulness as she could into the sound and gesture, even though she didn’t feel frisky at all. She was relieved when a small smile twitched at the corners of his mouth, and the sadness faded from his gaze.
Silence fell between them, and she sent up a silent thank-you when her cell phone rang. Considering it was two in the morning, it could only be one person.
Even though taking this call in front of Mac was probably a bad idea, she couldn’t ignore it.
“Time to roll?” she asked as soon as she had the phone pressed to her ear.
“Yeah, it is. It’s big, Gayle. We’re looking at our first potential mass outbreak over the next few days.”
All the ingredients needed for the formation of supercells had been brewing for a while, now. They’d known it would be any minute, which was why they’d gone ahead and loaded the SUV that afternoon.
“All right. We need to be on the road by seven am.”
“10-4, boss lady.”
As she hung up, she had a hard time looking at Mac. She wasn’t ashamed of what she did. Quite the opposite. She took pride in helping people, and in the information she fed to the National Weather Service. But after seeing how affected he was by the storms, it was difficult to meet his eyes.
“Do you need to leave?” he asked just as another clap of thunder boomed above them.
She made herself face him. “No. I don’t have to be back at my place until right before seven.”
Nodding, his gaze slipped off to stare at the wall as his nose scrunched. At length, he said, “I saw you packing earlier and heard a vehicle drive away. I’d thought you were already gone.”
“Just preparing. We knew this was coming. That was probably Rick you heard leave.”
Mac never took his eyes off the wall, odd expressions contorting his face. Deep-in-debate-with-himself expressions. What was going on in that mind of his? She remained silent. After a minute, she started gnawing on her bottom lip, after two, she finally asked, “What are you thinking?”
He slowly turned and regarded her for the span of a heartbeat. “I’d like to come, too.”
She stiffened. “Say that again?”
“You did say I could join you on a chase. Correct?”