Dreams

Chapter Two-Part 3

Mick watched as she slumped in her seat and sighed. "But I had mine reserved so we will share it for the night."

She looked up at him with mixed emotions. "I can't stay with you."

"Doesn't look like you have much of a choice."

"I don't know you at all. Come to think of it I don't even know your name."

"It's Mick, Mick Brown, and don't worry I'm neither a rapist nor murderer," he said, then flashed her his best grin.

Stevie couldn't help the laugh that bubbled out. "I'm Stevie, Stevie Long, and no, I don't think you are either of those things." Stevie, being the go with the flow kind of gal, didn't take long to agree to the room. "I don't mind sharing a room with you, I just don't like putting you out, and I've already thrown a wrench into your night."

Mick laughed, "It's nice of you to say that but what are you going to do if I turn you away? Go walking in the blizzard again?" He was shaking his head laughing when he saw the look in her eye. "You would wouldn't you?"

Stevie shrugged her shoulders. "I don't stay where I'm not welcome."

He cursed her under his breath as he pulled the truck around the side of the building and in front of door twenty-three. "You're stupider than I thought."

"I might have taken the insults you threw at me earlier but I won't stand for them now." She was pulling on her socks and he said, "Leave the damn things off, they're wet, I'll carry you in."

"No thanks." She continued to pull on her socks and then boots and noticed the flash of annoyance across his face. "Not use to people telling you no Mick?"

In fact he wasn't, but that wasn't the issue. "Have it your way." He grabbed his bag from the back seat and was going to pick up her purse for her but she grabbed it a second before him. He was a man use to doing for a woman, even more so when one was hurt or sick. He had his thoughts on needy women, and women who wanted a man solely to take care of them. But at the same time, he was a man and certain things were considered man things. And no he didn't care how chauvinistic that sounded.

When he went to meet her around her side, she already had the door swung open. She was half way out when he had another annoyed thought. Hell, the woman had half frozen to death, less than an hour before, she should be all but begging him to do things for her.

He shut the door behind her. Just as she took a step, he saw it happen before she felt it. She slipped on the ice that was packed into the parking lot. He reached out a hand and caught her elbow as he steadied her. She took a deep breath and then looked over her shoulder up at him, and said, "Thank you." For the first time, he noticed her eyes, they were caramel.

He figured a guy could stare into those eyes for hours. She turned her head away and took another step forward, leaving him staring at the back of her head.

Mick put the key in the lock and turned but had to actually bump the door with his hip while turning the knob to get it to open. He gestured for her to go inside first, fallowing her, he practically ran smack dab into her because she had stopped just inside the door.

He looked past her and saw what she was seeing. The place was a hole in the wall all right. Instead of the normal size room and the two queen beds he expected to see they entered into a small room, he figured it to be maybe a seven by eight room with a bed that could barley be called a full. The bed took up more than three quarters of the room. The room held a desk and phone as promised at the front desk, but you couldn't pull the chair out without closing the front door. There was a 19" TV mounted on the wall, he glanced at the door to the bath room and could only imagine what it would be like.