AFTER THE RAIN (Bonus edition)

16. The most perfectly inopportune moment

Stormy was lying. She'd always wanted kids. Especially a little girl – she could imagine picking wild flowers with her, making brightly-colored dresses, plaiting her hair and tying it up with luminous ribbons. They could skip and play with dolls and when she was older, she would teach her all about what life was really about, hold her hand when her heart was broken for the first time, and get giddy with excitement when they chose a pink wedding dress together. Actually, a boy would be good too – a muddy, naughty little boy she could catch frogs, build tree houses and play pirates with. A boy who would grow up to be a gentleman, and respect women and be the best dad possible to her grandchildren.

She'd thought about this a lot.

But the truth was, she would never dare to have kids. She was terrified of turning out just like her mom – or her dad, for that matter. They were both equally terrible. She didn't have a single example of good parenting in her life. Even her foster mom had been a total cow. She'd constantly accused Stormy of trying to seduce her fifty-year-old husband, when in fact it had been the other way around. He had a thing for young, pretty blonde girls who looked 'innocent and ethereal', those were the words he always used. Nothing hectic happened, except the odd inappropriate leg touch; but when it looked like he was going in for some boob action, she went out, dyed her hair bright green and got a nose ring, and he'd never touched her again. And then the look just kind of stuck. It had served her well over the years, keeping away people she didn't like – normally people like Marcus, although that wasn't working this time. Normally guys like him just saw a freak and didn't bother, which she preferred. Marcus's world was not one she was vaguely interested in being a part of.

But Marcus himself, without all that stuff that she so hated, was a different story. She had to wonder what he would be like in his natural habitat, though. Would she still like him if he were sitting across a boardroom table, throwing big legal words around, like 'objection' or 'sustained'? (She'd watched some legal dramas over the years, and could totally picture Marcus in a crisp suit, delivering some dramatic closing argument to the judge.) But the way he touched her back so protectively, and tenderly tucked the hair behind her ear, she craved that even more than the sex – and that was saying something.

She glanced over at him again and had to stop herself from resting her head on his shoulder. This was really all very confusing; they had gone from not liking each other, to not being able to keep their hands off each other sexually, to craving a very different type of touching...

***

Marcus always looked at women through the lens of "wife and mother" – that was what he was looking for, after all. Even if they weren't already dating but there was potential, he'd often make his decision to date a woman based on whether he thought she was "settle down" material. Why waste his time with someone if it was going to go nowhere? Why waste his time if it wasn't the right person? And of course, Stormy wasn't the right person – they were just too different.

But while Marcus was stuck in his head, contemplating such things, someone else was contemplating something, too. Something important, something potentially life-changing.

She'd left them alone for too long now. Far too long indeed.

It was time to intervene once more. To pull their strings and watch them dance once again to Her little beat. Oh, how these two opposites amused Her, and when this was all over, She was sure it would be Her best work to date.

So, no time to waste. They needed Her now. The moment was calling for it, and this was the most perfectly inopportune moment for a perfectly opportune disaster to strike once more...