The Divine Whisper

by Rebekah Daniels

  “I know, but it was the only way that I could get you to stop hating me.”

  “Well, you’re doing a bang-up job, let me tell you.”

  “Errg! You can be impossible at times, do you know that?”

  Nicole felt her pulse accelerate, and couldn’t prevent the smile that came to her lips. When she realized her enjoyment was because she had missed bickering with him, she started to laugh at the absurdity.

  “What now?” he answered sternly, but she could tell that some of his ire had left.

  “You’re going to think I’m weird.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time, so tell me.”

  She chuckled. “Hey! That wasn’t very nice.”

  “When are you going to realize that I am not a nice guy?”

  “Yes you are.” She couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “You just have your moments of stupidity, that’s all.”

  “Now look who’s not being very nice.” There was a pause before he continued. “What was so funny?”

  Nicole thought for a minute. She didn’t know how to phrase what she wanted to say without sounding like she was off her rocker. Deciding to just wing it, she started to explain. “I missed it, is all.”

  “Missed what?” he asked, clearly confused.

  She let out a loud sigh of surrender before continuing. “Arguing with you.” He stayed silent, so she forged on. “I appreciate that you’ve been watching what you say, but I missed the verbal sparring. It kept things interesting. Did we agree on everything? Of course not, but at least I was getting to know the real you. When you agree with me all the time, it gets boring.”

  She had spoken quickly to get it all out in the open, but now that she was done, he wasn’t talking.

  “Gemariah… you need to say something.” She prompted.

  “Oh thank God,” he said on a whisper. “Do you know how hard that had been?”

  “Then why did you do it?”

  “I told you. I needed you to stop hating me.”

  The more he talked, the worse she felt. Looking down, she started to wind the drawstring of her pants around her finger. “I never hated you.” She spoke to her lap. “Okay, maybe I did for a little while, but never after you started hanging around more often. Did you piss me off? Undoubtedly yes, but not hate.”

  “That’s good to know.” he responded softly.

  They talked for another half hour about anything they could think of. The feelings between them had shifted, and it was slightly nerve-racking, but at the same time, new and exciting. Her cracked defensive wall had started to crumble.

  “It’s getting late.” Surprisingly, it was him that made the observation.

  She looked at the clock to see that it was close to midnight, and she still had to get up early for work the next day. Ugh! “Yeah, I should probably get some sleep.”

  “Okay.” There was a pause. “You gonna think about me while in bed?”

  Nicole laughed out loud. “You wish.”

  “You’re right.”

  There was no teasing in his tone, and she knew that he was completely serious. The thought made her cheeks start to flush… yet again. She didn’t know what to say, so she stayed quiet.

  It was him that finally broke the silence. “Have dinner with me tomorrow.” It could have been a question, but the way he spoke, it made it sound like a demand. “At my house. I want to cook for you.”

  At that moment, there was nothing that sounded better. “Okay.”

  “I’ll pick you up at six.”

  “I can drive—”

  “I’ll pick you up at six.” He interrupted whatever else she was going to say, and his tone brought no argument.

  “Okay.”

  There was a quiet tension between them.

  “Goodnight, Nicole.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “Dream of me?”

  She could make another joke, but it just didn’t feel right. There had been a change, and she had a feeling that there was no going back. She swallowed the lump in her throat before she whispered, “Okay.”

  “Till tomorrow…”

  He hung up without saying more, and Nicole pulled the phone away to look at the screen. “Till tomorrow,” she said to no one.

  Thinking back to Gemariah’s last words, she thought that they sounded more like a promise than a farewell. Suppressing a shiver, she got up and walked back to her bedroom to get ready for bed.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Shit!” Gemariah pulled his hand back from the scalding pot, and shook it out. “Dammit!”

  He’s never had this much trouble cooking before. It had to be his nerves. He was wound so tight, he felt that he would snap at any moment. Why am I nervous, he thought? It’s not like he’s never cooked for a woman before. Admittedly, those times had been different. It had never been at his house, he had never put that much work into it… and it had never been Nicole.

  He had been off kilter all day. His job was not one that he could get distracted while doing, as he was proved that day. It was a simple vanquishing mission. A blackjack dealer at a casino was stacking the deck in his favor and cheating people out of their souls.

  He got there, but his mind wasn’t completely on what he was doing. Nicole took up the majority of his thoughts. What she would want to eat, what would she wear, did she actually think about him in bed the night before... Was it the night for them? That thought quickly led to the question, did she take his advice and touch herself to relieve some tension? Once that vision got in his head, he was a goner.

  Terah went with him to the casino and could tell that he was distracted. Hell, with her ability, she probably knew exactly what he was thinking.

  When they got there, his ax was too obvious to take inside, but Terah easily got in with her dagger. Using her womanly wiles, it didn’t take long for the dealer to be lured into a secluded corner. There weren’t too many things demons loved more than an illicit rendezvous.

  Terah lead the unsuspecting demon into a utility closet, where Gemariah was already lying in wait. The plan was that he would overpower him while Terah stuck him with her dagger to send him back to hell. Of course, his mind was elsewhere when they came in, and the demon got the jump on him.

  That was the last draw for Terah. She was a naturally calm person, but even she had her limits. In front of the demon, she started to berate him for being a lovesick fool, and yelling to get his head in the game.

  Having had enough, Gemariah finally overpowered the demon, and when Terah delivered the final blow to the demon, she gave him one as well. Her words were firmly etched in his mind, and forever would stay there. “If I would have known you were going to turn out this unbalanced, I would have made sure that it wasn’t you who took Nicci home the night of the barbeque.”

  He knew immediately what she was talking about, and was stunned. So stunned, that he forgot to let go when the demon caught fire.

  So, he was in his kitchen, working with second degree burns on his hands. They were slowly healing, but still hurt any time he touched something remotely warm. Damn Terah for dropping that bomb on him. It brought on a new flood of thoughts. What would I have done if Terah would have told me why it was me that had to go? Did she know about the baby? Ugh… too much information to process, and she wasn’t answering anything.

  Thinking only of the night, he pushed all other thoughts aside. He would have to come back to them eventually, but it wasn’t the right time.

  Turning his attention back to the gumbo that he was simmering to perfection, he tried to get into his zone whenever he was in the kitchen. It was a place that used to be his domain, somewhere he would go to release all the tensions accumulated in his life. Except, lately the only time he could forget how ugly the world was, he was around Nicole.

  Shaking his head, he laughed at what his thoughts sounded like. If he believed in love, he could almost believe Terah when she called him a lovesick fool. Lucky for him, he didn’t.

  ******

&nb
sp; Dinner was a success. She had been so particular with her cravings, Gemariah knew he had taken a shot in the dark with the choice in food, but the look on her face when she walked in the door had said it all. She was impressed. When she closed her eyes to savor her first bite, it was all he could do not to lean over and kiss her.

  To distract himself, he decided to fill the silence. “How was your day?” Really? Out of everything he could have asked her, he came up with the most mundane question?

  She licked her lips clean before she spoke, and even though he knew she had said something, he couldn’t recall what it was because his attention was still on her delectable mouth.

  “Gemariah.”

  His name snapped his attention back and he jerked his gaze to her eyes. The laughter he saw in them showed that he had been caught with his mind in the gutter. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Her smile got wider. “Are you okay? You seem distracted.”

  Putting on the playboy smile that has made girls swoon for centuries, he grinned wickedly before admiring her from head to toe. “Tell me, how I’m supposed to stay focused with the most tempting thing in this kitchen right in front of me and I can’t help myself?”

  It was now his turn to laugh at her flustered reaction. When she realized that he was teasing her, she giggled and reached over to slightly shove his shoulder. He found how much he loved the sound, and went to reach over and tease her more.

  She obviously wasn’t having any of that, and grabbed his hand to stop the assault. With everything going on, he had forgotten about his injuries to his hands, but in that moment, he felt everything.

  He winced, but quickly tried to mask his reaction to a lack of interest. She didn’t miss the slight change, and quickly grabbed his wrist when he went to pull back.

  “It’s nothing,” he said before she could speak. “Just a hazard of the job.”

  Immediately, she looked troubled and pulled her hands away. He gave her a couple minutes, and when she still hadn’t said anything, he prompted a response from her. “What’s wrong?”

  She waved her spoon slightly in the air. “It’s nothing.”

  He didn’t buy that for a second. “You got heartburn? Gas?” He knew it wasn’t any of those, but tried to get her embarrassed enough to say something. When she just looked at him like he was a petulant child and kept eating, he knew he was going to have to go one step farther.

  “Oh I get it.” He turned back to his own bowl, and tried to keep a straight face. “It’s those hormones again.”

  The sound of a spoon clanking against the bowl was his signal that he hit his mark.

  “For your information…”

  He tried to keep the smile off his face, but failed miserably. When he glanced up, she took one look at his face, and immediately relaxed her stiff posture.

  “You’re impossible, you know that right?”

  He nodded. “I have been told this before.”

  She let out a heavy sigh, but her face stayed soft. “I worry about you.”

  He was not expecting that.

  She must have seen the confusion on his face, because she turned towards him and straightened her spine. “I worry that your job is too dangerous; that one day you won’t come home. It’s not just you to think of anymore. You have a little one coming that’s going to want you around.”

  Suddenly she became self-conscious, and looked back to her meal. “Plus, what would I do without you? Who would be around to give me a hard time every day?”

  He could tell that she was trying to make light of a serious subject, but he was just too floored to try and make a teasing remark. Instead, he grabbed her hand.

  She looked over at him, and he could see the depth of her concern. He never needed his abilities with her when he could see everything through her eyes.

  “My job is…” He stopped. He didn’t want to lie, and telling her that his job was just as dangerous as any other was not entirely true. “There are many dangerous jobs out there. It’s not like this every day.”

  When she still didn’t look convinced, he made sure that her eyes locked with his. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that what I do is a piece of cake. Some days it’s hard, but it’s even harder to get rid of me. So like it or not…” He squeezed her hand for emphasis. “You and our little guy are stuck with me for a very, very long time.”

  Her smile was all he could have asked for at that moment. “Little guy, huh? What if it’s a little girl?”

  He brought their clasped hands up to his mouth and kissed the back of hers. “Two of you? God help me.”

  “Hey!” She let out a burst of laughter and pulled her hand away to push his shoulder once again.

  Still laughing, she got up and walked over to the fridge. “So, how did you burn your hands, today?”

  Shrugging, he watched as she opened the refrigerator and examined the contents closely. “Got too close to a fire.”

  Glancing away, she looked at him questionably. “Really? That’s all you got for me? I thought you were in a security business and protected people. How does one get ‘too close to a fire’ while doing that? Well, except firemen, of course.” Once she was done speaking, she turned her head back to the fridge.

  “Looking for anything in particular?” He already knew, and the thought sent shivers up his spine. Before she could say anything, he continued. “Because if it’s what I’m thinking it is, you’re not going to find any in there. I can’t believe you would even think to defile my gumbo with it anyways.”

  When her shoulders sagged, he knew he had gotten it right. “Sit down and eat the rest of your food. If you’re good, I might just give you something for dessert that will have you begging for more.” He hadn’t meant for it to sound so provocative, but from the color that rose to her cheeks, she had taken it that way. Just knowing where her mind had wondered excited him so much that he had to adjust how he was sitting.

  Once again, he had to deter his mind elsewhere. “So, tell me more about being a social worker. Is it everything you thought it would be when you went into the profession?”

  She gave a sad smile. “Yes and no. Some days it’s hard.” Her words were an exact echo of his a couple minutes earlier. “You can’t help them all, even though I wish I could. I would love to be able to swoop in, wrap the child in my arms, and fix everything that was wrong in their lives, but it’s never that simple. There’s a system… a set of rules that need to be followed. Therefore, I can’t help them all.”

  “Do you just work with kids?”

  “Yeah. There are other people in the office that are called when adults are the ones that need help. I’m one of the people that only work with children.”

  “Is it because you grew up in a foster home? Is that why you wanted to become a social worker?”

  She put another bite in her mouth when he asked the question, so she nodded. Once it was swallowed, she continued. “Part of the reason. As you know, Rin and I were in a couple homes together. I knew then what I wanted to be.”

  “Why?”

  Inhaling slightly, she looked at him with wide eyes. “What is that glorious smell?”

  He could tell that her eyes had become guarded. Therefore, when she changed the subject, he didn’t push her for an answer.

  “That is dessert.” Nodding to her empty bowl, he asked, “How was the gumbo?”

  “Perfection,” she said with a smile. “What’s next?”

  Laughing, he got up and held out his hand. “Come on, you can help me with the next part.”

  She scoffed, but stood up anyway. “What? I thought you were preparing a meal for me. I thought I wouldn’t have to lift a finger,” she teased.

  Pulling her in so her back was pressed against his chest, he kissed her temple. “Trust me. This will be fun.”

  They rounded an island, to walk into the actual kitchen, and he finally let her go. “Stand back.”

  Grabbing the pot holders, he waited until she moved o
ut of the way before he opened the oven. When he pulled out the tray holding the mini chocolate cakes inside ramekins, her face was almost comical. He never thought eyes could get that big a round.

  While he ran a knife around the inside edges, he nodded to the plates on the island. “Grab those, and bring them over here.”

  She did as she was told, but never took her eyes off the cakes. When he inverted them onto plates, he could practically see the hunger in her eyes when he slid hers in front of her.

  Catching him off guard, she grabbed a fork, and tried to cut into it before he could stop her. Luckily he was a second quicker. “Ahha… not yet.

  He laughed when she put down the utensil and practically pouted.

  “Patience.”

  “You’re kidding, right? You are actually telling a 20 week pregnant woman to have patience when you put something like that in front of her?”

  He laughed again before moving the confectioners’ sugar and frozen mini raspberries towards them. “They’re not done yet. Here. Decorate.”

  He watched as her delicate hands, very gingerly tapped the strainer to spread around the powdered sugar. It was much more intricate than he would have been. When he looked up, he saw her bite the tip of her tongue while she concentrated. The sight created an overwhelming urge for him to kiss her right then, and all the forces of heaven couldn’t have stopped him.

  By her startled gasp, she hadn’t been expecting it, but she soon joined him and swirled her tongue against his. The delicious aroma in the kitchen, the taste of the sugar she had snitched, the feel of her small hand going into his hair… all his senses hit him at once and he groaned before pulling her closer.

  The kiss became intense, and fast, but he hadn’t lost all his senses and remembered why they were in the kitchen to begin with. He had been waiting all day for her to see the dessert, so he reluctantly pulled his lips away, but stayed close as they both caught their breath. “Hold that thought.”

  He gave her a short but sweet kiss on the lips and stepped away. “Now, I don’t think you’ll need this, but I wanted to be prepared.” She became wary, and he could only imagine what she thought he was grabbing.