After the Storm (All I've Ever Needed) Read Online Free PDF Page B

wondered if she would be strong enough to make whatever sacrifice was needed for the sake of love.   Things worked out in the end in romance novels, but it wouldn’t be that easy in real life.   Not that what she and Stephano had shared could be termed a romance—it had been a shameful one-night fling that hadn’t even lasted the night.
    It had felt like she was ripping her own heart out telling him that she wanted them to be ‘just friends’, but he had taken her decision well, embarrassingly so.   They had been coolly polite with each other for the rest of the week.   She had joined him and their usual group of colleagues for lunch when meetings hadn’t taken her out of the office, only because not doing so would have seemed odd and raised suspicions that were already heightened by her and Stephano’s less-warm-than-usual camaraderie.
    Forget Stephano , she rebuked herself and focused on the book again.   She hoped that the description of the characters matched the cover.   It was a silly peeve of hers, but she got annoyed when the picture on the cover looked nothing like the characters inside the book.   She knew it must be difficult to find stock art that matched the characters writers dreamed up in their heads, but sometimes publishers didn’t seem to even make an effort.   She had even read books with sketched or painted covers that didn’t match the characters—that she found totally unacceptable!   It probably meant that she needed a life, she acknowledged.   After all, what did it matter if the characters looked nothing like the cover?
    She opened the book carefully, trying not to crease the cover.   The charity she donated the books to after reading were able to charge a little extra if the books were in good condition.   Buying four new books each weekend, six if there was a bank holiday on the Monday was a guilty pleasure, but knowing the charity benefited and other readers were able to buy the books at a reduced price made her feel less guilty.
    Yesterday she had done her household chores accompanied by music in an attempt not to think about Stephano.   But later in the sauna, after a hectic and very enjoyable Zumba class, he was all she could think of.   Slipping between crisp, clean bed sheets was usually the highlight of her Saturday, but all she thought of as she’d done it yesterday was how much better it would be having a hard body to snuggle up to instead of soft sheets.
    She had awoken feeling refreshed and rested.   With nowhere to go and all the time to get there, she decided to spend the morning in bed reading with the radio softly in the background, providing companionship of sorts.
    Whitney Houston dead at 48…
    It took several moments for the words to register in Natalie’s subconscious mind.
    Did the announcer just say…?
    Hastily, she reached over and turned up the radio.
    The words the man was saying made no sense!
    Whitney was too young.   The same age almost as Natalie’s mother.
    Throwing back the covers, she scrambled out of bed.   Whitney was her mother’s favorite singer.   The news would be a huge shock.
    ***
    Taking a deep breath, Natalie opened her car door and got of the car on arriving at her parents’ three-bedroom house in Raynes Park.   Whitney’s death was sobering.   She’d never given a thought to her parents dying.   Her mother was forty-seven and her father fifty-three.   They were both healthy and she naturally assumed that they would live to ripe old ages as both sets of her grandparents did in Trinidad.   Her parents had joint gym membership of the nearby private club and went there weekdays for an hour on the treadmill each morning at six.   On weekends they went for a walk in the park instead.
    “Hi, Daddy,” she greeted as she slipped off her shoes at the front door.   He was sitting in his favorite recliner reading The Independent , which he would read from cover to cover before the end of the day.   Sometimes she missed