Loving Night: Dream Catcher Series ~ Book 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

focus on the pieces of dreams she remembered
from the previous night.
     
    ~
~ ~ ~ ~
     
    “Hey,” Chaz smiled at her when she
emerged from the room more than an hour later. He’d done his usual Saturday morning
routine—jogging and practicing at the firing range. Since his wife was behind a
closed door when he returned home, he’d decided to make a sandwich for lunch
and marinate steaks and wash broccoli for dinner. He loved that the kitchen in
this new home had an indoor grill. But, he wasn’t in the kitchen when Stephanie
found him. He was sitting in the family room scrolling through channels with
the television muted. He patted the space beside him on the oversized sofa.
    “How was your morning?” she asked
as she made herself comfortable by straddling him with her knees snug against his
thighs.
    “Same as always.” He kissed her and
wrapped an arm around her back before resting his chin on her shoulder. “How
are you?”
    “Better.”
    “Better than what?” One hand rubbed
slowly up and down her arm. Stephanie took her time answering and he didn’t
rush her.
    “I’ve almost figured out something
that has been bothering me about my dreams.” She kissed his cheek. “I’ll be
able to talk about it once everything is clearer. And, Karen is coming for a
visit. She’ll let us know what day tomorrow.” She leaned away from him so that
their bodies had to shift enough for her to see his face. “What’s on your mind,
Chaz? Why are you sitting here like this?”
    He shrugged, but when Stephanie
didn’t stop staring at him, he admitted, “Sylvia and I had another fight—if you
can call it that. She again voiced her opinions about my priorities. I ignored
her. She continued, adding her criticisms of you. I said I was done with her.
End of friendship.” He slowly shook his head. “It was inevitable since Syl has
never been a person to back down. I’m not surprised, just disappointed.”
    “And hurt.”
    He nodded. Stephanie leaned her
forehead against his until he held her tighter and dropped his chin to her
shoulder. They sat like that for as long as he needed, him drawing calming strength
from his wife.
    She wanted to assure him that
everything would work out fine, but she wasn’t certain about that. For some
reason, Sylvia hated the fact that Chaz loved Stephanie. She wanted to say that
she was sorry about the loss of a long-time friend, but that wouldn’t have been
true. From the day Stephanie had moved to Cincinnati, she had seen the way
Sylvia’s caustic comments and blatant rejection bothered Chaz. Like he’d said,
today’s culmination was inevitable. Maybe now there could be a period of
mourning and Chaz would stop holding on to hope that the relationship between
the two women would improve.
    What worried her most was that
Sylvia was in an administrative position above Chaz, although it wasn’t in the
same Division. She hoped the woman wasn’t vindictive enough to cause problems
on their job. Uneasiness settled in the pit of Stephanie’s stomach.
     
    ~
~ ~ ~ ~
     
    There didn’t seem to be any
repercussions from the situation between Chaz and Sylvia. In fact, all was
reasonably calm in his area. Steve McDaniels officially transferred in and
several meetings were held to bring him up to speed on the previous analyses
for the case he would be taking on immediately. As an analyst, Chaz would be
one of the people to pass along information to the new undercover operation.
Even though he would remain in the Cincinnati office, he would work closely
with Steve who would be on site in Kentucky.
    Of course, the newcomer had already
read the reports; he wanted to get a feel for the personalities of the people
he’d be relying on to feed him credible intelligence. After a few meetings,
Steve invited Chaz to lunch so that he could get the other man’s impression of their
coworkers. Their time together was both professional and personal.
    “So, how is Stephanie?” Steve asked
as the men settled