"There's a tornado watch, you go to the basement. Common sense."
"It's only a watch!"
"You hear the wind?"
The screaming wind is quieter down here and I still hear Pat Benatar playing, but yes, the wind is battering the house upstairs.
For the first time tonight, my eyes get a chance to look at him up close. The rain has made his white dress shirt transparent, showing off the tattoos on his toned chest and arms. His wet hair is plastered to his forehead. A drop of water hangs from the dimple in his chin. God, he's hot as hell.
"Um..." The quick turn of events from failed party and wanting to die to hiding in a wine cellar with the Unstoppable Foster Dunham has me dazed and reeling.
His gaze locks on my chest and his smirk reappears. My sundress is soaked and the fabric is clinging to my cleavage like an x-rated wet T-shirt contest. My hard nipples show through the red fabric of my bikini. Darn.
Click.
The room goes black.
Pat Benatar cuts off.
There's only darkness and howling wind.
"The lights. We've lost power. Oh no. We're going to die!"
"No we're not." The chuckle in his voice and his unflappable confidence would bother me if I wasn't fighting panic. It's pitch dark. The kind of dark where you keep waiting for your eyes to focus but they don't and when they do, you see a ghostly figure looming.
"Oh my god, it's dark. We need light. I can't do this. Holy crap. Where are you?" My arms search in the void but find nothing. It's like I'm about to jump off a ledge, but I don't know where the edge is.
"I'm right here." A bright beam shines on his face and makes his cheekbones look ashen and spooky.
My gasp sounds loud in the small room. It's just his cell phone but it was enough to make my heart jump into my throat.
"You scared of the dark?" He's eyeing me again, waiting for another chance to razz me.
"No," I say indignantly. I'm not sharing my fears with him, but yes, I hate pure darkness.
He chuckles.
"Stop laughing. It's not funny."
"A few seconds ago you were asking to die out on the beach. You fought like a banshee every step I took to get you safe. Now you're terrified you're gonna die because the lights went out? Are you suicidal or scared as shit?"
"I have no idea!"
"Exactly, so relax and trust me on this one."
He grins and shines his cell phone flashlight around the long narrow room. Wine bottles stacked in wooden racks cover the walls on each side. The arched brick cove at the end makes it feel like a crypt.
"What if the tornado rips the roof off?" I ask.
"We're below ground. We're safe." He digs into a drawer and pulls out a wine opener. "Hold my phone." He grabs a bottle of wine off the shelf like it's a beer and starts pushing the corkscrew into the cork as he holds the bottle between his legs.
My shaking hands make the light bounce around.
"Hold the light still."
"I'm trying."
He pops the cork and tosses it across the room. He sits on the floor at the back of the room and tips the entire bottle up as he slugs back the wine. "Turn off my phone to save the battery." He places the bottle next to his leg, which is bent at the knee.
"But then we'll be in the dark."
"You said you weren't afraid."
"I'm not."
"So come sit next to me, drink some wine, and turn out the light."
"I'm not drinking from that bottle."
He blows out a breath and stands. "Red or white?"
"Cabernet," I answer.
He searches a bit, takes another bottle out, opens it, and hands it to me. "Drink up. It'll calm your nerves."
"Fine." I use his phone to find a wine glass and pour myself a generous amount of wine.
As I sit down with my full glass, the rough brick scratches the exposed skin on my back, and the cold tile squishes against my wet butt.
The buttery drink tastes bitter and tart. I glance at his phone to see how much battery he has left.
His screensaver is a quote that says "Maybe self-destruction is the answer," and it has a picture of a bloody fighter's face in the background.
"Your phone is at twenty-five percent."
He twists his screen away from my view when he sees me checking out his screensaver. "It'll last an hour if we're lucky," he says.
"I can go get my cell phone upstairs. Then if yours dies, we'll have mine." I don't like the idea of running out of light.
"No. Don't risk it."
It's quiet in the small space. The wine warms my chilled skin, and the smell of old wood and dusty bottles fills my nose.
After a minute, the quiet sets in. We could be in here for a long time. "All right," he says. "You have one hour to tell me everything about you and finish that bottle."
I'm surprised by his question and laugh it off. "It won't take an hour." My story is short and I'm happy to get drunk after the night I had.
"Get started."
Gosh. What do I tell him? "We're a typical family. My parents immigrated here from Sicily in the seventies. We had a small house in New Jersey. My uncle helped my dad get into commodities trading. That went well. We bought a bigger house. My dad met rich people and we moved to Manhattan. My brother died." My voice falters. "Then my mom died." He leans in closer and our shoulders touch. I have to take a deep breath to continue. "I run my dad's charity now. That's it."
"Typical, huh?"
"Not typical I guess."
"I'm sorry about your mom and your brother."
"Yeah." I really don't want to talk about it as the sadness wells up in my heart.
"So money doesn't solve everything?" He asks it like he already knows the answer.
"No. The only thing good in my life is the money I help raise for the charities."
"The only thing?"
I don't answer him because really the charity work isn't even a good thing. It's an obligation, but I do enjoy raising money. "Today's charity was for the animal shelter. I'm sad it was a flop. They rely on it each year." Enough about my pathetic life. "How about you? Where'd you grow up?"
"In the New York foster care system."
"Foster?"
"Yep. I'm the foster kid. The name stuck." He shrugs in an unassuming way, but it has to cut him deep that his identity is based on being a foster child.
"Can I ask about your parents?"
He's quiet for a minute and makes a point of taking a huge gulp of wine. "My mom was an alcoholic. Spent my life waiting for her to sober up."
"She never did?"
"No." He says it matter of factly, but the truth is he's shared something very personal with me.
My heart aches for him. Here I am complaining about my family when he's been through so much. I can't imagine how painful that would be to always be hoping to be adopted or have your mom back and neither ever comes true.
"You don't have any family?" My family sucks the life out of me sometimes and we've been through a lot together, but at least I have a place I belong.