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CHAPTER FIVE
Heidi didn’t generally set alarms for Sunday mornings. Her neighbors did all the heavy lifting of getting her up, whether she wanted to be up or not. But for a change, she had something to do. So, when her watch alarm bleated at six, she opened her eyes and immediately turned toward Carine.
As instructed, the redhead had kept to her side. She’d gone to the length of hugging a pillow against her front to avoid rolling toward the center. She lay on her back with her mouth parted and her hair snaking around her head in vivid contrast against the white sheets.
Without her painted lips, concealed freckles, and tinted brows, Carine could have passed for a completely different woman. That may have been what she wanted most of the time. Like many other people, she probably turned on the bathroom light first thing in the morning, stared at her reflection in the mirror through bleary eyes, and pondered what needed fixing. She over-scrutinized the things she thought people would peer at for too long and opened her makeup case to paint on some magic that would alter their perceptions of her.
She didn’t need to.
No one really needed to, but Heidi certainly couldn’t fault anyone for doing whatever they felt was necessary to make themselves feel brave.
Twenty minutes later, Heidi had a cup of coffee in her. She’d brushed her teeth, washed her face, and dragged a chair to the bedside beside Carine.
The woman slept like a rock. Her chest barely moved as she breathed.
Heidi hadn’t slept so deeply since she was seven weeks pregnant with Kevin. She couldn’t predict how long Carine would sleep if she were left unmolested, but that wasn’t knowledge she didn’t need to know, really. Carine wasn’t there to sleep. She’d visited to learn why poking at honey badgers was a bad idea.
Carefully, Heidi wriggled the pillow out of Carine’s arms and tossed it to the center of the bed.
Carine’s eyes flew open a few seconds after the thump. Her pupils were enlarged, and her eyelids were sleep-swollen. She sat up in a hurry and frantically cast her gaze all about.
“I warned you it’d be disorienting.” Heidi pointed to her ears.
“Oh,” Carine said in a small voice. She removed the earplugs.
Heidi leaned back in the seat and pulled a knee against her chest. “If you have business to handle, you have five minutes.”
“What?”
Heidi set the timer on her phone and turned the screen so Carine could see the display. “Four minutes, forty-seven seconds until you need to be back in the exact spot you’re in right now.”
As Carine’s pupils settled, her realization seemed to dawn. She rubbed her eyes, pushed the covers aside, and only wasted a couple of seconds registering that she was naked.
Murmuring incomprehensible things under her breath, she hurried into the bathroom and closed the door.
“Don’t linger, darlin’. Time flies when you’re on the throne resting your eyes.”
Heidi responded to Tim’s text inquiring if they should upgrade the ventilation system at the factory before taking the baby back in there.
Obviously and absolutely, yes. I’ll call the contractor on Monday.
She peeked at the newly dropped puzzle in her Daily Sudoku app. She had a good-sized section of the grid filled in when Carine opened the bathroom door.
“Thirty-nine seconds,” Heidi said.
Furrowing her brow, Carine moved in an unsteady morning wobble back to the bed, where she resettled beneath the covers.
Heidi killed the timer and set the phone on the nightstand. “Sleep well?”
“I did, yes.”
“You don’t move in your sleep. Did you know that?”
“I did, actually. I had to train myself to be still in college. Housing department never got around to giving me railings for my loft bed, and I got tired of nagging them.”
Heidi didn’t want to think she was as treacherous as an un-railed, high-up bed, but she supposed she could be at times. More than once, she’d sent rude switches crashing down to Earth. They were always so much more conscientious afterward.
“You won’t need the covers,” Heidi informed her.
