'No worries.' Even so, I peered around the door before I entered. I thought there might be police tape, but everything had been cleaned up. There was no blood on the floor, no tea or shards of pottery. I looked mournfully at the spot on the counter where I'd kept my teapot.
'Fran will buy you a new one,' said Ariana.
'It won't be as good,' I said. 'They never are.'
She was smiling when the building shuddered. 'Whoa,' she said. 'Earthquake. Get in the doorway. It's the safest place.'
Oh, jeez! This was much worse than the tremors I'd felt at Chantelle's. It was as if some gigantic animal had the building in its jaws and was shaking it violently.
It was almost impossible to stand. Ariana and I clung together while the ground bucked and groaned and rolled beneath our feet.
The sounds of the earth tearing itself apart faded, and the shaking stopped. I was suddenly conscious of Ariana's arms around me. Of mine around her. Our first embrace? Maybe our last. The shaking was beginning again.
'Oh, no,' I said. 'One's enough.'
Rending sounds, a deep roar bursting from the depths. The earth in pain. I looked into Ariana's blue, blue eyes. 'Could be curtains,' I said, thinking I might die in her arms.
She smiled. 'Not likely, Kylie.'
The grinding, the rolling, the terrifying instability slowly faded. There were a few final tremors, then everything was unnervingly quiet.
I could hear my own breathing, fast and furious.
'Don't be frightened,' said Ariana.
'It's not fear,' I said.
She gave me a long blue stare.
And then she kissed me.
ABOUT CLAIRE MCNAB
Claire McNab is the author of the Detective Inspector Carol Ashton and the Undercover Agent Denise Cleever series. Like the star of her new series, Kylie Kendall, Claire left her native Australia to live in Los Angeles…a city she still finds quite astonishing.
