Excerpt: Dreams of Thunder

It wasn't until the shower stopped that it occurred to Edward that waiting in the living room may not have been a good idea. He hadn't called ahead to warn his sister that he had come in a day early, hoping to surprise her. She's going to be surprised all right. But the door was opening and it was a little too late to make a getaway now so Edward put on his best penitent smile and waited to get yelled at.

Instead of his sister stepping out of the bathroom like he expected though, it was a man; one hand holding a towel around his waist while he scrubbed his hair dry with another towel.

Okay, you're not Rayen, Edward thought as he lowered the paper a little more to get a better look. The man stopped in surprise at the rustling sound.

He wasn't particularly tall- Edward was sure he had several inches on the guy-- but he looked pretty fit, obviously working out from time to time though not overdoing it. Brown eyes watched him warily but Edward didn't get a sense of anger or resentment from the gaze, more like cautious curiousity.

“Uh, sorry,” the man said, his voice trailing off uncertainly.

“I'm not,” Edward replied, then immediately wondered where the hell that comment had come from.

The guy frowned at him, more in confusion than anger. Before he could give any other reaction than that, the back door banged open and something was dropped on the counter. Edward winced as he listened to click of his sister's heels on the wooden floor and he wasn't surprised when she smacked him in the back of the head once she got close enough and said, “Hey, you behave yourself.”

Edward chuckled and looked up at Rayen. His laughter faultered when a weird emotion hit him at the sight of his sister. He blinked, then the emotion passed. “Hey, I didn't do anything. I was just being nice.”

She crossed her arms and gave him a look. “Yeah, uh huh.” She looked at the guy, who was frowning at the two of them. And said, “Feel free to ignore him, he's just my brother.”

“You're brother?” the guy said. He shook his head and Edward heard him mutter under his breath, "Great."

(Cover photo used under a creative commons license- http://www.flickr.com/photos/wvs/ / CC BY-NC 2.0)