When he kissed Gabriella goodbye, he whispered that he planned to set his alarm thirty minutes earlier from now on, just in case he got lucky every morning, now that Gabriella shared his bed. She climbed out of bed after he left, took one look at the dark, rainy day and decided she was glad the police had not yet completed their investigation of her apartment. She did not particularly want to work today, and now she had no reason to feel guilty for not doing so. She headed to the bathroom and took a long, steaming hot shower. Her whole body ached, but it was a nice, satisfied kind of ache. Her abdomen and knee were both still tender, but the pain was negligible and only really hurt when they were touched. After she showered and dressed, she sat in the kitchen and drank coffee and ate breakfast while she read the local newspaper, which Brandon had left, in his haste to get to work. Normally, he took it with him to work in the morning. The temperature had plummeted. The rain brought in a cold front.
