Excerpt of VOICE of TRUTH by Dana Pratola

She washed the dishes as she spoke of her early memories
of her grandparents. It was a good thing he had the
recorder for he hardly heard a word. As he watched her in
her baggie pajamas and old gray sweater, pushed up at the
sleeves, he thought how nice it would be to have the
freedom to come up behind her, wrap his arms around her
waist and nuzzle her ear.

She might appear the sophisticated temptress to the rest
of the world, but in her personal life she was green as a
forgotten garden well, full of water sweet and deep, but
too long overlooked and untended. Even his objectivity
told him this ought not to be. Something special and
beautiful, particularly a woman, should be cared for,
loved.

He swore under his breath and clicked off the recorder.
Objectivity, he told himself, was in danger of falling
into that well and drowning. It was certain to be a slow
and magnificent death.

Sophia glanced over her shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

Cade stood, ran his hands down the thighs of his jeans.
“I need to stretch my legs.”

Sophia reached for a dishtowel and dried her hands. “You
weren’t sitting that long.”

“Yeah, well, I need to stretch.”

She tucked the rag into the handle of a cabinet door and
faced him. “Why are you so edgy all of a sudden?”

“I’m not edgy,” he snapped.

She arched a thin, perfect brow. “What do you call it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m having a reaction to your
waffles.”

She laughed, not a little, but with her whole body,
leaving him no choice but to follow.

He was having a reaction all right, but waffles had
nothing to do with it.