In the Eye of the Storm by Samantha Chase

here.  With every little movement, every word, every gesture, Holly was beginning to take hold of a part of his life that was off limits to everyone.  He had to take some action to stop it from happening if for no other reason than to wait until he knew for sure what she was thinking.
    Carefully, he turned her slightly so that he could put an arm around her shoulders and walk her towards the living room so that they could sit on the couch and recover from their explosive encounter.  He kept her close as they sat down.  He grabbed the remote and turned on the TV to once again check on the forecast.  It seemed as if the storm was finally preparing to move out of the area and the rain was expected to end within the next couple of hours.  He felt Holly tense a little beside him and said, “It won’t matter if the rain ends today or not.  It’s Sunday and the trees are probably still down.  The roads probably won’t be cleared until tomorrow.”  In his own mind he was saying the words to Holly but he knew subconsciously that they were just as much for his own benefit.
    Watching the remainder of the newscast in silence was oddly soothing.  When the house phone rang near the end of the broadcast, both nearly jumped out of their skin.  Stephen walked to the kitchen to answer it.  “Hello?”
    “Mr. Ballinger?  It’s Margret from personnel,” she began. 
    “Hi, Margret; what can I do for you?”  Stephen was a little perplexed as to why his employee was calling him at home and hoped that nothing was seriously wrong.
    “Yes, sir, I’ve been trying to call Holly Abbot at home with no luck and figured it would be best to try and get to you myself.”
    “Is there a problem, Margret?”
    “Well, I just got a call from the building manager, sir, and it seems like there has been extensive storm damage in the downtown area as well as some to the building.”
    “Are our offices okay?”  He was immediately in ‘boss’ mode and his brain was scrambling to the possibilities of what could possibly be ruined.
    “Oh, no sir, our offices are fine.  The entire first floor and the basement were flooded and so our offices are fine being that they’re up on the eighth floor.  No, the problem is that they won’t let anyone in to the building until at least Tuesday afternoon and so I needed to get the phone tree going to notify all employees of this fact.  Holly normally assists me with that when we have snow days and such.  I guess her phone must be out because I can’t reach her.”
    “Um…yes, probably.”  A part of Stephen wanted to hand the phone to Holly so that she could do what she normally does to help Margret but to do that would be to let someone know that Holly was staying in his home, and he was not ready to even attempt something like that just yet.  “Are you able to make the calls or do you want me to help you?”
    Margret was stunned silent for a moment.  “Oh, no, really Mr. Ballinger, I’ll be fine.  I have the entire company list here and we have a system.  I just need to get Holly’s branch of the phone tree going and then everyone passes a call on to the next person on the list.  I just thought that you should know what was going on for yourself since I couldn’t reach Holly.”
    After thanking her and wishing her a good day, Stephen walked back in to the living room where Holly was channel surfing in search of something to watch.  “You have like a thousand channels.  How do you ever find and decide on something to watch?” she asked, looking at the TV and not at him.
    “Honestly?  I don’t even watch TV.”  Holly stopped surfing and turned to look at him with disbelief.  “It’s true,” he assured her.  She shook her head and returned her focus to the TV until she found something that caught her attention.  She was laughing when Stephen interrupted her.  “That was Margret on the phone from personnel.”  He went on to explain to Holly all that was going