to retreat back into the closed-in porch, but Martha was already pulling her out into the now blistering storm. Jack wasn’t as enthusiastic, but trudged along, head ducked. Emma flipped the hood up on her fleece-lined canvas coat and kept her head ducked, too, as she led them to the edge of the trees. “Here, guys,” she said, having to raise her voice over the cracking sound of the storm as the ice and sleet pummeled the trees and ground. “Not going up that hill in this.” She had her good hiking boots on, and they had great traction, but ice was ice. She’d have to look in the addendum section to see if there was a note about where she might find a bag of gravel or something to throw around, at least in the backyard.
Maybe Trevor knows, she thought. No. If she was lucky, he’d have already fixed a sandwich or something and gone to bed. Wherever that was. A vicious gust drove the ice pellets sideways, hitting her cheek as she tried to corral the dogs back toward the house. And even that didn’t stop her from picturing Trevor in bed. Getting ready to get in bed. Possibly taking a shower before going to bed.
“Come on,” she shouted to the dogs, perhaps a bit more loudly than absolutely necessary, then all but dragged them back inside. “My God, it’s nasty out there, isn’t it?” she said, talking to them as she took their jackets and leashes off and toweled them down. Poor Jack was trembling, not enjoying the rubdown nearly as much as he had last time. She crouched in front of him and worked the ice from his paws. “I’m sorry, little guy. It sucks to be a small dog in a big storm, I know.”
Martha was licking at the ice clumps in her paws, but otherwise didn’t seem to be all that adversely affected.
“Wow, check that out,” came a male voice almost directly overhead. “The storm’s really picked up.”
She prided herself in not even glancing up as Trevor’s jean-clad legs passed by her lower line of vision. A mere tip of the chin would have put her eyes right in line with his—“Sorry, fella,” she told Jack, forcing her attention to stay exclusively on finishing up with Jack’s ice-clumped feet. “I know it hurts.”
“Maybe it’s too late to get my car in, it’s probably encrusted by now. But I’d like to at least go check.”
She finished with Jack and had to stand to attend to Martha, who had already taken care of the worst of things with her big feet. Emma rubbed her head, neck, and legs down with a dry towel. “Suit yourself,” she said to Trevor, completely unconcerned. Completely unconcerned that they were going to be stuck in this house—together—for possibly longer than one night.
Right.
Just as soon as she stopped thinking about him naked in the shower, she’d be unconcerned.
“Here,” he said, reaching out to take the towel from her hands. “I can finish drying her off if you’ll—”
“Just because I was just out there does not mean I’m heading out to check on your car. You want it in the garage, I’ll be happy to—”
“Did I ask you to go out there? All I need you to do is open one of the garage doors.” He tugged the towel out of her grudging grip.
“Fine,” she said, knowing she sounded like a shrew, but he did things to her equilibrium she really didn’t appreciate. Too bad if he didn’t understand that. She wasn’t about to explain it to him. She left him with the dogs and headed down the passageway to the garage, then realized she’d forgotten the Hamilton bible with the garage code and turned around to head back. A second later two things happened almost simultaneously. The lights flickered out, casting her in immediate full darkness…and she ran chest first into Trevor Hamilton.
“Hold on there,” he said, finding her arms easily despite the complete lack of light.
“The lights,” she said. “What happened?”
“The storm, I’m guessing. Ice is heavy. It probably coated the power lines and took some of them down.”
“Generator?” Surely a house as massive as this one had a backup system, but she didn’t recall reading anything about one in the book.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never been up here when the power went out.”
She suddenly realized she was still standing deep inside his personal space, and that he still held her arms. “I—I need to get back to