most private concerns. From the way his glance dropped to her mouth, he seemed to be thinking more of the seductive pull snaking across the six feet of tension separating them.
Or maybe it was just her own tension she felt.
“Just part of the service.”
He’d only been doing his job.
The reminder had her ducking her head as she turned away. It didn’t matter that she’d wanted his kiss, or how badly she’d wanted him to hold her. It didn’t even matter that she didn’t trust what she’d felt when she’d been in his arms before, that almost desperate need to hide in his strength.
He’d offered her his help, a little comfort and his experience. What he wasn’t offering was a refuge, and she had no business thinking of him as one.
“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just say good-night now,” she murmured. “You’re welcome to stay down here and watch TV if you want. My bedroom is the one—”
“I know where your bedroom is, Rory.”
Of course he did.
“The sheets are clean and I put clean towels in the master bathroom.” Her bathroom wasn’t very big, but he already knew that, too. “I set out a new toothbrush for you.”
“I’ll figure it out,” he assured her. “Is there anything you want me to do down here?”
“Just bank the fire.”
The rest could wait until morning.
The telltale muscle in his jaw jerked. “Consider it banked. I’ll take care of that,” he said, taking the mug from her. “You go on up. I’ll catch the news for a while and turn off the lights.”
He obviously felt the need for a little space, too.
More than willing to give it to him, she started for the stairs.
The silence behind her and the faint ticking of ice against glass had her turning right back.
“Is the roof up there okay? It can handle the weight of the ice, can’t it?”
“The roof should be fine.”
She lifted her chin, turned back again.
Another step and she turned right back. “Is there anything I can get you before I go up?”
He’d barely met her eyes again before he shook his head and turned away himself. “I don’t need a thing,” he assured her. “Just go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”
For Rory, sleep rarely came easily. When it did, it was usually fitful, an often futile exercise where the loneliness she could sometimes mask with activity during the day reared its ugly head at night to haunt her. But she must have been asleep. Something had just wakened her, a distant, cracking sound followed by an odd, heavy silence.
With Tyler’s back tucked against her, she blinked into the dark. Realizing that it shouldn’t be that dark since his night-light should have been on, she reached for her robe at the foot of the twin bed.
She had no idea what time it had been when she’d heard Erik come up the stairs and close the door at the end of the hall. She’d lain there listening to the sound of water in the bathroom pipes and the heavy creak of floorboards as he’d moved around her room. When silence seemed to indicate that he’d gone to bed, she’d attempted to block further thought in that direction by listening to her son’s deep, even breathing and the wind gusting like muffled cannon blasts against his bedroom wall beside her.
The ice pelting the window had no longer sounded as sharp, as if the buildup had muffled it. The only thing that had allowed her to not feel as anxious as she might have about the fury outside had been thinking about the man down the hall being so near.
Now she heard nothing at all.
There was no clock in Tyler’s room. Quietly, so as not to wake her sleeping child, she pulled on her robe and found her way to the door.
The moment she opened it, she realized the electricity had gone out. The night-light in Tyler’s bathroom across the hall wasn’t on. Neither was the one in the outlet down by her room. The hall was as black as pitch.
She kept a flashlight in her nightstand, another in a drawer in the kitchen. Without questioning why she didn’t head for her room, she edged toward the stairs, her hand sliding along the wall to guide her to the handrail.
“Rory?”
Her hand flattened over the jolt behind her breastbone. “Erik,” she whispered, turning toward his hushed voice. “Where are you?”
“By your bedroom door. Where are you?”
“By the stairs,” she whispered. “What was that noise?”
“It sounded like a tree went down. My guess is that it took out a power line.” Across twenty feet of dark came the soft, metallic rasp of a zipper. “Do you have a flashlight up here?”
It seemed he’d just zipped up his jeans. Thinking he could well be standing there shirtless, she murmured, “The nightstand on the left. In the drawer.”
She heard him move inside, and his mild oath when he bumped into something, the end of the bed, probably. Moments later, shadows bounced around the room and a flash of bright light arched low into the hall. Following that blue-white beam, he walked up to her, his undershirt and sweater in his free hand, and handed her the light.
She kept the beam angled down, the pool of it at his feet. Still, there was more than enough illumination to define every superbly sculpted muscle of his chest.
Deliberately, she moved her glance to the heavy sports watch on his wrist. “Do you know what time it is?” she asked.
“Almost seven.”
It would be getting light in less than an hour.
He dropped the sweater. In two quick motions he shoved his beautifully muscled arms into his long-sleeved undershirt.
“When you did the walk-through with the building inspector, did he say anything about the generator? It should only have taken seconds for it to take over.”
The generator? “He said it was set to come on for a few minutes once a week,” she told him, scrambling to remember as she watched him pull his shirt over his head. “To make sure it’ll be available when I really need it,” she added.
Erik’s dark head popped out, rearranging his already sleep-mussed hair. His jaw was shadowed, hard and angular in the dim light. “Has it been working?”
“I don’t know.” The gray metal generator on the slab at the back of the building hadn’t been on her priority list. It hadn’t been on her list at all. Until now. “I think he said it’s set for either Tuesday or Wednesday mornings.
