Uneasiness curled in her belly.

The gas fireplaces still worked, so she’d be warm. The toilet would still flush. A big plus. But it was dark. Very, very dark.

* * *

“This is fucking stupid,” she muttered to herself as she dashed across the street in the frigid night air. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a little power outage.”

It was so damn dark. The lights up and down the block were out. Except for the house across the street. The lanterns on either side of Brick Callan’s front door blazed bright, beckoning her like a beacon. Because of course the man she’d been trying to avoid since her drunken alter ego had made a fuzzy yet certainly embarrassing appearance had a generator.

Her teeth were chattering so hard her jaw ached. It wasn’t the cold that had her literally shaking in her boots. Well, it wasn’t only the cold. The dark was suffocating, closing in around her as the cold burned her bare legs.

She wasn’t running to Brick, she told herself even as she picked up the pace, bounding up his front steps. She was merely knocking on a neighbor’s door and—

The heavy wooden front door was wrenched open just as she raised her hand to knock.

“Holy Miles Davis!” she yipped, slapping a hand to her chest and taking an involuntary step backward. “Jesus, Brick. You scared the life out of me. Where are you going?”

“To get you.” He said the words simply as if they weren’t meant to give her solace and hope and make her feel weak in the knees.

His gaze heated her straight through to the bone. He had boots on with pajama pants stuffed into them. On the opposite end, those flannel pants rode low over his hips, revealing the waistband of his underwear. He had one arm shoved through a heavy winter coat and no shirt. The man was shirtless. There was so much to look at.

Her brain came to a screeching halt as she stared at a solid acre of muscular flesh. The comforting bulk of broad shoulders. The taper of his stomach to his narrow hips…and the dangling temptation of an untied drawstring.

“What the hell are you wearing?” he demanded.

Tearing her gaze away from his man chest, Remi glanced down at her middle of the night ensemble. In her panic, she hadn’t changed out of her hoodie and shorts before pulling on snow boots and running for her life.

“I don’t know what you’re complaining about. It’s a hell of a lot more than I was wearing five minutes ago,” she told him.

He swore under his breath, then grabbed her by the front of the sweatshirt and dragged her inside.

“I swear to God, woman,” he said, pulling her further into the house without loosening his grip.

The first few rooms were dark, but the living room was warm and cozy with a fire going in the fireplace and a single lamp casting a glow from the end table.