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.
The light drew her in, instantaneously lowering her pulse from a gallop to a steady jog.
She threw herself on the worn, plaid couch and went to work pulling her boots off. Brick waited until she was done and moved the boots closer to the fire.
On the coffee table, a laptop was open to a search engine. She sneaked a peek when his back was turned.
Remington Ford artist Chicago mayor.
That sneaky son of a bitch was snooping on her.
Under most normal circumstances, it would piss her off. But in the current situation, it damn near made her panic. He needed to leave this alone. She couldn’t let more people get hurt because of her.
While she feigned interest in a blanket on the back of the couch, she noticed him close the computer and move it.
It was quiet, aside from the soft whir from the fireplace fan and the purr of the generator outside.
“Do you want me to turn on more lights?” he asked, his voice low and rough.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Damn that Darius and his pink flamingos. So I did tell you?” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and held them there. “I couldn’t remember if I actually opened my big, fat mouth and told you I was afraid of the dark or if I just wanted to tell you.”
“Why did you want to tell me?” He hadn’t moved any closer. His back was to the fireplace, the coffee table between them. But he still managed to take up all the space in the room.
“Because you used to make me feel safe.”
He flinched. An actual physical recoiling like she’d managed to hurt him. Then it was gone.
“Tell me why you don’t feel safe now. Why you sleep with the lights on. Why your name doesn’t come up in any accident records but you were taken to the hospital for a severe asthma attack.”
She jumped up from the couch, and something slid to the floor, landing with a soft thump.
“Tell me why you’re carrying a pair of fucking scissors in your pocket?”
“You spied on me?” It had been a mistake coming here. Coming home maybe. But running to Brick? Definitely. “You can barely look me in the eye but you went digging for information on me?”
She didn’t make it two steps before he caught her around the waist. They both went stock-still. She could feel the steady thump of his heart. His heat. His glorious, intoxicating, hypnotizing heat seeped into her bones.
“You’re shivering.” His voice was a rumble at her back.
“I’m not shivering,” she said through chattering teeth. “I’m shaking with rage. Totally different.”
For a beat, they stood exactly where they were, bodies touching, breath audible. Then he released her and pointed to the couch. “I don’t care if you’re trembling with hysteria. Sit your ass down and explain to me what the fuck is going on,” he said.
“It’s none of your business.” It wasn’t. She wouldn’t make it his. If she couldn’t protect Camille, she could at least protect him and the only way she was going to be able to accomplish that was by pissing him off.
“I don’t know why you think you can just stick your nose into other people’s business and then demand they explain their lives to you,” she huffed, working herself up into a temper.
“I’m a cop and a bartender—it’s what I do.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not a criminal or a patron. So back off.”
“Where’s your inhaler?” he demanded crisply.
“What?”
“You’re starting to wheeze.”
She didn’t have to work herself up now, she was actually there. For the first time in weeks, she felt strong, not weak.
He blew out a breath. Standing there, hands on hips, he looked formidable. And safe. But it didn’t matter. She wasn’t his problem. He’d lost the opportunity to make her his problem a long time ago.
“Sit,” he ordered.
Stubbornly, she remained standing until he gave an aggrieved groan and took a seat on the couch. “Happy?”
“Not until you tell me why the hell you decided it was imperative that you go digging into my business,” she shot back.
His hands closed over his knees, and then he slid his palms up his thighs. “Because you’re fucking scared, Remi. And the girl I know isn’t afraid of anything. So when you show up here, unannounced, with some bullshit story and a broken arm, and you can’t sleep with the lights off, you’re fucking right, I did some digging. I know you were hospitalized for an asthma attack, not injuries sustained in an accident. You didn’t mention that to your parents when they asked.”