My Way to You, page 16
“It only takes a spark.” She was sure she sounded paranoid, but didn’t really care. “A fire could come from the other side,” she told him. “I can’t be gone if something started.”
“You do know there is nothing left to burn and the wind isn’t blowing in that direction.”
Didn’t matter. “The power could go out. One of the trees could go down in the driveway. I can’t do it. Leaving isn’t an option.” Her hands shook with the memory of the hillside on fire.
Colin smiled understandingly, and tossed his car keys on the kitchen island. “Okay then, what can I do to help?”
He was dressed for a day out, not work. “You don’t have to.”
“I don’t have to do a lot of things. But since I’m going to spend the day with you one way or the other, you might as well put me to work.” He leaned down, touched his lips to hers, and stood back up. “Direct me.”
“You sure?”
Parker wasn’t positive he rolled his eyes . . . but yeah, he rolled his eyes.
“Okay, fine. Can you check how much gasoline we have for the generator? There are cans in the generator room and some down in the garage. I’m just not sure how many of them are empty. I’ll go down to the pool and bungee cord the patio furniture together so it doesn’t get tossed all over the yard.”
They went in opposite directions. Unfortunately, she was one gust too late for the pool furniture. Three out of the six chairs were already in the water.
She’d lugged one of the chairs out of the pool by the time Colin found her.
“I’m going to the gas station to fill two cans.”
The ash flying through the air made it hard to keep her eyes open. “Thank you.”
“Leave this, I’ll get it when I get back.”
“I got it.”
“Parker.”
She smiled at him, waved him along. “Thanks for the gasoline.”
It took less than half an hour to drag everything out of the pool and tie it all together to keep it from taking a second swim. She turned off the pool pump to save the thing from overheating when it went on. Her weekend workload just tripled. And since both Austin and Mallory were at their part-time jobs, she had only herself to depend on. She blinked with the thought. And maybe Colin.
Erin met her halfway up the steps to the house. “This is crazy.”
“Welcome to my life. Come inside.”
Scout met them at the door.
“Where is everyone?” Erin asked.
“Work. Colin went to fill the gas cans for the generator. We lose power a lot when it’s this bad,” she explained. “You should take the guest room if that happens.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“I insist. The noise alone in that place with the wind this crazy will even scare Freddy Krueger. It gets cold in the guesthouse without power to run the heater this time of year.” The main house had three fireplaces and a generator if needed. The guesthouse didn’t.
The wind rattled the windows as if it were emphasizing her point. “Besides, I’m not a superfan of being alone when it’s like this.” Even though the fire hadn’t hit when the wind was this bad, thank God, the reality was, it could. Even a house fire in these conditions could spread into a neighborhood disaster. She realized her fears may be edging on PTSD, but Parker didn’t care. The wind was not her friend.
“You’ll have Colin here.”
“Then he can keep us both safe. Please. I wouldn’t be okay with you down there, in the cold, dark, wind-ravished space.”
Erin was grinning. “Fine. I’ll go grab my laptop and try and get some work done while we still have the internet.”
“Solid plan.”
Erin disappeared back down to the guesthouse and Parker pulled out the Crock-Pot, a pork roast that had been on sale that week, and followed a five-ingredient recipe Nora had given her. She was putting the lid on when Colin knocked on the front door.
“You don’t have to knock,” she told him.
Scout lifted his head long enough to see who it was and went back to his nap.
“I put the cans by the generator.”
He walked over to the kitchen sink and washed his hands.
“I told Erin to come up and join us. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.”
She paused in the middle of the kitchen and looked up at the ceiling. “I didn’t hear the gate.”
He grabbed a towel and dried his hands. “When I came in?”
“Yeah. Did it open like normal?”
“I didn’t notice any problem.”
One more thing to look into once the wind stopped.
Erin rapped on the front door. When Parker pulled it open, she gave her the same line she’d given to Colin. “Just come in.”
Once they were both in the kitchen chatting, Parker went over to the refrigerator. “I have a roast cooking for dinner, but who wants lunch?”
Before long, she and Erin had tossed a salad and made turkey sandwiches with the leftovers Nora had sent home with Parker.
Colin turned on some music, and it was like a post-Thanksgiving party without pie.
They were finishing their lunch, not quite as stuffed as the day before. “So what are we going to do while we’re waiting for the sky to fall?” Colin asked.
“I should probably get some work done,” Erin told them.
“That sounds boring,” Parker teased. “How about a board game?”
Erin shrugged and Colin pointed at a couple of boxes of Christmas decorations that Mallory had pulled down the day before. “What are those?” he asked.
“Two of the million boxes of decorations we have for the house.”
“A million, huh?” he asked.
“My parents loved the holidays.”
He pushed back from the table. “A million boxes must require some serious effort to put up.”
“You want to help me decorate the house?”
Colin smiled at her. “I suck at Monopoly.”
Next thing Parker knew, Colin was schlepping decorations from the garage up into the house, and the place became a holiday explosion.
Parker pointed where the decorations went while the three of them transformed the house for the season.
At one point, once the garland was up on the walls and white lights were adding that extra spark, Parker felt her throat thicken with emotion. Memories of her parents working together to make the house festive surfaced.
Colin came beside her and placed an arm over her shoulders. “You okay?”
“It looks beautiful. My parents would approve.”
He kissed the top of her head. “It has to be hard without them.”
“This is the third Christmas without them. The first we didn’t bother with anything. Last year we put up a few decorations and forced ourselves to celebrate at least a little.”
“I’m sure your parents would want you to move forward.”
She leaned into Colin’s side. “They would.”
Erin called out from the living room. “Why are we not listening to Christmas carols?”
Parker smiled. “Good suggestion.”
Hours later, when the sun was setting, the winds picked up as they often did at dusk. Deep into the twelve days of Christmas, with all of them singing in their own key, the power blipped once before completely cutting out.
“Oh, man!”
Colin moved to the window, looked out.
“Let’s give it a few minutes, see if it pops back on,” Parker suggested.
“I’ll open the wine,” Erin said.
Dinner still had another hour, and since the house ran completely on electricity and not gas, they would have to run the generator if they wanted to eat.
“That’s pretty handy,” Erin told her when Colin went outside twenty minutes later to fire up the generator.
“So is he,” Parker said before Colin returned. “It could be really easy to start depending on him.”
Erin huffed. “Be careful with that.”
“Depending on him?”
“Yeah—”
Colin walking back in with his cell phone in his hand interrupted Erin. “Looks like a transformer blew. They’re estimating six hours before the power is back on.”
“Good thing you filled the gas cans.”
Colin went over to the stereo and turned their entertainment back on.
Parker grabbed the master key ring to the house, the one that held every key for every lock on the property and headed for the front door.
“Where are you going?” Erin asked.
“I have to turn off power to the gate and open it. All these blips screw it up. I don’t want it shutting on Mallory or Austin’s cars when they come in.”
Colin opened his palm. “Give those to me.”
“I can . . .”
“And take my man card? I don’t think so. Pour yourselves some wine and talk about me when I’m gone.”
She smiled and lifted her lips to his.
He winked after he kissed her, and called the dog. “C’mon, Scout. Keep me company.”
After he walked out the door, Erin turned to her and said, “I didn’t know men like that existed.”
“Me either.”
Austin and Mallory both walked in the door after nine, ate dinner, and went to bed.
Erin excused herself to the guest room, and Colin finally found some alone time with Parker.
“Alone at last.”
They curled up on the couch, full from dinner and warm from the wine. The generator still ran, the noise hummed behind the music.
Parker tapped her fingers on his thigh. “What should we do?” she asked, a lift in her voice.
“Spin the bottle or three minutes in the closet are my best games.”
“You need more than two people to play spin the bottle.”
Colin stopped her hand and brought it to his lips. “Three minutes in the closet it is.”
She leaned her head back on his arms and he took the offering of her lips.
Kissing her was becoming an addiction he was fast learning he couldn’t do without. They started out lazy . . . a slow languishing of lips and tongues until he felt Parker’s hand land just shy of his groin while she repositioned herself.
Colin pulled her up against him and captured her sexy little hand before she could move it away.
“You’re bad.”
He nodded. “You found my fault.”
He pressed her hand dangerously close to his erection and watched her eyes widen.
“Colin, I . . .” She looked away, her palm squeezed his hip. “I’ve never done anything in this house. With a man . . .”
It took a second for her words to catch up to his brain. “What about a woman?” he teased to try and ease what he felt were her nerves speaking for her.
His goal was achieved with her laughter. “It’s just that, Austin and Mallory are in the other room, Erin . . .”
“You don’t have to explain, Parker. I understand.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I took over my parents’ bedroom, so that just feels weird.”
He placed a finger over her lips. Sure, he was disappointed, but he completely understood. “Shhh. Let’s just make out on the couch,” he said before kissing her again.
Parker pulled away, smiled. And the fist next to his goods relaxed and grazed his cock. “Maybe some heavy petting?” she asked.
He pulled her higher on his lap, kept one palm firmly on the cheek of her ass. “Until one of us cries uncle.”
The sweetest torture of his life commenced and ended with an awkward walk to his car an hour later. He placed the cold water bottle she’d given him for the drive home between his legs to calm his hormones and pulled out of her driveway.
He drove through the neighborhood, where not even the streetlights shined.
It was dark and unsettling. In neighborhoods where the houses were closer together, power outages didn’t feel so empty. But out here in the middle space between big cities and rural countryside, it was like a dark vastness of quiet. It was then Colin understood Parker’s father’s desire for fences and gates, shotguns, and “No Trespassing” signs. It wasn’t that he felt threatened, but he didn’t want some opportunistic criminal to see a dark house at the end of the road and take advantage.
It was also at that point he was happy that his little Annie Oakley could be a serious ballbuster when she wanted to be.
But he still worried.
The problem with the big box stores is you go in to get one thing, leave with twenty . . . and forget the one thing you went in for. But Parker was learning to buy in bulk.
She was on her third trip up the stairs with armloads of groceries when Erin poked her head into the garage. “Want some help?”
“Absolutely.”
“So how is the world of editing?” Parker asked while pivoting around the kitchen putting groceries away.
“Strangely satisfying. I’m reading more books than I have in years.”
“I don’t remember the last time I read for pleasure. It’s always school or how-to manuals on fixing something here.” She shuffled through the produce, putting it away and tossing stuff that was growing the wrong shade of green.
“I have some great recommendations once your time frees up.”
She peeked around the open door of the refrigerator to look at her. “Like that is ever going to happen.” They’d spent three days power washing patios, furniture, and swimming pools.
Scout let out a bark while staring out the sliding glass door.
Parker stopped what she was doing to investigate. Her eye traveled to the far end of the property. The last of the heavy-machine drivers was climbing on the back of his loader. The men who worked directly for the county had all left. It wasn’t uncommon for the subcontracted men to stay behind to oil their rigs and repair any issues before they left for the day. “What’s got you excited?” She reached down to pet the dog.
He barked again.
One of the large oak trees at the bottom of the driveway cut off her view from a large section of the property, the part that once corralled the horses when they had them. After the fire, there wasn’t anything left of the fences to contain anything. Parker opened the door and Scout darted out.
“Hey!”
He ignored her and ran off.
“What is it?” Erin asked.
Parker walked to the far end of the patio and spotted a small convertible parked in the center of the field away from where the construction workers parked. Then she saw another dog running around.
What she didn’t see was the person who drove the car in.
It wasn’t completely uncommon for one of the office engineers to make an appearance, but most of the time they came with one of Colin’s people in the middle of the workday. Not after everyone else had left for the day.
“I don’t know,” Parker told her. “I’ll go find out.”
She trekked down the stairs and driveway and cut across the yard. The closer she got to the car, she was able to make it out. A Mercedes. Not the kind of car anyone had driven in before.
Scout had run up on the hill outside of the chain-link fenced portion of the property. The gates had been open since construction had started. No need to shut them when no one other than her family and Colin’s workforce walked up there.
Scout and another dog were dancing around each other, playing. At the top of the hill stood a man she didn’t recognize. She made it halfway up before the man turned, smiled, and waved.
“Hello,” she greeted who she assumed was a county employee.
He peered over the work in progress, hands on his hips. “This is some project.”
That sounded odd.
“Yeah, it is.”
“Looks like they’re expecting some serious flooding.”
Okay, not an employee. Parker’s guard went up.
“They’re not taking any chances.”
The dogs started barking, and it looked like Scout was getting a little too friendly with his companion.
“That your dog?” the man asked.
“Yeah.”
“Is he fixed? Cuz I breed mine. I wouldn’t want any mutts.”
Parker’s jaw dropped. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
“Oh, I’m one of your neighbors, Bill . . . I live down the street. I thought I’d drive up here and take a look.”
Her heart rate started to pick up speed. “Did you miss the ‘No Trespassing’ signs . . . all five of them?”
The blank look on his face suggested he didn’t get it. “I wanted to see what the big deal was.”
By now Scout had jumped on the back of Bill’s dog that kept trying to sit down to avoid being violated.
“Let me get this right. You drove past the ‘No Trespassing’ signs, pulled your car in the middle of my yard, parked . . . let your dog out, and walked around like you had the right. Did I get that straight?” Her hands shook with anger. Where was her shotgun when she needed it?
He had the nerve to look offended. “I’m your neighbor.”
“What’s my name?” she yelled the question at him.
“Sinclair, I think.”
She pointed down the drive. “Get the hell off my property.”
“Excuse me?”
“Now!”
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Too late.”
The man finally got the hint and started to walk back to his car. He called his dog, who shook off Scout and trotted with her owner.
He slid behind the wheel and started his car while glaring.
“Don’t come up here again.”
No apology left Bill’s lips.
For good measure, Parker placed a hand on Scout’s head. “By the way, my dog isn’t fixed.” A complete and total lie, but the horror on the man’s face was worth it.
She waited until his car left the property before marching back up to the house.
Erin met her at the door. “What was that all about?”
Anger fueled her as she walked into her bedroom and dropped to her hands and knees. “Son of a bitch thought he could just come in here. Brings his dog and has the fucking nerve to ask if my dog is fixed? Who the hell?” She grabbed the shotgun under her bed, checked to make sure it was loaded. It was, she knew, but the habit was there.
