“Yes.”
He turned away from me and headed down the stairs. “No worries, Rach.”
No? So why was I suddenly worrying even more? “Kel?”
“I’ll be right back.”
“But…” I bit my lip, trying hard not to say, “Please don’t leave me out here.”
Still, it must have been all over my face, because he sighed again and, coming back, pulled his T-shirt off over his head. Handing it to me, he said, “Here.”
I scrambled into it gratefully, my body absorbing his heat, his scent, as the material fell to my mid-thigh. I nearly pressed the material to my face for more of his delicious scent, but I managed to control myself. “What about your sweats?”
“Keeping those on,” he said.
“You’re no fun.”
“Wait here.”
With that, he jogged off the steps and toward the B and B. Which was how I ended up standing there for the longest five minutes of my life.
I know it was five minutes because I counted.
At thirty, a bird squawked so loudly I nearly screamed.
At fifty-five, a squirrel dashed in front of me, chattering, nearly putting me into heart failure.
I got to three hundred twenty before Kellan showed back up. “What took so long?” I demanded, for once unimpressed by his half-naked state.
He held out his empty hands, perplexed and irritated, a rare look for him. “The inn’s locked, too, which is weird, because I was just there.”
“Locked?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought Marilee gave you coffee.”
“Axel did. He told me Marilee’s coffee would burn a hole through my esophagus, and that his was far better, but I wasn’t to tell her.”
“What about the guns? Did you ask about the guns?”
“Gert never let anyone in her place, right?”
“Right.”
“So telling them about the guns she kept there seemed unwise.” He glanced back at Hideaway. “But why is the place locked up tighter than a drum, with no signs of life?”
Feeling very naked, I wrapped my arms around myself. “So I guess it’s true then.”
“What?”
“I’m really in the Twilight Zone. Without underwear. It’s like every bad nightmare I’ve ever had.”
Chapter 9
Locked out. I put my forehead to the front window, caressed at every movement by Kellan’s shirt. “Kel? Remember that time in college when we played Truth or Dare?”
He moved behind me, rattling the front-door handle. “No.”
“Yes, you do. Dot and I dared you to strip naked and run around the perimeter of the house, and you did, and then we locked you out. Remember now?”
He sighed. “Trying hard not to.”
“You banged on the door, bare-ass naked, and then we flipped on the porch light, and all the neighbors came out. Someone took pics, and they ended up on the bulletin board in the coffee shop.”
“I remember,” he said tightly, rattling the window. “Is there a caboose to this story?”
“I was just going to say that suddenly I know how you felt.”
“Are
I grinned.
“Yeah, you did that then, too,” he said, and shook his head.
“Not at you. I didn’t laugh at you.”
“Oh yeah, you did.”
“Okay, I did.” I laughed now, too. I couldn’t help it. He was pretty adorable over there, pouting.
“Damn,” he said softly, his gaze holding mine.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
But it had been something, and I had a feeling, given that he was watching my mouth, that it had to do with my smile. But before I could say anything, he turned away, again rattling the door handle.
Still locked.
“I’m going to break it.”
“You can’t break a door handle,” I said. “You’d have to be Superman.” I had my eyes closed again, my forehead to the window. I was pretending I was on a cruise to…somewhere warm, maybe the Bahamas. Yeah, that worked. With a hot sun and cute waiters carrying trays of goodies like-like
At the sudden sound of wood cracking, I lifted my head.
And then gasped.
Kellan stood there holding the doorknob in his hand, staring at the hole he’d left in the door, looking a little unnerved.
“My God,” I whispered. “How did you-”
“Don’t know.”
“Are you-” His hand was bleeding. “Kellan, are you all right?”
“Fine,” he said tersely, and pushing open the door, he gestured me in.
“Your hand-”
“Just a scratch.”
“The door-”
“Rach, just get inside.”
I crossed the threshold and went directly to the six-pack of water on the coffee table before remembering that I hadn’t been able to open one the night before.
Kellan reached past me, tore the first water out and opened it without any effort at all. He handed it to me, looking a little bit sweaty and a whole lot tough.
Wow. He really had it going on. I still didn’t get how I’d never noticed before.
Oh boy. Was I slow, or what?
In the guise of giving myself a minute, I drank half the bottle, then swiped my mouth and stared at him. “You were hit, too,” I said with remarkable calm, given that my heart had just bounced off my other internal organs with the impact of a freight train. “We were both hit, and we were both changed.”
He opened his mouth, but at that exact moment, Marilee-tall and lush and darkly gorgeous in black jeans and boots, and a black beaded leather jacket-appeared in the doorway.
“Morning,” she said, and held out a steaming mug for me, not even blinking at the fact that I wore nothing but Kel’s T-shirt and a towel.
Or that there was a brand-new hole in the door of her dead employer’s private quarters.
She didn’t acknowledge any of that because her eyes had locked on Kellan. Specifically, on the fact that his loose sweats hung low on his hips, and that he wore nothing else on his fabulous, mouth-watering body. She let out a slow smile as she leaned with easy negligence against the jamb, acting like sex on a platter, when only yesterday she’d completely ignored him.
Prelightning.
