We both froze.
I stepped closer to Knox just as he pulled me in. “What was that?”
“It must be getting bad out there.”
We both stared at the shuttered window as if we could see outside of it. “The storm just started. There’s no way we’re at theworst of it yet.” Even a fast-moving storm took hours, and they normally slowed as they hit land.
“If this isn’t the worst of it, then prepare for it to get bad,” Knox said.
I hid my eye-roll. What was I doing kissing a man who didn’t even understand storm systems? Clearly, I’d lost my mind for a moment there. It was the muscles. They clouded my brain. That and the raging storm outside, the loss of my boat, and all the other shit.
The ground shook outside the cabin as a terrible crash rattled the windows. Our overhead lights flickered twice.
My eyes widened, but Knox held me tightly. “Sounds like we’ve got a tree down.”
“The generator was good. Right?”
He nodded. “As long as a tree doesn’t land on it, we should be good.”
“Great,” I said, not totally feeling it. Storms—even big ones—didn’t normally scare me, but it’s also not like life had been going my way lately.
The room dropped into darkness.
“Shit,” Knox said as we stared at the light, waiting for it to come back on.
It didn’t.
I grabbed his shirt. “I thought you said the generator was working?”
“It is, but someone has to go turn it on.” We waited another full minute, which is a long damn time when you’re standing next to a hot guy with a mini hurricane happening a few feet away.
“They’re not coming back on.” It sounded obvious, but someone had to say it.
Knox shook his head. “I’m going out. Turn off everything you can in here so we don’t draw too big of a charge when I flip the switch.”
“Are you going to take your shirt off again?” I asked, the words sticky in my mouth.
It didn’t matter. By the time I finished my question, Knox already had his shirt over his head. “It’s raining worse now. Stay inside. I’ll be right back.”
Good thing he volunteered because I was not going out there in the storm, even for a generator. I waited until Knox pushed his way outside, the door heavy as the wind battered it from the other side, and then raced to the kitchen to unplug a simple single-cup coffee maker and flick off every visible light switch.
“Ahhh!” I yelped as the gray tabby I’d rescued forgot how she owed me her life, as she jumped at me from the top of the short refrigerator. “How the hell did you get up there?”
Her claws dug into my shoulder as she clung to me for safety. I held her and bit my lip as her claws sank deeper into my skin when the fridge clicked to life.
The cabin’s front door smashed against the wall, and Knox ran into the room. “Are you okay?” he asked, his gaze scanning the room, looking like he wanted to take on someone in hand-to-hand combat.
I pointed at the tabby. “She’s scared.”
“She’s probably flea-ridden.”
Ugh. Why was it that every time I had good feelings about this man, he opened his mouth and ruined them? “You cannot talk that way about Princess Penelope.”
“Emerson, you don’t even know if she’s a girl, and we have bigger problems.”
I walked to him, getting a better view of his naked chest before he rubbed off the water droplets with a small towel from the kitchen and redressed himself. “The storm?”
“That and Rex taking a liking to you.”
