“Hey, Dad. When you were prowling around outside, did you happen to notice where the breaker box was? Asking for a friend.”
A little silence, during which he probably stifled an “I told you so.”
“So are you sitting there in the pitch dark?” He sounded amused.
Her dad was smart.
“I have my lantern. And the glow of my cell phone. And the moonlight is rather picturesque on these hardwood floors. It’s illuminating all the scratches.” She aimed the lantern beam at the back wall and made a shadow dog with her hand. That was a mistake. In this light it looked more like the Loch Ness monster than a dog and there were enough unidentifiable shadows as it was.
“That house has a fuse box, not a breaker box. It’s outside behind that little round door. You got any fuses handy?”
“Sure, Dad, I got a whole box full of fuses right here.”
“Youdo?” Her dad sounded so touched and thrilled she was instantly filled with remorse.
“Sorry, Dad. I shouldn’t tease you like that. Do fuses evencomein boxes? Can you order them with an app?”
He snorted. “Do you have lights in the other parts of the house?”
Ava cast her gaze up the stairs. The entire flight was so dark she couldn’t distinguish one step from another from where she sat. The light switch at the top might as well be down a deep, dark well. Moonlight threw shivering shadows of pine boughs against the wall, thanks to the big windows.
“Mmm, yeah,” she said vaguely. “I think so.”
“What were you doing when you blew the fuse?”
“Um... listening to music and heating something up in the microwave.” It wasn’t a total lie, but she crossed her fingers. “I think the refrigerator is on that fuse, too, though I don’t have too much stuff in there that can go bad.”
“You know how to get into the basement?”
She hesitated.
“Yep.”
“You can do it, pumpkin. Maybe the groundskeeper has a fuse.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
She might be a grown woman, but “you can do it pumpkin” would never lose its motivating power, and that’s why she’d called him instead of Googling.
She hooked the lantern over her arm and headed out the door into the deep dark, down the flagstone path.
Five feet away from Mac’s front door a cloud shifted and Avalon stopped cold and tilted her head back. The half moon hung up there like a neon sign over the door of a heavenly speakeasy. Behind it, a million stars pinned the blue velvet sky up in place.
It was preposterously beautiful and sostrangewhen you really thought about it, that enormous radiant shape in the sky.
Honestly, it was so dumbfoundingly gorgeous in the country all at once it felt like insanity to live anywhere else.
She took in a long, long breath for courage. To attempt to settle her hammering heart.
Exhaled.
She raised her hand to rap on the door.
It flew open before her knuckles even brushed it. She was treated to a backlit glimpse of pillow-rumpled hair, a lamplight-burnished torso partitioned in muscles as satiny and distinct as quadrants on a Hershey bar, low-clinging red boxers, and a jaw shadowed in stubble.
The impact was a bit like taking a mallet to the head. Her ears literally rang from the sheer sensory input.
“Hold out your hand, Ava.” His voice was gruff from sleep.
