Page 13 of Alaskan Blackout
“I made it my business to know as much as possible about Clayton’s life here before I bothered you with questions.” He regretted that he’d been short with her after that kiss.
What if she shut him out completely?
The possibility stung more than he would have anticipated.
“And yet here you are. Bothering me so much I thought it was a good idea to kiss you.”
The dark sarcasm in her voice would have made him chuckle if he didn’t fear how easily he could get caught up in the attraction he felt toward her. Even now, glancing over at her pale profile in the moonlight, made him want to pull her into his arms and finish what they’d started in the parking lot.
“I wasn’t happy to hear the PI we hired pestered you so much that you stopped talking to him altogether.” He hadn’t read the extensive reports word for word, but he did recall that much.
The rhythmic sound of the wipers scraping the windshield was his only answer for a long moment.
“He seemed to think I would be moved to spill all my secrets if I knew he wouldn’t get paid without producing Clay.” She shook her head as the arc of Quinton’s headlights swung toward the narrow driveway that led to her house. “I wasn’t impressed.”
“That’s blatantly untrue. He made his fee structure clear before he began, and he sure as hell collected a check.” Quinton made a mental note to speak with the PI about his tactics as he dodged potholes on the steep gravel embankment. “Are you sure you didn’t want to pick up your truck tonight?”
He regretted not asking her when they left the pizza place, but she’d said earlier that a neighbor worked on the docks and she could catch a ride with him to retrieve it. Scanning the hillside for signs of life now, however, he couldn’t imagine the neighbor resided very close to her.
“No, thank you. I’m wiped after today and Big Mac owes me a few favors.” She straightened in her seat, as if ready to bolt the moment he stopped the SUV.
Regret for how the evening had turned out—with them at odds even after a kiss he would be replaying in his head all night long—weighted his limbs. He put the vehicle into Park as he stopped in front of the saltbox-style two-story with a detached garage.
The place was no-frills simple with no landscaping or outdoor furniture, just a white utilitarian front entrance and four dark windows in the blue frame house. He wondered how she handled the isolation of life in a place like this. Had she sought out this existence because of that damned video? The idea of her feeling like she needed to hide herself away in the Last Frontier State because of some asshat former boyfriend made his blood boil.
“Thank you for having dinner with me.” He unfastened his seat belt at the same time she did, needing to walk her to the door. For more than just safety. But also because he wasn’t ready to say good-night. Not yet.
“I can see myself in,” she told him pointedly, holding up one hand to stop him from accompanying her. “Bad enough that you wrote off my kiss as a mistake because you see me as ‘off-limits.’” She made air quotes around the words. “I might have reached my quota of alpha male nonsense for the day.”
“McKenna, wait.” He hovered between stepping outside of the SUV anyway and doing as she asked. Both things had been drilled into his head as part of being a gentleman.
But the slam of the car door in his face helped him to decide. He heaved a resigned sigh as she rounded the vehicle and withdrew her keys from her bag.
Quinton lowered his window to say good-night through it, keeping the headlights on so she could see her way inside.
When the lock turned for her, she glanced up at him, gave him a little eyeroll as if to communicate that he was being absurd to sit there watching her, then disappeared inside the house.
The moment she vanished from sight an ache panged inside him, his first indication that some dynamic had shifted between them. Stuffing the thought down deep, he headed back to his hotel room, where his laptop and a VPN connection awaited him.
Because right now, he had a cybercriminal to catch.
Two storms were brewing the next day as McKenna unboxed specialty beers to restock the walk-in cooler.
As she shoved six-packs onto the lower shelves, she couldn’t decide which storm was worse. The one predicted for the Aleutian Islands, which was already battering the Cyclone Shack with high-speed gusts of wind, or the one raging inside her as she recalled her evening with Quinton.
That makes you strictly off-limits.
His words after their kiss—a kiss that had been damned good, she believed, even to a man who surely had tons more experience than her—had circled around in her brain all night long. At first, they’d just ticked her off.
She wasn’thisstepsister after all. There was nothing in the world to keep her from kissing him if she wished. Then, later that night, she’d gone from miffed to downright mad. How could Quinton write off that lip-lock because of some inflated sense of loyalty to Clay when he had no relationship with his half brother in the first place?
And seriously, how dare he shut her down as if he hadn’t been sending his fair share of hot looks her way for days? Those eyes of his told her he wanted her. Badly.
Emptying the first box, she moved onto the second. She found her box cutter and sliced through the tape with a little more force than necessary, the pent-up feelings from the night before needing an outlet. Before she could start unloading the contents, the back door blew open with the force of a particularly nasty gust of wind.
“Damned latch,” she muttered as she went to resecure the handle that was on her personal to-do list of fixes that needed to be made around the bar.
Papers from a small workstation swirled around her until she relatched the door. The skirt of her long red dress brushed against her legs, the jersey garment fancier than she normally wore for work, but she’d had a meeting with one of her suppliers earlier in the day. Now, she drew the dead bolt for security’s sake as the cook wouldn’t be coming in today anyhow. McKenna had given her the day off since business would be negligible with the storm blowing in. Experience had taught her that locals were wise enough to stick close to home when low pressure systems rolled close to the islands. The few tourists who might have ventured into the bar on another day would be too spooked by the weather, already dark and gray in the early afternoon.