Page 17 of Alaskan Blackout
As she hurried away to retrieve them, Quinton tried his best not to envision himself sharing a blanket with McKenna before the night was through. That wouldn’t happen, of course. He couldn’t allow something like that to happen.
And yet, if the temperature really did drop significantly in the house with no power, would they have any choice?
While the storm raged on outside, McKenna reread the directions for her inhaler, using a small flashlight to see the tiny print from the drug insert she kept in the medicine cabinet upstairs. But the instructions for taking the prescription were just as she remembered. She wasn’t supposed to use any more for four to six hours after the previous dose.
Tell that to her burning lungs. Or the thready panic that had gone through her at the thought of something happening to Clayton’s boat while theUn-Reelwas under her care. Had she followed all the right safety precautions when she’d left it last time? For that matter, had she secured the bar well enough? The house? Clayton had allowed her to step into the life he’d made here, and she couldn’t bear the idea of being responsible for damage to any of it.
Now, shoving the paper back into the old-fashioned mirrored cabinet, McKenna told herself to get a grip. She needed to calm down first and foremost if she wanted to get her respiration under control. She closed the door of the medicine cabinet and exited the bathroom to retrieve quilts from a linen closet at the top of the staircase.
Blankets she would be using side by side with Quinton Kingsley. In a darkened house. While they rode out the storm together.
A small throb of excitement tripped through her, even though she shouldn’t want anything to do with the man coaxing a blaze from the hearth downstairs.
He’d rebuffed her after their kiss for one thing.
For another, he was a Kingsley. Enemy to Clayton and therefore no friend to her. Except it wasn’t easy to remember that when Quinton did kind things like help Julie Weatherspoon recoup her lost funds or made sure McKenna got home safely during a blackout.
Or promised to make her ex-boyfriend pay for the vile way he’d filmed her without her knowledge or consent.
That Quinton wanted to help her heal that wound melted her heart. What woman wouldn’t be romanced by a man ready to take down the villains in her life?
She paused before descending the steps again, taking a moment to breathe in the scent of fragrant cedar logs as they burned. The orange glow from the flames was visible even on the second floor, reminding her how dark it had grown outside from the storm.
Right now, it felt like they were all alone in the world with the unnatural dark that had fallen, the wind roaring around the house and the rains battering the windows from every angle depending on the gusts. Then, in the middle of all the noise from the storm, she could hear Quinton’s voice float up from downstairs as he crooned encouragement to her dog, telling Loki he was a very good and brave boy.
Her breath hitched in her throat as she listened, awareness heating her body at the thought of spending more time with Quinton one-on-one. A moment later she realized that when her breath caught in her throat it didn’t burn.
Because her inhales and exhales had quieted. Her respiration close to normal. Was it the effects of the inhaler finally kicking in almost an hour after she’d taken it?
Or could there be an inverse relationship between her anxiety and her hunger to touch and taste the man downstairs?
Ludicrous, she chastised herself. That made zero sense. And this was probably her brain doing serious mental gymnastics to justify what she really wanted—a hot and sexy night with Quinton Kingsley.
Another gust of wind rattled something outside the house before a thumping noise against the exterior made her jump. McKenna rushed down the steps, hugging the blankets to her chest at the same moment Quinton appeared in the hallway to look up toward her.
“You okay?” he asked, his dark eyebrows knitting together at whatever expression he saw on her face.
Her lungs burned again, her airway closing at the thought of the severe weather wrecking the house that Clay had left in her care.
“It sounds like the siding is peeling off the walls outside,” she managed between ragged inhales as Quinton took the blankets from her. The words burned. Her airway tightened. Resentment at her condition made her eyes sting. “I hate this.”
“The storm?” he asked, tucking her under his free arm and guiding her toward the living room, where he’d pulled the small gray sectional closer to the hearth.
She didn’t protest him shepherding her around. Maybe a piece of her appreciated that anchor at a time where it felt like she was coming unmoored. She’d worked hard to carve out a life for herself here after she’d left San Francisco and she couldn’t afford to let Mother Nature rip it out from under her.
“No.” She shook her head, just that one word taking too much air. “Stress asthma again,” she clarified, prodding aside Freya from the middle couch cushion so that she could take a seat there instead. “Hate that I can’t control it.”
“That only makes you human like the rest of us,” he observed dryly, shaking out one of the wool blankets she’d brought and draping the heavy blue fabric over her lap.
Then, taking the seat beside her, he dragged a red quilt over his own legs. Now they sat just inches away from one another. Her pulse quickened.
But her lungs eased a bit more, and she wondered if it had to do with that anchoring sensation Quinton inspired.
Definitely not!her inner critic admonished. It just helped to sit down and stop thinking about worst-case scenarios.
“But I guide tourists through the Alaskan wilderness,” she explained softly, unwilling to tax her lungs to speak too much. “It ticks me off that a storm like this one—the same kind of low pressure event that happens all the time in this part of the world—is sending me into an asthma attack.”
In the quiet moments that followed her admission, the fire crackled and spit a shower of orange sparks onto the flameproof mat in front of it. Loki leaped up onto the couch beside her then turned not just once, not twice, but three times before finding a perfect spot to lie next to her. He settled into a sleepy dog lump and seemed to fall into a snooze state almost immediately.