There had been all sorts of toiletries laid out for him on the countertop, including a basket filled with condoms in varying sizes and colors, which had amused him earlier.
How long had it been since he’d needed a condom?
Too damn long, he knew that much.
Towel around his hips, he stepped into the bedroom just as the lights flickered. Perfect.
The electricity was going to go. Then he could be cold, wet, starving . . . and in the dark.
Another power surge, making the lights dim with an odd hum, and from somewhere below came the sound of a thud and low cry. Dropping the towel, Cooper grabbed his jeans, jamming first one leg and then the other in, hopping as he made his way out into the hallway, still shirtless and barefoot.
Up here at an altitude of sixty-five-hundred feet, daylight didn’t slowly fade, but vanished in the blink of an eye, and today had been no exception. Full darkness had fallen. Any starlight was muted by the heavy snowfall, so the three overhead skylights and the wide range of huge windows in the rooms below were useless.
The lights were flickering nonstop now, offering only a sporadic glow from the wall sconces lined up in the empty hallway. “Hello?”
No answer. Of course not. What had seemed like a beautiful, welcoming house in the daytime suddenly didn’t seem so welcoming. Still, he wasn’t alone, he knew that much. He might be close to a nervous breakdown, but he wasn’t seeing things.
He reached for the banister, just as the lights stopped flickering and went out completely.
“Don’t panic, don’t panic,” Breanne whispered to herself. She’d flown down the stairs and across the hardwood floor at the base of the curved staircase, thankful for the lighting, stingy as it was, because she wasn’t happy in the dark. That went back to the days of too many brothers, and too many times they’d happily tortured her. Once she’d even been locked in a closet and left there by accident.
But she was a grown-up now. “You’re tough,” she said out loud. “You’re impenetrable.” She wondered where Scary But Gorgeous Naked Guy was.
Coming after her.
At the thought, she tripped over her own two feet and went sprawling face-first across the shiny floor.
That’s when the lights went out.
Then, from up above somewhere, she heard footsteps.
For years her brother Danny had been telling her she needed an exercise regime, some sort of weight training to give some tone to her body, and she’d always shuddered at the thought because she and exercise mixed like oil and water.
Now she wished she’d paid attention. Kickboxing, taebo, karate . . . Hell, anything aggressive would have been nice.
In the complete dark, she pushed herself up off the floor, breathing like a lunatic, probably looking like a deer caught in the headlights. Only there were no headlights, nothing but an inky blackness that had her stomach falling to her toes.#p#分页标题#e#
No groom.
No electricity.
Stuck in a house with a naked guy.
Screwed.
She was a self-proclaimed city girl, she reminded herself. Feisty and independent, not easily cowed or intimidated. Give her a scary downtown alley with a drunk leaning against the wall, or an obnoxious construction worker blocking her path any day. Anything but the big, open, scary, dark space where the unknown waited just out of sight. Bears, spiders, coyotes . . .
Oh, and a gorgeous naked guy with a low, sexy voice in her shower.
Maybe people found gorgeous naked men in their showers all the time out here. Maybe it was a way to greet the newcomers. Maybe . . . maybe she was delusional because her day had gone so badly.
She slipped her hand in her pocket and gripped the comforting weight of her cell phone. Normally she’d have mace there as well, but who’d have thought she’d be needing any on her faux honeymoon?
Pulling out the phone, the digital display lit up, providing a tiny, welcome bit of light. No bars, though, which meant no reception. She actually shook the thing, as if that would help. She’d heard about this, of course, and she’d seen the “Can you hear me now?” commercials, but having grown up in a city where people walked around with their cell phones permanently attached to their ears, where there were no mysterious pockets of low reception, she’d never had this problem.
Hell of a day to experience it now.
She should never have gotten out of bed, should never have donned that lacy white wedding dress she’d loved, never gone to the church to marry a man simply because it had seemed like a fun, exciting thing to do, and because her mother had suggested this was her last chance to get it right.
And she sure as hell wished she would stop falling for “I love you” when what a guy really meant was “Do me, and also my laundry, while you’re at it.”