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she went to the thermostat and tried to turn on the furnace, only to discover that there was no electricity. Again.
    She moaned. Well, wasn’t this just the berries, she thought gnashing her teeth. Infuriated, she went to the fireplace, where she’d laid a fire the night before and searched for matches. Then she remembered that she’d used up the last one and hadn’t thought to ask Hollister for the loan of a pack. Not that they’d have done much good. She didn’t have any wood except what was in the fireplace. Nobody had cut any more.
    She sat down on the sofa and burst into tears. Her whole life seemed to be falling apart.
    The knock on the door came as a shock. She stared at it, frowning because it was barely dawn. Could it be one of the men? She went to it, hesitating because she was in her pajamas and didn’t have a robe handy. She opened the door just a crack and found a familiar hard, mustached face.
    Her heart jumped, and the light that came into her face seemed to paralyze the man on the porch for a split second. He studied what he could see of her with a faint twinkle in his own eyes.
    “Your generator’s down again,” he said.
    “Yes, I noticed. How did you know?”
    “I wanted to see if my jury-rigging was going to hold since the temperature dropped so much last night,” he said with a curious inflection that made her suspicious.
    “Did you?”
    “I can’t fix it without the proper supplies, anyway,” he said impatiently. “So I guess that being the case, you and Blake had better come home with me until this weather lets up.”
    Her heart ran away. She had doubts about it, and she wanted to ask more questions about that generator because he did look suspicious. But his dark eyes had found hers, and she couldn’t quite look away from them.
    “Come…home with you?” she faltered.
    “Mmm-hmm,” he murmured, as oblivious to what they were saying as she was. She was pretty even without makeup, and her gray eyes were oddly welcoming.
    “Would you…like some coffee?” she asked, without realizing that if she didn’t have any power, she certainly couldn’t make any.
    “Sure,” he replied.
    She opened the door, moving back, and she flushed scarlet when he came in the door and got a good look at her pajama-clad, barefoot figure.
    “Oh,” she exclaimed, pausing while she tried to decide what to do.
    His dark eyes raked over hers, and there was a faint flush high on his cheekbones.
    “I…I’d better get something on,” she began.
    “You better had,” he agreed.
    But she couldn’t seem to convince her legs because they wouldn’t move. She stood helplessly, feeling her breasts swell, feeling her heartbeat shaking the low V of the pajama top so that he had to be able to see it. In fact, his eyes had dropped there and narrowed as he looked, and that flush on his cheekbones that was so puzzling got even darker.
    Her lips parted. No, it wouldn’t work. She was afraid to go with him, afraid of what was happening. “Blake and I…had better stay here,” she said huskily. “But thanks anyway.”
    Her breath stopped as he suddenly bent and lifted her in his hard arms, carrying her straight back to her bedroom. His booted heel caught the door and slammed it. He put her down then, slowly, with her back to the door.
    “What are you afraid of?” he asked quietly.
    She felt the cold door at her back and the even colder floor under her feet, but her body was blazing with sensation as he paused just a foot away. “You,” she confessed.
    His dark eyes went over her like hands, fascinated, intent. “I guess that should flatter me?”
    She moved restlessly under the pressure of his black stare. “You’ve been married,” she said hesitantly. “So have I, but only for a few months, and I haven’t dated very much since Blake was born.”
    That surprised him, although with what he was learning about her, it shouldn’t have. He tilted his hat back, watching her face. “No sex?” he asked