Free Second Chances (Nugget Romance 3) by Stacy Finz

gotten cozy in her flannel pj’s, turned on the computer to do some cyber-sleuthing for a client, and run a little background check on her eccentric neighbor just for the fun of it. Because who knew? Maybe Colin Burke was a high-profile business titan who’d given up fame and fortune to make furniture and couldn’t go to dinner with her for fear someone might recognize him.
    Yeah, right.
    That’s when the lights started to flicker off and the rest of the power went dead. Which meant no heat.
    Now she’d have to go outside in the snow to check the circuit box. Her mom had left on Sunday afternoon, missing the storm by less than twenty-four hours. Harlee wished she was still here. Being alone in the pitch-black woods gave her the creeps. She came down the steep loft stairs on her butt, afraid she’d fall down and break her neck. In the front hall, she found her boots, struggled to put them on in the dark, grabbed her jacket, and felt her way into the garage, where she’d left the flashlight. After fumbling around, she found the Maglite next to the hot-water heater, clicked it on, and went in search of the breaker panel.
    Although she’d seen her father come out here many times, she hadn’t exactly paid attention to what he did with the switches. As an experiment she slid one breaker off and on again. Nothing happened. She tried a few others to no avail, warming her hands inside her pockets to keep them from turning to ice. Once they no longer felt numb, she flicked all the switches at once. Still nothing.
    Crap. It was a real outage. She went back inside the house, shaking the snow from her jacket, planning to build a fire, when the phone rang.
    “You okay?” Colin’s voice came reassuringly across the line.
    “Did you lose your power too?” she asked.
    “Yeah, but I have a backup generator. How ’bout you?”
    “Uh . . . not that I know of,” Harlee said. “I’m surprised the phone’s still working.”
    “It probably won’t for long. What are you doing for heat?”
    “I was just about to—” Damn .
    “Harlee, what’s wrong?”
    “My flashlight just went out.” She opened up the Maglite and wacked the batteries, but it still didn’t work.
    “I’ll come over and get you.” He hung up before she could tell him to stay home, where it was safe and warm.
    She could’ve made do, even lit a fire in the dark, but she’d be happy for the company. With the wind howling and the tall pines swaying like they could snap in half, the storm was a little scary. On the couch, she wrapped herself in a throw blanket and waited for his truck lights to stream through her front window.
    When she heard the rumble of an engine come down the hill, Harlee opened the door. With the plow attached to Colin’s truck he cleared the driveway, parked in front, and jumped out of the cab as Max came bounding into the house.
    “Hey, boy.” Harlee grabbed the dog around the neck and gave him a kiss on the head.
    “You ready to go?” Colin asked, flashing his big-beam flashlight and eyeing her pajamas. She still had on her snow boots.
    “We’re going to your place?” She’d assumed he would come build her fire, sit for a while, and go home.
    “I have power. You don’t.”
    “Okay.” It made sense. “Let me borrow your light to pack a few things.”
    He and Max made themselves at home on her couch while she went into the bedroom. She emerged fifteen minutes later with a satchel and cosmetics case.
    He cocked his brows.
    “What?” she said defensively. “I have a nighttime regimen.”
    “Does that include a coat?” He continued to goggle at her pajamas. She checked to make sure a button hadn’t come undone.
    “I’ll get it,” she said, leaving her bags in the entryway while she grabbed the jacket she’d hung in the mudroom after jiggering with the circuit box, and locked the back door.
    When she came back, he’d already loaded her luggage into the truck along with Max. He helped her into the passenger seat