They went in opposite directions. Unfortunately, she was one gust too late for the pool furniture. Three out of the six chairs were already in the water.

She’d lugged one of the chairs out of the pool by the time Colin found her.

“I’m going to the gas station to fill two cans.”

The ash flying through the air made it hard to keep her eyes open. “Thank you.”

“Leave this, I’ll get it when I get back.”

“I got it.”

“Parker.”

She smiled at him, waved him along. “Thanks for the gasoline.”

It took less than half an hour to drag everything out of the pool and tie it all together to keep it from taking a second swim. She turned off the pool pump to save the thing from overheating when it went on. Her weekend workload just tripled. And since both Austin and Mallory were at their part-time jobs, she had only herself to depend on. She blinked with the thought. And maybe Colin.

Erin met her halfway up the steps to the house. “This is crazy.”

“Welcome to my life. Come inside.”

Scout met them at the door.

“Where is everyone?” Erin asked.

“Work. Colin went to fill the gas cans for the generator. We lose power a lot when it’s this bad,” she explained. “You should take the guest room if that happens.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“I insist. The noise alone in that place with the wind this crazy will even scare Freddy Krueger. It gets cold in the guesthouse without power to run the heater this time of year.” The main house had three fireplaces and a generator if needed. The guesthouse didn’t.

The wind rattled the windows as if it were emphasizing her point. “Besides, I’m not a superfan of being alone when it’s like this.” Even though the fire hadn’t hit when the wind was this bad, thank God, the reality was, it could. Even a house fire in these conditions could spread into a neighborhood disaster. She realized her fears may be edging on PTSD, but Parker didn’t care. The wind was not her friend.

“You’ll have Colin here.”

“Then he can keep us both safe. Please. I wouldn’t be okay with you down there, in the cold, dark, wind-ravished space.”

Erin was grinning. “Fine. I’ll go grab my laptop and try and get some work done while we still have the internet.”

“Solid plan.”

Erin disappeared back down to the guesthouse and Parker pulled out the Crock-Pot, a pork roast that had been on sale that week, and followed a five-ingredient recipe Nora had given her. She was putting the lid on when Colin knocked on the front door.

“You don’t have to knock,” she told him.

Scout lifted his head long enough to see who it was and went back to his nap.

“I put the cans by the generator.”

He walked over to the kitchen sink and washed his hands.

“I told Erin to come up and join us. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not.”

She paused in the middle of the kitchen and looked up at the ceiling. “I didn’t hear the gate.”

He grabbed a towel and dried his hands. “When I came in?”

“Yeah. Did it open like normal?”

“I didn’t notice any problem.”

One more thing to look into once the wind stopped.

Erin rapped on the front door. When Parker pulled it open, she gave her the same line she’d given to Colin. “Just come in.”

Once they were both in the kitchen chatting, Parker went over to the refrigerator. “I have a roast cooking for dinner, but who wants lunch?”

Before long, she and Erin had tossed a salad and made turkey sandwiches with the leftovers Nora had sent home with Parker.

Colin turned on some music, and it was like a post-Thanksgiving party without pie.

They were finishing their lunch, not quite as stuffed as the day before. “So what are we going to do while we’re waiting for the sky to fall?” Colin asked.

“I should probably get some work done,” Erin told them.

“That sounds boring,” Parker teased. “How about a board game?”

Erin shrugged and Colin pointed at a couple of boxes of Christmas decorations that Mallory had pulled down the day before. “What are those?” he asked.

“Two of the million boxes of decorations we have for the house.”

“A million, huh?” he asked.

“My parents loved the holidays.”

He pushed back from the table. “A million boxes must require some serious effort to put up.”

“You want to help me decorate the house?”

Colin smiled at her. “I suck at Monopoly.”

Next thing Parker knew, Colin was schlepping decorations from the garage up into the house, and the place became a holiday explosion.

Parker pointed where the decorations went while the three of them transformed the house for the season.

At one point, once the garland was up on the walls and white lights were adding that extra spark, Parker felt her throat thicken with emotion. Memories of her parents working together to make the house festive surfaced.

Colin came beside her and placed an arm over her shoulders. “You okay?”

“It looks beautiful. My parents would approve.”

He kissed the top of her head. “It has to be hard without them.”

“This is the third Christmas without them. The first we didn’t bother with anything. Last year we put up a few decorations and forced ourselves to celebrate at least a little.”

“I’m sure your parents would want you to move forward.”

She leaned into Colin’s side. “They would.”

Erin called out from the living room. “Why are we not listening to Christmas carols?”

Parker smiled. “Good suggestion.”

Hours later, when the sun was setting, the winds picked up as they often did at dusk. Deep into the twelve days of Christmas, with all of them singing in their own key, the power blipped once before completely cutting out.

“Oh, man!”

Colin moved to the window, looked out.

“Let’s give it a few minutes, see if it pops back on,” Parker suggested.

“I’ll open the wine,” Erin said.

Dinner still had another hour, and since the house ran completely on electricity and not gas, they would have to run the generator if they wanted to eat.

“That’s pretty handy,” Erin told her when Colin went outside twenty minutes later to fire up the generator.

“So is he,” Parker said before Colin returned. “It could be really easy to start depending on him.”

Erin huffed. “Be careful with that.”

“Depending on him?”

“Yeah—”

Colin walking back in with his cell phone in his hand interrupted Erin. “Looks like a transformer blew. They’re estimating six hours before the power is back on.”

“Good thing you filled the gas cans.”

Colin went over to the stereo and turned their entertainment back on.

Parker grabbed the master key ring to the house, the one that held every key for every lock on the property and headed for the front door.

“Where are you going?” Erin asked.

“I have to turn off power to the gate and open it. All these blips screw it up. I don’t want it shutting on Mallory or Austin’s cars when they come in.”