Page 28 of The Millionaire's Mechanic

The snow had piled up overnight. It stood at least three and a half feet deep, and it was getting deeper with every minute. The dreaded white stuff was coming down fast and hard.

“I checked the weather report.” Georgia joined him at the window. “The forecast said we can expect another four feet at least.”

He groaned aloud. “But I checked the report before we came. We weren’t supposed to get more than a few inches, a foot tops.”

She grimaced. “I guess it changed because now it says we’re in pre-blizzard conditions.

Rainer swore under his breath. His forehead hit the cold glass of the window. “Fuck. I hate the snow.”

Georgia nudged him gently. “At least we don’t have anywhere to be, right?”

“Yeah.” He laughed, giving the snow a dirty look. “I guess our plans haven’t changed much.”

“C’mon.” Georgia touched his arm before tossing the kitchen towel over her shoulder. “I’ll make you eggs and latkes.”

He blinked before remembering that her foster dad was Jewish. His stomach rumbled. “Throw in some bacon and you have a deal.”

The latkes were first-rate, far superior to hash browns. But aside from Georgia herself, the latkes were the only bright spots in his day.

The snow kept coming. By nightfall, it had piled up so high they couldn’t open the doors.

But still, he didn’t worry for their safety when it kept snowing the next day, or even the day after that. Not until the power went out.

CHAPTERTHIRTEEN

“How does it look?” Rainer called out the window.

The floor of the master bedroom was a mess, a thick layer of snow turning to slush on the carpet. But he didn’t care about that. He was worried about Georgia’s precarious balance on the roof just above him.

The power had cut out sometime during the night. He and Georgia had woken up to a freezing house. Georgia had been sure that they could simply clean off the solar panels to get the power back. They had scoured the house and garage for a ladder, without success. As it turned out, the snow had piled high enough for her to climb up without one.

Rainer hadn’t wanted her to go up alone, but she had pointed out that it made little sense for them both to do it. Plus, she was lighter and strong enough to muscle her way through whatever hurdles climbing around up there might entail.

But she had been out there too long. The melodic swear that filtered down a moment later confirmed his gut feeling. There was a problem.

More snow falling into the room signaled her return. Rainer caught Georgia as she scrambled inside.

“I have bad news,” she said, working off the ski gloves. “The solar panels themselves are not the problem. It’s the thing they feed the power into—the controller that processes the energy was damaged somehow. I think the snow broke a branch off from that tree up against the side of the house. It busted the converter box on the way down. I can’t make it work without a replacement.”

Rainer swore, shoving the excess snow falling in through the window back outside before forcing the sash closed with brute force. “Something tells me Garret doesn’t have a spare lying around.”

Georgia raised her hands, rubbing them together to warm them up. “I don’t think that’s the sort of thing people keep spares of. A specialized technician will have to come out to install a new one.”

“Who knows when that will be,” he murmured, taking her hands and rubbing them between his much larger ones. They had already checked the phone lines. Whatever cell tower was servicing this corner of the mountain must have gotten knocked out.

“Damn, your fingers are frozen. Those gloves must be crap. I’m sorry.”

He blew on her fingers to warm them up.

Her mouth pulled down in chagrin. “I didn’t have enough dexterity wearing them. They were too thick…so I took them off.”

His mouth tightened. “You could have fallen off the roof.” The gloves had sticky pads that should have helped give her hands traction.

Smirking, she gestured to the window and its partially obscured view. “All this snow would have broken my fall.”

“Not funny,” he groused.

Rainer scrubbed his hair roughly with his hand. But he wasn’t a CEO for nothing. “All right, we have to take stock. The temperature inside the house is going to keep dropping. We’ll have to hole up in a smaller space, in one of the rooms with a fireplace.”

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