A Warm Heart in Winter(31)

“You’re bleeding,” Qhuinn hollered back.

“Breathing? Of course I am. Over there! Let’s go over there!”

Qhuinn’s mouth was moving, and going by his glower, he was clearly cursing, but he followed the lead. Together, they dragged the ungainly weight toward the garage, the sandbags flattening a path in the snow-covered side lawn like a Zamboni on an ice rink. And Blay would have just tucked the production off to the side of the stone steps, next to the bushes, but he knew that Fritz wouldn’t have approved—and that the elderly doggen was liable to go outside in the storm and insist on taking it out of sight on a tidy-up.

The last thing the household needed was a Fritzcicle in the front yard.

Growing colder by the moment, Blay trudged through the snow, his loafers breaking through the icy top inch of the snowpack, all crunch, crunch, crunch. As the wind made staying upright a struggle, his white clouds of breath went the house-ward way of the tarp and the ball-busting, window-breaking, sonofabitch sandbag.

Not that he was bitter.

As they approached the closed garage doors, he triangulated in on the keypad mounted on the side wall.

“What’s the code?” Blay shouted.

“Try the one to the training center!”

With a half-frozen forefinger, Blay punched in the numbers, hit the pound key—ta-daaaaaa. With a laconic trundle—like the goddamn garage door had no clue they were fucking cold and needed to get out of the wind—the panels lifted and rode their track, retracting to reveal a sparkling-clean, concrete-floored equipment corral nearly the size of a soccer field. The storm’s gusts barreled into the space as soon as they had even a six-inch opening, rattling the tops of the metal trash cans, blowing over a row of weed whackers, whipping past V’s R8 and Manny’s Porsche, neither of which would be taken out until spring.

As soon as they could duck under, he and Qhuinn dragged the tarp in and folded it up in a messy way. If Fritz wanted to micromanage that part of things, fine—

Qhuinn was suddenly right in front of him, and before Blay could say anything, his mate took a grip of his chin and brought up a black-and-white bandana.

“What are you—”

When Blay tried to lean away, Qhuinn wouldn’t let him, pressing the folded cloth to the side of his face. “Hold still, wouldya. You’re bleeding.”

As a vicious gust shot into the garage, their bodies got thrown to the side, and Qhuinn must have willed the garage door back down because the panels started to descend again—you couldn’t raise the things without the code because they had closing-activated copper locks, but you could drop them into place.

And good thing. It felt like it was getting even colder. Or maybe that was just his extremities’ last gasp of sensation before frostbite turned him into a statue.

“I’m fine,” Blay said as he thought about that broken window in the front of the house. “We need to go help—”

The garage door thumped into place, the wind’s last foray ending in a high-pitched whistle, the relative silence something you had to acclimatize to after the din.

“—go down to the training center right now,” Qhuinn finished in a normal voice as he rubbed his hands together for warmth.

Outside, the howling ascended in volume again, and Blay had a sudden urge to count everybody in the frickin’ household. If someone were to get stuck out there? If they left the house on foot and got disorientated? If they took a car and lost traction on the road?

They weren’t going to last long.

Shaking himself back to attention, he tried to remember what his mate had said. “The training center? For what?”

“I just told you. You’re bleeding.”

The door into the house opened and Tohr leaned out. “Everybody okay in here?”

“No—”

“Yes—” Blay batted Qhuinn’s nurse routine away from his face. “Did anyone get hurt upstairs?”

“No, the second-floor sitting room was empty,” Tohr replied. “We’re boarding up the hole and closing the daytime shutters right now. Hey, do you want me to get Doc Jane for that wound?”

Blay glared at his mate and spoke deliberately. “No, thank you. We’re not going to bother a doctor about a scratch that is going to heal within the hour—”

“We need to check him out right now,” Qhuinn said. “Maybe get a gurney?”

“Are you even kidding me?” Blay rubbed the side of his face to prove he was fine—until the scratch started protesting the attention. Keeping a grimace to himself, he announced, “I am very sure I’m not bleeding out, and someone else might need something.”

Tohr smiled. “How about you guys check in later at the clinic if it looks like things are not resolving on their own with the injury?”

As the Brother gave them a little wave and disappeared back into the house, Qhuinn walked around in a tight circle.

“I’d just feel better if someone looked at it. You know, to be sure . . .” He let the sentence fade out as he blew into his cupped hands.

The helpless look in those mismatched eyes was such a surprise. Especially because what was going on was on a shaving-nick level.

Blay went over and put a hand on Qhuinn’s shoulder. “You know I’m fine. Come on, a minor scratch is nothing compared to you getting stabbed last night—”