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Cole, to his credit or maybe just to his nature, didn’t seem to register any of it. Or if he did, he’d filed it in the same place he filed everything else that bothered him, which was somewhere deep and locked and very far from his face.

Cassidy came through after Liam, still somehow managing to look festive despite arriving by snowmobile with her red wool coat over a green Christmas tree sweater with actual pom-poms sewn onto it, a holly-green scarf wrapped twice around her neck. She took one look at Emily’s face, then at Cole’s, and had the good sense not to comment.

Then Jackson came in, greeting Cole with a handshake and a pat on the back. He shared Liam’s dark hair, chocolate-colored eyes, and broad build, but where Liam looked ready to crack a joke, his twin always seemed to think before he spoke. “You good?” he asked Cole.

“Yeah, we’re good,” he replied.

Emily noticed the warmth between them and fought not to roll her eyes. Jackson was far too nice for his own good.

She told herself it didn’t bother her. Jackson was a volunteer firefighter. They worked together. Besides, they were grown men. Jackson could like whoever he wanted.

“How bad is it out there?” Cole asked, already zipping up his coat.

Jackson answered, the easy humor gone from his face. “Bad. Downed power lines all the way down Birch Road. Trees across half the side streets. A few roofs took damage, and there are people boxed in all over town.” He glanced toward the dark front windows. “Utility crews aren’t getting through anytime soon. Could be days before everyone has power.”

Liam shifted beside him, snow still melting off his jacket. “I’ve got a generator running at the farm, but most people aren’t that lucky.”

Emily had already stopped listening and started thinking.

Her mind moved fast, the way it always did when there was a problem she could actually solve. She was no longer thinking about gingerbread cookies and Santa cutouts. She was thinking about minestrone soup, crusty bread, and whatever she could stretch across the most people. The wood-fired stove was going. Between the café supplies and whatever the others could bring, she had enough.

She’d done this before, back in 2019 when the last big storm hit. She could do it again.

Besides, not everyone needed help. Half the town had portable generators. It was standard equipment for Midwest living, between the summer thunderstorms and winter ice. Businesses like the grocery store, hotel, and gas station definitely did. But a generator didn’t do much good if you were eighty and couldn’t pull-start it, or if you couldn’t afford one in the first place, or if you had power but couldn’t get your car out of the driveway to buy groceries. A storm like this didn’t hit everyone the same.

She thought of the winter she and Zach had moved into their grandparents’ farmhouse after their dad left. Their mother had nothing, but the town had made sure they never felt like it. Coats appearing. Winter boots in the right sizes. Holiday dinners that somehow stretched to include them. The church ladies, Norma Steigler, half a dozen others who had never once made them feel like charity.

Emily had spent the years since quietly paying that back, one free refill and one extra cookie at a time. Today she’d just have to do it on a larger scale.

“I can feed the town,” she said. “Soup, bread, whatever I can get going on the stove. I just need more wood and a few more ingredients.”

“I can bring honey from the farm shop,” Liam offered. “Preserves too, for the bread.”

“I’ll pack up the chocolate from the Cocoa Corner,” Cassidy added. “No sense letting it go to waste. And I can bring the cocoa pot—if this stove keeps going, I can keep a pot running all day.”

Emily sighed with contentment.

This. This was exactly what she’d needed.

Her friends filed out to gather supplies, leaving only Cole in her kitchen. As far as Emily was concerned, he could follow them any time he liked.

He didn’t.

He moved to the counter and stood there reviewing something on his phone like he had all the time in the world. His turnout coat was unzipped, thermal pushed up to his elbows, and he leaned one hip against her butcher block like he’d been standing in her kitchen his whole life.

He was taller than she remembered—or maybe she just hadn’t stood this close to him in decent light before last night. Broad through the shoulders, narrow through the waist. It was the build that came from actually carrying people out of burning buildings and not from a gym membership.

She forced herself to look away. Outside, she could hear a city plow grind slowly past, working the same strip of Oak Way over and over. It was going to take days to clear the town.

Cole lowered his phone and looked around the room. Emily felt oddly exposed, as though he were seeing her kitchen for the first time instead of simply standing inside it. The wood-fired stove glowed in the corner, its flames crackling behind the little glass door and sending warmth across the black-and-white checkered tile.

Copper pans hung above the prep table, catching flickers of firelight, while flour still dusted the scarred wooden surface from the baking she’d abandoned when the power went out the night before. The scents of cinnamon, vanilla, and buttercream blended in the air.

His eyes landed on Emily last.

“This can work,” he said.

Emily narrowed her eyes. “What can work?”