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“Here.” He tapped the counter once. “Your kitchen. The stove. This becomes the base.”

“Base of what exactly?”

“Most of the town has no power. No heat. No way to cook. Half the residential streets are impassable. Drifts are shoulder-height on the south side, and there are downed power lines everywhere. For people who can get here, your plan to feed them is great. But many people can’t get out. Some of them are elderly, some are alone, and most of them don’t have a wood-fired stove or a bakery full of supplies.”

Emily said nothing.

“My crew has the equipment and the training to get through,” Cole continued. “Snowmobiles, shovels, the truck if the plows clear Oak Way first. We can navigate around the downed lines, assess which houses have generator issues, check for carbon monoxide—half the town is going to be running space heaters and wood stoves they haven’t used in years and not all of them will be vented properly.” He looked at her. “That’s the access problem. That’s what my crew does.”

He paused.

“What my crew can’t do is feed anyone. We don’t have the supplies, the space, and we don’t have—you.”

“So you’re proposing,” she said slowly, “that I cook and you deliver.”

“Exactly.”

“Then why do you sound like you’re assigning me a job?”

“Because I’m trying to organize a relief operation before half the town freezes in their living rooms.”

The words landed hard enough to take some of the heat out of her temper.

She hated him a little for being right. Hated herself more for reacting as if he’d tried to take something from her when what he’d actually done was take her idea and make it better.

Cassidy popped back in to grab her scarf she’d left behind. “Sorry. Just text me if you need anything else!” She took one look at the two of them, at Emily’s expression and Cole’s, and immediately backed away. “Actually, I’ll just… go get chocolate.”

Her footsteps hurried back down the trench.

Cole zipped his coat. “I’ll be back at noon with the first delivery route.”

Emily stared at him. “You’re very confident that I’m agreeing to work with you.”

“No,” he said, opening the back door to the cold. “I’m confident you care too much not to.”

Then he stepped out into the trench, radio crackling at his shoulder, leaving Emily in the warmth of her kitchen with a stove to heat, a job to do with the dreaded Cole Alders… and something she hated even more than him.

The knowledge that he still knew her so well.

SIX

COLE

Sunday, December 13th

Cole stepped out into the frigid air and took a breath for the first time in what felt like ten hours. The arctic air burned his lungs, but he needed to clear his head.

He stood there for a moment and let it do its work, taking in what was left of Oak Way. The buried cars parked along the curb, their roofs barely visible beneath drifts that had rounded them into shapeless lumps. The snowdrifts taller than him on every side. The shop awnings across the street sagged under the weight—Anita’s café, Cassidy’s Cocoa Corner, the hardware store.

Still, it was nowhere near the disaster that was his situation with Emily Whitaker.

He’d known, the second Jackson’s text came through, that it was going to be a problem. Not the rescue. He thought that part would’ve been straightforward—window entry, assess the situation, get her out—but nothing with Emily was ever straightforward. He should know that by now.

At the end of the day, he’d done his job. That was what he kept coming back to. He’d gone in through the window, kept her warm. He’d handled it.

But there was that other part. The part where she pulled him closer, the primal sound she’d made when she’d sunk down onto him. Even now his body shivered at the feeling of her. The way she’d taken what she’d wanted and encouraged him to do the same.

He pushed all of that firmly aside.