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Okay, probably not. But a woman could dream. Having Cole owe her one wouldn’t have been the end of the world.

Emily followed his tracks in the snow, moving as stealthily as possible, which was not very stealthy at all given she was wading through two feet of powder in an elf hat with a jingle bell on it.

Cole had found the overhang. She watched him grab the support beam, test it once, and pull himself up. His coat strained across his shoulders, his arms flexing in a way that was not helpful to her current emotional state.

He swung himself onto the overhang roof, crouched for a moment to check the second-floor window, then pushed it open.

Emily stood in the snow and watched Cole Alders climb through a window for the second time in three days.

Her brain made the connection to her bakery’s kitchen before she could stop it.

His boots dropping into her sink. The way the room had felt half its actual size the moment he was in it.

Her body remembered, too. A flush of heat climbed up her neck despite the cold, and she turned away and stared very hard at the lake until it passed.

It didn’t entirely pass.

A few minutes later, the back door scraped open from inside. Cole appeared, slightly out of breath, snow in his hair.

“I see you didn’t listen,” were the first words out of his mouth.

“Had to make sure you weren’t lying dead in the snow.”

“I guess it’s not your lucky day.”

“I guess not.”

Cole took a step back, wordlessly inviting her in.

Walt was crouched beside the armchair by the fire, where Alice sat with a crocheted blanket across her lap. One weathered hand was resting over hers on the arm of the chair, his thumb moving slowly across her knuckles. Alice was looking at the fire, not at him, her expression soft and far-away in the way it sometimes got.

The cabin was, thankfully, warm from the fire and sunlit, streams of light shining on the ornaments on the Christmas tree in the corner.

“We have visitors, Alice,” Walt said, his voice softening. He touched her shoulder. “Emily Whitaker. And Cole Alders. They’ve brought us some things.”

Alice looked up and her eyes brightened. “How lovely.” She studied Emily for a moment. “You’re from the bakery.”

“That’s me,” Emily said. Her voice came out gentler than she intended.

“Your cinnamon rolls,” Alice said. “I do miss your cinnamon rolls.”

Emily felt her heart crack, just a little. “I’ll make you a fresh batch as soon as the roads are clear.”

Cole was already moving through the cabin, checking things the way he checked everything. The fire, the flue, the stack of wood by the hearth. Emily watched him crouch by the fireplace and examine something, his gloved hands careful and precise. He spoke to Walt in a low voice, asking about the water supply, the pipes, whether anything had frozen overnight. He was thorough without being intrusive. Careful without being condescending.

When Walt mentioned he had an old generator he hadn’t been able to get to, Cole took care of that too, walking him through what needed to be fixed to get electricity flowing to the cabin.

She thought about the way Walt had touched Alice’s hand. The way fifty years of love had looked in that single ordinary gesture.

And then she thought, without meaning to, about Cole kneeling by that fireplace, the attentiveness he brought to everything. He cared in a way that Emily wished she could ignore.

They stayed long enough for Cole to double check the firewood supply, and for Emily to sit with Alice and talk about cinnamon rolls and the bakery and whether the Christmas lights would be going up on Oak Way this year. Alice repeated the question about the cinnamon rolls twice, and Emily answered it exactly the same way both times, because that was what you did.

Walt walked them to the back door.

“She has good days and not-so-good days,” he said quietly, out of Alice’s earshot. “Today’s somewhere in the middle.” He looked at Cole. “Thank you for coming out. Both of you.”

“We’ll come back,” Cole said. “Day after tomorrow, if not sooner.”