Page 62

He was looking back at her with the expression he got when something had surprised him. Cole hated surprises. She knew that about him.

The cold had put color in his jaw that came from being outside for a while, and his dark coat was dusted with snowflakes that hadn’t bothered to melt yet.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” she said.

Captain wagged.

They stood on the corner for a moment in the quiet. The Christmas lights on the storefronts threw soft color across the snow. The town was mostly settled for the night, just the odd set of footprints in the fresh powder, the distant sound of someone’s television through a window.

“Late to be walking home,” Cole said.

“I’m fine.”

“I know you’re fine. I said it was late.”

“This isn’t New York City, Cole. I walk home alone all the time.”

“I know it isn’t, but it’s dipping back into the negative.” He said it without argument. “Where’s your car?”

“At the bakery. It wouldn’t start tonight. I figured I could just walk.”

“Emily.”

“I’m perfectly capable of⁠—”

“I know you’re capable. I’m offering to look at it.” He said it the same way he said everything—even, unhurried, without making it a thing. “It’s probably the battery. I’ve got jump leads in the truck. It’ll take twenty minutes.”

She looked at him.

He looked back at her.

She knew she was being stubborn, acting on reflex as opposed to logic. She could hear it herself. There was no good reason to say no. Her car needed looking at and Cole was standing right here.

“Fine,” she said. “But I might be paying you in cookies.”

Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. “Who said you had to pay me anything?”

The car was parked behind the bakery, buried under a fine layer of fresh snow, looking cold and sorry for itself.

Cole handed her Captain’s leash without asking, crouched beside the driver’s side, and had the hood up in under a minute. Emily stood with the dog and watched him work.

She was not going to think about his hands.

She thought about his hands.

They were large and rough, and she knew exactly what those fingers felt like when he grabbed her—Nope! Don’t go there.

She watched instead as he pulled a small flashlight from his coat pocket, holding it between his teeth while both hands worked.

“Battery cable came loose,” Cole said, from under the hood. “That’s all it was.”

“That’s all?”

“Cold can do it. Expansion and contraction.” He did something she couldn’t see. “Try it now.”

She leaned in through the driver’s door, turned the key. The engine turned over immediately, smooth like butter, as if it hadn’t been sitting dead all day.