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“You walked into me.”

“You lunged at me.”

“I did not lunge.”

“You absolutely lunged.”

“I was making sure you didn’t crack your head open on a table.”

“I know where my tables are.”

As if to prove it, she took one indignant step sideways and immediately clipped her hip against a chair.

The chair scraped loudly across the floor. “Don’t say a word,” she snapped even though Cole’s lips were sealed.

He closed his eyes, though there was no point, since the room was already pitch-black.

“Great, just great,” Emily said.

Cole wasn’t positive, but he could’ve sworn she muttered, “Fuck me,” under her breath.

“Rather not,” he said.

“You know what your problem is?” She turned on him, and even in the dark he could feel the heat coming off her. “You waltz back into this town like you own the place, throw your weight around, and expect everyone to just fall in line because you’ve got a badge and a ladder truck.”

“My problem,” Cole said carefully, “is that I’m stuck in a bakery in a blizzard with a woman who’d rather freeze to death than admit she needs help.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“You needed it forty-five minutes ago when you were stress-eating a gingerbread man and couldn’t open your own back door.”

She made a sharp sound of frustration and pushed past him.

Or tried to.

In the dark, she misjudged the space between them. Her arm brushed his. It wasn’t much, just barely a touch. The quick graze of her fingers over the back of his hand.

He felt it travel all the way to the tips of his toes, and he’d deny that fact until the day he died.

Another gust of wind slammed against the back of the building hard enough to rattle the pans hanging over the prep station.

Emily shuddered in the pitch blackness of the bakery kitchen.

The moment she realized he’d noticed, her chin lifted immediately. “I’m fine.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t. I was about to say the temperature in here is going to drop. The ovens are off. The heat isn’t running. By two in the morning, this place is going to feel like a walk-in freezer. So unless you want to lose your toes, I suggest you start thinking practically.”

“Oh, I’m thinking practically alright.”

Cole held her gaze in the dark. “Smothering me with a flour sack doesn’t count.”

“Pity,” Emily shot back.

Cole said nothing.

He was busy doing the math he really, really did not want to do.

No heat. No power. No exit. The kitchen would hold some warmth for a while, but after that?