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He gave me a long look, then handed me the flashlight. “Fine. Hold this.”

Apparently, my official role in keeping us alive through the storm was illumination. I could work with that.

The attached garage was colder than the house, though it still protected us from the worst of the weather. An ATV took up one side, while the other held shelves loaded with tools, tie-down straps, chains, work gloves, and plastic bins.

Everything was organized in a way that suggested Cole liked knowing exactly where things were when he needed them.

The generator sat on a concrete pad outside, but the transfer switch was in a gray panel on the back wall. He crouched in front of it while I aimed the flashlight.

“Lower.”

I adjusted the beam. “Like this?”

“Yeah.”

He opened the panel and leaned closer. Watching a man work on an electrical panel shouldn’t have held my interest. Then he shoved his sleeves up to his elbows. His forearms were strong, the muscles shifting under tan skin as he reached into the panel. A pale scar ran across one wrist, disappearing underneath his sleeve.

I shifted the flashlight without meaning to, and the beam wandered toward the ceiling.

Cole looked up. “Need the light down here.”

“Right. Sorry.” I redirected it and focused very hard on the panel instead of his arms.

He adjusted something, checked another connection, then flipped a third switch.

“Do you know how to fix everything?”

“No.”

“I bet you do. Name one thing you can’t fix.”

He didn’t hesitate. “People.”

That wasn’t the answer I’d been expecting. I watched the side of his face while he kept working. He didn’t look like a man who had just revealed anything important. Maybe he hadn’t meant to. Or maybe he was the kind of man who said the most honest things when he was pretending they didn’t matter. Before I could decide, the generator kicked on outside with a rumble I felt through the wall, and I jumped.

Cole stood. A few seconds later, the lights inside the house came back on.

“See?” he said. “Five minutes.”

“Four and a half. I helped.”

“You held a flashlight.”

“An essential position.”

He reached past me toward the garage-door controls at the same moment I stepped sideways. We collided. My hand landed flat against his chest. His went around my waist. For one loaded second, neither of us moved.

The sweatshirt bunched beneath his fingers, and I could feel the heat of his hand through the fabric. My palm pressed against the solid wall of his chest, close enough to feel the rise and fall of his breathing.

I looked up.

He was already staring at me.

This close, I could see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes and the darker flecks in his irises. I could smell coffee on his breath and cold air clinging to his shirt.

His hand stayed at my waist. Mine stayed on his chest. Moving would have been easy. Neither of us did.

Cole’s gaze dropped to my mouth.