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“Backup heat’s in the basement,” he said. “Do you have a basement?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

He looked at her.

“I’ve never looked,” she said.

He found the basement door in the hallway (she genuinely had not known it was there, it was a small door that she’d assumed was a closet) and went down. She heard him moving around, something mechanical, and then a sound she didn’t recognize, and then the click of something engaging, and then, within a few minutes, the feeling of warm air beginning to move through the cottage.

He came back up.

“Propane backup,” he said. “Should have showed you this when you moved in.”

“You didn’t show me anything when I moved in.”

“I should have,” he said.

She looked at him in her kitchen, snow melting off his jacket, tools in his hand, her cottage beginning to warm around them, and felt something she’d been feeling for two days every time she thought about him, which was constantly. She wanted to be near him so much it surprised her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Pipes next,” he said, and went to check the pipes.

* * *

She made tea while he worked.

This was partly practical, the stovetop was gas, it worked without power, and she needed something warm, and partly the need to do something with her hands while Shane Colter moved through her cottage with the methodical certainty of a man who knew what every system in a building was supposed to do and could tell when one wasn’t doing it.

He checked the pipes under the kitchen sink. The bathroom. Something in the utility area she hadn’t explored. He came back to the kitchen while the kettle was doing its thing on the gas burner and sat down at the table.

She looked at him sitting at her kitchen table.

He looked back at her.

Outside, the storm was doing what it was doing, the wind finding the gaps, the snow coming sideways, the world reduced to approximately ten feet of visibility in any direction. Inside, the backup heat was running and the kettle was heating and the kitchen lamp (she’d found candles, there was a whole drawer of them, she was learning things about this cottage) was casting its warm light across the table.

“It’s only been two days,” she said.

“It has,” he said.

“Since...”

“Yes.”

She turned to pour the tea. Her hands were steady, which surprised her. She brought both cups to the table and sat down across from him and wrapped both hands around hers.

“Are you...” she started.

“Yes,” he said, before she’d finished. His voice was even, the way it was always even, but underneath it she could hear the thing she’d been learning to hear, the look of someone who meant what they said and had thought about it before saying it. “I’ve been thinking about it. Since Tuesday.”

“Me too,” she said.

“I should have...” He stopped. Started again. “I moved without asking you first. Whether you wanted...”

“Shane.”

He looked at her.