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She nodded, smiling. “I’ll be here, so just whenever.”

“Will there be more cookies?”

“Undoubtedly,” she returned with mock seriousness.

“I’ll be here then.” He moved for his boots, and he watched her out of the corner of his eye as she grabbed her clothes and got dressed.

“I don’t have any nicer underwear. Just FYI.”

Gabe had no idea where that remark could have come from, and he tried not to look at her like she was crazy. “I don’t really care much about your underwear, Monica. I’m far more interested in what’s under it.”

“Well, that’s…good. I just… You know, when you’re a single mom, there’s no reason for pretty, lacy underwear. Except this kind of reason, and I don’t usually have this kind of reason, so—”

“I don’t care about your underwear. Period.”

She gave him a sharp nod. “Got it.” She tried to smile, but it was all twisted, and somehow that twisted him. An aching, awful thing.

He couldn’t give in to that. He found his coat and shrugged it on and considered for a second giving her a goodbye kiss. Except he wasn’t strong enough to touch his lips to hers, then walk away. It’d have to wait. Until tomorrow. He walked to the door and grabbed the knob.

“Gabe?”

He didn’t dare look back. “Yeah?”

She paused for the longest time, this endless series of minutes where his heart beat hard against his ribs and a hope for something he couldn’t possibly allow himself to have tried to overtake his body, his brain, his heart.

“Good night,” she finally said.

“Good night,” he repeated, wrenching the door open.

And then he nearly fell over something. Something cold and… Snow. The light from the cabin spilled outside, and all he saw was white. In the air, on the ground. Everything was a swirling, nearly indistinguishable white. They’d been supposed to get a blizzard tomorrow, but tomorrow wasn’ttonight. There had to be a foot of snow on the ground if not more. There was no way…

“I think that’s what they call a whiteout,” Monica said, her voice blank and completely unreadable.

“That would make sense,” he said, staring at the white emptiness in front of him. It was loud and eerie and—

“I guess you’re stuck with me.”

He glanced over at her then and tried not to feel the panic that was bubbling inside of him. Panic. That’s what it was. Not joy. Not anticipation. This was sheer and utter panic.

She grinned the kind of grin she must have copied from him. “We can probably find something to do.”

Panic or joy, it didn’t matter, because he was stuck, and she was here, this gorgeous, sweet woman he couldn’t have.

Later, in the future, he couldn’t have. But tonight, for as long as they were stuck in this storm, he could have her.

Gabe closed the door. “I guess we could.”

* * *

Monica woke up the next morning sure she was dreaming. Because the cabin smelled like coffee and she was sore in ways she wasn’t sure she’d ever been sore and something in her bed smelled like a man.

Not a boy. A man.

Her eyes flew open in a second of alarm before the night’s previous activities rushed over her. Her face went hot, and she pulled the sheets a little closer to her chin.

She was naked. Asleep and naked and her cabin smelled likecoffee.

She hadn’t woken up to coffee already made since she’d lived with her parents. She hadn’t woken up naked in far longer than that, if ever. She had never, ever woken up to the smell of a man in her bed who wasn’t a man she was married to.