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She sighed heavily, working on fixing a very piecemeal dinner of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and canned fruit.

Gabe crouched by the fire, moving logs this way and that with a poker. Something had changed in him this afternoon. There’d been flashes of it here and there since this whole thing started, but it was sharper, harsher tonight. It wasn’t just considering silence, or even that weird silence from yesterday. This had a darkness to it, a heaviness.

She hated this feeling of premature despair. That it was all over before she’d even had the courage to try to start it.

She frowned harder at his back. She had never let someone tell her shecouldn’t, and why would this be any different? No, she couldn’t make miracles happen and erase his past or magically heal all his scars, but she could get through to him if she tried.Lovewas powerful that way, and if he didn’t love her back…that didn’t mean her love couldn’t be powerful.

That’s what he hadn’t had growing up, so it made sense he might not believe it existed, might not want to trust it. She’d just have to prove it did and that he could.

Talking healed. The entire basis of her professional career. Talking could heal.

Her stomach turned. She was much better at listening, at guiding. She’d grown up in a household that held itself together no matter the cost.

Things had eased once her father had started seeking help for his PTSD, but by then she’d been twenty. It was too late to undo all the stoic, military acceptance her mother and father had impressed upon her.

“It’s never too late,” she muttered to herself. She’d raised Colin differently, and her familywasdifferent now. And most of all,shewas different. She’d dreaded this week alone, but it had turned into an awakening.

She didn’t want to do this on her own anymore. She could, and if she had to, she would, but she didn’twantto. She wanted a partner.

She wanted Gabe.

Now, she just had to find the courage to tell him, and the right approach to convince him. She squared her shoulders. Her childhood might have made expressing emotions hard, but it had also taught her the value of hard work, and the importance of not giving up when the going got tough.

But as she marched a plate over to Gabe’s crouched form, a million words jostling for space in her brain, a knock sounded at the door.

Blinking, Monica turned to stare at it.

“Expecting visitors?” Gabe asked dryly.

She didn’t bother to respond. She put the plates down on the fireplace hearth next to Gabe, then opened the door.

“Oh, Caleb, hi.” Caleb Shaw ran the Shaw ranch and had rented her this cabin. Though he was Rose’s brother-in-law, Monica didn’t know him very well besides a few conversations over rental agreements.

“Hey. Just wanted to give you a heads-up that the road out is fairly passable. Probably another day or two before we get power, but…” His gaze drifted to Gabe, so Monica’s did too.

He’d gotten to his feet and was scowling.

Caleb cleared his throat. “Anyway, didn’t mean to interrupt your evening. Just wanted you to know we’re not so blocked in anymore. Path out will still be rough and slick though, so be careful.”

“Thanks, Caleb.”

He tipped his hat and then headed back to some kind of vehicle clearly made for traveling over snow. What little light remained of the day glowed in the west, and Monica sighed. It was beautiful, this snow-covered land of vast space and even vaster sky. She couldn’t say she enjoyed this long, bitter winter, but she’d fallen in love with Montana.

She smiled a little ruefully. Just as she’d fallen in love with the harsh, bitter man behind her. Because under all that bluster, something big and true and honest existed. Strong and good.

“Friend of yours?”

She frowned at Gabe’s voice, finally closing the door against the pretty Christmas exterior. “Caleb Shaw.”

Gabe just made a grunting sound.

“You know, my landlord, so to speak.”

“So to speak,” he repeated with an odd edge of something shereallydidn’t understand. Because surely that was not some kind of twisted jealousy lurking there.

She could only blink for a moment. Jealous? Of a married man who was herlandlord? Which surely he knew. “He’s married to Rose’s sister,” she said, baffled beyond belief.

“Your point?”