He nodded and did that growly grunt of his again before stepping away from the fireplace as she approached it, his moves hurried. His heel caught on the corner of the rug. His eyes went wide with surprise and he flung his arms out for balance as he started to tip over. Shelby didn’t think, she just reacted, calling up on that adrenaline-spiked quick reflexes and reached out, catching his hand and pulling him forward, helping to hold him steady as he fought to stay upright in a long, drawn-out moment that was probably all of half a breath long. Then he was stable, looking down at her, the muscle in his jaw working overtime as the air crackled around them.

“Thanks,” he said, a tinge of pink hitting his cheeks. They were so close, the heat from his body rivaling what the fireplace was kicking out. “You’re stronger than you look.”

“Have you ever met a woman before?” she asked, mentally warning herself not to notice the flecks of green in his brown eyes or the tiny scar across the bridge of his nose or the way her pulse was kicking it up a notch or four thousand. “Of course we are. We have to be.”

He ran his thumb over the back of her knuckles—soft and tentative, as if he didn’t understand why he was doing it. Then he exhaled a harsh breath, lifted his thumb, and scowled at her. “You can let go now.”

Shelby flinched and dropped her hand. She’d been trying to help. It wasn’t like she wanted to hold his hand, or touch him, or—

I should have just let him fall on his ass. Way to go, Past Me.

“We need to shut off the other rooms and keep this fire going,” he said, closing the door that led from the open-concept living/kitchen space to the hall that led to the back of the house and then heading for the stairs. “Since there aren’t fireplaces upstairs and there’s no way we’ll get power all the way up here until after the storm’s gone, we gotta shut this room off as much as possible.”

Wait. What? No. That wasn’t right.

“Heat rises,” she said. “I’ll just stay in my room upstairs under some blankets. It’ll be fine.”

Okay, that sounded lame even to her ears. The more open space the heat had to fill, the less there would be.

“Shelby, we don’t know how long it’s going to be until either help arrives or we can drive back down the mountain,” Ian said as he climbed the stairs. “This is us for the next few days. Believe me, I hate it, too.”