“Want to break for lunch?” Daniel asked shortly after one.

Eleanor didn’t answer.

“Elle? Eleanor?”

She exhaled slowly. “Seven-day loan, remember?”

“What was that?”

Eleanor turned to face him. “Seven-day loan. That was the deal.”

Daniel nodded, but it was clear he wasn’t quite nodding in agreement.

“That was the deal. The deal can change.”

“No. It can’t,” Eleanor said, suddenly angry. “It’s not a joke. I’m not a library book. I’m not a part of the permanent collection.”

Daniel said nothing for a long time. “You could be.”

Eleanor just shook her head. “I can’t believe this. You’re his friend and I’m his everything and you’re doing this.” She left the library and kept going down the hallway, stopping only to grab her coat. She was out the door and in the snow. She headed down the long winding driveway. Soon she heard footsteps behind her.

“Eleanor, get back in the house.”

“You get back in the house. It’s your goddamn prison. Not mine.” She kept walking. It was cold out but she was too upset to notice or care.

“You’re in a jacket and jeans and it’s twenty-five degrees out.”

“Well, you should have thought of that before you asked me to stay.”

“That makes no sense whatsoever.” They were nearly to the edge of the long driveway. “I’m not the one running away.”

Eleanor turned around and stopped. She was at the end of the drive. Two steps back and she would be off his property and in the road.

“No. You’re not running away. You’re not running or walking or strolling or going anywhere. You’re staying and rotting and hiding. And there’s not much you and I haven’t done together this week, but I will not do that with you.”

Daniel took a step toward her. Just one but she took another step back.

“Eleanor.” Daniel’s voice was calm, controlled. He sounded like a jockey trying to gentle a spooked horse. “We can talk about this. Nothing has to be decided today. Just come in out of the cold. I’m cold, too, and I’m never cold. I know you have to be freezing. Come inside.”

Eleanor only looked at him. Even so angry at him, and cold and scared, she couldn’t deny he was breathtakingly handsome. Grief had left its mark on him. His eyes were haunted and his body lean and cold...like granite. She knew about granite, how you could build on it or be broken on it.

Still without a word she took the last steps back off his property.

“If you want me back in the house, come and get me.” She wasn’t mocking him. All she wanted was to help him.

“Don’t do this to me.” Daniel looked at her so gently that she was instantly ashamed of herself. But still she didn’t budge.

“You’re doing this to me,” she countered. “I love him with all that I am and you’re asking me to let that go, to leave him. I won’t do it. I can’t do it. I love him as much as you loved her. More maybe because if he died I would live like he would have wanted me to and not like some hermit in a cave.”