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Logan could not afford to replace anything damaged in such a good cause.
    There was a drip coffeepot in one of the cabinets, but since the power failure seemed to have something to do with the water supply, she would have to go outside for snow to melt before she could make coffee. Clare had picked up the pot and started toward the sliding doors when Logan spoke from the darkened living area.
    “Here,” he said, pulling on his heavy, insulated boots. “I’ll do that.”
    Clare drew a sharp breath, coming to a halt. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
    “You didn’t,” he said.
    That short answer seemed plain enough. They were to be no more friendly this morning than they had been the night before. Without another word Clare put the pot she held down on the end of the dining table and turned back to the kitchen.
    Coffee, bacon, eggs, and toast lightly browned on one side, only slightly burned on the other, was their breakfast. Clare cooked it kneeling before the fire with her face growing red from the heat. They ate it from the top of a coffee table that Logan dragged up before the warmth, using their neatly tucked-up beds for seats.
    Holding out his cup for a refill, Logan gave a slight smile. “I suppose since I had to be snowed-in with a representative of the press, it is worth something that you can cook.”
    “You are too kind,” Clare murmured, her tone dry as she tilted the pot above his cup.
    “Probably so,” he agreed. “It wouldn’t do to encourage you.”
    “I don’t think there is any danger of that.”
    Logan made no answer, but the look he sent her was long and searching.
    The snow still fell in a thick curtain that was shaken and lifted, then let fall again by the keening wind. The soft whiteness drifted across the decks of the house in deep piles and lay heaped against the glass door. Dressed once more in, coat and boots, Clare moved from one to the other of the door and window openings, with their curtains flung open for light, watching in fascination. There was nothing to be seen but the falling flakes and the dark outlines of the evergreens. Everything else was lost in the encroaching snow. Still Clare stared out. She had never seen so much snow, had never known it to fall with such endless persistence, as though it meant never to stop, as if it meant to bury them in soft, feathery cold.
    Teeth clenched in determination, she had helped Logan bring in a fresh supply of wood. Together they had cleared away the breakfast things, wiping the grease from the skillet with a handful of paper towels, then burning them with the paper cups and plates. Afterward, she had managed to freshen her appearance, using the cosmetics in her tote bag and water heated in a metal bucket from the laundry. With those few tasks out of the way, there was nothing else to do; she might as well watch the snow.
    In the room behind her, Logan was reading; a screenplay, she thought, from the way it was bound and the notes he made now and then in the margin. She had not liked to ask. She would give the man no excuse to accuse her of prying. He had offered her a collection of magazines his mother had left behind the summer before, but Clare could not settle down with them. Fashions and recipes had little interest for her at the best of times; just now they had none.
    Logan put down his manuscript, got to his feet, and strolled to join her at the window. With his hands in his pockets, he scanned the blowing snow and oppressive, low-hanging clouds. He glanced at her, then looked away again.
    “Is it really that much of a marvel, or are you sulking?”
    “I enjoy watching it,” Clare answered briefly.
    “I wouldn’t have taken you for a nature lover.”
    “No, but then, you know nothing about me.” She could not get used to that mocking inflection, especially knowing how little she deserved it.
    “True.”
    Clare slanted him a glance from the corner of her eyes. The fact that he had crossed the room to speak to her could be