"These are fine. Thank you. Where can I change?"
"The bathroom is the first door on the left." He pointed toward the hallway.
She hesitated before asking, "Is there a shower?"
"Yes."
"Do you mind if I use it?" She felt sweaty from the exertion of her walk.
"Not at all. I'll get you some towels."
Quinn nodded her thanks and followed him the short walk to the bathroom. He removed several fluffy towels from a small closet and handed them to her. "Soap's in there." He pointed through the open door as he reached behind her to turn on the tight.
Cale tried to concentrate on preparing a bed for Quinn on the sofa, piling the blankets and fluffing the pillow, and not on the fact that she was, at this moment, in his shower. That the water he could hear running on the other side of the wall was sliding down her back, across her shoulders...
He had added yet another log on the fire, and poked energetically at the embers, when he heard the bathroom door open, heard her soft footsteps behind him as she came into the room. Turning to her, his words stuck in his throat. He watched her as she placed her folded clothes into her bag, his stomach tightening, and he tried in vain to look away. Even with her long hair damp from the shower and wrapped in a towel, Quinn was, if possible, even more lovely than she had been as a girl. She had filled out just a little, rounding here and lengthening there, until she was, as he could plainly see, nearer to perfection than any woman had a right to be. He could not help but notice, too, that she filled out his old gray thermal shirt in ways it was never intended to be filled.
Feeling his eyes on her, Quinn practically leaped under the blankets and drew them up to her chin.
"Anything else I can get you?" he asked.
"Just your promise that I won't be bound and gagged when I wake up in the morning." She tried to make light of it.
"You've got it." Cale did his best to smile. "Well then," she said, rubbing the. wet strands of hair with the towel, "I guess I'll see you in the morning. And thank you."
"For what?"
"For taking me in."
"Right." He backed away from the sofa as if it were on fire. "Good night, Quinn."
"Good night, Cale."
Sweet dreams, she wanted to call after him, but did not. Instead, she lay in silence and listened to his footsteps echo on the wooden floor. Hearing his bedroom door close, Quinn sat up and took a deep breath, then got up quietly, creeping across the rag carpet to the fire, where she bent forward to let her hair dry the best it could. When she had finished, she draped the towel along the stone mantel, and tiptoed back to the sofa, grateful to be alone for the first time in hours. Alone to contemplate what the fates had delivered to her. Had anyone told her that she would spend the days before Christmas in a remote cabin with Cale McKenzie she'd have laughed in their face.
And yet here she sat, wearing his clothes and bundled in blankets a mere fifteen or twenty feet from where he slept, right down that hallway. And with him out of sight, it was easier for her to dwell on him, on how well he had filled out over the years. His face had changed so little, maybe a little less angular, but his eyes still had that glow and his smile still carried that same old warmth, that same sweet promise____
That promise he had never kept, she reminded herself. Tortured by the memory, she wished she had the nerve to ask why, but then again, surely he'd think her a fool to have harbored that all these years. Better, perhaps, to pretend that the episode never happened, than to open those old wounds.
Old wounds that never really healed, but that's mine to deal with. He doesn't need to know that....
Quinn sighed deeply and lay back down, pulling the covers around her to make a nest of sorts, knowing that there would be little sleep for her while the. man who had filled her dreams for so many years was really here, under the same roof. In the flesh. Just seeing Cale had touched her in places she hadn't even known were still alive and well.
She sighed again and turned over to stare at the fire, watching its dancing tongues lick the sides of the brick firebox and the shadows move slowly, sinuously across the room, like lovers dancing in the dark.
Arrrghhh.
Wrong image. She turned her back to the fire and punched the pillow, then began to count backward from one thousand. Anything to keep her mind off the beautiful man with the hazel eyes who slept just a short stroll down a darkened hallway.
Cale turned over for what must have been the four- hundredth time. Sleep, which was, for him, always hard to come by, was, on this night, a total impossibility. Not with her curled up on his sofa, just thirty-two steps away. He'd counted after he'd turned his back and walked to his room.
The reality of it stunned him and almost made him giddy. Quinn was there. His golden girl was there, under his roof. How different things could have been --should have been--if things had gone the way they had been intended. They would be cuddled together under this down quilt right now, sharing their warmth and sharing the night, instead of being separated by thirty-two steps.
Why, he had wanted to ask her. Why, his heart had wanted to know. But surely, after all this time, it should not matter. And would it not hurt more to find that he had had his heart bruised by the whim of a schoolgirl? Why embarrass himself now by demanding from the woman an explanation for the actions of the girl she had once been? He turned restlessly once again and closed his eyes, but all he could see was that face, eyes green like new grass, mouth ripe as mountain berries...
Cale groaned and turned over again, knowing that this was a night that was not likely to pass quickly.