All she felt at that moment was awkward and unprepared to share the confines of a cabin with him.
All she wanted was to get away, to retreat from those hazel eyes that changed with the light, and that were now turning a soft blue.
Not ready, she told herself. I'm not ready for this.
She forced her eyes from his face--dammit, the very least he could have done was to have gone bald and paunchy--forced herself to look around for her boots. There. By the door. Right where she left them. "I have to go."
Cale walked to the window and drew aside a dark green and white checked curtain. "Quinn, you wouldn't make it ten feet from the door in this storm."
"I have to get home." She felt awkward and nervous, wanting to flee.
"Not for a while, I'm afraid."
Walking to the front door, Quinn peered out onto a totally white world. Cale was right. She wouldn't make it past the porch without losing her direction. She stared into the dense whiteness, searching for a shadow. Perhaps Elizabeth would come back, and lead her away from here. But there were no shadows to be found, no dark figures waiting to guide her from the cabin and back to her car. With a sigh she turned back to the room, the words she had been about to speak forgotten in the blink of an eye.
Cale was tending the dying fire, building it up to send warmth and light into the room. The dark blue sweatshirt stretched across his broad back and shoulders as he lifted one log after another and stacked them evenly. Even as a teenager his arms had always been strong and hard, overdeveloped from baseball. She wondered how much more so now, after twelve seasons of playing in the majors. He looked wonderful. Everything about him looked wonderful.
She wondered where his wife was. Still napping, no doubt, in one of those rooms at the end of the hallway.
Without warning, he turned and smiled at her, totally disarming her with that same warm smile she had lived for once upon a time. Touched in ways that terrified her to recall, Quinn backed up involuntarily as if to place as much distance between them as possible. So many times throughout the years she had dreamed of this moment when she would see him again, had so carefully planned what she would say. And though she might want to grab him by the throat and demand an explanation, of course, she would not. She'd never give him the satisfaction of knowing how deep the pain had gone, how long it had lingered. Oh, no. She'd be mature. Witty. Sophisticated.
But now, so unexpectedly face-to-face, she could not recall even one word of the clever monologue she'd carefully rehearsed so many times over the years. A crash from the back of the cabin made her jump.
"Excuse me," Cale said with a grim expression as he headed down the hallway.
He was back in two minutes with one small boy under each arm. He deposited one at each end of the sofa and said sternly, "And you will sit there until I say you can get up."
Two small freckled faces levied silent curses in Cale's direction.
"So." Cale turned to Quinn and folded his arms. "I bet you'd like something warm to drink. Can I get you some tea? Coffee? Cocoa?"
"Well, a cup of tea would be great. My mouth is still a little dry," Quinn said, uneasily awaiting the appearance of the boys' mother at any moment. She couldn't possibly sleep through the racket her sons had made. Quinn kept one eye on the doorway, waiting for Cale's wife to appear. What did she look like? What was she like? Quinn was at once dying to know and sick with the thought of meeting the woman who had, after all, taken her place in Cale's life.
He walked through the doorway behind her into the small kitchen. She heard a cupboard door open, then close.
"Regular or herbal?" he asked. "What kind of herbal?"
"Umm, let's see." Cale looked up to see her in the doorway, and he held up several boxes of teas. "Val has some mint, some chamomile, and something called 'Roast-aroma.'"
Suddenly clumsy, he dropped all three boxes on the floor. Quinn bent to pick them up at the same time he did.
Trying to ignore the fact that she was close enough that he could smell some delicate, enticing scent-- lilac, maybe?--he stacked the boxes of tea, which his sister had brought at Hitler's General Store back in November, onto the counter, and stepped back, away from her.
"Mint is fine. Thank you." She tried to be casual, and thought she wasn't doing too badly, right then.
He filled the blue enamel pot with water and set it atop the stove. "I don't know why Val didn't replace this old wood stove," he muttered.
"Probably so that when you lose electricity up here, you can still eat."
"Well, it's a pain in the butt." He reached into a large black bucket by the back door and pulled out a few pieces of wood. Opening a door in the front of the stove, he stuffed in the wood, which had been cut to fit perfectly. Cut to fit by my brother, she could have told him.
"When's dinner?" Eric poked his head around the door-jamb.
"What did I say about staying on the sofa till I said you could get up?"
"We're hungry." Evan appeared behind him.
"Okay. I'll start dinner."
"What?" They eyed him suspiciously.
"Spaghetti."
"You made spaghetti last night. It was hard."
"We want pizza."
"Sorry, boys. No pizza up here. But I will try to time the spaghetti better tonight. I promise. Now, back on the sofa. You're still doing penance for having tied up Quinn and stuffed a sock in her mouth."
Dejected and grumbling, the two little boys shuffled sullenly back into the living room.
"We're bored."
"We want TV."
Cale grimaced and shrugged his shoulders. "It's hard to keep them amused sometimes. They're used to video games and cartoons."