"Was it a woman?" she asked. "A woman wrapped in a blanket?" "How do you know... ?"
"Because I saw her. She led me here, to your cabin."
He stared at her. "A woman in a blanket led you through a blizzard to this cabin and you didn't find that remarkable enough to mention?"
"Not really." She smiled in the darkness and added, "It was Elizabeth."
"Elizabeth?" He frowned. "You mean your great- great whatever?"
"Yes."
"Are you telling me that a ghost led you here?"
"We don't really think of her as a ghost. But yes. I do believe it was her spirit."
"Remind me to thank her," he said in the safety of the darkness.
"I already have," she told him.
From across the room, he could see the way her hair turned to copper flames in the fire's glow, and the way the light played with shadows across her face, and he knew in that moment, without doubt, that they were inevitable.
"Quinn."
He dropped to the floor next to the sofa, and took her face in his hands. Their eyes met, measuring each other for a very long time. He leaned forward and kissed her, tentatively at first, to give her the option of pulling away, just on the outside chance he had misunderstood the message he thought he read in her eyes. Quinn pulled him closer, deepening the kiss as she had in a thousand dreams, while his fingers traced the sides of her face and down the fineboned jawline to her throat and back to her mouth, just as he had longed to do through all those sleepless nights. Sinking back into the cushions, she took him with her, until he half-covered her body with his, and his hands began to explore the body that arched beneath him and drew him like a magnet.
"Quinn," he whispered, hating to stop, but needing to know, "Quinn, why didn't you come that day?"
"What?" Her eyes snapped open. He couldn't possibly have said what she thought he said.
"If you had changed your mind, why didn't you just tell me?"
"What are you talking about?" She pushed at his chest.
"Don't tell me that you've forgotten, Quinn. Even after all these years, I don't think I could take that." He sat up and ran a restless hand through his hair.
"Cale..."
"Did your parents find out that we were planning to elope? Or did you get cold feet? I need to know, Quinn. Why did you leave me waiting here?"
Quinn pushed him away and shot up from the sofa on a bolt of remembered pain. "What are you talking about? I waited. I waited all day. I watched and waited and paced..."
She began to do just that, reliving those agonizing hours.
"Quinn, I was here all day. I stood right there, on that porch..." He stood and pointed to the front of the house.
"Here?" Her face twisted into a frown. "Why would you have waited here?"
"Because that's what we had agreed upon. July 27, at three o'clock. At the cabin."
"At Elizabeth's cabin."
"Elizabeth's cabin?" He frowned. "Why would you have gone all the way up there?"
"Because cabin means Elizabeth's..."
"No, Quinn. When I said, Meet me at the cabin, I meant this cabin..." Cale's mouth went dry. "You were there? At Elizabeth's? You actually were there... ?"
"All day. Until dark." She blinked, not believing. "You were here... ?" "Till the last possible moment. Until I had just enough time left to catch my plane."
"Oh, Cale. Oh, Cale." The enormity of it overwhelmed her and took her breath away. "All these years, I thought... I thought..." She backed up toward the fireplace, choking on words she could not speak.
"... that I didn't love you? That I'd changed my mind about you?" He spoke as if the very words singed his tongue.
She nodded. "Yes."
"That's exactly what I thought," Cale whispered.
Tears as clear as glass and big as pearls welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
"Quinn, I never stopped loving you. Never. Not for a day" He gathered her into his arms, and her sobs broke his heart. "I thought that maybe you had gotten cold feet about leaving with me... that you were afraid to take that chance."
"Never, Cale. I was never afraid to love you."
"Even now?"
"Especially now."
He lifted her off her feet, and with one hand, grabbed a comforter from the sofa and spread it on the floor in front of the fireplace. Gently resting her on the blanket, he lay down beside her and wordlessly began to kiss the tears from her face. Soon there were no tears left to be kissed away, and his lips began a descent the length of her throat to the place where her collarbone met the buttons of the old thermal shirt, which one by one, she opened to lay bare the skin beneath, inviting him to feast on her flesh the way she had dreamed he might have done. Moaning through slightly parted lips, she offered more, and then more of herself to the heat of his mouth, crying out softly as his hands and seeking lips found those places that had so ached for his touch for so very long.
Reality being ever so much more wonderful than fantasy, she pulled the shirt over her head, and removed his own, needing desperately to feel his skin against hers. She felt her bones begin to melt away, the resultant liquid, thick and hot and bright, seeming to spread through her like lava. Wordlessly they moved together, caught up in the rhythms of an ancient dance, until he filled her as completely as she needed him to, and the sweet power of their dreams engulfed them both and dragged them down into the magical heart of the night.
Chapter Ten