Holiday Blog Part Five

Taking over from DeeDee Lane is Rebecca Grace

             They lounged on the sofa in front of the fire place in silence, sipping their hot chocolate drinks in silence. Cammie loved the smoky scent that enveloped the room. It took her back in time to the memories of holidays spent with her family when they would take a cabin in the mountains and stay for a week.

            “What are you thinking?” Paul asked, leaning toward her. “You have such a.. I don’t know, happy, satisfied… fulfilled, just soft look on your face.  I’m not quite sure how to describe it.”

            She gave him a mischievous smile. “Happy? Satisfied? As opposed to plotting my next action to defeat you?”

            He chuckled. “I guess.”

            She turned and gazed into the crackling fire. “It’s hard to think of a battle when I’m in a place like this. It takes me back to when I was young… to the time I spent with my family just a couple of years ago.” She sighed as she leaned toward the warmth of the fire.

            “Tell me about it,” he said softly.

            “Tell you what?”

            “What you’re thinking?”

            A lump crept into her throat and she stood and walked over to the fire to stoke the flames and throw another log into it. “I keep remembering the past. How happy it was... how much I love this area…and being here… how much I would miss it if… well, if things change. ” She glanced around the room, thinking about all the work they had already put into renovating the area.  And with a few strokes of a pen, it could all be for naught.

            He studied her for a minute and then turned to looked into the fire as well, a thoughtful look crossing his face. In the dim light from the fire, Paul's eyes seemed to take on a bright glow. If only she could show him how special this place was.

A sudden blast of wind outside rattled the door. Paul shivered as he took a sip of his drink and faced her with a quizzical look on his face. “The sound of that wind doesn’t freak you out?”

            Cammie listened for a minute, concentrating on the whistling wind as it whipped through the trees outside. A branch scraped the edge of the roof and a window rattled as snow driven by the force of the wind pelted the glass, Again she smiled. “Freaky, isn’t it?  You should hear the noise when the rain pours down in the summer.”

            Paul straightened his shoulders and shook his head, taking a quick sip of his drink before speaking. “Really? It's always like this?”

            She laughed. “Of course not. And it’s not freaky or frightening to me. What are you? A city boy?”

“I guess I’m more used to the sound of traffic than this.” He shivered again, leaning toward the fire.

“Not me. To me, the sound of that wind and the snow hitting the glass reminds me of family. I think of how we’d come up here in the winter and go snowshoeing during the day or just hiking when there wasn’t snow.”

            He glanced around the room and cocked his head to the side, looking confused. “But what would you do at night? With no TV? No internet? I would think the nights would get long, especially in the winter.”

            She laughed again. “Not really.  Sometimes those nights were the best part.”

            “Is that an invitation?” he asked, lifting one eyebrow.

            Her heart skipped. Just what was he implying? She turned away, not certain what she wanted, but she wasn’t ready yet for more than teasing. Not yet, sexy as he might be and as pleasant as he had been all day.

“Oh, this is a perfect spot if you want to be alone. But I’m not talking just about that. I’m talking about family fun. This is a perfect spot for family getaways in addition to romantic nights.”

            “Tell me about it,” he prodded. Or perhaps he just wanted to keep her talking to break the silence or cover up the sound of the of wind that had begun to howl outside.

            She sat forward on the sofa, warming to the subject. “We would usually bring board games. My dad loved to play chess and we’d have tournaments for bragging rights. He always won, though my brother Jeffrey would sometimes accidentally knock over the board when he realized he was about ot lose again.”

            “Board games?” he seemed surprised.

            She laughed again as another memory came to her. “You think this wind is spooky? We loved to play the game ‘Clue’ as children -- you know, Miss Scarlet in the library killed Mr. Body with a rope?  Well, we didn’t just play. If you made that accusation, you had to have a reason, almost a little story to go around it. Like she killed him because they were having an affair and she feared he might tell her husband, Mr.Scarlett. So she hung him from the library ladder. You know, those old ladders that they used to have to reach the top shelf? She tied his neck scarf around a nail and then yanked him off the ladder. You had to have a good story. Professor Plum had some ingenious way of using all the weapons. And of course someone always had a ghost story to tell in the middle. You know they say there are Native American ghosts that still roam this area.”

            He laughed and shook his head. “Thanks a lot. You might have made a spooky night even spookier.”

“But that is the point. We would be up here with little to do at night, except talk. It was family time in a way that you don’t get when you have all these other distractions around you. Look around. What do you have to do? Talk, play games, catch up. When we would go home, we all felt closer, and we could hardly wait to get together the next year. And it’s not just family fun I’m talking about. It's perfect for couples who just want to get away from the hectic work world.” She gave him a wicked smile. “What if you were up here with a woman and little outside stimulation?”

            “If I was up here with a beautiful woman, I could think of something stimulating to do…” He winked and leaned toward her, putting his drink on the table. Then abruptly he stopped. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I meant.”

            Cammie laughed. “Paul, are you flirting or embarrassing yourself?”

            “Hell, I’m not sure.”  Paul sat back on the sofa and the fire light again blased in his eyes, sending off a sparkle that shook her.

            For an instant she felt a spark deep inside and her stomach jiggled. She leaned forward and touched his hand, not certain if she wanted to encourage him or continue teasing. “Does that mean I win this round?”

He shook his head, as though clearing it, but he put his hand on hers, covering it gently. “I’m not sure what we were competing for. Did you have a game in mind?”

She gazed at his lips, full, kissable, those bright eyes that seemed to shimmer in the firelight. Cammie wanted to lean forward to kiss him, touch him, but she stopped. 

What the hell was she doing? They might end up working together. Did she want to get involved with someone she was working with on a regular basis? And was he even interested in her? He seemed to be, or perhaps it as just that they were in this cabin for the night. Alone. What was he thinking? She wasn’t certain she wanted to know.

And this wasn’t a game. This was her future.

 ++++++++++++++++

What happens next?

A:  They share a kiss and curl up on the sofa and talk?

B:  They become more intimate?