Cabin Fever (18 page)

“What?” I say, trying to break the tension.

“Hearing you say it makes me angry at myself,” he finally says.

“Why?”

“Because. First of all, you’re right. That
is
how I feel. And second, it’s idiotic. It’s a vicious circle going nowhere but down. And worst of all, it’s disrespectful of Laura’s love for me. She deserves better than that.”

“I guess.” I shrug. “If you say so.” I’ve gotten kind of lost in the philosophy, but I’m glad he seems to be perking up.

He sounds frustrated but energized. “She’s gone, but to think that she never should have been around is worse. It’s totally worse. I
know
that it’s worse. Why am I doing that to her?”

“Great. That’s a good sign, right? Clarity?”

“Yeah.” He bows his head and scratches at the back of it. “I guess I was so messed up with the booze and the drugs, there was no hope of any clarity for me.” He looks up. “But that’s how I wanted it, you know? It’s how I needed it to be.”

“But not anymore?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t.” He looks behind him at the fridge. “If there were any beers in there, I’d probably be drinking them.”

“Because you’re an alcoholic?”

“No. Because I don’t think I know how to handle Laura’s death on my own.”

“Most people don’t. That’s what therapy is for.”

“Have you ever gone to therapy?”

I push the last of my food around in my bowl, uncomfortable now that he’s bringing the conversation back to me. “No. Art has always been my therapy.”

Jeremy gestures over to the covered painting. “Is that one therapy for you? That painting over there?”

I can’t look him in the eye. “Maybe.”

“I didn’t peek at it, you know.” He says this softly, as if he knows how important it is to me. “I wouldn’t do that.”

I bite the inside of my cheeks to try and control my stupid smile. It wants to take over my entire face. “Thank you.”

“But I’d love to see it.”

“Not today,” I say in a rush.

“Okay, not today. Maybe before I leave?”

“Maybe. No promises.” I can only imagine what he’d think seeing that painting. He’d know right away I’m hot for his body. Out of the ten million things I could have chosen to paint, I put
him
on the canvas? A guy I just met and disliked for most of the time I’ve known him? Yeah. I’ve got it bad.

He reaches over and takes my empty bowl and fork. “You in the mood for dessert?”

My heart flips over twice. Is he flirting with me? Was that supposed to be as sexy as it sounded?

“Maybe. What’s on the menu?” Will he say himself? If he does, will I be happy and take him up on the offer or will I run?

He turns around and wiggles his eyebrows at me. “A surprise.”

“Ooo, I love surprises.” I rub my hands together, acting like I’m getting into the mood when what I’m really doing is freaking out. I’m on auto-flirt-pilot.

“Just give me two minutes to clean up my mess, and then I’ll show you. Get your coat and boots on.”

“Oh, boy. I hope this dessert isn’t at the quick-mart or whatever that place is. I’ll never make it, not after all those noodles.” I hold my stomach for extra drama.

“Are you kidding?” He laughs. “That’s carbo-loading, baby. You could walk to the Wal-Mart from here on that fuel. But don’t worry, I’m not going to take you far. Just to the edge of the woods.”

I look out the window. It’s pitch black out, but I know the place he’s talking about isn’t more than twenty feet from the front door.

I get dressed in all my gear, while butterflies battle each other for space in my belly. By the time Jeremy’s done with the dishes and dressed in his boots and coat, I’m ready for anything. I’ll even make snow angels if he asks me to, as long as he does it with that smile of his.

Chapter Twenty-Five

JEREMY TAKES A MIXING BOWL out of the cabinet and walks to the door. “Off we go,” he says, grabbing the door handle. “You ready?”

I join him and smile, wondering what the bowl is all about. “Ready for anything.”

He pauses before turning the handle. “Anything?” His eyebrows go up.

I punch him playfully on the arm. “Get your head out of the gutter, boy.”

He yanks the door open and shoves me outside. “Well, all right then, if you insist!”

I half expect him to slam the door shut and lock me out of the house, but he’s right behind me, herding me across the porch and down the stairs. Jaws is at his heels.

“Where are we going?”

“Just keep moving, Lady! Head for the trees.”

I take one step off the porch and promptly sink up to my thigh in snow. “Holy crap it got deeper out here while I slept!”

“Worst winter since 1977!” he says, way too brightly. He picks Jaws up and holds him in his armpit.

“You don’t have to sound so happy about it,” I grumble, struggling to stay upright.

“See that tree over there?” He points, using the bowl, to the left of the cabin at a giant evergreen with broad branches full of snow.

“Yes.”

“That’s where we’re going. Come on … follow me.” He trudges through the snow with large, swinging elbows and high steps that bring his boots almost to his waste. I follow in the churned up snow he leaves behind. It’s a lot easier moving forward in his path than making my own. In the lights coming from inside the house, shining out of the cabin windows, I can see Jaws’s curled up hindquarters and his scraggly tail hanging out from behind Jeremy’s arm. He doesn’t seem to mind being the baggage of the guy he tried to eat earlier. I guess he and I have that in common: one minute we hate Jeremy, the next we love him.

My heart spasms painfully.
I just thought-said love.What insanity is this?! What’s next? A marriage proposal? Jesus!

We reach the tree in a couple minutes, and I’m sweating like I’ve just run a mile, too exhausted from my trekking to worry about the direction my innermost thoughts are taking.

“Okay,” Jeremy says, putting the dog down on a pile of snow, “you’re going to stand here with the bowl above your head.” He hands me the bowl and starts to walk off.

“Where are you going?” I ask, mystified. Are we about to do a moondance? Are we catching the moon’s rays or something? Is he a Wiccan and just forgot to mention it?

“I’m going to climb.”

“Climb?” I say mostly to myself, as I watch him stop at the base of the tree.

He looks back at me and gestures with his arm. “Hold it above your head.”

I slowly raise the bowl up. “The bowl? Like this?”

“No, put it on top of your head.”

Well, he’s obviously completely crazy, but what the hell. I’m out here in the middle of nowhere. If he wants to do a moon dance, who am I to argue? I turn the bowl upside down and put it on my head. My arms drop to my sides and I wait.

He starts laughing so hard, he falls over into the snow.

I slowly lift the bowl off my head as my face burns. “What?”

He struggles to his feet, and points at me, his hand flapping like a bird wing in slow motion because he’s still laughing. “Not that way, you goofball.”

I cock my arm with the bowl behind my head, ready to wing it at him.

“No! Don’t throw it! Just put it on your head the other way!”

I stare at the bowl in confusion. “What other way?”

“Right side up! How’re you going to catch any snow with it upside down?”

Suddenly the lightbulb goes on. “Oooooh, you want me to catch some snow in the bowl? Why didn’t you just say so?” I take it and bend down, planning to scoop up a whole bunch of the fluffy white stuff.

“No, not that crap on the ground. You want the snow from the trees. Hold on, I’ll get it for ya.”

My jaw eases open as I prepare to respond, but then the words are stolen away by surprise when I see him climbing the tree. Tiny limbs and barely-there ridges are enough for his boots to get a grip, and suddenly he’s up to the same level as the branch above me.

“Now put the bowl on your head like I told you.”

I sigh out really loudly, letting him know how silly I think this whole thing is. But I put the bowl on my head now and wait. “This is ridiculous. I feel like an idiot.”

“Just oooone moooore second…” Jeremy climbs up a few more feet, stands on the branch, and begins jumping up and down on it, holding onto the tree trunk for balance.

I open my mouth to protest, but close it when it fills with snow.

Every bit of the frozen white pile that was on the branch is now on
me
.

“Awesome!” Jeremy yells. “Hold it right there! Don’t spill any of it!”

I’m too busy spitting snow out of my mouth and blinking it off my eyelashes to answer him. He’s going to be in so much trouble when I get my hands on him.

I hear a big
BOOF!
and realize that he’s jumped out of the tree and into the snow. He struggles through his former path to get to me, a huge grin on his face.

“Are you ready for some dessert?” he asks.

I blink at him, melted snow making it look like I’m crying. “If you tell me my dessert is snow, I’m going to kill you.”

He reaches up slowly and takes the bowl from my head. “Easy now. Wouldn’t want you to spill your dessert.” He gives me a big exaggerated wink, pushes me in between the boobs, sending me on my back into the snow, and takes off running with the bowl held to his chest.

I point at his back, my other arm and legs flailing around, trying to make contact with something that will help me get to my feet. “Kill, Jaws! Kill! Bite him in the ass!”

Jaws picks his way over the uneven snow and stops when he gets to my leg, using it to leverage himself up onto four feet. He starts walking daintily up my leg. When I see him coming for me and guess his plans, I flip onto my side and then get on all fours. “No way, you stinky mutt. No French kisses. Not anymore. Not ever again.”

Struggling through the snow, I make my way back to the cabin with Jaws behind me. The door to the cabin slams shut as I reach the bottom of the stairs. My heart is racing and my pulse pounding, and it’s not all from the workout I just got trying to get through the snow. Jeremy is most definitely flirting. I just have to decide what I’m going to do about it.

Chapter Twenty-Six

STOMPING LIKE A BIG GIANT among Lilliputians as I cross the porch helps to get rid of most of the snow from my body and boots.
 
I leave the rest to melt into puddles just inside the door to the cabin. Jeremy’s already undressed and standing in the kitchen with two bowls.

“Do you prefer maple syrup or blueberry?” he asks.

My plans for revenge are tempered by two of my favorite words. “What?” Maple syrup? Blueberry? Sex on a beach? What?

He holds up two bottles. One looks like regular old maple syrup like I’d buy for my pancakes, and the other looks like something that would be at a snow-cone machine at a state fair. I can’t help but grin like a kid.

“You have snow-cone syrup?”

“Always. It’s a tradition up here at the cabin. But you have to use the right snow. You can’t risk anything that’s been on the ground. Too many critters with bladders around here.”

I sit at the stool where I had my dinner and watch as he pours maple syrup over a round ball of snow in a bowl.

“How’d you get it so perfect?” I ask, pointing to its smoothly domed surface.

He grins to himself. “Secret. Can’t tell you.”

“No fair. No secrets in the cabin.” I pretend-pout.

He looks over at my painting alcove. “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

I scowl at him, trying like hell to ignore the jolt of sexual electricity that just raced through my body and zapped me in the nether regions. Does he want to get naked as much as I do?

“Not fair,” I finally say, possibly a little out of breath.

“All’s fair in love and war,” he says, grinning again.

The silence that follows nearly eats me alive. I have to look away. I can’t imagine he’s feeling what I am, thinking what I am, namely:
Which is this? Love or war?

When he first arrived, it felt like war. Now it doesn’t so much. Does that mean there’s something else happening between us?

I nearly laugh out loud at the path my thoughts are taking. I must be way lonelier than I thought. This poor guy can’t think or talk about anyone but his deceased wife, and yet I’m imagining him falling in love with me.
Crazy town
. I need to paint these deranged feelings out of me, ASAP.

“Here,” he says in a more subdued voice, “try mine, and if you like it, I’ll make you one with the maple.”

I take a small bite and decide it’s my new favorite cabin dessert.

“You like it?” His smile reminds me of a little kid giving the perfect present on Christmas.

“Love it.”

He reaches for the bowl, but I wrap my arm around it and drag it closer. “Mine.”

He laughs. “I’ll make you another one.”

“Mine.” I hover closer over the top of it and hold my spoon out in a threatening gesture. “I will cut you.”

He puts his hands up in surrender. “Fine. Yours. I’ll make myself a new one.” He licks his lips as he starts the process.
 
“But with more syrup this time.”

“Hey! No fair!” I reach over and hit the bottle with my spoon as he pours it over his snowball. “Save some for me!”

“I don’t knooow,” he says in a singsong voice. “Maybe if you agree to show me your painting later, I might be able to save you some.”

“No deal.” I pretend to be mad as I eat more of my maple-flavored snowball. I can’t call this a mere snowcone. It’s much better, plus there’s no cone in sight.

We crunch our snowy desserts in silence, grinning at each other over the island. Twice he pretends to try and steal some of mine and twice we enter into a spoon-sparring competition. Of course, I win. I think he’s letting me, though.

When we’re done, he takes our bowls and rinses them in the sink.

“Now what?” I say, resting my chin in my hands and my elbows on the counter. My lips are sticky, so I keep licking them. I watch his every move, too, so the whole scene makes me think I must seem like a total weirdo. Luckily, he’s not giving me any strange looks.

As he moves around the kitchen, his muscles bend and flex. I could get used to staring at him all day. He’s a truly beautiful specimen. I haven’t done any nudes in a while, but I could sure be convinced to do one of him…