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watched her open one cabinet after another until she’d found a mug.
    “Will you have some?” she asked without turning.
    “No.”
    Her hand trembled as she poured the coffee, and even the small movement had repercussions in the tension-weary muscles of her shoulders. Cup in hand, she padded barefoot across the floor to peer through the small opening between the shutters that served as drapes. She couldn’t see much of anything, but the steady beat of rain on the roof told her what she wanted to know.
    Straightening, she turned to face Garrick. “Is there any chance of getting to my car tonight?”
    “No.”
    His single word was a confirmation of what she’d already suspected. There seemed no point in railing against what neither of them could change. “Do you mind if I sit by your fire?”
    He stepped aside in silent invitation.
    The wide oak planks were warm under her bare feet as she crossed to the hearth. Lowering herself to the small rag rug with more fatigue than finesse, she tucked her legs under her, pressed her arms to her sides and cupped the coffee with both hands.
    The flames danced low and gently, and would have been soothing had she been capable of being soothed. But sitting before them, relatively warm and safe for the first time in hours, she saw all too clearly what she faced tonight. She was here for the night; she knew that much. The storm continued. Her car wouldn’t move. She was going nowhere until morning. But what then?
    Even once her car was freed, she had nowhere to go. Victoria’s cabin was gone, and with it the plans she’d spent the past three weeks making. It had all seemed so simple; now nothing was simple. She could look around for another country cabin to rent, but she didn’t know where to begin. She could take a room at an inn, but her supply of money was far from endless. She could return to New York, but something about that smacked of defeat—or so she told herself when she found no other excuse for her hesitancy to take that particular option.
    If she’d felt unsettled during the drive north, now she felt thoroughly disoriented. Not even at her lowest points in the past had she been without a home.
    Behind her, the sofa springs creaked. Garrick. With her glasses on, she’d seen far more than details of the cabin. She’d also seen that Garrick Rodenhiser was extraordinarily handsome. The bulk that had originally impressed her was concentrated in his upper body, in the well-developed shoulders and back defined by a thick black turtleneck. Dark gray corduroys molded a lean pair of hips and long, powerful legs. He was bearded, yes, but twenty-twenty vision revealed that beard to be closely trimmed. And though his hair was on the long side, it, too, was far from unruly and was an attractive dark blond shot through with silver.
    His nose was straight, his lips thin and masculine. His skin was stretched over high cheekbones, but his eyes were what held the true force of his being. Silvery hazel, they were alive with questions unasked and thoughts unspoken.
    Had Leah been a gambler, she’d have bet that Garrick was a transplant. He simply didn’t fit the image of a trapper. There were the amenities in the cabin, for one thing, which spoke of a certain sophistication. There was also his speech; though his words were few and far between, his enunciation was cultured. And his eyes—those eyes—held a worldly look, realistic, cynical, simultaneously knowing and inquisitive.
    She wondered where he’d come from and what had brought him here. She wondered what he thought of her arrival and of the fact that she’d be spending the night. She wondered what kind of a man he was where women were concerned, and whether the need she’d sensed in him went as deep as, in that fleeting moment in the bathroom, it had seemed.
    Garrick was wondering similar things. In his forty years, he’d had more women than he cared to count. From the age of fourteen he’d been aware of himself as a man.