Upon a Midnight Clear (Legend, Colorado 2)

"Well, then," he said, forcing a nonchalance he did not feel. "Look who stopped by to say 'hey.'"

She glared up at him, her auburn hair spread around her head like a soft fog.

Yep. Those were her eyes, all right. Big and green and throwing off sparks when she was angry. Just like now.

"Mmphfmprhm." She seemed to be speaking directly to him. Through her teeth.

Frowning, Cale leaned forward to take a closer look. Something white protruded from her mouth.

"What in the… ?" He tugged at the white thing until her mouth released it, then held up the small white sock and asked with studied patience and practiced composure, "Whose is this?"

Eric pointed at Evan. Evan pointed at Eric.

"His," they both said.

"How did it get into her mouth?" Cale asked sternly.

"He did it," they both replied.

"Well, I guess it could have been worse." Cale held the sock up to examine it. "At least it's clean."

"That makes me feel so much better," Quinn told him dryly. "There aren't five more of them, are there?" She eyed the two boys warily, certain that they, too, were part of this ridiculous dream. And it was, of course, a dream, wasn't it?

How could it be otherwise?

"What?" Cale asked. He sounded real enough. Looked real enough…

"Weren't there seven dwarfs?" she heard herself ask.

Cale's laughter was unexpected.

Good grief. It wasn't a dream. It was him. She'd know that laugh anywhere.

Mortified, Quinn straightened herself up and, going for dignity—as much as one could muster when the man who'd dumped you twelve years ago had just removed a tinty sock from your mouth—cleared her throat and leveled her chin.

"Well then, if you would just untie me and get me a glass of water so that I can rinse the cotton out of my mouth, I think I'd like to mosey on back to the ranch about now." Quinn sought to sound as nonchalant as possible, searching for just the right note, trying to ignore the fact that her heart was attempting to pound its way out of her chest in heavy, erratic thumps.

Pulling back the afghan to reveal rope looped tightly around her wrists and ankles, Cale scowled, then turned to his sons. "Would one of you like to explain this? And it had better be good, fellas. This one had better be real good."

Eric pointed to Quinn and said darkly, "She's an invader."

"He means an intruder."Evan nodded.

"Boys, this is no way to treat company."

"She's not company. She's a girl."

"Yeah." Eric nodded. "A stranger girl."

"Well, this girl just happens to be an old friend of mine, so she's not a stranger at all." Cale unloosened the rope with fingers that were close to shaking at the sudden nearness of this woman who had appeared in his dreams so many times he knew every line of her face, every curve of her body.

He cleared his throat and helped her up, as if was the most natural thing in the world to have the woman of his dreams show up, bound and gagged, on the sofa in a remote cabin in the Montana hills in a blinding blizzard.

"Boys, you obviously do not know who this woman is," Cale told them, forcing his eyes onto them and away from her. From those green eyes that still, he had noticed, held that spark of gold.

They shook their heads and asked in unison, "Who?"

"This is the daughter of Hap Hollister," he announced gravely.