Dinner had been wonderful – Sabrina was a surprisingly good cook. She had fixed chicken cacciatore and they had eaten in the big, old fashioned kitchen instead of the formal dining room. Daniel had helped her put the finishing touches on the meal as they sipped wine and talked.
He realized he knew very little about Sabrina Gosling, apart from her relationship to Catherine. During dinner he learned that she had been an art major and that she had worked for a while in a museum in New York City. Nothing to do with antiquities really, but it did give her an appreciation for old things. Until Catherine died, she had been living in Rome, working in a museum there.
She actually had a lot of things in common with Daniel. She was also an only child, and her parents had died in a car accident when she was a teenager. That was where the similarities ended.
Whereas Daniel had no one, unless you counted his absent grandfather, Nick; Sabrina had Catherine, who had put her through college and had allowed her to study abroad in her chosen field. Daniel felt another rush of emotion at the generosity of his good friend.
After dinner, dessert and more wine, Daniel looked around for his jacket. It was time to head back to Colorado Springs. To tell the truth, he had a slight buzz, but he figured a large fast food coffee on the way out of town would sober him up. Evidently Jack was right—he was a cheap date.
"Daniel, it's really late." Sabrina was holding his jacket, but she made no move to offer it to him. "And we've been through two bottles of wine. I'd feel much better if you stayed in your old room tonight and drove back tomorrow."
Daniel had known Catherine less than a month when she had declared the first guest room on the right at the top of the stairs to be his. From that moment on, he had an open invitation any time he was in Denver to come by and spend the night.
Of course, there was that year when he had been on Abydos, followed by another six months of just trying to fit in with the SGC, when he had honestly been too busy to visit. It wasn't until after Ernest came back into her life that Daniel had begun to take her up on her offer.
He had thought that he would never spend another night in that comfortable room, so the prospect pleased him. "Okay, if it's not too much trouble."
"Not at all. The bed's already made up."
Daniel helped Sabrina clear the table and load the dishwasher, and then he wished her goodnight and went on upstairs to bed.
When he got to his old bedroom, he wasn't a bit surprised to find out that some of his clothes were still in the big, antique dresser. He ran his fingers lightly over its polished surface and thought of happier times. This room had always felt like home. He looked into the adjoining bathroom, and there was his toothbrush, right where he had left it.
He stripped down to his boxers, climbed into the beautiful old four-poster bed, and soon fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.