She tore her eyes away, already annoyed. Why did the man turn her brain to mush?
“Any word on Paul? Or Hector?”
“He’s sent more text messages,” Bonnie answered for her. “But we don’t think it’s really him.”
That was true. Something had never felt right about the messages. Paul, in his gang persona as Inigo, often blustered, but he didn’t threaten pure violence. Paul in his role as a brother, especially to Bonnie, could even be tender.
Anger, deep in the pit of her stomach, rose to a familiar boil. The longer she’d thought about it, the more Rio believed Paul could not have sent the messages. Deep down, she knew it was Hector who’d shattered their life.
And yet, they were the ones in hiding.
Awesome.
“Let’s hope the police will find the answer,” David said. “Meanwhile, let’s get you into the house. I’ve cleared the afternoon so I’m at your disposal.”
“At your disposal”? Who said that? Rio buried her anger again. David was back to being as genteel as a duke and as polite as the diplomat she’d seen in him days earlier. She half-expected Jeeves the butler to come waddling out of the mansion and call her “miss.”
“You didn’t have to change your schedule for us.”
“It hardly would have been chivalrous to make you wander around an unfamiliar place by yourselves. There are lots of nooks and crannies here where newcomers can get disoriented. We should also do a bit of grocery shopping. Stock the pantry with some of your favorites?”
He was only being wonderful. Welcoming and open. But his offers suffocated her like more smoke from the fire. It would take forever to repay him for this, but she had to take the help for Bonnie’s safety. Her stomach ached. She’d always been able to scrape her way out of tight spots, but this time she’d been squeezed to the point of helplessness for one of the very rare times in her life.
“I . . . appreciate this.” She stumbled over the words, knowing she needed to sound at least a little grateful. “Bonnie’s pretty excited.”
Bonnie normally railed against Rio speaking for her, but the girl was too immersed in a theme-park state of mind to care. “This is so cool!” she said for the hundredth time.
“Okay, I’ve got to get home, so you guys enjoy the tour of the house and barns.” Jill got an enthusiastic hug from Bonnie, and accepted a perfunctory one from Rio without questioning the lack of enthusiasm. “I’ll be back to teach in a few hours,” Jill continued. “I’m guessing Chase wants to come and say hi, too. He was so worried about you.”
It dawned on Rio that she knew nothing about Chase’s life outside of Crossroads. She knew Jill had her own horses and taught here with David. But what was the old farmhouse they were fixing up really like?
“Everything okay?” Jill asked.
Rio pulled a smile from somewhere deep. “Sorry. Tell Chase thanks for helping set all this up. Thank you, too.”
Jill waved a dismissive hand. “This is no trouble. See you later, David.”
An awkward silence filled the void Jill left behind. David stood alone before them in this new reality, truly the only port in this storm. Unlike when she’d first met him, however, he seemed much less harmless than at the community center or even at the fire scene. Here she was in his domain where, breeches and all, he definitely ruled. His dark good looks only enhanced the picture. With hair mussed from the breeze and a small vee of skin at the base of his throat messing with her equilibrium, she noticed his maleness far more than when she’d been in her own space. The danger wasn’t that David Pitts-Matherson would ever hurt them physically. Emotionally . . . that was where she felt a deep, nameless peril.
“Let’s take your things inside,” he said. “Please forgive the state of the house. It’s very much a work in progress.”
There wasn’t anything to forgive. Dark pine wainscoting and a welcoming shade of sage green greeted them in the entryway. Three large oil paintings of horses caused Bonnie to squeal in delight yet again.
Past a stairway with an open railing, the living room was comfortable and masculine in the same woods and greens. Deep-cushioned furniture, upholstered not in cliché leather but in a rich burgundy print, looked rich but inviting. Bamboo flooring glowed a burnished gold beneath thick area rugs.
“Books and telly in here any time you like,” David said. “Kitchen’s this way.”
At the kitchen doorway, Rio nearly lost her composure for the first time. She’d never seen the like, even in the diners where she’d worked. The expanse of granite countertop seemed big enough to land small aircraft. Stainless gleamed from the appliance surfaces, and a few dishes sat in the sink. When she caught sight of the shiny stove, tears filled her eyes. Her stacks of cookbooks, some from her grandmother, most discovered at garage sales or used bookshops, had been destroyed in the fire. Gone, like the Breyer horse . . .
Mortified, she held back a ripple of nausea. She’d spent so much time trying to instill a philosophy of non-materialism to her siblings, and here she was mourning the loss of her things more than the loss of the house itself.
“Here now.” David’s warm voice drew her away from the memory pit. “I’m sorry. Let’s skip this for now.”
“No.” Rio squared her shoulders and stiffened, angry at her breakdown. “I’m just fine. Once in a while I just remember something we lost.”
“What was it just then?”
She stared into his cocoa-brown eyes and almost allowed herself to sink into their sincerity. She shook free of his spell. “Cookbooks,” she said shortly. “Nothing important.”
Attractive creases formed between his thick brows. He thought a moment. “Is that what was piled on the range?”
She shrugged. “They were all of them old and generic.”
“But did you use them? You like to cook?”
“She’s a great cook.” Bonnie had prowled through the room and returned, an eager puppy exploring a new world.
“When I had time and money.” Rio tried to convey indifference. “I rarely had them both together.”
“I think most of us can identify with that.”
She knew he meant his quiet smile to show camaraderie, but irritation rolled over her, and her good intentions to stay calm and aloof dissipated. This man had no idea what it meant to run out of either commodity. If he could blithely clear his afternoon schedule of work and create a home that looked like this, he had nothing in common with her microscopic bank account or the forty-plus-hours-a-week job at Calvin’s Diner she’d just had to quit. She turned her back on David and Bonnie and gripped the handle of her donated suitcase.
“Where do you want us to take our things?”
“Right this way,” he said. “There’s a bathroom on this level through there.” He pointed to a hallway door on the other side of the living room. “It and my room and office are beyond.”
He led them to the front staircase made of more burnished wood and studded with pristine white balusters. In spite of herself, Rio ran one hand along the polished railing as she climbed the steps, reveling. This was so different from the narrow, enclosed staircase in her old house, which had been scarred and painted and functional, period. She loved elegant staircases.
“Now you’ll see how much there is left to do on the house,” David said, when they reached the hallway at the top. “Believe it or not, there are eight rooms up here, albeit small. One day I’d like to put in some skylights. Until then, this long hallway is dark and a bit dreary, I’m afraid.”
True enough, the hall was windowless and held only doorways, but with light beige walls and pictures lining its length, it was hardly dreary.
“Two bedrooms up here are finished. The others are still in original condition. There’s another bath. It’s ugly but clean.”
His eyes apologized. Rio held back a grunt of disdain. He’d just described the bathroom she’d used for the last twenty-six years. He turned to the right and led the way to a corner room facing the front of the house, d
ecorated in spring green and white. A beautiful quilt in greens and yellows with touches of blue adorned the double bed. Bonnie gaped.
“This has to be the most gorgeous room I’ve ever seen! Oh Rio, look. Look at the flower pictures.”
The décor was luxury beyond anything Rio could ever have afforded. The delicately striped green-and-white curtains were pretty but not frilly. David Pitts-Matherson clearly had deeper talents than raising horses and filling out tight pants.
“It’s yours for now if you wish,” he said.
“Really? Oh, really?” Bonnie spun around the space once and flipped her suitcase onto the bed. “Thank you!” She stopped short of throwing her arms around David’s neck.
“Yours is right next door.” He caught Rio’s eyes, his smile underscored with friendliness.
“Yeah!” Bonnie stopped her room-ogling and grabbed Rio’s upper arm. “I can’t wait to see what yours looks like.”
“Hers” looked like a page out of a decorating magazine. What Bonnie’s spring-fresh room was to airy neutrality, Rio’s was to masculine serenity. A soothing dove gray covered the walls, and classy blue, gray, and maroon striped drapes hung floor-length at the window. Like the green room, this one faced the driveway, barns, arenas, and off into the fields.
The quilt on the bed was even more intricately designed than the first, in stars and log cabin blocks of blues and whites and reds. Rio stared at the richness of the space, both entranced and terrified. The colors touched her, yet David might as well have placed her in a room hung with gold tapestries.
“I’m afraid this one is a bit less pretty,” he said. “Fit a little better for a fellow, I reckon.”
“Stop apologizing,” she heard herself say. “This will be fine. It’s . . . beautiful.”
Reluctantly, she set her case on the floor next to the bed, not daring to place anything on the amazing craftsmanship of the quilt.
“Not much cohesiveness between rooms—each is its own little theme park, isn’t it?”
“Just shows you have an amazing talent for decorating,” Rio said.
“Me?” David’s eyes filled with amusement. “Good Lord, no. I can frame a room and hammer up drywall, but the rest is one hundred percent my mother. She comes from England once or twice a year and drives the people at the decorating shops into padded cells. She’ll be here the middle of November, in fact.”
“So when you picked the color chip in my kitchen . . .”
“It matched the floor.” He shrugged. “My mother tells me it’s important, the matching part.” He hesitated, then spoke hesitantly. “I truly am sorry about your kitchen. I know I said it, but I do understand being here isn’t the same.”
One point for him. She nodded without replying.
“C’mon, then,” he continued. “Let me show you the rest of what’s up here so you’ll know.”
The bathroom was only a little ugly. Aged, shrimp-colored tile lined the tub surround and rose halfway up the rest of the walls. The glazing on a classic, pedestal sink had cracked over the years, and the linoleum had bubbled slightly in a few places. But, just as David had said, it was spotless, and it smelled like fresh citrus. Fluffy white and blue towels hung on a long towel bar, and a white wicker shelf unit held more linens. A pot of bright silk flowers up on one shelf added a cheery spot of color. David’s mother, Rio assumed, had made the best of the old room.
“I use the bathroom downstairs,” he said. “So this is private for you ladies.”
“I thought you said it was ugly!” Bonnie laughed. “It’s pretty.”
Thank goodness for bubbly Bonnie saying all the right things. Rio couldn’t rid herself of the slight sourness in the pit of her stomach every time she opened another treasure trove of a room in this immense house. She barely knew what to say about anything.
“These last rooms are just as they were when we bought the house,” David explained, leading the way down the hall. “A bit less dusty and filled with my own storage but unchanged from probably fifty years ago. The house, according to the original deed, is eighty-nine years old and was quite the showplace in its day.”
It’s quite the showplace now. Was he so jaded he couldn’t see what he had?
One more room faced the house front. Its walls bore faded flowered paper and the floor was stacked with neat plastic bins along with a folding table and a sewing machine in its case.
“Mum uses this as her sewing room when she comes,” David said. “The bins are full of fabrics, I guess. I don’t come in here much.”
“How long does your mother stay when she visits?” Rio had to wonder about a woman who specialized in drive-by interior decorating.
“A solid six weeks. Long enough to indulge her decorating fantasy-of-the-moment and get a bit of visiting in, as well. She’s quite a girl is Mum.”
Rio swallowed back the slightest twinge of envy. She’d been four when her mother had died, and she remembered her mostly from stories and pictures.
“This room is purely storage.” David opened a door on the opposite side of the hallway.
The small, white-walled room had a sloped ceiling, a small window facing the back, and was filled nearly floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes and random pieces of furniture. The not-unpleasant scent of age filled her senses.
“It’s my version of an attic,” he explained. “I don’t even remember what’s in some of the boxes. There’s a trunk in the corner came from England ten years ago. Shows you that, unlike my mother, I’m basically disorganized.”
After showing them more rooms, each a different size and filled with a random assortment of junk, extra beds, exercise equipment, and horse tack, David pushed open a door at the end of the hallway. “The last room,” he said. “Completely untouched although it probably has the most potential, as an office or lounge or some such thing.”
The room was slightly bigger than the other bedrooms. Bare hardwood covered the floor, and the walls bore faded, purple-ish paint. Although the sloped ceiling reduced the back half of the room to three-quarters height, three windows brought in an abundance of light, and half-height bookshelves lined the back wall. A single bed covered in a quilt of periwinkles, purples, and turquoises stood on one side, and a large antique wardrobe served as a closet.
The barren space seemed to call her name. “This is beautiful.”
“We call it the nothing room,” said David.
“Could I stay in here instead?” she asked, before she could lose the bold nerve.
“Here?” He seemed honestly astounded. “But there’s nothing to it.”
“There’s character. And a bed, and a place to put what’s in this suitcase. We aren’t going to be here long, and I’d rather have the . . . sparseness.”
“Of course,” he said, still nonplussed. “You’re welcome to it. But you know you can stay, you must stay, until the threat toward you and Bonnie is gone. Don’t you want something more comfortable?”
To her, this space was steeped in more comfort than any Better Homes and Gardens room she’d already seen, as if it was perfectly suited to holding her tiny suitcase of possessions and her enormous trunk loads of mental junk.
“This is plenty comfortable.”
“All right then.” He swept his arm toward the room. “If you want it, it’s yours.”
“Do you have a plan? For this room?”
“Ah? Not in the near future.”
“I thought maybe if you had a paint color chosen I could paint for you.”
He turned in place to face her squarely. “Look here, love. Are you taking this bare room and offering to work for it out of some wrongheaded idea that you don’t deserve simply to be here and be safe? You don’t have to earn the right to be here.”
He rested his fingers on her upper arm as casually as the word “love” flowed from his lips. The touch meant nothing, and yet her stomach filled with frenetic butterflies. A mix of spicy musk, sawdust, and faint farm odors befuddled her, and for an embarrassing moment she found
no words—she only stared and swallowed. Then annoyance with herself returned and, ducking from his touch, she hardened her features and stared him down.
Long, long ago she’d learned not to accept free help. Free help equaled ulterior motives and ulterior motives usually required payment due later.
“I don’t do charity well, Mr. Pitts-Matherson. We’ll earn our keep, and we’ll be out of your hair as soon as I know the police have Hector Black in custody.”
He half-chuckled. “Please don’t backslide into the ‘Mister’ title. Nobody even calls my father Mr. Pitts-Matherson. My great-grandfather, perhaps, the one who saddled us with the mouthful.”
He so charmingly ignored her point, Rio couldn’t decide whether to laugh or scowl harder. “Do they call you Dave? Or Davy?”
“Not if they want an answer. It’s David. Or, if you must, Hey You.”
She gave in at last to his incorrigible charisma with a small smile. “Hey You. I need you to understand that we’re not here as charity cases. We’re grateful, but I’ll find a way to get back into a place of our own just as soon as possible. And, like it or not, I’ll somehow work off our room and board.”
For a moment he looked ready to argue further. At the last second, he nodded. “All right. Under one condition. Tell me you understand that I do not view either of you as a charity case and we agree today is a free day. You both unpack, and I’ll show you around the place. We’ll go into town, get acquainted with the area. No fires, no Hector, no police, no worries. Even your brother doesn’t know where you are, right?”
“Yes,” Rio said. “Since he took my car, it’s safer for all of us if he can’t find me.”
“Then everything’s good for now. I’ll fetch your case and leave you to it.”
Bonnie tripped back to her pretty green room, and Rio buried a twinge of envy at her sister’s ability to forget and adapt. “I can go get my own suitcase.”
“If you like. But I’m happy to do it.”
All at once the whole situation—this amazing house, with this seriously attractive man she didn’t know a thing about—seemed ludicrous. Who was he? What was she doing here?
Beauty and the Brit Page 5
