For a scrupulously tidy house, there was a lot to do to bring it up to photo shoot perfection. Rachel made lists and worked hard. She also checked whether the shoot would be confined to the living room and possibly the kitchen, or whether the journalist and photographer might range further.
“I don’t mind where they go,” Wyatt said. He thought about it, yellow paint dripping off his brush. “Not my bedroom. I don’t want that in a national magazine.”
Nor did Rachel. “We’d better tidy the bathroom, just in case, but they should stay in the living room and kitchen.” She concentrated on her self-imposed task, stenciling in a lighter gray pattern over the dark gray flat-pack cupboard doors. Just the border of light gray with a pattern of oak leaves in the top right corner would add character to the conventional, cheap and practical kitchen.
“What do I need to do to the bathroom?”
She laughed. “Wyatt, you have nerves of steel. Any other man would ask that question with dread in his voice.”
“I’m enjoying this. It feels like the house is coming alive. Becoming a home.”
The beautiful compliment filled her with joy.
It had been a busy few days. She’d worked with Wyatt on so many things that sprucing up the kitchen had gotten pushed down the list. There’d been furniture to collect from Gramps’s attic, and they had an early dinner with him, too. Then the weekend brought her family and neighbors, all offering treasures to make Wyatt’s bare house a home. Some were borrows, many were gifts. She’d been busy chatting, visiting, choosing and polishing.
Wyatt had appeared overwhelmed at the generosity.
The town evidently welcomed the chance to show him that he was one of their own. Like her, they responded to his genuine niceness.
In amongst it all, though, he’d managed to put up the clothesline she’d requested, move in the furniture she’d selected from his workshop and continue his amazing work—the reason for all this activity.
“It reflects you,” she said to him. “A strong house that’ll keep its people safe.”
He stared at her a minute, then grounded his paintbrush. “Rachel.”
Her phone rang.
“Birdhouse! That had better be Mrs. Haughton.” She snatched up her cell, not bothering to check caller ID. “Hello?”
Wyatt picked up his brush again.
Rachel was pursuing a birdhouse he’d made a couple of years ago for Mrs. Haughton. She wanted one to hang on the oak tree on the far side of the house and he’d mentioned that he’d made a birdhouse resembling a gothic mansion two years ago for Mrs. Haughton’s retirement from the real estate agency. Now Rachel was determined to borrow it.
“Mr. Trimm!” Rachel’s voice squeaked. She scrambled up from the kitchen floor, crumpling the drop cloth.
Wyatt hadn’t heard that note of panic and shock from her before. He started forward.
She flapped a hand at him.
Stop? Wait? Fetch a pen? He couldn’t tell. He stopped.
“Come into the office?” She drew a deep breath, her eyes on Wyatt. “I can’t. When you fired me I came home to visit family in Texas.”
“Texas!”
Wyatt heard the muffled squawk through the phone.
Rachel winced. But then she showed her strength. Her voice went cool and steely, gaining something of a New York snap. “Of course I came home. I worked through the last two Christmases. I wanted to see my family.”
The voice on the phone muttered something. Probably something soothing and fake. The muttering continued.
Rachel’s posture softened, re-settled.
Wyatt practiced reading body language so he could replicate its lines in his sculptures. His fists clenched as he read Rachel’s stance shifting from shock and resistance to receptiveness.
She cast him an uncertain look, then headed out the back door.
Cold paint soaked through his right jeans leg. He swiped at it with a rag, smearing it.
The phone call had to be from her old boss at the New York advertising agency. Wyatt was pretty sure the man had realized how good Rachel was at her work, and wanted her back. The question was, would she go?
Her career was important to her.
He remembered how passionately she’d defended the role of advertising.
Through the window, he could see her pacing along the fence as she spoke on the phone. On the other side of the fence, Jezebel trailed along. Rachel had won that suspicious donkey’s heart with a mix of oats and molasses, and nose rubs. If Rachel left, Jezzy would miss her.
So would Wyatt.
Determinedly, he resumed painting. A man had to have some self-respect. He didn’t want her to return, see his lack of progress, and realize he’d been watching her. So he painted the patch of wall near the window where he could watch her, casually.
He saw her end the conversation, stuff her phone in a jeans pocket and rub Jezebel’s nose.
She stood at the fence a while before walking inside. “That was my boss, ex-boss. He wants me to return.”
“You’re good at your job.”
Her smile was beautiful and wry. “There’s that, and there’s the fact that Neroli refused to work with Charles, who took over her account from me. Neroli truly hated his idea of using sexy teenage models to sell her products. They ended up whipping out my original campaign, which she approved.” A pause. “On the condition that I run it.”
“Will you?”
“They didn’t tell her they’d fired me. They said I was sick, off with the flu.”
He wondered if she’d even heard his question.
Her gaze was distant. Perhaps she was already back in New York.
“You should work for people who value you.” And that wasn’t just his self-interest talking. She needed to be appreciated. Everyone did.
“Mr. Trimm offered me a pay rise and a bonus if Neroli signs off on the campaign.” She focused on him. Her eyes were clear gray, honest and confused. “I don’t know what I’ll do. I feel vindicated. I believe in Neroli’s products and would like to work with her to promote them. New York has an energy all of its own, and yet…Texas is special, too.”
They stared at one another across the kitchen with its drop cloths and smell of paint, the materials she used in stenciling and the sudden intrusion of Sunny, whining at the tension in the air.
Rachel’s phone rang. “Hello? Mrs. Haughton!” Relief in her voice. “I’ve been trying to reach you. It’s about your birdhouse.”
Chapter 4
Gramps’s old car swayed and wobbled as Rachel drove too fast around a corner on her way home from Mrs. Haughton’s. She eased off the accelerator, grimacing at how dangerously emotional turmoil impacted her driving. She risked a glance over her shoulder, but the birdhouse remained upright, well-wrapped in a tarp and seat-belted into place on the backseat.
Mrs. Haughton had been thrilled to contribute her birdhouse to the photo shoot project.
If only Rachel was half as thrilled about the offer to return to her old job with a pay rise and a bonus, and the tantalizing near-promise of a promotion.
Part of her was thrilled. Part of her was exuberant, jubilant and triumphant. That part of her wished she could have recorded Mr. Trimm’s conversation and played it to Mabel so that the whole town learned that Rachel wasn’t a washed-up dreamer, a Miss-Too-Big-For-Her-Boots. No, she was a respected professional, on the first rungs of becoming a high-powered advertising executive.
Only…where Mr. Trimm had evidently anticipated her gleeful acceptance of his offer, she hadn’t been able to take it. She’d asked for time to consider things.
Six foot two things like Wyatt Allenjo.
Things like, was it possible to fall in love in a week? She’d not previously have believed it, but there was no doubting that she very much wanted to see where their attraction might lead them.
There were other things, too. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed her friends and family, the town and the Texas spirit of freedom and
independence. She liked breathing in clean air and listening to country sounds rather than the blare of traffic and people. Jezebel the donkey was noisy, but nothing compared to New York cabs.
But New York was where she’d achieve the dream she’d had since she was fourteen. The dream in which helping others to promote their best elements earned her success and acclaim, made her wealthy and envied, and she lived happy ever after.
Alone?
“Frogs’ feathers,” she swore gently. Being career-focused and ambitious had been the center of her life for so long that these alien feelings frightened her. Was she attracted to Wyatt because she’d been rejected by New York? Now that New York wanted her back, would her feelings for him fade?
If she stayed in Bideer would she grow bitter and resentful of chances not taken?
She walked into her family home, into the heart of it, the kitchen. “Mom, what should I do?”
“I’m sorry, Wyatt.” Rachel hesitated in his spotless kitchen with its newly painted yellow walls and stenciled cupboards. “I should have finished the stenciling before I left, yesterday. I didn’t mean for you to add it to your work. You’re busy enough. It looks lovely though.” She smiled uncertainly.
He didn’t smile back. He looked grim this morning.
“I brought onions.” She placed two on the counter, like a peace offering. “I’ll slice them and pop them in bowls of water, and they’ll take the paint fumes out of the air.”
“Thanks.” He stood, immovable, a dog on either side of him.
“The birdhouse is in the car. I’ll bring it onto the porch if you don’t mind hanging it?”
“I’ll get it.”
She watched him walk out, and sighed.
Beau pushed a cold, wet and friendly nose into her hand.
“Yeah, not a good day.” She patted the dog.
Wyatt placed the birdhouse on the porch and as she crouched to unwrap it, his home phone rang.
“Excuse me.”
She listened to his boots strike the wooden floorboards, then the cessation of the phone ringing. She couldn’t hear his conversation, though. He and she needed to talk, although what she’d say when she didn’t know her own mind…maybe they shouldn’t talk. But she missed his friendly warmth and the sense that she could say anything to him and be understood.
The tarp fell away and the birdhouse stood revealed. It was a fantastical gem, a sly mockery of the grandiose houses built in the late 1800s by timber barons to show off their wealth. Rather than paint it, he’d used different timbers and stains to add color. It would be perfect, dangling at the edge of the porch.
“Rachel, that was Mikal.” Wyatt sounded freaked.
“Your agent?”
A distracted nod. “He says the journalist mislaid my phone number, so called him. They’ve changed their plans. The photo shoot is this afternoon!”
Wyatt hadn’t thought he could feel worse than he already did. He was pretty sure Rachel was leaving, returning to New York. But Mikal’s phone call ratcheted up his misery from awful to panicked. Alone, he’d have done nothing more to prepare for the photo shoot. If the journalist and photographer could so rudely descend on him, then they’d have to take him as he was.
But Rachel was made of sterner stuff. Plus, she knew the value of advertising. “Go and slice those onions. I’ll phone Mom. She’ll know some other way to deal with paint fumes. Then I’ll phone Uncle Theo. We need his roses, pronto. He can hang the birdhouse, too.”
“I can do that.”
She had her phone out. “No. You and I will be setting the stage in your workshop.”
His workshop! He’d left it a mess yesterday, too depressed to give it its usual tidy up. He double-timed it into the kitchen to slice onions.
Within an hour, Rachel had activated her family and they descended on his house and yard. While her mom dealt with the paint smell in the house—“dabs of this to absorb the odor, then I’ll bake a spice cake. I have the ingredients in the car”—Theo and his son Orwell wrestled the pots of roses into place. Rachel’s Gramps polished the furniture they’d borrowed from his attic and elderly Una Cruft pegged bright plaid blankets to his old-fashioned clothesline.
Rachel placed a long to-do list on the kitchen counter and invited everyone else to take a task and cross it off. Then she and Wyatt vanished into his workshop.
There was no time for conversation. He tidied, while she studied the front half of the barn, which she insisted on calling his “studio”, and re-arranged his desk. Then he was lending his muscle, dragging his sculptures into place for maximum photographic appeal.
“Although the photographer will have his or her own ideas.” Rachel slumped against the desk after helping him move the last piece, a solid oak bookcase with a raw left side, subtly carved to emphasize its flowing line. She checked her watch. “Ten past twelve. And we’re done. Let’s go see the house.” She held out her hand, before blushing and dropping it.
He crossed to the desk and took her hand, pulling her up and to him. “Let’s see the house.”
Everyone had gone. Rachel had been vaguely aware of the sound of vehicles departing, but she hadn’t paid attention. She should have. Now, she and Wyatt were alone.
His two dogs sprawled on the porch, shut out of the house. At the bottom of the porch, Uncle Theo had been generous with his rosebushes. Two reds, a white, a pink and a yellow rose lined up, evenly spaced. Their color lifted the whole house, as did the red curtains at the living room window.
She blinked. There was even a doormat saying “welcome”, something she hadn’t thought to buy.
They walked into the house and it smelled heavenly. Whatever magic her mom had performed, there was no smell of paint, only spice cake and an undertone of apple wood smoke. A generous fire crackled in the living room fireplace. Gramps’s old furniture gleamed and provided a subtle background for Wyatt’s incredible hand-carved furniture. Her cushions and a couple of throw rugs, crocheted by Auntie Una, gave splashes of color.
An arrangement of trailing ivy and fall leaves spilled from a low bronze vase on the mantelpiece. That would be her cousin Emmy’s work. She was a talented florist.
In the kitchen, the spice cake sat cooling on a rack. Beside it, every item had been crossed off her to-do list.
“I love my family.” Their kindness and willingness to drop everything and answer her call for help was like the world’s biggest hug.
“They’re good people.”
“Yes.”
They both looked around. Possibly Wyatt felt a little bit lost, too. They’d been so busy, and now, there was nothing to do but wait. Then Rachel read her mom’s note scrawled at the bottom of the to-do list. She laughed and opened the fridge.
Wyatt peered over her shoulder. “Oh, man.”
Cold fried chicken, potato salad, sandwiches, a strawberry layer cake, a mud cake and freshly-made iced tea. No matter what time the journalist and photographer arrived, they’d receive genuine Texan hospitality.
“Do you think I can steal some for lunch?” Wyatt asked.
“As long as you don’t cut the cakes.”
He reached for the platter of fried chicken. “I love your family.”
“Me, too.” She looked wistfully around the kitchen, now bright with color from the yellow walls, the tea towels and a sage green tablecloth. The cuckoo clock she’d rescued from Great-Aunt Sue’s junk room ticked cozily on the far wall. “You’re all set. I can’t wait to see how the photo spread turns out. Good luck.”
Wyatt abandoned the platter of fried chicken. “You can’t go.”
She stared at him.
He took a deep breath. “I mean…please, stay for the photo shoot. I’d like you to be here.”
Time stretched out as Wyatt waited for her answer. He wanted Rachel to stay, full stop, forever, but asking for an afternoon seemed a more reasonable request. If she said “no” even to that…
“I’d like to stay, if I won’t be in the way?”
He got out two plates and cutlery. “Stay.”
Chapter 5
The journalist and photographer turned out to be a husband-and-wife team, and absolutely charming. They were also appreciative of everything they saw, recognizing the hard work that had gone into preparing for their visit.
“If every job was this easy, we’d be laughing.” The husband and photographer was an Australian.
His accent and turn of phrase entertained Rachel. She helped him set up shots—after everyone had eaten—while his wife interviewed Wyatt.
They’d arrived not two minutes after Rachel and Wyatt sat down to lunch, and were profuse in their apologies. Another job had developed hiccups—family drama—and they’d had to reshuffle their schedule, driving up from Dallas.
“Thank you so much for letting us drop in on you like this,” Alicia said. She asked Wyatt about his work, where he’d learned carpentry and how he came to live in Bideer.
Rachel listened hard to his answers.
His low voice and considered responses showed his caring, thoughtful side. He credited working beside his stepdad on construction projects as starting him off with carpentry. “A piece of wood is like a puzzle. It has possibilities, if you can unlock them.”
His words resonated with Rachel. She felt the same way about people and the products her advertising sold. It was about unlocking potential.
What was it her mom had said when Rachel had asked for advice?
“You’ll know your answer. It will come from your head and your heart. You’re smart and you care about people. Wherever you are, whatever you do, that’s what’s important. Choose to be happy, honey. What makes you happy?”
Watching Wyatt touch his sculptures, pick up the tools of his trade for photographs and stand tall and quietly proud in his studio, she knew what made him happy.
He answered Alicia’s question of how he came to live in Bideer. “I was looking at land sales on the internet. I wanted a working forest, somewhere that I could source some of my own timber and also pay it forward, conserving the forest for future generations. This land is beautiful. The town is friendly, filled with good people.” He smiled at Rachel. “It felt like coming home.”
Fall Into His Kiss Page 3
