Until He Met Rachel

by Debra Salonen

  She’d wanted to do that since day one. As wrong as it was, she’d never experienced anything that felt so right—even the odd cushiony texture of his beard. She wanted more. Everything. Every inch of that gorgeous body she’d seen in the water.

  At what price, Rachel? Her mother’s voice. You mixed business and pleasure once before and look how well that turned out.

  She stopped kissing him.

  He lifted his head and looked at her; his clear, intelligent eyes asking for direction.

  “This is a bad idea. A sort of combination Titanic and Hindenburg all in one.”

  His head cocked sideways. “Hyperbole not withstanding?”

  She adored his quick wit but she made every effort not to smile. “It’s possible I’ve taken unprofessional behavior to a new level. First, interrupting my client’s bath. Then, kissing him.”

  “If it’s only the client thing that’s bothering you, I could fire you.”

  “You already did that. Is making out with you my consolation prize for losing your business?”

  He made a groaning sound and took her hand. “Come and sit down. We need to talk.”

  She started to balk, but changed her mind when it struck her that leaving with some modicum of self-respect was lost to her. She might as well hear him out and try to figure out what she did wrong.

  She chose the sofa because no matter how great his body was under those sweats and how wonderful she was certain it would feel to make love with him, she wasn’t strong enough—emotionally—to handle casual sex. She wished like hell she was but… “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. That was rude. A total invasion of your privacy. I should have turned right around and marched—”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it.” He perched on the edge of the large leather chair adjacent to the sofa. His big, rough hands clasped together. “I’m not that modest. At least, I wasn’t in the past. And, I’m glad you’re here so we can get this ironed out.”

  That didn’t sound as final as she’d feared. “I’m not fired?”

  “No. I’m not as simple as people think, Rachel. I know I need a Web site to sell my stuff. And maybe I’d sell more if I let you plaster my face, my personal history, my—what do you call it? My blog?—all over the place. But I can’t.”

  “Why? If you’d trim your beard a little, I bet a lot of women would buy a Dreamhouse in order to write secret wishes about you.” I know I would.

  He ran his hand over his beard, giving a little tug. “Did you ever hear about those indigenous people who refused to have their photographs taken because they thought the camera had the power to steal their souls?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, it’s true. It happened to me. I lost myself for a dozen or so years. Coming here saved my life. Literally. If I’d stayed in New York, I probably wouldn’t be alive today. I can’t—I won’t—risk falling back into that old trap.”

  She was confused. “What trap? Success?”

  “It’s hard to explain. Coming here was more an act of desperation than conscious choice, but living here has brought me peace. Can’t we come to some kind of compromise? Find a way to sell my work, without selling me?”

  She sat back and took a deep breath to slowly let it out. “It’s a good thing my mother isn’t here. She’d say, ‘See, Rachel? This is what you do. You take an idea and run with it without looking to see if anyone is following.’”

  “The way Rat-Girl teases Fred with the ball?” he asked, smiling. “Sometimes she’s halfway down the road before she realizes he gave up and went home.”

  She could picture the scene all too clearly. “Exactly. I have the ball, but you went home a few steps back. I’m sorry for not paying better attention.”

  His shoulders lifted and fell. His wide, wonderfully shaped shoulders— She coughed into her fist and blinked to refocus on their conversation.

  “…you wasted time building pages or links or whatever they’re called that won’t be used.”

  She nodded. She had half a dozen ideas sketched out. Hip, fun things that she knew without a doubt he’d hate. But she also had one idea that might appeal to him.

  She jumped to her feet. “Stay put. I want to show you something. It’s a bit passive for my taste, but…” But this isn’t about me. Duh. This is about the client.

  Her bag was on the floor by the staircase. She pulled out her laptop and quickly returned, setting it on the narrow coffee table. The Mac booted up and she clicked on the icon she’d toyed with early in the creative process then abandoned. Maybe she should have listened a bit more closely to her muse. “It’s rough. A work in progress.”

  Rufus turned the computer so the light from the window behind him wasn’t casting a shadow. The colors appealed to him immediately. The dark greens and browns held a cool, mysterious and sensual quality. Suspended from the branches of the earthy canopy were photos of his Dreamhouses, each with a name indicating it would reveal more if clicked upon. Home. Birdhouses. Dreamhouses. Buy. Contact. FAQ.

  “Frequently asked questions?” he confirmed.

  “I was going to suggest using the questions I asked you the first day we met. If we keep the answers short and simple, we build in a mystery without making it obvious.”

  He clicked on Home.

  The background was a faded blueprint. A sketch, actually. One of his early designs made to look like a blueprint. At the center was the secret room. A hand-drawn arrow with the words where dreams are born was penciled in red. A sidebar told the story of how the Dreamhouses came to be.

  “I like this.”

  Next, he clicked on an image hidden in the trunk of the tree. He’d completely missed seeing the profile at first. It was labeled Who?

  Swallowing, he braced himself for the worst. “Who is Rufus Miller?”

  The question appeared to have been chiseled in wood and was superimposed over a big photo of him at his workbench. Taken from the back. The sepia tone was old-fashioned. He could have been a kid dressed up in his grandfather’s coat, Santa Claus in plaid or a very husky woman, he realized.

  He read aloud. “Who is Rufus Miller? Retired falafel salesman? Gigolo on the run from an irate husband? Street-sweeper with carpool tunnel syndrome?” That made him snort. “Ask the individuals who know him best.”

  He looked at her, questioningly. “Who would that be?”

  “Click on Chumley,” she said, pointing to the dog napping at his feet.

  He did. A woman’s voice—Rachel’s, he realized—spoke. “Hello. My name is Chumley. My master rescued me from certain death. I’m the oldest member of the family and the best at finding wood and—forgive the pun—bark, which our master then uses in these unique masterpieces. Was that too many masters?”

  Her face was scrunched up as if horrified by the sound of her own voice. “Too cheesy?”

  “Chum might think so, but I like it.”

  He clicked on the other dogs. Different voices.

  “My brother recorded Fred for me, and Kat did Rat-Girl. I thought they turned out pretty good.”

  He agreed. In fact, he was blown away by her creativity. “How come you didn’t show this to me earlier?”

  She made a wobbly motion with her hand. “I guess I didn’t trust my first effort. And I thought you’d think it was too off-the-wall. I mean, talking dogs? Come on.” She shrugged.

  He clicked on his image. Nothing happened. “You were going to ask me to record something, too.”

  “Was being the operative word. You’re a recluse. I get that, now. I’m sorry I was so insensitive earlier.”

  He scooted the laptop between them. “Enthusiasm has its place, Rachel. Maybe I needed a kick in the butt to stir things up.”

  “A very attractive butt,” she murmured softly. Not softly enough. He heard her. He wanted to finish what they’d started, but he couldn’t. For her sake, more than his own.

  Liar.

  He stood. “Would you do me a favor and put some water on to boil? I need a cup of te
a before I start working. This site is going to sell a lot more Dreamhouses than I’ve got built.”

  “Does that mean I’m still employed?”

  “Yes. I’ll cut you a check when we get to the office. Do whatever you have to do to get this up and running on the Internet.”

  Her smile seemed to show her relief. Because he was still her client or because he didn’t follow up on her possible invitation? He didn’t know. That was probably best.

  For now.

  He ignored the voice in his head. That voice had gotten him in trouble before. It made him want things he had no business wanting. Like a normal life.

  AS SHE HEADED BACK into town a couple of hours later, Rachel congratulated herself on dodging not one near miss, but two. First, getting fired…and then getting laid. She wasn’t sure how she felt about either.

  Over tea, she and Rufus had firmed up the new site. He was adamant about keeping personal references to a minimum. He was perfectly okay with people wondering about his identity—even his gender, although she felt there were sufficient hints for people to figure out he was a man.

  After a good half an hour of discussion, he’d agreed to let her use photos of the Black Hills on his site and okayed the mention of Sentinel Passtime, since having a popular television show filming in your area couldn’t hurt from a PR prospective.

  He also let her keep the dog’s names. “They’re more social than I am,” he’d said with a rueful smile.

  To her profound surprise, he’d been the one to suggest that she might consider writing a blog in one of the dogs’ voices—possibly Chumley. “I, personally, don’t see the point, but if you can show me stats on how many people seek out this sort of thing, I might let you make it a permanent part of the site. Of course, I’d pay you for this, in addition to your normal upkeep fees.”

  A good thing, she told herself. More money was never bad, but writing a weekly blog would mean interacting probably one-on-one with the man she was finding more and more interesting. And attractive. And sexy.

  She really hated to admit that. Seeing Rufus naked had given her imagination license to ponder things she had no business pondering.

  Instead of heading to the quiet of her little bungalow, she turned toward the highway. The best way to avoid daydreams was to keep busy. And one way to do that would be to work on her brother’s wedding plans.

  First, she’d finish writing the code for Rufus’s site and load it on her personal site to test so she could get a couple of unbiased reads from people whose opinion she trusted: Kat and Char.

  “What do you think?” she asked Char two hours later.

  Char was sitting at her computer behind the main desk at Native Arts, obviously doing her best to ignore Rachel’s nervous pacing. She pushed back to swivel the chair about so they could see each other. “It’s awesome. I love the talking dogs. You really are clever and creative. If I weren’t going back to school, I’d hire you to completely revamp my Native Arts Web site.” She frowned. “I simply can’t afford a big overhaul right now.”

  “At least you have a legitimate reason for maintaining the status quo,” Rachel answered. “With Rufus, I have to fight for each little change. You should have seen the look he gave me when I suggested setting up his own Facebook page. Equal parts terror and mortification.”

  Char’s shoulders lifted and fell. “I’ve worked with a lot of artists over the years and some are very private people. Maybe they put so much of themselves into their work there’s not enough left over to share with the general public.”

  “But Rufus is such a big guy,” Rachel said, reveling in her private joke.

  Char laughed. “Not what I meant, of course. My aunt used to say, ‘The bigger they are, the deeper the hole they make when they hit the ground.’”

  “Is this the aunt who has Alzheimer’s? Too bad. She sounds like an interesting person. That’s something you could blog about when you start doing a little social networking of your own.” Char’s expression rivaled Rufus’s from earlier. So much so, Rachel couldn’t help groaning. “What’s with you people? Hasn’t anyone in Sentinel Pass heard of the power of the Internet?”

  “I know. I know. The TV people were all about Twitter the last time they filmed here, but change comes slowly to the mountains. I finally got video conferencing down with my aunt. One technical hurdle at a time.”

  Rachel rubbed her neck to ease some of her tension. If she were being honest she’d admit that coming to an agreement about how to market Rufus’s work was only one small part of her problem. She was sexually attracted to the man. The more she tried not to picture what was under all those layers of really ugly plaid, the more she thought about what was under those really ugly layers.

  “I think I’m on the verge of having a mental breakdown.”

  Char looked at her a good minute before replying. “You’ve been through a lot in a short time. Aren’t moving and divorce number two and three on the list of emotional traumas?”

  She had a point. Jack had encouraged Rachel to take some time off before plunging into a new business, but with the holidays approaching—the biggest retail time of the year—she hadn’t felt she could afford to nurse her mental health.

  Char snapped her fingers. “Not to mention you’re planning your brother’s wedding.”

  Rachel shook her head. “Oddly enough, the wedding is the least of my worries. Kat’s so busy, she doesn’t have time to micromanage anything, and Jack’s so happy he agrees with everything I suggest. I love the power,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows to show she was kidding.

  “What does your mother say? She struck me as a bit of a control freak.”

  “Ya think?” Rachel joked. “She’s golfing in Florida at the moment, but that doesn’t keep her from adding her two cents about the wedding. Her text this morning said, ‘No poinsettias. Too predictable.’”

  Char’s gaze shot to the four pots of gorgeous red flowers on the shelf. She and Rachel had already talked about using them on the altar. “Well, I’m no expert on motherhood, but I have been trying to take Libby’s advice and listen more than I speak.”

  Rachel plucked a shriveled leaf off one of the plants. “Speaking of Libby. I got an e-mail from her last night. She and Cooper want me to design a Web site for a new charity they’re setting up in his mother’s and her grandmother’s names. It’s going to fund scholarships for single mothers and fathers returning to college. I’m really excited.”

  “That’s awesome. Jenna told me she wanted to redo the Mystery Spot’s site before spring. I’m sure she’ll be calling you, too. She and Shane are coming back for Christmas. It’s gonna be hectic for a few weeks.”

  Rachel pressed her lips together in concentration. The gesture drew a question from Char. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. The extra business will be great. But it’s becoming increasingly obvious that I need an office. I can’t keep using your computer. Libby’s cottage is too small and it doesn’t have DSL. Jack offered me space in his new office, but the county hasn’t even approved his building plans. Apparently the attention from Sentinel Passtime started a mini land boom and the planning department has put a lot of items on hold until they do some environmental assessments. Do you know anyone with office space to rent?”

  Char thought a moment. “What about Rufus? When Mac helped him build the studio, he said the second floor was intended for a future office. “

  The thought had crossed Rachel’s mind when Rufus gave her a tour of the place. Heat from the wood-burning stove passed through grates in the floor to make the upper landing cozy and comfortable. Plus, she’d have the added advantage of being present to shoot and upload photos of his new pieces on the spot. But could immediacy and convenience be enough to convince him to let her move in? Er, rent the space from him, she quickly amended.

  “He made a point of telling me he didn’t have DSL. He goes into town to use the computer at the community center.”

  Char shrugged. “By choice. He
could install a modem. I bet the tower that provides service for the town is in line of sight of his place. But you probably know Rufus better than anybody. A year ago, if someone had told me he’d hire a Web designer to help him sell his art, I’d have called him a liar.”

  Rachel knew for a fact that a lot could change in twelve months. “It might work,” she said, picturing where she’d put her desk and file cabinet. She could easily squeeze into the far corner without crowding his mostly unused desk area.

  Char held up two thumbs, encouragingly. “Well, there you go. It can’t hurt to ask.” Char’s grin turned mischievous. “What’s the worst that could happen? You get snowed in and have to spend the night. Maybe there’s more to the guy than any of us thought.”

  A whole lot more. Rachel bit on her lip to keep from blurting it out.

  Char tossed up her hands. “Hey, I know he’s not some gorgeous young calendar hunk, but based on how close you’ve gotten to him in such a short time, I’d say he might be sweet on you.”

  Sweet? Not the first word that came to mind when Rachel remembered his kiss. Hot. Much more apropos.

  “I’m trying to set up a business here, remember? I’m not looking to date the guy.” Before Char could say anything else, Rachel changed the subject. “When is book club again?”

  “Libby’s going to call everyone as soon as she and Cooper get home,” Char said. “Is it me or is A Thousand Splendid Suns an odd choice for someone who is getting married in a few weeks?”

  Libby had mentioned the same thing in her e-mail. “Kat told me she picked this book because it celebrates the power of the bond women share even in a society that devalues them.”

  Char pushed away from her computer and stood up. “Women power,” she said, grinning. “Works for me. Plus, your future sister-in-law doesn’t know how to take the easy road. She and Jack might never have gotten together if not for our book club.”

  Rachel smiled. Her brother had been pretty free with the details about his and Kat’s unusual courtship. And Kat’s friends had played a role, if not the defining one. Seeing her brother so happy had helped Rachel crawl out of her grief pit. She wanted that same joy and closeness some day, too. With someone she knew inside and out.