Rio finally responded to the kindness in Jill’s words and nodded. “I’m a fish on the sand here,” she admitted. “I was imagining more jeans and dust.”
Jill laughed. “Don’t worry. You’ll find plenty of those, too.”
Bonnie apparently harbored no disappointments. “I love those riding breeches! They look super-hot.”
“Super-practical,” Jill amended. “I’ll find you a pair to borrow. You’ll see.”
“Honest?” Bonnie looked at Rio as if for confirmation of this amazing promise.
All she could do was shrug again. If Jill did find Bonnie a pair of breeches, it would at least make three pairs of pants the girl owned. Between fire, smoke, and water damage in the house, neither of them had been left with much wearable clothing.
“I’ll get you set up inside,” Jill continued. “David could be finishing a lesson. He’ll find us.”
Rio quit listening when a third person emerged from the barn. For an instant she watched casually, but then his movements, his wave of thick, dark hair, and a smile visible across the distance shocked her into recognition.
David.
She took him in, and her heart fell in disillusionment. In tight-fitting breeches, a pale green-and-white striped polo shirt, and tall black boots hugging his lower legs all the way to his knees, he looked as un-macho as the two stylish women who’d just passed by. If Rio could have created a picture that screamed “I am the opposite of a cowboy,” this would have been it. For once, even Bonnie was quiet.
And yet, as the length of his confident stride carried him closer, the contours of his thighs and breadth of his shoulders erased anything she’d mistaken for effeminate about him. Her disenchantment faded enough to make room for curiosity.
“Rio. Bonnie,” he called out. “I’m glad to see you’ve made it safely. How was the ride down? Construction traffic?”
Jill shook her head. “Easy peasy.”
“Brilliant.” His accent and warm smile gave the word an onomatopoeic brightness.
He faced Rio directly, and her memories of him turned to pale shadows. The real man, with his sculpted cheeks and rich, glinting brown eyes, turned her heart and pulse into a marimba band, drowning her disappointment further with the fluttery music of gut-deep attraction. Tight riding pants and all, he was flat-out gorgeous. How could she have forgotten?
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, decorated 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.”