Amy’s tense face relaxed into a relieved smile. “Good. That’s … good.”
Amy walked away, back to her truck.
What the hell is wrong with all of us?
Victoria wondered.
chapter
18
Celeste was usually
very good with a blank slate. The fashion industry was all about blank slates. But the barn wasn’t blank. It was full of cats and hay, saddles and bridles, equipment and generations of hardware. It was the opposite of blank. And she just couldn’t see past the reality to the possibility.
So, she called in some help.
“Hey, Celeste,” Gavin said, walking down the wide center aisle of the barn. Dust motes glittered around him, and looking directly at him was like looking into the sun. “Thomas said you were looking for me.”
He tucked his thumbs inside his tool belt and leaned against a stall door. The last two weeks she’d been eating lunch with him, and his glamour was undiminished by familiarity. None of his appeal had worn away. And now she knew that beneath his surfer hair he had an artist’s clever brain and a saint’s generous heart. A combination that drew her in like gravity.
“We need more room,” she said.
Gavin held up his hands, his laugh a deep ripple through the air. “I’ve been in the middle of this fight with you and Victoria too often.”
“But you know I’m right.” She smiled at him over her shoulder and the air popped and smoked between them. Flirting was dangerous, since it was obvious he was as attracted to her as she was to him. Or at least as attracted
to the idea of her, that poster of her. But it was hard to resist the flirtation sometimes. The interest of a man like Gavin put the panicky gerbils in her heart to sleep. And she no longer cared about looking younger, because she
felt
younger.
“You’re right, Celeste. You ladies need more room.”
“And this barn is just sitting here. How much square footage do you think we have?”
He pulled his tape measure from his tool belt. “Hold this.” He handed her the metal tab and walked away from her, the metal ribbon uncoiling between them.
She followed him around the barn, holding the tab when he asked her to, remembering the numbers he called out.
“You’re a good assistant,” he said, as the tape measure snapped and slithered back into the case in his hand. “If the spa business gets old, you can come work for me.”
“You can’t afford me.”
“You don’t know that,” he said, chastising her. He’d gotten very comfortable calling her on her snobbery. “I might be rich.”
“Fine. You can afford ten of me. How big is this barn?”
“I’d say you could get ten more rooms, between the main floor and the hayloft. Or ten more rooms and a yoga studio.”
“What about the arena?”
He looked at her in a way she was utterly unfamiliar with. Men were captivated by her surface. They didn’t try to figure her out; they didn’t guess at her inner workings. Didn’t care if she had any. But Gavin did. Gavin looked at her as if she were his favorite puzzle, and it made her feel like she had a bag over her head.
It was liberating.
“What are you thinking, Celeste?”
“I’m thinking about weddings.”
His eyes went wide, and he spun on his heel to look into the dark shadows of the riding arena at the end of the hallway. “A ballroom.”
“Yep.”
“Absolutely. You could do it. In fact …” He walked down the hallway and she followed, drunk on his enthusiasm.
He pointed up. “Skylights.” He spun. “Open the doorway up. Lay down some hardwood. A few windows. Maybe take out the walls between the arena and the barn and you could get a hundred people in here, easy.”
It was as if he were singing her love songs.
“How much will it cost me?”
He took his time, this methodical man. He walked around, pushed on joists, paced the barn again, and she walked back out into the aisle, where it was lighter. “A hundred grand.”
She blew out a long breath. That was better than she’d expected. Another call to her son would be forthcoming.
“You think Victoria will go for it?” he asked.
“No.” She laughed. “Absolutely not.”
“Why do I get the feeling that’s not going to stop you?”
“You think it should? You said it yourself—I’m right.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against a closed stall door. “I think you and Victoria are complicated enough without you going behind her back.”
Celeste fought the urge to fidget. To bite her lip, or put her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. She just stared at him and wished he weren’t right.
“What’s the story between the two of you?” he asked.
Immediately she turned away. They’d discussed a lot of things over their lunches. Politics. Art. The many blessings
of a Starbucks drive-thru, but they hadn’t talked about anything personal. At least she hadn’t. But it was getting harder and harder to stop herself. To keep what was private private.
“She’s not your daughter. And you don’t treat her like a friend.”
Celeste whirled back around, a strand of hair getting caught in her lip gloss. “She is my ex-husband’s bastard daughter, born a year after my son.”
“Oh … Celeste. I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be. Honestly.” She waved her hand as if she could wipe up the mess that was the Baker family. “She had the worse end of the deal.”
“What do you mean?”
Oh Lord. She felt the familiar chill of her anger, of her self-directed guilt and loathing. She pulled the hair away from her icy smile. “Thank you for your help, Gavin.”
He stared at her and she stared right back. And right about the time most men would walk away, Gavin tilted his head back and laughed up at the ceiling. Birds darted from their nests, startled by the sound of his howling.
She frowned at him, and still he laughed.
“Does that usually work?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Does that usually scare away all the men that want to get to know you?” He stepped closer to her, his work boots silent on the dirt and straw.
“It scared you, remember?”
He lifted a big, callused finger and she wanted that finger in her body, against her skin. “But I’ve seen you, Celeste.” He was close now, very close. She could see the faint glimmer of his blond beard coming in, the handsome wrinkles that crinkled in the corner of his blue eyes. The smell of him, masculine and earthy with just a hint of the apple he ate every morning, curled and coiled
around her and she had to open her mouth to breathe just so she could taste him.
His eyes touched every part of her face and his smile was sweet, tender, even, as if he were staring at something with sentimental value. As if he were staring at something that mattered.
“You can talk to me, Celeste. And I know you’re going to hate this, but I’ll say it anyway. I think you could use someone to talk to. I think you could use a friend.”
“Is that what you are?” She wanted to sound sarcastic, but instead she sounded plaintive. Yearning almost.
“Yes.” He was definitive. Rock-solid. “So, tell me, Celeste. Tell me about you and Victoria.”
And just like that, as if she’d been standing on the edge of a cliff she wasn’t even aware of, she opened her mouth and the whole sordid tale came out. Her anger with her husband; the way she’d taken it out on Victoria, punishing her for something that had never been her fault.
“Guilt won’t change anything,” Gavin said. “I used to feel so bad about my divorce, like if I had just tried harder Thomas would have a real family—”
“You can’t save a marriage on your own, Gavin,” she whispered.
“Yeah, it took me a long time to learn that.” His smile was bittersweet. “But you and Victoria seem like you’re on good terms now.”
Her eyes burned with tears and the ache of so much sensation, so much feeling, made her gasp. “I’m so proud of her, Gavin. I’m so proud and I can’t even tell her. What …?”
She stopped herself before asking,
What’s wrong with me?
Certainly she wasn’t so much of a fool that she’d lay herself naked like that.
“Oh, babe,” he sighed, and before she could stop him
or prepare herself, he pulled her into his arms. Against his chest.
The heat and strength of him was intense and she gasped, her skin, every nerve ending, thrown open to soak him in. This was dangerous, reckless.
And it certainly wasn’t just friendship.
She pulled away, wiping her eyes, frantically searching for some kind of joke, something sarcastic to remind her of the distance she liked around herself.
His thumb touched her cheek, wiping away a tear, and her brain emptied out like a grocery bag turned upside down.
“You’re even beautiful when you cry,” he whispered. Speechless, ruined by his kindness, she turned and ran.
Victoria pulled up in front of Eli’s barn, and he stepped off the porch of his house to greet them before Jacob could even get his seat belt off.
She concentrated very hard on turning off the car, on the metal and plastic under her fingers, the kick and rattle of the engine that she never had time to get inspected. All instead of staring at him in those jeans, that long-sleeved shirt that hugged his shoulders against the cool early-November evening.
He was sex in cowboy boots, masculinity with a rock-hard jaw.
And this was her sixth excruciating visit. Her son had progressed from feeding the horses to learning how to ride. According to Eli he was a natural, and even she had to admit that he looked comfortable up on that saddle.
And Eli … Eli just looked good.
She couldn’t take much more of this. Not without begging him to forgive her, or buying some mail-order sex toys.
Truth be told, she’d forgiven herself halfway through the second visit, mostly in the hopes that if she did, he might too, and then she could come back to his place and work out this frustration she could barely stand. She wasn’t used to feeling this way, as if her skin didn’t fit. As if her body wasn’t her own. As if she’d do anything to get his hands on her again.
A sad state of affairs, but there you have it.
She unrolled her window and Eli leaned in, smelling of sun and sweat and man. Her body went haywire at the smell.
“Hey there,” he said, that slow smile crossing his face. She wanted to lick that smile from end to end, a voyage of discovery.
Jacob unclipped his seat belt and leaned over the console, bracing his weight against her leg. She winced and tried to move his hand.
“What’s going on, Eli?” he asked. “Everything all right?”
“Sure.” Eli nodded. “Right as rain, but it might not be the best night for a ride.”
“But … why?” Jacob’s face was a picture of devastated boyhood.
“Well.” Eli rubbed his neck, a blush visible through the golden-brown hairs of the beard he had coming in. “Nothing … ah …” He glanced at her, a purely pained, adult look. From behind the stables, horses whinnied and cried. Her eyes opened wide at the sound. It sounded … matey.
“It’s like equine porn back there,” he whispered.
No. They definitely didn’t need to go watch that.
“The horses are sick,” she said to her wide-eyed, innocent son.
“Yep.” Eli nodded. “Sick.”
Jacob’s shoulders fell. “It’s not forever,” she murmured, kissing his head.
“But I don’t want to go back to the ranch,” he said. “If we go back, you and Celeste and Ruby will open up those notebooks and I’ll be bored.”
She didn’t want to go either—coming to Eli’s had given her a much-needed break from Celeste and Ruby’s notebooks, Amy’s calculator. Her own drive to see the spa succeed.
Eli didn’t want to talk about the tiles in the change rooms or Celeste’s conviction that they needed to renovate the barn. Or this
Dallas A.M
. talk show possibility.
Instead, she and Eli talked about how Jacob was doing in school, Eli’s horses. Two days ago he’d given her an elegant soliloquy on the differences between creamy and chunky peanut butter. Half the time they didn’t talk at all, and somehow that back paddock of his had become the most peaceful place in her life.
“Well, we can’t stay here,” she finally said, wishing that weren’t the case.
Eli listened to Victoria give Jacob options for their evening, each more boring than the last. When she got to doing laundry, he winced, on everyone’s behalf.
For two weeks now he’d been blaming his excitement about seeing the kid on the fact that he so badly wanted to sleep with Victoria. She and Jacob were a package deal.
But contemplating a night alone when he’d been planning on seeing them all week … well, all this privacy he’d cultivated, this solitary life, just seemed lonely.
“I’ve got an idea,” Eli said, and Jacob perked up like Soda, who sat on the porch drooling.
Victoria eyed him as though he were trying to sell her rotten eggs.
“Eli, you don’t have to—”
“What?” Jacob asked, bouncing. “What’s your idea?”
“You got Ruby’s peace offering?” Eli asked, and Jacob scrambled down to the floorboards and grabbed a tinfoil-wrapped plate.
Ruby, since finding out that Victoria and Jacob were coming over to Eli’s most nights, had started sending him food. A way of saying she was sorry for bringing his mom back to the ranch, without ever actually having to say she was sorry.
That kind of passive-aggressive cowardice was right up his alley. He and Ruby had always understood each other.
“Brownies,” Jacob said. “I helped. No nuts.”
“Thank God.” Eli took them through the window, his hand touching a few strands of Victoria’s hair—like hot wire filaments, he was burned by them. “Anything else?”
Victoria leaned back and hauled a paper bag up from the backseat. Bottles clanged together inside.
He grabbed it and stepped away from the truck.
“Come on with me,” he said.
She and Jacob shared a quick look and practically tumbled out of the truck. Jacob whistled for Soda, who bounded off the porch and then headed toward the other side of the house and the thin dirt trail that parted the wild fennel.
Jacob charged up ahead, getting in front of Eli, and then turning around and walking backwards to talk to him.