Falling for Rain (5 page)

Rain didn't even say
I told you so.
But she could feel his eyes still on her.

And although she knew it was time to say goodnight before it was too late, she instead heard herself say, “Would you like to come to the house for a drink?” She had packed a bottle of very expensive wine to celebrate the farm's sale. The irony of drinking it with Rain after delivering a farm animal didn’t occur to her.

“Alright,” he said with a shrug. If he was surprised by the offer, he didn't show it. “I'll be there in a few minutes.”

Emily took this as a dismissal and walked back to the house. She was tired. The scene with the lawyer, the argument with Rain, cleaning the house, and last but not least the calving – all had taken their mental and physical toll on Emily's mind and body, leaving her feeling vulnerable.

For the first time in years, she came close to admitting she was not a solitary being, an island, or a rock. She needed someone right
then,
and she tried to convince herself that anyone would do.
And if she found herself after a couple of glasses of wine wanting to throw herself into Rain's arms?
Well, he was attractive after all. If she had no room in her life for love, she could still manage to find room for
oldfashioned
lust.

She opened the china cabinet and took out two wine glasses of her mother's wedding crystal. It was only used at Christmas, and her mother had never allowed Emily to wash it. She could be sure her father, who had no need of pretty things in his life, had never touched the crystal again. It was quite probable that the last time the glasses were taken from the cabinet was the final Christmas her mother had been alive. Suddenly she felt like a child playing with something she shouldn't, and so she put them back on the shelf before instead selecting two prosaic water glasses from the kitchen cupboard.

She uncorked the wine and, after starting a fire in the wood stove, sat at the kitchen table. Automatically she picked up her cell phone to turn it on but quickly set it down again. She was sure that Jonathon would try to call her tonight, and she didn't want to take his call with Rain there. She would call him tomorrow.

Just then Rain knocked quietly and let himself in. He took his boots off at the door and hung his coat on the rack.

“Everything okay?” she asked. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears.

“Mother and baby are doing well. You were right to act quickly.”  He went to the sink and washed his hands before sitting down across the table from Emily.

“You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl,” she said flippantly.

“No matter how hard the girl works on exorcising her past?” he said without sarcasm. He felt close to relaxed.
What a day!
He was surprised to be ending it with them both sitting in the same room, seemingly relaxed in each other’s company. Perhaps they were over the worst of the bumps and in for a smoother ride.

“It was a joke. Don't push it,” she said with a smile. 

It was the first real smile Rain had seen since her arrival. It was beautiful to see and it took him a moment to regain his composure enough to speak. “Fine,” he said at last.
“How about a glass of that wine?”

She poured two generous glasses before raising her own in a toast.
“To a truce.”

He smiled, and they touched glasses before taking sips.  “
Mmm
, good wine,” he said, turning the bottle around to read the label. He raised his eyebrows. “If I hadn't guessed already from that car parked in the driveway, I'd say from this label that business was good.”

Business
, Emily thought. 
This is a safe topic
. “Pretty good,” she said, realizing she couldn't think of another thing to say. In Toronto it consumed her life twenty four hours a day, but now, after only two days away, her office seemed like another universe.

“I saw the article on you in
Architectural Digest
.
Impressive.”

“Thanks.” Something seemed to click inside her. Was this what she’d been looking for? The respect she had come for? To hide the sudden turmoil inside her head, she stood up and went to the wood stove to add another stick of wood. This had been one of the driving forces in her career. Prove to the boy you left back home that you could do just fine without him. 

“Tell me about it.”

“What about it?” She was so shaken that for a moment she wondered if he had read her thoughts.

“I don't know. Something about what you do. I know. Tell me about the building you live in. I understand that’s your
pièce de resistance
.”

“Okay.” This was safe ground. She poked at the wood in the stove's firebox and fiddled with the dampers before returning to her chair and taking another sip of wine. “It was an abandoned textile factory that had been slowly surrounded by gentrification. That's when old neighbourhoods are renewed....”

“You don't need to explain. I know some big words for a farmhand.”

She paused for a moment to determine whether he was being sarcastic but, encouraged by a seemingly guileless smile, continued. “The neighbourhood was lobbying the city to have it torn down. I saw it, fell in love with it, and bought it for a song. It's a wonderful building.  All steel construction. It has five floors with floor-to-ceiling windows all the way around, and each big window is divided into 100 smaller ones. So each floor has 4,000 panes of glass. Of course, hundreds of panes were missing – I kept a glazier busy for months.”

“I'm just glad that I don't wash them,” Rain said with a laugh.

“There are four tenants in the building and between the four of us we keep a window washer pretty busy.” Emily poured them both another glass of wine. She was beginning to relax, and the words were coming easily. This was a topic she not only could get excited about but was also completely safe. And if she was here to impress him with her success, it did seem to be working.

“When the glazier replaced the broken glass,” she continued, “he used only old glass so it would match the original. It's like this,” she said, indicating the kitchen windows. “It's full of bubbles and imperfections and distorts everything you see through it. The effect is marvellous. When you walk through the apartment, the outside world seems to dance in time with your steps.

“Each apartment is an entire floor. The first floor is just an entranceway. It’s like the others: surrounded with windows, but completely empty except for the elevators. I left the exterior fire escapes on the building, but I had the interior stairs removed and replaced by four elevators, so that each apartment has its own private one. The most striking feature of the entranceway is the black marble floor. It's original.”

“I take it these aren't your average low rental apartments.”

"They're condominiums, actually. I had them all sold before they were finished. Let's just say that they were a big success, and I live rent free. Graham Richards, the concert pianist, lives on the second floor. His apartment was the one featured in
Architectural Digest.
Since that article, I've designed two other similar buildings, one in Vancouver and one in Montreal."

“They sound wonderful. And if you were to hire yourself to renovate this house, what would you do?"     

Emily, on a roll now, didn't stop to consider this could be a loaded question. She looked around her at the kitchen of the house she'd grown up in. She looked at it objectively, as if for the first time. She didn't look at it as the room her mother spent most of her adult life in, where she had cooked their meals, washed their dishes,
cleaned
their clothes in the old wringer washer, while Emily did her homework on this very table.

Neither did she look at it as a room that she had hated after her mother was no longer there to fill it with love and cheer. Instead she looked at the walls with their peeling paper, the low ceiling, the tiny windows,
the
sloping floor. She envisioned the other cramped rooms, the narrow dark staircase, the tight halls, with a critical, professional eye.

“I'd tear it down,” she said in all seriousness. The fatigue she had felt earlier was dissolving into a light-headed drunkenness. She topped off their glasses even though Rain's was still full, and with her attention thus diverted, missed the unmistakable flash of anger in Rain's eyes. Had she caught that look, she wouldn't have continued so recklessly. “Why are you so adamant about staying in this place?”

“Why are you so adamant I should leave?” His tone indicated their tentative truce had been broken, but Emily, judgement impaired by wine, continued to press him.      

“But you were so bright....”

“Still am. Or at least I like to think I am.”

“So why don't you do something with your life?”

“Like become a rocket scientist?”

“Well, maybe not a rocket scientist, but you could get a trade. How about mechanics? You've always been good at fixing trucks.
Or a carpenter.
You fixed up the cabin. You've always been pretty handy.”

Rain took a careful sip of wine before setting the glass down on the table. “Thank you for your confidence in my abilities. Would it make a difference to you if I did?”

Emily was confused.  “Did what?”

“I said,” he spoke very slowly and deliberately, “Would it make a difference to you if I was something other than a farmhand? Would you still try to kick me off your father's farm like a stray dog?”

“That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?” she said defensively.

“No, I think it’s a pretty fair assessment. I haven’t heard from you in years.”

“That’s not true,” she protested. “I was at the funeral.”

“I would hardly call your little appearance ‘being there.’ But let’s get back to now. You waltz in here like the lady of the manor and tell me, for all intents and purposes, to get lost.” He took a sip of wine. “You fired me, Emily, and kicked me out of the only home I’ve ever had.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Not only was it melodramatic, it was cruel.”

She looked him in the eye. All the protective shields she had put around herself locked into position. She wasn’t going to let him get the better of her. “Okay, so I should have called first with a warning. But you knew a year ago I planned to sell. That’s pretty good warning in my books. You should have been prepared. I think you’ve been acting rather childishly about this.”

He leaned forward in his chair, the front legs of the chair hitting the wooden floor with an angry thud. “Childish? Me? Who went berserk when she found out the place wasn’t hers to sell?”

“I did not.”

“You most certainly did.”

“I didn’t!”

Rain laughed softly and shook his head sadly at her. “I think I just proved my point.”

“You bastard,” she snapped.

“Yes, I
am
a bastard.
Literally.
That’s why I feel so strongly about my home.” He got up from the table and stood with his back to the stove, arms crossed over his chest. When he spoke again his voice was quiet but nonetheless commanding. He was serious, and he intended to be heard. “I don’t know where you got the idea that you’re my superior, Emily, but I do know it drives you crazy to discover that I’m not quite the fool you took me for. I’m not going to be pushed around by you.” He really did feel sorry for her. All that anger and resentment could only result in unhappiness.  Nevertheless, he intended to tell her what he thought of her. He took a deep breath and continued with genuine pity in his voice. “I can't believe what you've become, Emily. The most generous thing I think of to call you right now is a snob. Your mother must by turning in her grave with shame.”

Emily jumped up from the table. She tried to think of something to say but a blinding anger paralysed her voice. She didn’t know which was worse: his words or his tone. But how dare he talk to her like that, after all she had accomplished. And to use her mother against her!  Once again she opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. She hated him at that moment but couldn’t find the words with which to lash back. Then, without even being conscious of doing so, she grabbed her glass of wine from the table and threw the contents in his direction.

Rain reacted instinctively and leaned to one side.  The wine landed against the hot wood stove, sizzled, and evaporated in a cloud of pungent steam.

Rain laughed bitterly, pity replaced with contempt.  “That veneer of sophistication is pretty thin,
Em
.  Scratch it and you find under all the expensive clothes, makeup, and education that there's nothing but a country hick.  What was that you said earlier about taking the girl out of the country?”