“That I’d make sure you stayed that way.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Hardheaded.”
“Stubborn.”
“You know it.”
Chapter Seven
One hell of a night. Nightmares and memory lane. Yay. Rai stood at the kitchen sink and looked out over the narrow valley. The grasses were already blond with the coming winter. The pines were the only green on the steeply rising mountains guarding either side. There wasn’t a tree line here, but she knew that just a few miles west, or north or whatever, there were plenty of mountains with tree lines. Taos was known for its ski resort, as was Angel Fire and whatever the other one was. It would be beautiful here during the winter. Always having had a vivid imagination, she could easily see the valley or meadow or whatever it was called covered in blankets of white, glistening like diamonds in the sunlight with the green trees breaking the landscape.
Now, though, the poplars and the aspens broke the monotony with bright bursts of yellow, orange, and some reds. One tree was such a bright yellow it made her smile. Lee had one planted just outside the back gate. The entire ground was covered, the walkway like the Yellow Brick Road. She wondered if he ever saw it all. Or if he was like he’d always been and just went along, one goal beyond the next, never seeing the beauty around him. So much beauty. The sky was bright, robin’s-egg blue.
To the side was a big wooden barn. In the paneled-off area beside it, she saw llamas. At least she was pretty sure they were llamas. There were also a couple of huge horses with wide hooves. Clydesdales, she guessed. The hair on their lower legs probably had a name, and though she grew up on a ranch in Texas and knew cattle, they hadn’t had horses. However, she’d seen enough beer commercials to know a Clydesdale when she saw one.
What was he doing with the llamas and horses, and did he have anything else?
Solitude, livestock, and mountains. She wouldn’t have guessed the Harley riding, moody veteran she knew three years ago would end up here, but it fit him.
She rubbed her arms and finished the dishes.
Some things didn’t change. He kept a tidy house, but then he always had. Dishes, though, were in some realm he hated to do. For a fit guy, he ate like a college bachelor. There were too many cans of beans and unhealthy soups in his pantry. And his freezer… She shivered. Too many frozen manly meals, or whatever they were called. Chock-full of sodium, there was no way they were healthy.
Not that you could tell looking at the man. Broad shoulders, narrow waist and hips, muscles from his days in the military and a morning workout he apparently still kept to. It was the sound of the weights this morning that had woken her up.
Weird, being here. He hadn’t really changed. Or maybe he had. Had she?
After three years, she didn’t know. She had been working for a law firm, but she hadn’t finished her final year of law school. A fact her brothers were still pissed about. Sometimes, though, life threw you curve balls.
It was weak, she knew. She liked to think she was a strong woman, but losing Lee, and then her parents in the car accident, really tore her world apart. He had been so…judgmental when he’d found out where she worked, as if that had tainted her somehow.
She was, and had always been, the same person.
Of course, Forest, her oldest brother, practically had a stroke when he’d found out. His words had hurt too. So she’d thought, fuck ‘em all. She hadn’t called Lee back, hadn’t sat around waiting for him to call—well, for no more than a week. She’d heard from her boss when he’d moved to the wilderness. It was all anyone would tell her. And she hadn’t been home since the funeral. She could go home anytime. Forest had even apologized, but she could hold a grudge.
Or she had.
And yet, here she was.
Needing something else to do, she checked the freezer again and found some frozen veggies, a few potatoes in the pantry, and checked the venison she’d set out earlier. They’d have stew. She could at least do that.
“Dumbass man.” She popped the stupid veggies in the microwave to defrost them while she browned the meat. She’d wanted to go into town, even offered to get on a bus and get out of his hair.
“You’d have thought I’d asked to blow him,” she muttered.
“If you want to do that, just let me know when,” he said behind her.
She bit back the grin and didn’t turn. Instead, she reached for the long butcher knife. “You know, I never knew you were so narcissistic.”
He grunted.
“Who said I was talking about you?” she added.
“I know, or remember, that tone of muttering.”
She cut open the package of venison and reached above her head for the hanging cast iron skillet. “For your information,” she said, setting the skillet on the stove and dumping the half frozen meat into it, “I was talking about Doc and when I wanted him to let me get a bus in Albuquerque.
“Albuquerque? You have any idea what goes on in Albuquerque?”
“You have any idea what goes on in Seattle?”
He grunted again, his boot heels clicking on the wooden floors as he stepped closer and leaned against the counter near the sink.
Rai took a deep breath and focused on adding spices.
“What are you making?”
“Stew.”
“You know what you’re doing?”
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Seriously? It’s stew.”
“I seem to remember you could burn water in a pot.”
He had a point.
“I took a cooking class for a couple of semesters.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, my therapist said I needed to find a hobby. I hate to waste time, so I figured I’d find a hobby that was useful, and you’re right. I could burn toast and water equally.”
“Well, it does take talent to burn water.”
She snickered and tossed a hotpad at him. He caught it. “Still pissed at me?”
“For?”
“Not letting you go traipsing off by yourself to get killed.”
She turned and faced him. “I got here, didn’t I? Alive? Well? In one piece?”
“Which reminds me, I need to call Doc and Harlen and D. and tell them all thank you.”
“Oohhhh. Go do something.”
HIs gaze skimmed slowly over her, from her twisted flop of curly blonde hair to her bare toes, then meandered back up. When his green eyes met hers, one side of his mouth kicked up. “Darlin’, I know exactly what I want to do.”
She felt her cheeks blush. Turning back to the stove, she stared at the meat.
“You might want to turn the burner on,” he said right behind her, his breath hot on her ear.
She shivered, huffed and leaned over to twist the stupid knob. “I know that. I was making sure I had everything.”
His dark chuckle danced on the air before his lips touched her hair. “Darlin’, you’ve always had more than enough of everything.”
“Go feed a llama or a Clydesdale or something,” she snapped, or tried to, but it came out as a whisper.
His eyes danced as he watched her, and then he walked out the back door, his cap firmly on his head, his shades now hiding his eyes.
“Damn man.”
“I heard that,” he hollered back over his shoulder.
Half an hour later, she felt more like herself and had mixed up some cornbread to go with the stew, which was slowly cooking on the stove. It would be ready tonight.
If she didn’t burn it.
So she’d taken a cooking class, and she’d passed. She hadn’t been at the top of her class, but then, she liked to experiment. Not that she had tonight. She stuck to what she knew would work and be okay. Stew and cornbread was hard to screw up.
Chocolate.
Maybe she could make brownies.
Looking in the pantry, she saw he had everything she needed. She set out the ingredients and decided she’d make the brownies later. Should have w
aited on the cornbread too, but oh well.
She realized the cornbread, which she’d poured into the muffin tin, was ready and took it out.
Looking out the wide expanse of window over the sink, she watched as Lee carried a sack of feed tossed on his shoulder out of the barn. The man strode, yet seemed to prowl sometimes. Not now. Now he sort of meandered. A llama on the far side of the pen turned and saw him. The brown-and-white beast started toward Lee. And Lee—Bear to everyone else—paused, watched him, and then walked faster over to the round rubber feed trough set up in the middle. He quickly poured the feed into it, but not before the llama trotted over, stopped several feet away, and spit on him.
Rai chuckled. She couldn’t hear him, but Lee was saying something, waving his arm. The llama stood there, and another one came up from behind and nudged Lee. He reached up and petted this one, which was almost solid white.
Were they llamas or alpacas? She never did know the difference, and there probably was one.
She’d ask him later.
Lee with llamas. Lee the Llama Master. Maybe she’d write a kid’s story about that. A dream of hers no one knew about. One day, she wanted to write fun kid stories. Not like picture books, though illustrations were fine. But more than that, she wanted to tell a story. A chapter book.
So Lee the Llama Master would live in the mountains….
The dog barked.
With a trusted mutt named… She’d come up with that later.
As she hurried to her sack, ideas popped in her head. She pulled out a small notepad and took it with her to the couch. Several minutes later, she leaned back and rolled her shoulders. That could work. She’d get her laptop out later and write the notes down, flesh them out a bit more. A mutual friend in Seattle she’d met in grief counseling was a great artist. Maybe they could work together. She’d wanted to ask her but was afraid the woman would think it stupid.
She looked out the large windows at the end of the living room that faced the end of the valley and the mountains, and decided to hell with it.
If Niall had taught her anything in the last week, if her parents’ deaths had taught her anything, it was that there were no guarantees. Life could end. So go for dreams. Take a cooking class. Learn something new.
Throw the fear away and go for a dream.
Maybe not law school. The more she had worked as a paralegal in the firm, the more she knew she didn’t want to be in law. Another reason she hadn’t gone back. So she was almost done paying off the loans that she had nothing to show for, and she didn’t care.
The bright sky and ideas dancing in her head called her out onto the porch. She wondered if he had a chair or two on the porch… Were they called porches in the mountains or only in the south and Texas? Maybe in the mountains or on the coast, they were just decks.
And it hardly mattered.
She walked out and realized that two Adirondack chairs faced the mountains, and on the far corner, there was even a hammock between the corner post and some post that apparently had been hammered into the ground for the sole purpose of holding the hammock.
Perfect. Hammock it was.
***
He stood looking down at her. The woman he’d never really gotten over, the one he’d thought about, dreamed about, imagined here, was here now. In the hammock he’d picked out because it reminded him of her with its rainbow of colors. He propped his hands on his hips. She wasn’t wearing a hat or a cap. God forbid she sit on the porch where it was shaded. And he’d bet she hadn’t put on any sunblock.
That would be too practical.
She’d always confused him and confounded him. She came off as practical when he’d first met her, but the longer he knew her, he realized her practicality was rather self-imposed. He’d always sensed an energy she’d kept under wraps, and he was honest enough to know he’d been slightly wary of untying those wraps.
But he’d glimpsed that energy from time to time, and damn if she hadn’t beckoned him. She’d hum odd songs, want to go to out-of-the-way places, talk him into concerts with bands that sounded like they should be at Woodstock. He was used to rules and regs. The world away from war, home had no longer made sense for him.
Not until he’d met her at a coffee shop.
She’d been laughing at something the barista had said when there’d been a quiet moment in the coffee shop. She’d had books and a laptop on the table in front of her.
She’d seemed…normal.
He grinned. Normal was subjective.
She was like her name. Chasing rainbows had been something Harlen had said when the man had found out Bear was moving away and out into the middle of nowhere. “Chasing rainbows is for the adventurous and the stupid.”
But holding them in the palm of his hand, in his arms, was the best damn feeling he’d ever had.
He nudged the hammock. “You put on any sunblock?”
She startled awake and dropped a notepad.
“Easy,” he said, crouching down. “It’s just me.”
“‘Just me’ could be anyone, you know. Why do people say that?”
“I don’t know,” he said noticing her nose was pink. “How long have you been out here?”
She shrugged, closed her eyes, and flung her arm up over her head. She stuck one leg out, her turquoise-painted toes pointing as she gently pushed herself in the hammock. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
He reached up and ran a finger down her pink nose. “Will if you get skin cancer. You should put sunblock on up here. You’re in the mountains.”
“Seattle had mountains and the coast.”
“And very little sunshine and too much rain.”
She cracked one eye open and shaded it with her hand. “Anyone ever tell you, you worry too much? It’ll give you creases between your eyes.” She reached out and rubbed the area between his brows. Her fingers were cold.
“Someone might have once.” He really wanted to lean in and kiss her, slowly, deeply, until they were both in the hammock. Instead, he stood up and held out his hand.
She looked up at him and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I’ll wait a bit. I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
She just grinned, and damn if that grin didn’t tug at his gut and go straight to his groin. He grunted. “Fine. Don’t stay out too much longer and don’t whine to me if your nose burns.”
“You’re so sweet,” she cooed.
He grunted again and went into the house. Damn woman.
“I heard that,” she said.
He grinned.
Chapter Eight
Rai lay back against the claw-foot tub, soaking away the day. She’d waited until Lee had gone out to feed the llamas this evening. She’d offered to help, but he’d scoffed at her. Granted, she’d thought about just following him out there anyway and helping, but if he wanted her to stay out of the way, she could do that.
Once upon a time, she’d have helped him with or without him asking.
Now, though, she wasn’t quite sure where she stood with him.
Last night, he’d gone to town after she’d riled him up. Or he said he was going into town. She figured he’d had a date or something after he’d peeled out of the driveway. He’d been back in less than half an hour. She hadn’t asked if he’d actually made it to town or not.
But that did make her wonder.
Was she cramping his style?
The bathroom had black-and-white towels and several threadbare army ones. Well, she called them army ones. They were brown, tan, and some color in between, and worn. He’d had them for years, and they’d be better off as rags, but she left them folded on the shelf and noticed she was the only one to use the black-and-white ones. The bathroom, though lovely with its tiled floors and deep claw-foot tub and simple adobe walls did not scream female influence.
Needed some color. Just a splash. Maybe some photo or landscape on the wall would be nice. It would be, but then he’d never liked froufrou, as he called it. She g
rinned as she slid down into the steaming water.
Facing the door, she noted again there wasn’t a lock on it. Well, there was, but it didn’t seem to work. The knob still turned whether the lock was pressed or not. There was a hook lock farther up, but that seemed strange to her. As it wasn’t her house, it really didn’t matter.
She settled deeper into the hot water. Looking up at the ceiling, she wondered what she was going to do next. His bootsteps thudded in the hallway as he came in from the kitchen. Thump. Thump. Thump.
The man could definitely fill out a pair of jeans and boots. Did he ever wear a cowboy hat? She’d never seen him in one. He was more a cap kind of guy and always had been. Either way, he still looked hot—too hot for her peace of mind. He’d been in her dreams last night, and she remembered all too well what it was like between them. There hadn’t been another man to flip her switches or push her buttons as quickly and well as Lee Demarco in a long, long time. Okay, ever, truth be told.
He could piss her off, rev her up, and God knew, have her panting and over before she knew what the hell had happened. They hadn’t had any problems in the bedroom. She frowned as she trailed her fingers through the water. She hadn’t thought they’d had any problems really anywhere. Other than he’d wanted out of Seattle and she’d wanted to finish school.
It had seemed paramount at the time to finish school, to pay off the loan, to get ahead and grab that career her parents had dreamed of her having with both hands.
He hadn’t seemed like the judgmental sort. Not while they were together.
Maybe he was more.
They hadn’t said too much to each other since she’d been here. He’d teased her a bit on the cooking and when she’d asked about helping. Other than that, she’d tried to stay out of his way. She knew he hadn’t asked to have dumped on his doorstep any more than she’d asked to be dumped here. Why had the guys done that? She had no idea. Some joke?
His boots thumped toward the bedrooms. Something opened and shut, probably his dresser, with his neatly organized and rolled clothing. Color coded.
She grinned.
“Just grab one, they’re all tan anyway!” she hollered without thinking.
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