“Definitely puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, it does.” He still stared out into the darkness. His eyes had lost the spark that had been there moments before. “I came home and looked at my house, and my property and felt guilty I had so much, and took it for granted all my life. I knew from then on I wouldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t. Everything is more precious to me now. I wish Jessa would see that.”
He still had hold of her hands and she gave his a light squeeze. She wished she could offer some kind of advice to ease his mind. Like this was a phase and Jessa would work through it.
Jessa had changed a bit since Rio had come to live there. Regardless of those changes, Rio could detect the invisible wall between father and daughter; how much it hurt Travis.
“She will. Give her time. I hear teenagers go through these rough patches under the best of circumstances. She’ll understand soon enough the sacrifice you made was something you had to do, and she’ll love you all the more for it.”
“I’d hoped it would be sooner than later. I had big plans for my first winter home. Snowball fights, cross-country skiing, ice-skating. Things we used to do.”
“Remember she’s grown up some too, since you’ve been gone. It’s not all due to a streak of rebellion.”
Travis chuckled. “Maybe that’s harder to deal with than anything.”
He let go of her hands when the waitress brought their dinners. The smell was only an overture to the actual flavor of the meal, which was, in a word, exquisite. Rio couldn’t believe a quaint, out-of-the-way country inn could create something as delicious as this.
She couldn’t even speak until she finished a quarter of her meal. She glanced up to find Travis’s attention more on her than his prime rib.
She longed for a peek inside his mind. He studied her with a fond gaze, the one he’d been wearing all evening.
“This is incredible,” she said, to break the silence. “If I could cook like this I’d be working in the best restaurant in New York City.”
“Thank Lenny’s wife, Sophia. Actually, she did work in a restaurant in New York until he lured her away. She settled into small town New Hampshire life beautifully.”
“Well, I’m glad she did, because I would be sad to have missed this.”
Travis laughed. “I like to see a woman enjoy her food. I’ve seen too many who pick at a couple lettuce leaves and call it a feast.”
“Mmm. Not one of my problems. I guess I’ve been used to taking what I can when I can.” Fork poised halfway to her mouth, she glanced up at Travis. “Oh, a big appetite is not very ladylike, is it?”
“Eat, Rio. Don’t be that kind of woman. You’ll hurt Sophia’s feelings.”
She did as she was told, grateful she didn’t have to hide her appetite. “So, okay. You have a sister. Any more siblings?”
“Just my sister. Carla.”
“And you grew up here? At Shadow Oak?”
“Lived there all my life, except when I left for college and then the service. After my father passed, Laura, Jessa, and I moved in to help my mom out. Even before my dad died she’d been ill. Cancer. We had her another year, nearly two before she couldn’t hang on anymore.”
“Wow, I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine. Two parents, two years.”
“Yeah. Well, it happens, doesn’t it? Anyway, I kept the house. Sounds old fashioned, but the house has stayed in the family for generations. Carla understood. Besides, she was in love with her own house. She didn’t want to move.”
“Weren’t you still in the service?” She loved learning about him. It made her feel closer.
“I was. There were times the house was empty while I was stationed elsewhere. Sometimes Laura and Jessa would live at the house while I stayed on the base. There were plenty of times when we were separated. It stank, but what could we do? I was home as much as I could be. I never saw the signs.”
Of Laura wanting to leave. He must’ve been referring to his wife taking off. What could she say?
“At least she waited until I was home to leave.” The shine in his eyes had disappeared, and Rio regretted the direction the conversation had taken, but they were on that road. They had to walk it to the end.
“Must’ve been devastating.”
“Especially for Jessa. How could I explain it to her when I couldn’t explain it to myself? All she said, in a note to me, was how she couldn’t deal with being a parent or a wife, especially a wife to someone who couldn’t be around. Couldn’t, like I had a choice.”
“So she piled that guilt on you too.”
Travis smiled sadly. “She was good at things like guilt. And better at making it stick.”
“Did you really believe it was your fault? I hope not. You weren’t abusive or out carousing. Your job kept you away from your wife and child at times. How could she fault you?”
“Because it’s not what she wanted. I made her a single parent, for all intents and purposes. She must’ve hated it.”
This time Rio took his hand across the table. She knew all about mothers who shouldn’t be mothers. How different would her life have been if her own mother had decided she couldn’t deal with it and gave Rio and her siblings up?
“You have nothing to feel guilty about, Travis. It’s her loss, right? Someday she’ll regret what she did. In the meantime, you have your daughter. You have a beautiful home and you should be proud of both. Don’t regret Laura’s decisions. Let her do that.”
“Okay, Dr. Rio.”
“Now stop frowning. This food is too delicious to frown over.”
He complied. She wished she kiss him right then.
“Then I won’t ask you about your childhood.”
She squeezed his hand. “You really want to delve into my past?”
“Someday.”
Rio withdrew her hand and picked up her fork for another bite of the seafood pie. “We had some good times, Storm and I. Diamond was detached from us most of the time. She didn’t seem to care what we did, or what our mom did. I guess it was her coping mechanism.”
“Okay, then tell me about some of the better times you and your brother had.”
Rio grinned. “Little things. We had a creek not too far from one of the places we lived. It was a wooded area and we made an awesome fort there.” The smile died on her face. She didn’t want to admit they built the fort with plans on running away and living in it.
“We found some old fishing line and a hook wound in a bush at the edge of the water. I managed to untangle it and attached it to a stick while Storm dug up worms.” Rio chuckled at the memory of the young boy holding the pole over the water with fierce determination. “He actually caught two fish with our makeshift pole. We had no idea what to do with them once they were on the hook. A woman out walking her dogs helped us out, then scolded us for being too close to the water without parental supervision.”
If the woman only realized they were better off with no parental supervision, how the parent needed more supervision than the children. Don’t go there. “Anyway, we brought these tiny, pathetic fish home and cooked them. As is.”
“You didn’t clean them?” Travis made a face.
“I had no idea how to clean a fish. Back then anyway. No. We put them on a microwave safe plate, put a piece of paper towel over them and zapped them.”
Travis laughed out loud, and Rio joined in, grimacing at the memory. “It was the most disgusting . . . well, I’ll leave it to your imagination. To this date, despite the fact I’ve learned how to clean a fish, I refuse to eat one. It took weeks to get that nasty fish smell out of the house. But my mother didn’t say a word. Her boyfriend du jour noticed it though. Made him sick enough to leave. And good riddance. Storm and I thought this was a surefire way to get rid of the creeps she had living w
ith us.”
Rio sobered quickly. She didn’t mean to send the conversation to a serious note. “Besides, it wasn’t fair to the fish.”
She continued with the few stories she had to share. Trips to the corner market for candy and eating it in the branches of a willow tree in the neighbor’s yard. Making paper chains and decorating a little pine in a neighborhood park at Christmas time and singing carols around it. Making boats out of newspaper and sailing them in rain soaked street gutters.
As she shared her childhood stories, it dawned on her how sad they were, how much she tried to give Storm some kind of enjoyment they could remember during the bad times.
She stared down at her plate. All she could envision was the boy she loved so much. “I need to see him.”
Travis had been studying her with a small smile on his face. She wondered if his thoughts had been wandering the same direction as hers. Then he frowned. “You sure?”
“Travis, he’s my brother. Maybe it’s not too late for him. He was such an innocent, sweet kid. He was only trying to help.”
“And what can you do for him?”
“I won’t bring him here. But I want to make him see there’s a life out beyond her world. He can escape her.”
“Please be careful,” Travis warned softly. “You’ve worked for so long to assure she’ll never find you. You may change that by visiting. Rio, you don’t know how strong his loyalties to your mother are. He may think nothing of announcing your reemergence into his life.”
“Then again, he could be in a direct opposite situation. Wanting a reason to leave.”
“Promise me we’ll find out more about his situation first. Okay? Please. A few more weeks, at least.”
Rio didn’t answer right away. Instead she considered his words as she stared out the window into the thick fall of snow. Finally, she nodded. “I’ll wait. Not like anything major will happen within a few weeks,” she said weakly.
With the discussion settled, Rio was grateful for Travis reining her in a bit, otherwise she’d be hopping the next bus down to Springfield to confront her brother. No, this needed some planning. While she wanted to see her brother, in no way, shape, or form did she want to run into her mother again.
By the time they left the restaurant, the parking lot was nearly empty. At least two inches of snow covered Travis’s truck, with no sign of easing off. They drove home slowly, and Rio was sure by the time they pulled into the driveway, another full inch of snow had fallen.
Travis led the way toward the front door, his back to her as he dug out the keys. Grinning, Rio scooped up a handful of snow and formed it into a ball, then took aim and let it fly. It hit Travis squarely in the back, leaving a round white mark at the point of impact.
He paused, returned his keys to his pocket and in a blur of motion, had his own snowball made. Before she could duck, it sailed through the air toward her, catching her directly in the stomach.
A full-blown snowball fight ensued, right there in the darkness and falling snow. Rio couldn’t recall laughing so hard as she ran around the corner of the house to avoid the barrage of snowballs. The man was fast, too fast, and his aim deadly. She’d definitely underestimated him. She got in plenty of her own direct hits in before he finally caught her.
He grabbed her around the middle and tackled her into the fresh snow. The wet stuff crawled down the collar of her jacket. She didn’t care. She was having too much fun, and the weight of his body on hers created enough heat that the snow on her neck didn’t matter at all.
In the darkness, his face was cast in shadows, but she could see the smile fade from his mouth. A second later, he kissed her. She absorbed the delicious stirrings from where his tongue tangled with hers. Her hands roamed his waist, up to his hair, and pressed him closer to her.
She fully expected the snow to be entirely melted from the ground beneath their bodies when Travis finally eased away from the quick-fire kiss. He jumped to his feet and pulled her up so she fell against him once more.
“Let’s go inside before we turn into snowmen,” he murmured, and with her hand still clasped firmly in his, drew her to the house.
Inside, she removed her shoes and left them on the mat by the front door. He helped her off with her jacket and hung it next to his. It was the first time he’d ever done that, the first time her things joined his.
A step toward something more? Rio admonished herself not to be so silly. She couldn’t put any significance into the small action of Travis hanging her coat up there. Suddenly she was embarrassed even to have had the thought.
“I think I’ll go to my room to read,” she told him faintly.
He stood at his desk, his eyes pinned on her. When he frowned, she could sense his confusion and disappointment. “Okay.”
She backed up toward the hallway to her room. She didn’t want to leave, but he hadn’t given any invitation to stay. “Thanks for dinner. I had a nice time.”
The frown was replaced with a small smile. “You’re welcome. I enjoyed it too.”
Quickly she swung around. She wanted to escape this awkward situation nearly as much as she wanted to throw herself against him and beg him to take her to bed. No, sleeping with him couldn’t ever become a habit. It would be hard enough to keep this attraction at bay whenever Jessa was around. She had to start practicing now.
She hung her outfit in the closet and put on a clean pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt. After rubbing her hair, still wet from the snow, with a towel, she climbed into bed and picked up her book from the nightstand.
Then stared at it blankly. I can’t concentrate on anything. Her mind was too full of him, too full of the way his hands felt on her body and how his mouth tasted, pressed to hers.
And worse, how he could make her laugh. How he could draw her out of the box she’d existed in for so many years.
A soft tapping on the door brought her out of her head.
“Yes? Come in.”
Travis walked through the door and shut it behind him. He wore another frown and the intensity in his eyes struck Rio even from across the room. Her heart flew against her chest in rapturous excitement. She tried to set the book on the nightstand and missed. It fell to the floor with a thump. She didn’t care. She couldn’t break her stare from him as he made his slow approach.
“I couldn’t go upstairs,” he said roughly. “There’s no way I could do it, knowing you’re down here. Please, Rio, let me stay with you tonight.”
Silently, she nodded and pulled back the covers. He unbuttoned his shirt and dropped it on the chair by the desk. Rio let her gaze caress every contour of his torso, and as he removed his pants her attention trailed down his narrow waist, lean hips and long, muscular thighs.
The man was trim and rock hard. Incredibly male, already prepared for her, and her body reacted quickly.
As soon as he climbed under the covers with her, he tugged off her t-shirt and rained kisses from the base of her neck, down until he reached a breast. He kissed the tip softly, tracing the hard bud with his tongue, before taking it into his mouth and suckling it.
Her entire body flooded with untamed want and need. She arched her back to his attentions. If she could have, she would’ve opened herself to him right then and there and taken his hard erection into her waiting body. This would be an exercise in control, she told herself. In seeing how far she could let him go before he drove her mad.
After finishing with one tingling peak, he moved his concentration to the other aching breast, tugging on it, his tongue whisking it into hardness.
Her breath came in short, harsh gasps as his hands roamed her body, stopping short of her hips. She still wore her pajama bottoms and they were too much in the way, but she couldn’t speak to ask him to pull them off, couldn’t move enough to push them down herself.
Travis kiss
ed his way up to her mouth where he parted her lips with mindless intensity. His hands cupped her face, stroked her cheek, trailed down her neck, then up again. Together, their tongues circled, danced, and curled, making love on their own.
Against her chest she could feel his heart gallop, or perhaps it was hers. It didn’t matter. The way his fingers touched her mattered, how his thumb hooked into the waistband of the damned pajamas and dragged them down over her hips . . . Those things mattered. She kicked the garment away.
Now. Now he was free to take her, slide his hard, burgeoning arousal deep inside her.
But he didn’t. Instead he worked his way down her body again, slowly, with the sweetest torture, kissing and caressing, nipping and suckling. Oh, what he did to her.
If she had thought she couldn’t handle the building storm inside her body the night before, this was sweeter and slower, with so much promise. How could fire be hot and demanding yet gentle at the same time?
“Travis,” she sighed when his lips drifted down to her thighs. She understood then what he would do and she could barely breathe for the anticipation of his touch.
Her hips lifted off the bed of their own accord to meet his invasion. She welcomed it, yet at the same time feared losing complete and total control of her body and senses.
His tongue flicked against her soft center, circling and dipping before his mouth closed over the sensitive bud, nipping and sucking it lightly while his tongue teased it.
Her body might as well have been rushing forward on a fierce river for all the hold she had on reality. Travis propelled her with blood-rushing speed toward the edge of a waterfall that would plunge her into complete insanity.
The Staying Kind Page 15