Stripped Down (9 page)

After a few minutes, I break the silence. “We could have taken my car.” Now I’m just needling him. Angel doesn’t like others to drive him. Sure enough, he shoots me one of
those
looks and jams his Stetson down on his head.

It doesn’t matter.

He isn’t getting his way this time.

“You took your sweet time coming back to Lonesome,” he says eventually. He doesn’t take his eyes off the road, doesn’t drive faster than is safe, but riding with him feels like the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. He’ll never be tame or polite—but he’ll be right.

Damn him.

“I… had things to do.” The excuse sounds weak even to my own ears.

“What kind of things did you have to do, Rose, that were more important than coming up here and settling the estate of the woman who all but raised you?”

I don’t like the guilt or panic that shoots through me, an itchy, sickening coil of unwelcome emotions. I can’t explain why I hadn’t come, why I hadn’t been ready. Why I couldn’t face the empty house, Angel, or any of the pieces of the life I had in Lonesome. Explaining
that
would mean explaining all the broken pieces of me, and most days I just want to forget.

Plus, if I’d started any one of those tasks, I’d have been that much closer to failing. To not getting it right. So I’d waited. And then waited some more, until I’d failed anyhow and could stop worrying.

Second chance
, I remind myself.

“Maybe I just wasn’t ready until now,” I suggest, as if I hadn’t had lists of tasks to check off and a timeline for doing so. As if I hadn’t frozen in panic and done nothing.
Sweet procrastinator,
I can almost hear Auntie Dee whisper.
Someday, you’ll figure it out, get yourself started
.

I inked a little pink and purple poppy on the inside of my wrist for her. She loved the bright orange California poppies that peppered Lonesome in the spring, but she’d always wanted to try the exotic kind from the seed catalog.

Angel doesn’t turn, but his big body screams frustration. He isn’t buying the line I’m selling. He’s always has been good at recognizing bullshit.

“Not ready.” His voice is too quiet. “Well, that’s a hell of a thing, Rose, when you’ve been asked repeatedly to come on up here, and you’ve never said why you couldn’t. What did you think was going to happen? We’ve all been cooling our heels waiting for you.”

I stare straight ahead. His voice holds the quiet disappointment, the disapproval I expect. I’ve never pleased him, have I?

“I should have explained.” Like always, he’s right. I should have. Of course I should have—and, instead, I’ve procrastinated. Waited, like always, until the last possible moment. I tried college and dropped out. I became a tattoo artist in San Francisco, and then I lost the reality TV show that was supposed to make me my seed money for a shop of my own. I failed to come back for Auntie Dee in time.

Failure, failure, failure. I should make that my next tattoo.

When I don’t explain now, he waits me out, letting the silence stretch between us.

“But I wasn’t ready, okay?” I won’t cry. Instead, I blink furiously, wanting to curse him but bobbing in place instead.

“Hell, Rose.” He tightens his grip on the wheel. “We would have been happy to wait for you to be ‘ready’—you know that. But, darling, you have to either show up or call.”

“You just want to tear down the house and use the land,” I accuse.

“I do.”

He doesn’t bother sugarcoating his intentions, just hits me low and hard with the truth. A truth that isn’t going to become reality if I have my way.

“What if I don’t want to sell it?”

“What else are you going to do with that piece of property? You’re obviously not the settling-down type, Rose, and it takes cash to run a place like that. A steady income.”

I’m working on that, although he doesn’t know it. He’ll find out soon, though, because Angel owns most of Lonesome. Auntie Dee’s is the only place I can open a tattoo shop because Angel owns everything else, and I can’t afford the rent anyhow.

“You don’t think I could do it? What if I want to fix the place up, make a home for myself here?” My heart beats a little faster at my own audacity.

Angel sighs roughly. “Some dreams don’t come true.”

I hate that, like always, he’s right even if he has no way of knowing that I’d been hoping to make a success of myself, then come home to care for Auntie Dee and carve out a better life for both of us in Lonesome.

I just expected to do so before I lost Auntie Dee.

When we pull up ten minutes later, Auntie Dee’s house seems unchanged, heat-soaked and dusty and horribly, deeply familiar. It’s almost possible to pretend I never left, that the last few years haven’t slipped by. Despite the miles I put between myself and Lonesome, I’ve thought about the older woman every day. I needed to stretch my wings and figure out who I really was, and Auntie Dee had understood.

Now I need to come back home.

I wrestle the truck’s door open and hop down from the pickup before Angel can even kill the motor. Whatever doubts he has—and I’m sure he has plenty—he’s keeping them to himself for the moment. Knowing Angel, of course, he’s probably just waiting for me to figure out the truth for myself.

The house redefines
fixer-upper.

As I cross the yard, I wave to the contractor I asked earlier to come by to check out the work that needs to be done immediately. Angel took so long reading the will that the other man is almost finished with his external inspection.

The sun’s heat beats down on my bare shoulders, a sensual weight that renders it almost shocking to step onto the porch and into the cooler shadows. Angel follows me inside the house as if he owns the place, the floorboards squeaking noisily with each step he takes, but I can’t bring myself to care. He owns half of my house, but I’m busy wondering if he was always this sexy. He seems even bigger, harder, than I remember.

He’s seen me naked.

The wave of mildew and must that hits me when Angel finally shoulders open the kitchen door—naturally, it sticks—isn’t a good sign. Angel flips light switches.
Nada
. Of course. No electricity. When I run the tap, however, I score the one win of the day. Water gushes out of the rusty fixture, clear and cool. It tastes good, too.

Angel watches me drink. “You’ve got a good well here,” he says.

Mentally, I arrange the house, placing the furniture I left in storage in repainted, cleaned-up rooms. Angel, on the other hand, focuses on support beams and wiring and whether or not the place is up to code. He’s looking at what Auntie Dee’s is, while I’m already seeing the future.

Still, as the inspector takes me point by point through a damning litany of critical repairs, Angel is a silent, solid presence. He doesn’t add anything to the never-ending commentary of things gone wrong or rotten. Hell, he doesn’t
have
to say anything. He’s right, just like he always is. The house isn’t livable and might not even be salvageable.

Okay. So it needs work. I’m not afraid of putting in sweat and time—I’ve got those in abundance. It’s possible I’ll still be hammering and sawing when I’m ninety, but I’ll be working on my place.

When the contractor finally shuts the lid of his laptop, he looks as if he just finished a marathon. I’m not sure why he expects sympathy—he’s the one getting paid for his pain, after all.

“I’ll e-mail you the final report,” he says, pocketing the check I hand him. He shakes my hand and then grasps the hand Angel extends.

“Great. Thanks.” I guess it’s good that he’s thorough, but I’m feeling more than a little flattened at the moment. There’s no way my less-than-flush checking account can handle repairs of this scope. Even caution tape or a box of matches might be beyond the scope of my finances.

“You be careful in here,” he says, clearing his throat. “This house needs work.”

“I can handle it.” I do my best to project a confidence I don’t quite feel.
Yet
. Surely mastering the fine art of home repair should be possible.

“Lots of work.” Angel’s voice seems almost deliberately dry, but it still contains the little growl that starts me thinking about sex. With him. The two of us naked and going at it.

“You listen to your boyfriend here.” The contractor nods toward Angel. “He’s right.”

Shit. Now I need a new contractor.

Watching the man go, I’d bet those words horrify Angel. I’m not the kind of woman he admires. Cool, put-together brunettes are more his style. As soon as he’s done whatever it is he thinks needs doing here and he gets the estate wrapped up, he’ll return to work, and we’ll see each other from a distance rather than from this impossible, too-close perspective.

Things will go back to the way they were before.

Angel
will go back to the way he was before. God, I shouldn’t wish things were different.

Angel is the kind of hard, disciplined, determined man who knows precisely where he’s headed in life and how to get there. He’s all wrong for me, but that does nothing to stop the heat from blossoming inside me as he moves around my kitchen, testing the cabinet doors.

Wanting him is crazy.

Sunset makes color streak the horizon and elicits a raucous commentary from the nesting birds in the cottonwoods. I’ve always loved this pretty time, when the sky softens up and things get ready to hunker down for the night. The morning glories twining up the chimney have closed in anticipation of the darkness. For a moment, sitting on what’s left of the house’s wrap-around porch, I can pretend I’ve gone back in time. Dusk makes it harder to see that, while the porch was white once upon a time, now most of the paint has peeled off in long, curling strips.

Last Christmas, I bought home design software and drew a plan for me and Auntie Dee. The two of us talked for hours on the phone, adding rooms or moving them around. I took too long, though—waited too long. I slide the long roll of drawings out of the tube and spread them out on the porch. I included a big open kitchen for Auntie Dee, who loved to cook and who always had folks stopping by to chat. After our last call, I added windows upstairs for Auntie Dee to look out at the ranch land where she grew up, and even more downstairs because I had a sneaking suspicion that the stairs were finally too much for Auntie Dee.

At least the heart attack was quick.

Auntie Dee never had to leave the home she loved. By the time I got the message and understood there wouldn’t be any more phone calls ever again, Auntie Dee was gone. The EMTs didn’t have time to carry her outside, she left so fast.

“You gonna share with the class, darling?” Beside me, Angel rests a booted foot on the bottom rail of the porch. He’s picked the sturdiest rail of the lot, probably the only one not likely to break from his weight. Most of the boards are rotted clear through.

“Tell you what?”

“Why you’re so sure you want to hang on to this place?” He nods toward my sagging porch step seat and the drawings. “What your plans are?”

“It’s just about a tear-down, isn’t it?” Even I can tell my voice sounds rueful.

“Yeah,” he drawls. “It’s safe to say that. Bulldozing it would be the most practical option. We did what we could for Auntie Dee, but she wouldn’t let us help much. None of us realized the house was this bad, or we would have done something, Rose. I promise you that.”

I believe him. Angel isn’t a nice guy and he has a mouth on him that betrays his years in the SEALs, but he’s a protector and no one needed protecting more than Auntie Dee. I’m not sure why she thought she needed to ask him to look after me, though.

“I can fix the house.” I have the time. That’s one advantage of being laid off and jobless.

“Maybe.” I hate how inscrutable his face is. “This place is going to take a whole lot of work, Rose, and it’s going to take even more money. Do you have that?”

“I’ll find a way,” I tell him and I will.

Angel’s hand brushes my shoulder. This isn’t the first time he’s touched me since we came out here. He threaded his fingers briefly through mine to tug me upstairs, and he cupped my foot with his hand when I asked for a leg up to inspect a ceiling fan. Jumping up, suddenly desperate to get away, I perch on the porch swing, hoping to God it didn’t give way beneath me. Angel is driving me crazy, and he doesn’t even know it.

“You ever just known a place was the right one?”

“Sure.” He shrugs, powerful shoulders moving beneath the faded cotton of his T-shirt as he moves toward me and the swing. “The ranch.”

He’s close enough now that I can feel the heat coming off him. The V-neck of his shirt exposes the powerful column of his throat and makes me think about something besides home repairs.

“So how’d you feel if someone came along, wanting to buy you out, Angel? Would you give up that land?”

“Hell, no. That ranch has been in my family for generations. You don’t sell something like that.”

The fierceness that fills his voice and stamps his face is far too sexy. Angel’s ancestors were members of the Spanish aristocracy who came to California to start a new life and then mixed with the fierce, free-spirited Native Americans. Those men were warriors. Men who held on to what they took and who fought for every inch, every arroyo. Angel is a possessive man.

“It’s like that for me. I don’t want to sell this place.”

He doesn’t look convinced. At all. “It’s not the same. This isn’t a ranch. This land hasn’t been part of your blood, part of your family for more than a century.”

I wonder if he’d have me arrested for assault if I hit him. Probably not. Angel takes care of his own problems.

“This is my home.” My voice sounds strained, but fuck him. My home counts too, even if I don’t have ancestors dating back to Mayflower days.

“Sure, Rose,” he snaps. “And I suppose the whole time you were gone, when you were anywhere
but
here, you just couldn’t wait to come back.”

He can take his supposition and shove it.

He has the literal truth on his side. I ran, and I ran hard. I’m a serial mistake maker, and there’s no way to fix the past. Maybe, I’ll fail at home repairs, too. Maybe, I won’t get Auntie Dee’s house perfect, but I still get to try. I still get to come home.