Beauty and the Brit (10 page)

A bubble of a thought rose in Rio’s mind, and for the first time her churning brain stopped treading water. She’d spent the last eleven years of her life working in diners and restaurants. Four different eateries, although they’d all been a fair amount sleazier than this one. The best had been the most recent, where the food had been decent and the tips actually helpful. If she only had a way to get from David’s house into town . . .

“What?” David’s quizzical grin caused her cheeks to heat. She hadn’t meant to let her musings show on her face.

“Nothing. Just remembering the life of a waitress. It’s not an easy job, really.”

“That’s what you were doing?”

“Yes.”

“And all the cookbooks you lost in the fire. Did working in restaurants have any connection to them?”

She lost all words. Nobody ever made that link. She’d had two kitchen managers over the years who’d been her secret role models. Only one, Florin, a German student working his way through culinary arts school, had seriously shared his knowledge with her. There wasn’t much haute cuisine you could create in a burger joint on Lake Street, but she’d loved the few things she’d picked up during her stints as a line cook.

“I like working around food.”

“I pretend to.” His smile turned self-conscious. “I learned to cook in Scouts.”

“Like, Boy Scouts? Seriously?” Her mood lightened again, this time at the mental image of stiff, proper David Pitts-Matherson in a khaki shirt and kerchief grubbing over a campfire.

“What, you don’t think I could have been a Boy Scout?”

“Anyone can be a Boy Scout. My brother was a Boy Scout. For about twenty seconds.” She grinned at him. “Is that where you learned to ride a horse?”

“I learned to
ride
from my father, the Olympic champion. I learned
Scouting
from my mother, the Yorkshire girl who wanted me to love the outdoors. She was even a leader for a time.”

“I suppose you’ll tell me you were an Eagle Scout, too.”

“We don’t have them in England. We have Queen’s Scouts, but no, I wasn’t that dedicated. I was a bit of a rebel, liked to go off and survive on my own.”

“Say what?” Her disbelief couldn’t be contained.

None of his information meshed with the picture he presented. A loner? She’d only known him for a few hours, and he seemed like a guy who could calm a storm at the center of a failing universe.

“Well, my father would be pleased you don’t find me the type. Predictable and by the book, that’s what he’d rather have from me.”

“Your father sounds kind of rigid.”

“That, love, would be an understatement.”

They ordered, and despite her initial reluctance to let David pay, Rio found herself digging into a hot Rueben sandwich like a starving trucker. They’d eaten plenty well at the shelter, but something about the laid-back atmosphere and the peaceful, homey décor of the restaurant acted like an appetite stimulant. Rio stuffed the entire meal down before she knew it. When Claudia brought two pieces of cheesecake without even asking, Rio groaned.

“I’m gonna need a hospital gurney and medics to wheel me out of here.”

David laughed. “Aw, it’s just a little piece of cheesecake. One moment of celebration that you’re here safely. Fellas like it when women don’t eat like little butterflies.”

“You’re evil.” She pushed her fork tines into the velvety chocolate. “Attractive or not, pigging out isn’t my usual style.”

“Who said anything about a pig? No pigs here—just chocolate.”

“Evil,” she repeated over her stuffed mouth.

When she finished, despite feeling exactly like the stuffed pig David said didn’t exist, she knew she wanted the recipe for the cheesecake. It had been a long time since she’d been so completely indulged.

“I’ll bet Tiffany would share it,” David said when she voiced the desire. “She’s given out other recipes.”

Small towns, she thought. Probably no big secrets in the recipe world either.

“Are you going to be in town long?” Claudia asked, when David had paid and Rio stood, rubbing her stomach as if it were bruised.

“I honestly have no idea. There are a few details with the house to figure out . . . the house in the fire,” she added, not sure how much Claudia knew.

“I heard.” The older woman clucked in sympathy. “I’m so sorry. Well, I hope you stay a good long while. Come back anytime.”

Rio almost blurted her question then. Almost wondered out loud how much help the restaurant needed. But she had no way to get here every day. No real chef skills. No idea how long she’d be able to stay and work. She certainly didn’t want it to be long.

“Thank you.”

“Right, then, cheers, Claudia,” David added.

“You devil with that accent. You come back soon.”

“Can’t stay away.”

The air sat still over the main street, hot but not oppressive. It hadn’t been this warm in Minneapolis for weeks—how could sixty-five miles make such a huge difference? Rio lifted her eyes to the pure blue sky, amazed. No wires, no crumbling roofs, no obstructions.

“Feeling any better about this place?”

“You know that weird magical land in the old musical that shows up only once every hundred years or so? That’s ‘this place.’”

“Brigadoon?”

“That one.”

With a laugh, he started down the sidewalk. “Maybe so. Regardless, let’s go ’round the block to get to the car and walk off a calorie or two of that dessert.”

A good idea, she had to admit, even if she did feel like her belly needed a sling, and walking sounded gross. A nervous flutter joined the sense of fullness as she fell in beside him. It wasn’t his presence alone causing the little butterflies. It was this time-wasting attitude he seemed to have. Nothing seemed vital. They’d left two teenagers alone with horses. They had shopping to do. She had to get unpacked. Bonnie had to . . .

Had to what?

For the first time in countless years, it hit her that she didn’t
have
to do anything, not get to work, not figure out what to make for dinner, not keep track of Paul. She was aimless.

She stopped dead in front of a store window she hadn’t noticed on the drive into town. Tattoo art from the sweet to the skeletal decorated the plate-glass window, and letters in gold gothic typeface read “Th-INK Designs—Art for Your Skin. Nora Pint, Damian Pint, artists.” The few designs on display captured her. She loved tattoos—not so much full body ink or even heavy sleeves or cuffs. But a beautifully rendered picture—

“Strange what people will do to themselves, isn’t it?”

She met his eyes, and the peaceful calm just starting to return boiled back into defensiveness. “What do you mean?”

“What’s that phrase—whatever floats your boat? I think skin is quite nice on its own, so why shove needles full of ink into the cells trying to look prettier or tougher?”

“Oh?” An acerbic bite laced her words. “You mean like this?”

She turned away from him, hooked a thumb in the back of her waistband, and dragged it down three inches.

Chapter Seven

T
HE PALE SWATH
of skin Rio exposed stopped the vital flow of air to David’s lungs. Or so he truly believed. He’d seen a woman’s backside before. He’d seen many tattoos. But he stared at the exquisite picture she presented, and his body tightened as if she’d stripped to nothing.

The horse’s head and body formed a heart shape a full four inches tall and at least that wide. It was the most unique tattoo he’d ever seen. The fine, chiseled head was centered at the small of her back and its mane swept up and left to create half the heart. The horse’s back and tail formed the other half. What enticed him most, however, was the end of the tail—the point of the heart, that disappeared below the seat of her jeans. Her thumb hid the top of the cleft between her cheeks. He’d never given a rat’s bum about anyone’s tattoo, but this one he wanted to follow with his eyes, his fingertips, maybe partway down with his lips . . .

His breathing resumed with an audible hitch. Heaviness hit painfully behind his fly, and heat rose in his face over such a shallow reaction. “That’s . . . amazing.”

“You never know who you might insult, do you?”

To his disappointment she lifted her waistband back up and smoothed her purple T-shirt back in place.

“I’m sorry. I had no idea . . .”

“I have others, too.” She ignored his too-late apology, and her eyes blazed, a little disproportionately to the situation he thought, but he let her continue. “Would you like to get them out of the way, as well, so you know exactly what kind of person you’re dealing with?”

She yanked up the right leg of her jeans, and David closed his eyes as her ankle and long, smooth calf appeared along with an owl on a branch. Once again, the artwork astounded him.

“Rio, I . . .”

“And here.” She started to tug at the neckline of the T-shirt, her face now a flushed pink that only set off the blaze of her incredible hair.

“Stop, Rio.” He grasped her upper arms and held her as he’d have held a raging child. She wriggled for a moment, then stood quietly, looking at the ground. “I’m truly sorry. I did not mean to insult you, but you’re right, I was insensitive. All I’ve ever known were military tattoos, and they were only a way to commemorate something I had no desire to remember. I’ve paid no attention to artful tattoos, so I admit to ignorance and prejudice. Yours are beautiful.”

To his astonishment she stared at him, angrier than ever, her fists clenched at her sides.

“Now you stop it! Stop . . . smoothing everything over. Stop taking away everything I can cling to that’s maddening. Stop—” The anger melted in a flood of real tears. The first he’d seen except for the few at the fire scene.

“Here now.” Awkwardly, uncomfortably, he took her into a hug. It was one thing to offer words of encouragement, even apology. It was another entirely to touch her this way. Especially when his body was confusing the hell out of him with its reaction to the stupid horse tail.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I don’t really give a crap if you like tattoos.”

He chuckled at the defiance that swam up through her sadness. “I know.”

“The owl is supposed to remind me to keep my head, stay smart. There’s nothing anywhere right now that makes me feel remotely capable. I can’t do or fix anything. I can’t even stop from crying. I don’t cry.”

“Even when you’ve lost most of your physical world? C’mon, love, give yourself a break. Allow yourself to grieve.”

She relaxed in his arms. A wave of flutters joined the heaviness in his body, and tenderness melted him like a hot breeze. “You were in the army?” she asked. “Is there anything you can’t fix with all your worldly experience?”

“There are so many things I can’t fix,” he said. “So I try to concentrate on what I can do. Just as you do.”

She pulled away, but her movements had softened, and she stayed close rather than step away from him. He could see the struggle in her eyes—her fierce need to survive on her own terms warring with her need for help.

A smattering of freckles danced across her nose. They were so faint in her unusual, deep-toned skin he hadn’t noticed them before. She didn’t look like the typical, fragile-to-sunlight redhead. In fact, in spite of the tears she stabbed at with her slender fingers, she didn’t look fragile at all.

“I’m fine,” she said simply.

“I think what’s needed is to get the shopping done and head back to the house. You’ll feel better once you have your things unpacked.”

“And know Bonnie hasn’t gotten into trouble.”

“Does she get into trouble often?”

A range of emotions he couldn’t read flitted through her eyes before she wiped her nose a final time. “No. It’s just Hector. I don’t know why Paul introduced Bonnie to him; he’s never wanted her involved with the gangs. He must have owed Hector something big.”

“If I’m honest, I have to admit I wasn’t too impressed with your brother. When he abandoned you and Bonnie the other night, I thought it cowardly.”

“You’re right.” Her lips thinned.

“Tell me about you three. How did you get such a unique name and that red hair when the other two are so . . . opposite?”

They fell into step with each other again, leaving the tattoos and all the emotions they’d unleashed behind.

“We had different mothers.”

The bluntness startled him. “Really? Bonnie is your half sister?”

“Yes. She and Paul are full siblings, but we’ve never paid any attention to that. We’re family. My mother was a fair-skinned Irish girl named Colleen Flannigan. She gave me a name she thought would offset the Montoya. She died when I was four, and my dad married again almost right away.”

“Paul and Bonnie’s mother?”

She nodded. “Dad was a quarter or three-eighths Mexican, the rest, he used to tell us, was tough, loyal stray. When I was little I actually thought it was cool to be part stray. Portia, though, was Latina through and through, and gorgeous. Bonnie looks a lot like her.”

“But she’s not around anymore either?”

“She never wanted children. Paul was an accident. Portia managed him because her mother, Yaya we called her, watched us most of the time.” Her features eased slightly in absentminded amusement. “It may be too much information, but Portia made my father get a vasectomy. Almost six years later—surprise.”

“No bloody way.”

“Yeah.” She gave a little ironic snort. “Dad adored Bonnie, but for Portia that was one child too many. She stayed two more years, but she hadn’t signed up for motherhood, she said. Dad had failed her. So, she left. I think she lives in Nashville now, but that’s hearsay.”

“And your father? Chase told me you’ve been on your own for quite some time.”

“He was killed in a truck accident when I was seventeen. He’d been paying Yaya to stay and watch us while he was driving cross-country. By the time he died, I’d figured out a few ugly truths about my step-grandmother, like the fact she wasn’t with us because she loved us but loved Papa’s earning potential. I never knew how to tell my father without worrying him. When I was eighteen and emancipated, I kicked Yaya out. I don’t know where she is.”

The story amazed him. Most eighteen-year-olds he knew today were obsessed with themselves and their smartphones not the welfare of their families. He himself had certainly been a selfish teenager, and it had taken the British Army to whip him into shape.