Beauty and the Brit (39 page)

He cried into her cries. The reds, blues, golds, and whites of the powerful orgasm carried her away from her body, only to bring her crashing back with wave after wave of licking heat. David drove, his muscles rock firm, his breath hot on her face, sweet in her nostrils. But she couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t control the waves that just kept crashing until, at last, tears of relief and utter joy flowed down her cheeks, dousing the flames into hot, glowing embers.

S
OMETIME IN THE
night she’d wrapped herself back around him like a child around a teddy bear. David yawned and smiled into her hair, surprisingly comfortable. Rio’s sweatshirt still covered their shoulders, his zippered hoodie their feet. They’d dressed reluctantly in the light of the campfire, but the nights were cool now, and sleeping naked in the woods even with a fire was a poor idea no matter how much he would have loved waking her at midnight to re-create what they’d shared.

The sky glowed pewter and purple, indicating dawn was less than an hour away. David didn’t want to wake her. Her red hair tumbled across her face like the remnants of their fire from last night. All her wariness had vanished, leaving only peace on her features. How she’d turned him inside out last night, he didn’t know. His only explanation was that somehow he felt whole when they were together. Or else she was exactly the wood nymph she appeared to be in sleep.

“Rio?” He smoothed the hair out of her eyes. “Love? Wake up.”

She awoke immediately, her blue eyes filled with disoriented concern.

“It’s all right. Everything’s fine,” he said.

Her features relaxed into a smile. “Hi.”

“How does a ride sound?”

“Now?” Her sleepy incredulity made him laugh.

“No, not for five whole minutes.”

“Oh, all right then.” She kissed him on the corner of the mouth and closed her eyes, snuggling back into his side.

Forty-five minutes later, with the campsite looking exactly as it had when they’d arrived, they rode into a clearing and tethered Gomer and Tully to trees at the bottom of a twenty-five-foot rise. Rio followed him to the top where they could see out to the horizon. He marveled at her acceptance of this entire night—a rash and arrogant plan he’d put into action just to assuage the resurgence of guilt and inadequacy he should have fully buried long ago. The tough inner city girl, with no experience at this whatsoever, was following without a whimper. And healing him without a question.

Maybe her dream of solitude and self-sufficiency wasn’t so far-fetched after all. She’d probably do fine. But the thought of her pursuing any dream that took her away filled him with dread.

“Oh David, look!”

He’d seen the sunrise countless times, as a boy learning to camp, as a hiker with his mother, as a soldier in the deserts of Iraq. But he’d never seen it along with a face as full of wonder as Rio’s. She watched the colors spread through the eastern sky, yellow, pink, and purple studded with sapphire, as if she’d been given sight for the first time.

“Pretty, ’eh?”

He sat behind her, legs spread, regretting the position as soon as she leaned back.

“It’s miraculous. Oh, look at the colors!”

The sun’s fireball rose slowly at first, then it floated fully over the horizon and sent the shadow colors fleeing in the power of its yellow-and-white light. After five minutes it blazed fully in a fresh, pale-blue sky.

“Thank you,” Rio whispered, as if he’d given her the sun as a personal present.

“Are you anxious to get back to the farm?”

“Why?”

“I’ve a whole list of sights to show you as long as we’re out here. And I think I know where there are some wild raspberries for breakfast.”

“It sounds too good to be true.”

“Then spend the day with me, my love, and I’ll prove it’s not.”

She craned her neck, and her lush lips pecked him on the cheek, soft as down, powerful as a stun gun. “I can’t think of a more perfect idea.”

Chapter Thirty

“J
UST BE PREPARED.
We could be buggered with my mother.”

Rio halted Tully beside Gomer and laughed. “There’s still an hour before anyone comes for the party. It’s not like she gave me any real jobs to do.”

They’d spent the day wandering an area of waterfalls and creeks, a limestone-walled river valley, and countless wooded nooks and crannies. Although her body now ached from hours in the saddle, it also glowed—from an impulsive lunch of little sustenance but sweeter lovemaking than the night before. No guilt over being away while party prep took place was going to ruin her newfound happiness.

“Where the devil have you two been?” Colin, pouring himself a generous glass of wine, greeted them in the kitchen, more amusement than chastisement in his question. “Your mother’s been beside herself.”

“I’m sure she has things well in hand without me,” David said. “We were delayed.”

Colin shrugged, and his eyes lit on Rio. His gaze narrowed, and she swore a flicker of a smile threatened his lips. “Get up to your rooms and change before the bloody gauntlet of Minnesota’s most impressive dressers is assembled, touch wood Stella doesn’t see you along the way, and if you show up cheerful and ready, you might escape all hell.”

Rio groaned internally. She’d known she would have to find something that approximated party clothing, but she hadn’t done it.

“I have nothing to change into,” she said when Colin had left the room. “I’ll just—”

“Well, well. The prodigal children. Where
did
you two run off to?”

Rio looked up to find Kate in a tea-length cocktail dress of olive green, the bodice and plunging neckline encrusted with gold and green gems and sequins. On anyone else the color could have been sickly. On Katherine it stunned.

Her elegant eyes shot arrows of disapproval—directly at Rio.

“Hullo, Kate,” David replied cheerfully. “I took Rio to see some sights on the other side of the state park, and darkness came on more quickly than we’d figured. We found a safe place to overnight and then, in truth, we didn’t hurry back. You know how much I was looking forward to this.”

“What’s going on?” Stella bustled in next and stopped short.

“Hey, Mum. Here we are, just in time for the do.”

“You do realize I nearly called our lovely local constable.” She assessed them sharply as if trying to decide whether to send them to their rooms or simply scold them. “At least you had manners enough to let your man Andy know you’d taken the horses. And I know you can take care of yourself in the direst of conditions. But I really could have used your help earlier, David.” She sighed and shook her head. “Well, nothing for it. Go and change, and then help your father with moving the chairs.”

Rio bit back a snort. So it was both a scolding
and
a trip to their rooms.

“Stella, let me stay in here and take on the kitchen coordination,” Rio said. “I really have nothing appropriate to wear, and I’m perfectly happy to fill platters and coffeepots.”

“Pish-tosh,” she replied without a blink. “Kate can help you find something to wear. There are dresses I’ve left here, in your room, in fact. Kate, love, you can do her up in a snap.”

“Of course.”

Kate looked as if she’d rather do anything else, and Rio’s resentment swelled for the first time. “I really don’t think I need—”

“Mum,” David interrupted. “You have to let Rio do as she pleases.”

Rio smiled with gratitude. Kate did, too. “I agree,” she said. “Rio, you do whatever you wish.”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see Kate wasn’t worried for a second about Rio’s feelings or comfort. She would have David as an escort all evening if Rio acted as kitchen servant. Petulance and possessiveness trumped Rio’s pride in a rush.

“Actually,” she said. “If you’ll show me the dresses, I’d like to try to them.”

Kate couldn’t hide the puckered scowl of her surprise, but David grinned in obvious happiness, and that made following Kate’s regally draped backside up the stairs worth letting Stella win. Rio would have to owe David one. She hadn’t stood up to uber-mother either.

Once in her room, Rio showed Kate the dresses she’d noticed her first night and not thought of since. Kate studied the two for only a moment before picking the black-and-white sequins.

“This will bring out your red hair.”

“You don’t have to hide away up here with me, Kate. I can dress myself.”

“Let’s see how it fits. I work with clothing and know a few tricks. After that I’ll leave you alone.”

Rio sighed, with a sudden welling of nerves. “I lied. I’m the last girl who knows how to dress for a party. I’m sorry you got forced into this, but I really do appreciate the help.”

Kate said nothing for a long moment, looking from Rio to the dress and back. Finally she shook her head. “Nobody forced me. You’re a natural beauty, Rio. I can see why David would be attracted.”

“It’s not what . . .” She stopped herself. It definitely
was
exactly what Kate thought, and Rio was tired of hiding it. “It’s mutual,” she said, for the first time.

“I’m not surprised. Look, Rio, I’ll be honest. I’m not giving up on getting him back.”

“Understood.”

She said nothing more. It might be fun to fight for someone she wanted. And, despite herself, she found that Kate’s ministrations, which could have been obnoxious, were fun, too. The black-and-white dress flowed opulently to just above Rio’s ankles. Although it was two inches too big around, Kate sent Rio to shower “in five minutes, no more,” and took a raft of safety pins expertly to the side seams.

There was no time to dry Rio’s thick red locks, so Kate sat her in a chair and set to braiding, ending up with a gorgeous inverted French braid so pretty Rio honestly thought she’d never take it out. Kate finished with the barest hint of mineral foundation and some lip color.

“Voila.” Kate stood back. Barely twenty minutes had passed. “Have a look.”

The inside of one wardrobe door held a full-length mirror. Rio dared a glance and caught her own breath. The dress, white with beaded flowers over one shoulder, now hugged her snugly, accentuating her bustline and flowing softly, hombrelike, into silver, deep gray, and then black where it flared gently around her legs. She couldn’t resist one twirl.

“Wow,” she said. “Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, Fairy Godmother.”

Kate laughed. “A little enhancement of what was already there, that’s all. Come on, let’s go to a party.”

I
T WASN’T THAT
Rio didn’t appreciate compliments as much as the next girl, but the response throughout the evening to her metamorphosis was so overwhelming it made her wonder just how pitiful she looked under normal circumstances. First Bonnie, dressed herself in a pretty blue sundress from Kim’s closet, then Stella, then David, fell over themselves raving about the dress, the shoes—also Stella’s—the braid.

She tolerated it exactly the way she tolerated Carter, who captured her several times to regale her with his past, present, and future plans, convincing her he’d one day make it big on ego alone. She also endured Kate’s opening salvos in her war on David, flirting openly, dragging him from person to person collecting introductions. Despite that, he never left Rio alone, and he never let Kate trap him alone, but he belonged in the group the way he belonged with his horses, while she, attractive enough in her borrowed clothes, felt like Thirty-one at the Westminster Dog Show.

Throughout the night she smiled and nodded, and drank her new favorite Minnesota wine wondering how Stella Pitts-Matherson from six thousand miles away had made so many friends. At last, three-fourths of the way through the evening, David took her elbow while she was in the middle of hearing an excruciating diatribe on land, taxes, and foxhunting with Stella and Colin and three members of a hunt club outside the city. She couldn’t have been more relieved.

“I’m afraid I have to steal Rio from you. We’re needed in the barn.” David smiled, but his features held a tightness that set worry gnawing at Rio’s stomach.

“The barn, David, really?” asked his mother.

“Yes. We’ll be back shortly.”

“But you have your man for barn work,” she insisted.

“Mother. I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse us anyway.”

Rio thought she’d drop her teeth—right before she cheered. He’d not only stood up, he hadn’t even apologized.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

At the back door she swapped Stella’s black sandals for her barn-grubby tennis shoes and threw on the sweatshirt she and David had slept under the night before. The night breeze held a hint of early fall and lifted the hem of her dress in a teasing swirl.

In the barn she found their weak and bedraggled palomino filly flat on her side in a stall and Ben Thomlinson bent over her with a stethoscope. The first round of antibiotics clearly hadn’t helped, and cold gripped Rio’s heart. David had warned her not to give any of the rescue horses names until they were all declared healthy and fine. It was too risky to become attached.

He’d pack her off for Crazytown if he knew she’d named all twelve and kept them in her mind like a litany: Lacey-Rain-Hank and Digger, Amber-Jewel-Cricket-Dot, Harpo-Zeppo-Zeke . . .

And Glory.

That had always been the name of her fantasy palomino, the one she’d one day own. This ravaged little horse met none of her dream qualifications, yet Rio had known from the first that the filly needed a name worthy of hope.

“She went down about two hours ago,” David told her.

“Is she going to be all right?”

Dr. Thomlinson stroked Glory’s neck and stood. “Her vitals are okay. We need to give these new drugs time to work. But, Rio, sometimes, even when we do everything right in starting to feed starved horses, their systems simply can’t handle the changes. I’d say she’s got a slightly better than fifty-fifty chance.”

David ran a hand roughly through his hair. Rio’s eyes welled. “What should we do?” she asked.

“Watch her. If she tries to stand, encourage her but don’t force her. Our goal is for her to stand and support herself.”

Ben left soon after that, and a sense of helplessness replaced Rio’s sadness. David encircled her shoulders and kissed above her ear.