The Staying Kind (14 page)

She didn’t have any dresses, something she’d stood firm on when Sadie had taken her shopping. Rio promised she’d buy one should the need arise. She’d managed for nearly all of her twenty-seven years to not wear a dress. She was fairly certain she could make it another twenty-seven much the same.

The fact she shied away from dressy clothes worked against her in this case. She ended up with a pair of black leggings and a pale green scoop necked top with a crocheted neckline and snug fitting waist.

This was the most feminine she’d ever felt. She slipped on a pair of black heels that gave her an extra inch of height, then for the hell of it, applied a light coat of mascara to her lashes and blush to her face. She ran her fingers through her damp hair, making it curl more than usual.

This date preparation stuff consumed too much time. She couldn’t imagine doing it every day. Still, when she stared at herself in the mirror she grinned with shock and pleasure. Who’d have thought she could look like this? Travis was in for a surprise.

Travis waited in the living room for her, standing at his desk. He stared at a letter. The dark expression he wore cleared quickly when he noticed her presence by the sofa.

“Ready?”

Travis didn’t speak for a long moment. His gaze felt like a physical caress as he studied her. The intensity of the examination moved her, but it gave her an excuse to gaze at him.

She’d become so used to seeing him in his uniform or a sweatshirt and jeans, this dressy appearance made him seem like a different man. Though not wearing a suit or tie, his dark red button-down shirt was crisp and stylish, accentuating his wide shoulders and trim waist.

As soon as he turned, she’d be able to admire his long legs and nicely shaped butt in his black slacks. She wasn’t too embarrassed by the direction of her thoughts. His mind probably wandered in the same direction.

“Wow.” His voice was little more than a sigh. “You are incredible.”

Rio grinned with more confidence than she actually felt. “Well, don’t get used to it. Tomorrow it’ll be back to jeans and a sweatshirt.”

“Then I’ll take advantage of tonight,” he promised. “Though I can’t complain about the jeans and sweatshirt.”

“Since that’s what you wear all the time too.”

“You noticed.”

Rio felt herself blush harder. She shrugged and slipped on the black pea coat Sadie had bought for her.

The only restaurant Rio had ever been in, besides Denny’s, was Maitrise, a fancy French restaurant in Atlanta where she’d worked two winters ago. While the inn Travis brought her to wasn’t nearly as pretentious, she felt far more comfortable in the friendly, cozy atmosphere of the old New England restaurant.

The dining room boasted a large crowd, and she wondered how Travis could even reserve a table so last-minute until he introduced her to his friend Lenny, who owned the place.

Lenny gave Rio the onceover with an assessing look, then offered a friendly smile. Had Travis filled this guy in about her during their hunting trip? Apparently, yet she saw no judgment in his eyes, nothing as menacing or distasteful as the way Travis’s ex-mother-in-law had acted.

Lenny led them to a table at the rear of the dining room, a nice, quiet nook out of the way, lit by a small candle and low overhead lamp.
How romantic.

God, this
was
a date. Despite her thick skin against these kinds of things, shivers ran circles in her belly. Fantastic shivers. The kind of shivers she never thought she’d feel in a million years.

“Very nice,” she complimented as she picked up the menu. Well, at least she could identify the items on this menu, as opposed to Maitrise, where everything had been written in French.

Choosing a seafood pie, her mouth watered at the description. Lenny brought over a bottle of wine and poured some into the two glasses on the table.

“I guess I should thank Sadie for making me go shopping, otherwise we’d be eating at a pizza joint right now,” she said lightly because she didn’t want to be too serious. Already the expression in his eyes, which appeared dark in the muted, flickering light, shook her sensibilities.

“Pizza would’ve been acceptable, but here’s to Aunt Sadie and her arm-twisting. You’re absolutely stunning.” He held up his glass in a toast.

Rio tapped the rim of her glass against his. “Thank you.”

“You can relax. You’re ramrod stiff.”

“Am I? I’m sorry. You’ve brought me out of my element. I’ve been more accustomed to the serving side of the table, not the eating and relaxing. I guess you could say this is my first official date.”

“You’re kidding.” A small smile lifted the corner of his lips as he sipped his wine.

“Come on.” Rio dropped her voice so the other diners wouldn’t overhear. “I was a virgin up until last night. Is it really that much of a stretch? Okay, so I had a beer or two with a guy here and there, but this is the first sit down meal I’ve had with a man. I’m a bit awkward.”

Travis set his glass down, and gathered her hands in his, a tender gesture. In spite of her lifelong commitment to cynicism, something sparked in her heart and mind. Something more than lust and friendship. Something that told her—quite firmly—to back off, remove her hands from his, and screw her head on straight.

She ignored the voice, at least for now. Instead, she planned on letting him wine and dine her, and if later on they ended up in bed again, well . . . so be it. All things she’d no doubt pay for further down the line. She’d spent all her adult life—and most of her childhood—living for the moment and doing everything by the seat of her pants with no consideration of the consequences.

This relationship with Travis wouldn’t be much different.

Chapter 13

So, what did one talk about on a date?
Since they lived under the same roof, there wasn’t anything home-related to discuss. They could talk about Travis’s job, or hers, but those two topics wouldn’t keep the date on track for long. Rio’s childhood? No, not unless she wanted to be completely depressed by the time dessert rolled around.

She took a sip of wine and stared out the window. Just as Sadie had predicted, snow gently spiraled from the black sky, thick and fluffy. Already the ground was covered in a thin, white blanket.

“The snow is so beautiful,” she said.
Weather conversation. Great.

“We’re supposed to be in for our first decent snowfall tonight. It’s the first time I’ve seen snow for ages. I didn’t think I’d appreciate it like this.”

Rio glanced away from the window and studied his face. His eyes glinted with little-boy enthusiasm as he watched the drifting flakes.

“That’s right, you would’ve been in Afghanistan last winter. Must’ve been hard, separated from Jessa for so long.”

Travis nodded. “I don’t know what was worse, being away from her for Christmas or seeing the things that happened over there. You wouldn’t think there’d be two places more different, in landscape, in the very way we live our lives. Still, there was so much hope. Even more hope and optimism than you’d find here. You have to wonder how some people can survive such adversity when others would crumble because they lost their television reception or their cell phone.”

“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 with 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.