Fall Into His Kiss Read online

  “Sometimes. Do you think I should bring some into the house? I wondered if that would be too obvious.”

  “Obvious can be good, but let me think about it.” She looked up. The room had a high ceiling. “Nice light.”

  “It was there when I bought the house.”

  Oval, opalescent and brass-trimmed, it had a 1950s vibe. “Probably original. The proportions in here are really good.” She could make the living room work.

  They moved on to the kitchen.

  “Flat-pack?” she asked, appalled.

  He hunched his broad shoulders. “The old kitchen cupboards needed replacing and this was easy to install.”

  “Uh-huh.” Gray, white and horrible, it was a crime in what could have been a lovely country kitchen. The large window framed a gorgeous view out across the field, and on, through a gap in the trees, to the cobalt glint of the river flowing placidly down the contour of the land. “We’ll emphasize the view from the window and I’ll bring in some color.” The walls were an uninspired white.

  “I could paint the walls?”

  He sounded so tentative and apologetic that she reached out and put a comforting hand on his arm. “It’s not that bad, and I don’t want you spending loads of money.”

  “It is that bad,” he said flatly. “What color?”

  “Yellow,” she responded instantly. “Pale daffodil.”

  “Pale daffodil?” he repeated, doubtfully.

  “I’ll come with you to the hardware store. But you’ll have to go with me to the homewares store next door to buy the curtains and maybe some pillows.”

  “Deal.” He shifted and her hand slid down his arm. He caught it, squeezing gently, before releasing her.

  Her fingers tingled. His hand was warm and calloused, the fingernails rough but clean. Not like the carefully manicured nails of the men she’d worked with at the New York ad agency. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and sought a distraction.

  A long-eared one waited, looking at the kitchen window from the fenced field. “Is that your donkey?”

  “Jezebel. Would you like to meet her?” He opened the fridge door before she could answer.

  “I guess,” she said to his back.

  “Carrots!” He emerged, triumphant. “You can buy Jezzy’s friendship.”

  Rachel laughed.

  They walked out the back. Like the front of the house, the rough grass was neatly trimmed, approximating a lawn, but there was a dearth of garden. “Did you ever think of planting flowers?”

  “Deer,” Wyatt said briefly. “I plowed in the garden beds and…you think that’s a mistake.”

  “Not a mistake.” Heavens! The man would think she did nothing but criticize. The truth was, she could see the amazing possibilities of the house as a raw canvas, and she itched to make it really cozy. “I was just wondering about color…but that’s okay.” She reminded herself that she was here to prepare for a photo shoot, not makeover the man’s home. “The view is stunning. We’ll make it all about the amazing setting and your wood sculptures. They need to be center stage, anyway.” She paused, eyeing the donkey. “Is she unhappy?”

  “Jezzy? No. She’s curious.”

  The donkey’s ears were up, flicking slightly, as she stood back a fraction from the fence.

  Not so the big bay horse sharing the field. He leaned into the fence, eager to meet a visitor—or more likely, to have first dibs on the carrots she carried.

  “If you feed Hercules first,” Wyatt advised. “Jezebel will get miffed that she’s missing out. Let her come to you.”

  So Rachel fed the gentle horse and talked nonsense to him, while Wyatt stood by with the two dogs. “Are they rescues, dogs that needed new homes?” she asked.

  “How did you guess?”

  Because she suspected a theme. Wyatt didn’t turn away from a person or animal who needed help, not from his half-brother and not from homeless animals.

  “They’re ugly and scary to look at.” He tugged at Beau’s floppy gray ears as the huge dog sat beside him. Sunny wandered off to investigate something in the field. “Wouldn’t hurt a mouse.”

  The donkey nudged in, still suspicious of a stranger but determined to snaffle her share of the carrots. When they finished, so did Jezebel’s tolerance. She brayed loudly.

  “Good grief.” Rachel clapped both hands to her ears. “Thank goodness you don’t have near neighbors.”

  He laughed. “They wouldn’t appreciate the noise from my workshop either. Would you like to see it?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Walking Rachel through his house, Wyatt had gradually lost his nervousness, especially when she bargained for his company in the homewares store. He had friends who complained about wives and girlfriends forcing them into wasting afternoons at the homewares store, but Wyatt had never done so. He’d like to stand with Rachel while she chose curtains and cushions and anything else she wanted.

  The barn doors stood open and he let Rachel precede him into his workshop.

  Unlike the house, he wasn’t nervous about her response to his sculptures. He trusted that she would “get” them.

  And she did. She turned to him with an awed look.

  He felt ten feet tall.

  “They’re beautiful.” She ran her hands over the owlets he’d carved into a coat rack.

  His own fingers twitched, remembering the feel of the wood as he’d worked it.

  She admired a sculpture of a boy carved stretching up.

  “I think he’s picking apples,” Wyatt said. “I saw it in the wood.” The young boy stood on tiptoes, happiness and eagerness in the lines of his body.

  “Do you always get your ideas from the wood?”

  “No. Often it’s the design first.” He walked over to his desk and she came with him, her shoulder touching his as she looked through his sketchbook. The scent of violets wove with the familiar smell of fresh timber.

  “The drawings are lovely. You could frame some.”

  “No.” He reared back. “They’re working sketches.”

  “They’re adorable.” She studied the owlets he’d sketched, apparently absorbed in how those multiple sketches were worked into the design of the coat rack. “We’ll include these in the scene-setting for the photo shoot. Have them open on the desk here, the coat rack nearby.” She turned, her butt resting on the edge of his desk, to assess the workshop. “It’s all so organized.”

  “Only way I know how to be.”

  “Otherwise it would be chaos,” she said, comprehending. She inhaled. “I love the smell of new wood. Most people do. We’ll need to leave some wood shavings on the floor. What project are you working on now?”

  “A commission. A guy in Dallas wants a rearing horse.”

  “Cliché.” She grinned.

  He shrugged. “I don’t mind. I’m going to interlock three pieces of pine. Get the grains running different directions. It’ll work. Add energy to the horse.” He touched the pieces of pine, feeling the strength and weakness of the wood.

  “You really are an artist.”

  “I’m lucky enough to be doing something I enjoy.”

  She nodded. “It shows.”

  They walked back to the house and he made coffee and got out the cherry turnovers he’d gone into town for that morning.

  Cherry turnovers! Rachel looked at the box of pastries and couldn’t help but remember Mabel’s advice to Wyatt yesterday, buy her cherry pie. He hadn’t, but he had remembered her preferences.

  She smiled as she took a cherry turnover. “Yum,” she said around a mouthful.

  He beamed at her. “So, what do you think we need to do to the house?” His strong fingers curled around a large black mug.

  Her own mug was a mismatched blue one. She made a mental note to borrow a matching set from her mom, who had loads. Her mom liked to buy new dinnerware every spring, but couldn’t bring herself to throw away her old set, so the attic had boxes of it. And speaking of attics…

  “
I plan to raid Gramps’s attic.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s old furniture from the 1950s up there. It would suit your living room and we could mix your work in with it. Synergy.”

  “Synergy?”

  She blushed. “Advertising-speak. Jargon. Sorry.”

  “You really like the work, don’t you?”

  “Yes. A lot of people are critical of advertising and think we’re con artists, manipulating people into parting with their cash. But advertising is, at heart, storytelling, and I adore it. I love showing people the best of a product or how they can improve their lives. Advertising is how we remind people of the value of intangibles like education or good health practices.”

  “Or politics.”

  “Smarty.” She loved his smile. It started in his eyes and curved his mouth. She blinked, wondering how long she’d stared at his mouth. “Political advertising, yeah, that’s over the top. I wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “Is that why you quit your job? Did they ask you to do something you disliked.”

  Her relaxed enjoyment of chatting with him died. Even with the horrible flat-pack kitchen, she’d felt comfortable. Now, she didn’t. She finished her last bite of cherry turnover. “I didn’t quit. They fired me. But yes, it was because I refused to do a job—or to do it the way they wanted.”

  “What did they want?” he asked quietly.

  She sighed and sat back in her chair, cradling her mug of coffee. “I had a few small accounts that were just mine. Mostly I worked on other projects, under direction, but these were mine. This one in particular I really enjoyed. It’s a line of healthy food targeted to teenagers. Neroli, the creator of the line, survived an eating disorder in her teens, and now with her own children, she passionately wants to provide healthy options.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “It is. I had a ton of ideas. I worked up a whole campaign ready to present to her. Instead of models selling the products, I intended to use young athletes. I wanted them to be real role models and showcase—promise kids—that strength, discipline and success were all achievable. But the head of the ad agency discovered that Neroli wasn’t simply a dedicated mom. She’s the daughter of the sole owner of a national supermarket chain that’s on the verge of going international. That made her important. So he pulled the account from me and gave it to a…”

  “A…?”

  “I try not to swear.”

  Wyatt grinned. “Okay. I’ll imagine it. What happened?”

  “I was told to continue working on the account, to introduce the…new guy to Neroli. But he threw out my draft campaign and wanted one that focused on sexualizing the female teenage body; all flirty, languishing looks at the camera, skimpy clothes and skinny bodies. I hate that the fashion industry uses thirteen year old models. I refused to do the same myself.”

  “Neroli can’t approve of it if she’s had an eating disorder, and she’s the client.”

  “I don’t know.” Rachel twisted her mug on the table. “Everyone else swore this was the way to sell product, that teenage girls see themselves this way.”

  “Did you, when you were a teenager?”

  “Me?” She laughed, rueful. “No. I just worried that I’d keep growing taller forever until I was a giant, crushing boys underfoot.”

  “You don’t seem that tall to me.”

  “That’s because you are a giant.”

  Chapter 3

  Rachel hadn’t thought she could relax after telling the story of her humiliating defeat in New York, but Wyatt’s quiet acceptance worked a miracle. Where her family had been loud, indignant and supportive of her stand, he’d simply said, “You did the right thing” and invited her to go to the hardware store then and there.

  The hardware store was familiar to her from a thousand trips with her dad, brothers, uncles and cousins, not to mention Gramps, over the years. But she’d never walked its aisles with a man unrelated to her.

  It seemed as if the whole town turned out to view the event. She encountered one brother, one uncle, three cousins and Gramps. All of them eyed Wyatt with open speculation.

  “I’m helping him prepare for the photo shoot,” she said, exasperated. By their expressions, you’d think she and Wyatt were about to elope.

  Not that her extended family seemed unhappy with the idea. On the contrary.

  “If there’s anything we can do to help…”

  Rachel took advantage of those offers, ruthlessly.

  “My r-r-rosebushes?” Uncle Theo stuttered.

  “They’re still in flower. I’ve seen them. Bundle them up, pop them in your van the day of the shoot, and Wyatt will have some instant color in his garden.”

  “There’s no need,” Wyatt began.

  “The roses are in pots. We’ll line them up at the bottom of the porch. Thursday, Uncle Theo.” She gave him a quick hug. “Say hi to Auntie Teresa.”

  As her uncle ambled away, tugging at his baseball cap, she turned to Wyatt. “Is that everything?”

  He cast a longing look at the power tools department, but he withstood temptation better than the men in her family. “I think so. Paint, new brushes, cord for a clothesline.”

  “Trust me. An old-fashioned clothesline at the back of the house will be perfect. It’ll distract from the lack of flowers and we can hang a couple of bright colored blankets on it—”

  “My blankets are gray.”

  Of course they were. “I’ll borrow some.”

  “About that.” They approached the checkout. “Are you sure your family don’t mind us borrowing half their houses?”

  She laughed at his exaggeration. He might be a tad shy, but he was funny once he got comfortable with a person. “They love it. It gives them an excuse to nosy in and see what I’m doing.” She stopped abruptly. “Do you mind? I never thought. If you prefer your privacy…my family can be overwhelming.” And she couldn’t believe, after so long away and thinking she was fine with big city indifference, how much she loved that interfering-caring.

  “I like it,” he said simply.

  She pressed his arm. “Me, too.”

  Wyatt found he liked shopping with Rachel.

  She made everything an adventure and she knew everyone. It was hard to believe that she’d been away in New York for years and that he was the local. People greeted her by name, asked after her family and included him with sly twinkles.

  Was it possible the whole town was match-making, hoping to keep Rachel here?

  If so, he was happy to help. He wanted her to stay, too, and he’d only known her a day.

  “Red or orange?” she asked, holding up readymade curtains.

  “Red.”

  “Nice and cozy,” she agreed.

  He took the curtains from her and tucked them under his arm. Within a few minutes, he was also carrying a curtain rod.

  Rachel giggled. “You look like a medieval castle guard. Halt! Who goes there?”

  He grinned down at her. “Choose your cushions.”

  She gathered up an armful in shades of red and green with all sorts of different patterns. “And a throw rug. No, an old blanket will be better. We don’t want to look too staged.”

  “You’re the boss.” He’d have agreed to anything, just to hear that “we”.

  Rachel was having fun. She hadn’t expected to. The hardware store was fine, but in the homewares store they ran into her old high school nemesis, Lianne, still blonde and perky and all-too-evidently ready to mock-sympathize with Rachel’s job loss.

  Except it was hard to pity and patronize a woman when a big, gorgeous guy like Wyatt stood beside her giving Lianne and her perky charms no more than a polite, monosyllabic greeting. Rachel edged closer to him. She knew it was wrong, but giving the impression that she was part of a couple made her inner teenager absolutely gleeful.

  Lianne flounced away.

  “Friend of yours?” Wyatt asked.

  Rachel snorted. “Hardly.” She hadn’t moved away and they stood really
close. She looked up into his smiling brown eyes. “I think we’ve earned lunch. My treat. I want a burger with everything.”

  “Sounds good, but I’ll pay.”

  “Wy-att.”

  “I’m paying.”

  He did, too, even in the midst of the cheerful chaos of tables pushed together at the diner so that a heap of her friends and family could eat together. It started off casual, but more and more arrived.

  “Sorry,” she mouthed to Wyatt as her cousin Orwell told the story of his hour-long failed career as a rodeo clown, complete with gestures. Orwell even got up from the table to show how he’d been flung by a steer.

  Wyatt smiled at her, obviously unfazed by the noise and craziness.

  He drove her home—back to his house—still mostly silent, but responding to her random chatter about her family and friends’ news, and to things they needed to do before the photo shoot, companionably enough.

  “The roses will definitely help,” she said as they arrived. The front of the house was too stark. “And you need two chairs on the porch.” Her brain skipped to another issue, the bare living room window that added to the stark effect. “I’ll take the curtains home and wash them.”

  “I have a washing machine and a dryer.”

  “We don’t want them shrinking. Sometimes when they’re out on discount, they’ll have a flaw like that. It’s safer if I do it.”

  The dogs ambled up to greet them.

  Rachel patted them absently. “I’ll bring the curtains over tomorrow afternoon. That’ll give me a chance to look over Gramps’s attic first.”

  “All right.”

  She smiled at him. “You’re very agreeable. Tell me if you have other plans.”

  “You’re doing me the favor. If you do decide on some furniture from Alan’s, let me know. I don’t want you trying to carry it down from the attic.”

  “Don’t worry. I plan to use your muscles.” She blushed. “To move furniture.” She blushed harder at Wyatt’s pleased, masculine grin. “I’ll go now. See you, tomorrow.”

  The old car started with a cough and a roar, and she bounced away down the driveway on its soggy suspension.