No Ordinary Home

Austin stood across the room beside the window, leaning on the frame, big and calm and about as perfect as a man could be, except for a small scar beside his left eye.

He must have shoved his fingers through his hair because it lay in sexy, rumpled waves. She wanted to straighten it out, but no. That would be a big mistake.

Hands off, Gracie. You don’t need to be attracted to a man right now. You haven’t been for six years. Why start now when you’re so close to the end?

What really appealed to her, though, was underneath the great facade. Inside that broad chest beat an understanding heart. The man gave too much. She was a stranger who’d picked his pocket. He should have given her nothing more than a night in jail.

Instead, he’d shown compassion and it made him too attractive, had her yearning for things that could never be.

She glanced back at the bed. Maybe it would still be awkward. She hadn’t been attracted to a man since Jay, probably because she’d been preoccupied with survival, but Austin had taken care of that for tonight, and that made her warm, soft and fuzzy when she needed to keep up her defenses the most. If she wasn’t careful, she would let her guard down.

Don’t forget who you really are. This man must never find out the truth about you.

You’re almost home free.

She had a long way to go before she could relax into her new, safe life. She didn’t need anyone getting in her way.

Lucky for him she was too sick to complain about it. She had both her pride and her independence to consider. She didn’t need anyone to take care of her. She’d grown sick to death of handlers in her old life.

A residual rumble overturned her stomach. Yeah, all right. She would let him take care of her, but only for one night.

She crawled under the blankets and pulled the covers over her like a cocoon, running her hand across the cheap comforter with the ubiquitous bland design. In her old life, she’d slept in the best hotels, but no bed had ever felt better than this one did.

She hadn’t realized how fortunate she’d been in some areas of her old life until it was all gone.

Someone knocked on the door and Gracie assumed it would be Finn, but a bellhop came in with a tray, setting it onto the small table and leaving after Austin tipped him.

Food.

“What’s that?” she asked. “I thought you were going out with Finn.”

“I am. This is for you. Sit up.”

For her? How much was she going to owe by the time they parted, and how was she going to pay him? One haircut wouldn’t cover it. Whatever the bellhop had brought in smelled good and her stomach grumbled. Austin was going out to dinner. If she didn’t eat the food, it would go to waste.

She sat up and leaned against the headboard.

Austin brought a steaming bowl to her. “Here.” He grasped a pillow from his side of the bed and put in on her lap then set the bowl on top of it.

Chicken soup. It smelled even better than it looked.

“Take a few sips. Make sure it sits well in your stomach. I also ordered a poached egg and toast.”

She hated poached eggs, but she would eat it. Gladly.

He folded his arms across his chest while his cheeks turned pink as though his own kindness embarrassed him. The masculinity of his biceps exaggerated by his crossed arms in contrast to the vulnerability of his blush charmed her. “I don’t really know what you like, other than eating too much too fast.”

“I was starving. You would have eaten the same way if you were in my situation.” The words spurted forth hot and defensive before she realized he was teasing her.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

Unflappable, he ordered, “Try the soup.”

Did nothing upset this guy?

How about having his wallet stolen?

Oh, yeah. He hadn’t liked that. Otherwise, though, he looked like he could withstand a cyclone, mayhem and anarchy all at the same time and still keep his cool.

Even when she’d robbed him, he’d seemed angry, yes, but she’d only feared being sent to jail and the notoriety that would cause. She hadn’t worried that he’d hurt her. And wasn’t that strange considering she hadn’t known him.

His posture, his demeanor, everything about him screamed decency.

She sipped the soup. It slid warmly down her chest like sunlight pouring through an open window. It hit her stomach with a resounding aaaaah. “It’s good.” Just as the bed felt amazing, she didn’t think soup had ever tasted as good, even though it was modest. She sipped more, eating it carefully although she wanted to inhale it.

While she ate, Austin went into the bathroom and showered. When he came out, hair damp and smelling of soap, he asked, “How does your stomach feel?”

“Good. Stable. I think I’ll survive.”

He lifted the cover from a plate on the tray and brought it to her.

“Sorry it’s not much. I didn’t want you throwing up again.”

“Me, either.” She took a bite of toast. After she chewed and swallowed, she asked, “Why are you being so nice to me?” She didn’t mean to sound cynical, but life on the road had taught her a lot about people, and their often questionable motives.

Sliding his wallet into the back pocket of a clean pair of jeans, he shrugged then strode to the door, all without meeting her eyes. “See you later.” He hustled out into the hallway as though she’d threatened to shoot him.

So, he had secrets. Fair enough. She had hers, too.

Going slowly, she finished her meal. When she got out of bed, her legs gave out and her ankle ached.

She’d let herself go too long without nourishment.

Taking baby steps and small movements, she retrieved her knapsack from a chair then got back under the blankets and opened it. She didn’t have much time. Austin could be gone for a few hours, or as little as one, and she had work to do.

First, she took out her notebook and snagged the room service menu from the bedside table. She calculated how much the meal had cost Austin and then added what she thought he would tip.

Men tended to tip better than women, and he was a generous guy, so she guessed the tip would have been good.

She added the total to the sum she already owed him and returned the book to the outside pocket of her knapsack.

Shoving aside her old clothing, she pulled her laptop from the big inner section. Crazy to own a laptop, even if it was ancient, and not sell it for food, but this machine fed her soul. It also brought in the only bits of money she earned while on the road.

With a little luck, the room would have Wi-Fi. Most did these days.

She booted up her computer and opened her blog then eased herself out of the harsh reality of her life and into her fantasy world.

When she was ready, she started to type.

Dear readers,

I’m sitting here in (Where should she be today?) the Langhe region of Italy on a stone terrace looking out on (she glanced around the generic hotel room, bland by anyone’s standards) the Nebbiolo vineyards with their soft hillsides in the distance, the evening sun turning them to gold. I’m sipping a glass of the excellent local Barolo, which is made from the grapes grown below. Heavenly. Day after day, grapes bathe in the warm, magical sunlight particular to the Mediterranean and scent the region with their sweetness. Then the little darlings are plucked and made into the delectable wine for which the region is known.

I sit here contemplating how good life is, how one needs little more than the sun on one’s face and a glass of wine for all to seem right with the world. The ennui of daily life fades to nothing and one is left in a state of bliss.

She cast long tentacles into her memory to fill out the post, unearthing details of her own trips to Italy years ago, memories flowing from her fingertips like old friends. Those were the days. Only they weren’t. All of the beauty of the land couldn’t erase everything around those trips. The people. The circus atmosphere. The dreadful hoopla. Here, in her blog, she shared only the best. When she felt she had shared enough, she closed off.

Tomorrow will find me in La Morra and the day after in the Barbaresco wine region, where I will visit Neive, a picturesque town, and later will sample the delightful Spumante in Alto Monferrato.

Until then, fellow travelers, be well. Arrivederci.

Lina Vittorio

Gracie Travers posted the blog—yes, the room had Wi-Fi—turned off her computer and sighed.

Thank goodness for her alter ego, Lina, who gave her a rich pretend life. Where would she be without her fantasies to lighten the unrelenting darkness of her reality?

She had once traveled those very roads in Italy, but that was a long, long time ago, with the few golden moments committed to memory. She’d been a girl then. Now she was a twenty-nine-year-old woman, alone, with no one to depend on but herself. That suited her just fine, most of the time, except for those rare moments when it wasn’t enough. When she wanted more. When loneliness could no longer be kept at bay.

Stop it, Gracie. Save the pity party for a night when you aren’t sitting cozy and warm in a soft bed.

If wishes were horses, she would either really be in Italy, or she would live in the home of her dreams, nothing grand, just a roof over her head and regular meals. Despite her upbringing, she wasn’t spoiled. She really did need very little, only the basics. Food.

Now so close to the end of her odd, self-imposed lifestyle, she had reached her limit. She could no longer tolerate the moving, having no place to call home, without anchor, companionship or loved ones. In her travels, she’d envied each and every couple she met and the homes they lived in, whether large farmhouses on rural land, or tiny urban bungalows on postage-stamp lots.

She wanted to belong, but on her own terms, and so she kept on traveling.

She’d been on the move for too long and it exhausted her, but what else could she do? She had only one talent and had already tapped it dry. Too early. A burnout and she wasn’t even thirty yet.

Crap, she was tired. She closed her eyes to rest. Just for a minute.

* * *

“WHAT THE HELL are you doing?” Finn eyed Austin across the restaurant table with the mulish jut to his jaw that had been there since Austin had picked up Gracie. Finn was a good guy in general, solid, salt of the earth and all that, but he could get mad like nobody’s business. “Haven’t you had enough of taking care of a woman? You need to cut yourself some slack and just have a good time.”

Austin figured Finn had a right to be angry. This was their buddy fishing vacation. They’d both needed this for a long time and had turned themselves inside out to make sure it happened, Finn by getting a veterinarian from the next county to cover his calls, and Austin by dealing with his mother.

“Let it go, Finn.”

“I can’t. You’re being irresponsible.”

Austin couldn’t have heard that right. “Irresponsible? Me? I’m the most responsible guy on the planet.”

“Yeah, okay, maybe that was the wrong word. How about impulsive?” Finn amended.

Impulsive fit. It never had before, but it did where Gracie was concerned.

Her hunger, her need, resonated with him, but there was more. He liked the fight within her, her drive for independence and her refusal to give in. He even kind of understood why she’d stolen from him. But, cripes, the woman needed a long-term goal to get herself into a safer life.

“You shouldn’t be doing this, man.”

No, he shouldn’t, but Finn had his own thing going on, too.

“What about you?” Austin asked.

“What about me?”

“We’re on vacation, but you’re going to see a girl you knew nearly twenty years ago. Why?”

“She needs help.”

“So does Gracie.”

“Gracie is a stranger.”

“So’s your friend.”

“Nope. We’ve been in touch for ten years.”

“But you haven’t seen her in twenty.”

“So what? When I told her we were going to Denver, she asked me to stop in on the way.” He picked at his food. “Don’t you remember how great she was?”

“I wasn’t in your orbit at that time. I was a year younger than you and you were new in town. I heard a bit about it, but not much.” He’d been too busy trying to find sustenance and keep body and soul together.

“But you know the story, right? It was huge. The paper carried it for a week.”

Austin didn’t remind Finn that the only newspapers he ever saw as a kid were at the bottom of trash bins covered in garbage. He shook his head.

“Her mom was driving past my dad’s ranch just as a deer jumped out. She crashed into the tree at the end of our driveway and the car caught fire. Man, I’ll never forget how brave my dad was that day. Melody’s mother got thrown from the car, but Melody was trapped in the backseat. Dad didn’t hesitate. Just reached right into the fire and pulled her out. Saved her life.”

The waitress hovered ready to pour more coffee, her eyes on Finn. He’d inherited his dad’s good looks.

“That’s cool.” Finn’s father was cool. Austin, yet again, felt the lack of a father figure in his life. Every boy should have a father. Austin had had two of them. One had died when he was only six and the other hadn’t wanted him.

Not that he cared.

Really.

For the tenth time, Finn glanced across the street.

Austin checked out what he kept looking at. Storefronts. What was so interesting? Ah. The apartments above them.

“She’s in one of those, isn’t she? That’s why you chose this restaurant?”

Finn nodded.

“Are you going to see her after dinner?”

He shook his head. “She isn’t expecting me until tomorrow. I’ll go across after breakfast.”

Finn had a lot of confidence. So why the edginess? “Why are you nervous about seeing her?”

“She left town suddenly. One minute she was there and the next gone. I never had a chance to say goodbye.”

“You’re angry about that?”

Finn’s mouth angled grimly down on one side. “You know what? You see too much.”

“I had to learn to be perceptive.” Living with an alcoholic did that to a kid.

“Yeah, I’m still angry,” Finn admitted, “but I want to see her, too. We’ve been writing letters for over ten years. Well, she writes letters. I email my responses. Had enough writing in college.” He placed his cutlery across his empty plate and pushed it away. “Melody’s no stranger. And she isn’t a pickpocket. There’s no similarity between our situations.”

Austin shrugged. Maybe not.

He felt Finn watching him. Finn knew him about as well as anyone did. He probably thought he knew what Austin was thinking.

“This has nothing to do with my mom.” Even to Austin’s own ears, he sounded defensive. “This is nothing like dealing with Mom.”

“No? You take your first vacation ever. We’re barely more than a day away from home, and you pick up a stranger. A mighty sad one, I might add.”

He thought of Gracie taking small sips of the soup he’d ordered when he knew she wanted to gulp it down. He thought of her tears when she’d lost the last of her lunch. Yeah, sad, for sure. But strong, too, with a lot of pride. He liked that about her.

“She’s got problems, Austin. That woman is trouble. Why’d you bring her here?”

Good question.

Figuring he might as well be honest with his best friend and himself, he answered, “I don’t know.”

* * *

FINN STOOD IN front of his hotel-room door and watched Austin walk down the hallway to his own room, hating this tension between them. They’d been best buds for a dozen years. They weren’t normally like this.

It was that woman’s fault.

“Hey!” he called, not sure why except wanting to get back on good terms with his buddy.

Austin turned around, walking backward to his room at the end of the corridor. “What?”

“Don’t forget to keep a hundred bucks handy for when I catch the biggest fish on this trip.”

“In your dreams.” Austin grinned and spread his arms. “That hundred bucks has my name on it.”

Austin entered his room and Finn stepped into his own, breathing a little easier. Things were good. No permanent damage done.

He should have been honest with Austin. He wasn’t nervous about seeing Melody. Nope, not nervous. Terrified.

Holy freakin’ Batman was he scared.

Ever since the day a couple of weeks before his twelfth birthday when he’d watched his dad pull Melody out of a burning car, he’d been fascinated by her.

Every kid had pivotal moments in his childhood. That had been one of his. Man, oh, man, to see Remington Caldwell as a hero. To see that girl pulled out alive, but with her hair afire. To watch his dad put out the flames with his bare hands.

It didn’t matter that he hadn’t known at the time that the guy was his father. He had been a hero to Finn ever since. What a bonus it had been to learn, a couple of weeks later, that the great courageous man was also his dad.

His mom, a nurse, had made him visit Melody in the hospital. He’d dragged his heels. What boy his age wouldn’t have at being forced to visit a sick girl?

Melody had been a revelation. Despite all she’d gone through, she’d had more character and spunk than any other kid he’d ever met.

Even in a hospital room with a turban of bandages around her head, she’d been beautiful and strong-willed. She wouldn’t let him get away with any of his “boy” crap, and he’d respected that.

Hell, he didn’t even know what color her hair was.

Finn sat on the bed, took his wallet out of his pocket and slipped out the photo taken of him and Melody in her white turban of bandages at his birthday party at Grandma Caldwell’s house.

They perched on each side of the bed, flanking his grandma. Grandma C looked down at Melody with a drunken smile, courtesy of the stroke she’d suffered. In that not-quite-right smile there was affection. Even Grandma had liked Melody right away.

At one point during the party, Finn had run in from outside to find them asleep, Melody curled into a tight little ball against Grandma’s side.

Something in his boy’s heart had melted, shifted. Nothing had been the same since.

He smiled down at the photo. He hadn’t looked at the thing in years, had refused to. He’d been so damned angry with her for leaving the way she had, without a word to the boy who’d fallen for her hard.

Then, after a nearly ten-year silence, a letter had arrived. From Melody. From the girl who epitomized perfection. And Finn had fallen all over again.

Those letters were damned fine. The woman could write. She could probably sell snow to the Inuit. She’d melted his resistance and he discovered that inside his grown man there was still that twelve-year-old boy who’d never stopped waiting for Melody Chase to return.

In the past ten years, her letters had come from a P.O. box, not a home address. Until this evening, he hadn’t known if she lived in a house, an apartment or a condo. She’d shared her dreams, her fears, tidbits about her life as a journalist, but not enough else, and he was starving for more. He didn’t know where she’d been, or why she had waited a freakin’ decade to contact him.

Where had she been? What had she been up to? Had she been safe? And that had always been at the root of his anger, of his unreasonable urge to see a girl he really barely knew. Was she safe? For years, he had worried.

And then, a letter.

How are you? Where are your comics? Why can’t I find them in the bookstores? On the internet?

And then, her heart-rattling, I’ve thought about you. I think of you.

And his heart had exploded, expanded and then rearranged itself into familiar patterns. Or not, like a bone reset, but not quite aligned. He’d been off-balance and wanting to see her ever since.

She hadn’t allowed him to visit. He didn’t know why.

A month ago, she’d changed her mind.

Come. I need help.

And here he was.

And tomorrow morning, he would see her again.

* * *

GRACIE’S EYES POPPED OPEN. She came awake suddenly, unsure what had disturbed her. A quick glance around the room confirmed that she was still alone. She caught her computer a split second before it slid from her lap to the floor.

Then she heard it—Austin’s voice in the hallway. Crap! She tossed aside the covers and had only just gotten the laptop back into her knapsack when he came through the door. What would the guy say if he knew she owned a computer?

She tried to look casual. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.” He looked from her to her bag and his eyes were full of suspicion. Maybe he thought she did drugs. Not her. She was one of the lucky ones. She’d survived without them, and without alcohol, too, unlike many of her colleagues. She’d chosen a more literal escape from reality—running away and living on the road.

Austin’s cop’s eyes bothered her. She didn’t like it when he looked at her with pity, but she didn’t like this hard edge, either. She wanted that sweet, caring tenderness of earlier.

Come on, Gracie. You know how to act. You can do better to put off his suspicions.

“How was dinner?” That sounded more natural. She wandered back to the bed and slid under the covers. “Where did you go?”

“Mexican restaurant down the street.”

“Mexican.” She heard the longing in her own voice. She loved Mexican. “What did you have?”

“Enchiladas.”

“Oh.” She adored them. She salivated. “Were they good?”

“For a small town, yeah, surprisingly good.” He tilted his head. “You sure do like to talk about food.”

“I think about it, dream about it, fantasize, plan when I can eat again. Yeah, it’s a big part of my psyche these days.”

He nodded as though he understood, but how could he? He had a good job and, she presumed, a roof over his head. She doubted he ever went hungry or wore hand-me-downs, or worse, ate something found in the garbage. He couldn’t possibly relate to homeless life.

“Did the meal stay down?” he asked.

“It stayed down, probably because it was small. I nodded off after I ate. That helped.”

“Are you still hungry?”

“Always.”

Humor crinkled the corners of Austin’s eyes. He had nice eyes, blue and bright, warm when he let down his cop’s guard. He picked up the phone from the bedside table. “What do you want?”

“Anything.”

“You mean that, don’t you?”

“Yes. I’ll eat anything you order. Except maybe raw fish. I doubt I could keep that down right now.”

Austin’s smile lit up his face like fireworks piercing the night sky. She could sell tickets to the women staying in the hotel and make a bundle. Lordy, lordy.

“Doubt it’s on the menu,” he said.

Gracie returned his smile, surprised how good it felt to be playful with this man, to not be serious and worried every second of the day.

“Grilled cheese okay with you?”

“That would be good, yeah.”

He ordered a sandwich for her and a big bag of chips and a soda for himself. After they arrived, he pulled off his cowboy boots and settled himself on top of the covers, leaning against the headboard and shoving chips into his mouth while she ate a sandwich made with two cheeses on whole wheat bread, forcing herself to slow down and savor each bite. The last thing she needed was to screw up her stomach again.

Austin picked up the TV remote. “Let’s see if there’s anything on worth watching.”

When Gracie finished the sandwich, Austin caught her licking butter and grease from her fingers. She flushed. “I’m sorry. My manners have slipped while I’ve been on the road.”

“How long has that been?”

“Since I—” The sentence came to a screeching halt, like tires squealing before a car wreck. His casual tone had nearly sucked her into betraying her secrets. The ambience of the room, the low lighting that cast a soft glow on one end of a dark room, the camaraderie of two people sitting on a bed watching TV together as friends do, had lulled her. The situation was so unusual for her that she’d been seduced into trusting this stranger.