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She even loved the time when, back at the barn, they untacked and groomed Flyer and Latte. It gave her a different kind of pleasure to take care of the big sweetheart of a horse, even if her still-unconditioned riding muscles protested. And when Maggie Rafferty called out to both of them to come inside and have dinner, and Ry smiled, she didn’t hesitate to go with him into the big house.
Cody was there along with Keller and Sydney, and it turned into a cheerful, talkative meal that made her feel welcome even as it made her impossibly nostalgic for something she’d never had. After the meal and the cleanup, she wandered over to look once more at the painting on the wall. Now that she’d been to the place depicted a couple of times, it seemed even more vivid to her.
“Do you know,” she asked Ry when he came over to stand beside her, “did he do this there, at the location?”
He shook his head. “He never did that. He always worked from memory.”
She nodded slowly. “He wanted the heart of it, not just the details.”
Ry went very still beside her. Had she said something wrong? Maybe she shouldn’t have voiced such an assumption about his dead father.
“Come with me,” he said, an edge of tension in his voice. But she could no more not follow him than she could have stopped herself today from taking image after image of this amazing place. She grabbed up her backpack and followed him.
He led her across the ground between the main house and his studio. They hadn’t been back in there since the round of photographs he’d allowed her to take. Inside she saw that it didn’t look much different, except that the floor around the easel with the big drawing pad was a bit more littered with discarded pages. He didn’t even pause but kept going, and after a moment she realized he was headed for the stairs at the back of the space. The stairs that must lead to the loft, where he’d said he lived most of the time.
A million chaotic thoughts crashed into her mind. She had to focus on each step one at a time to try and keep any kind of control over them.
He lived up here.
He slept up here.
He was in essence, leading her to his bedroom. And she was following, without questioning. She—
She almost collided with him as he stopped dead at the top of the stairs. Her pack shifted, almost slipping from her shoulder. She caught a glimpse of the big space beyond, which covered at least half of the barn’s area. A couch, a table, a pile of books, a flat-screen TV, and…a huge-looking bed on the far wall. Her gaze darted away from that just as he stepped to one side, and she saw why she was really here. Saw the painting on the wall at the top of the stairs, so obviously by the same brilliant hand as the one in the house.
A painting of nearly the exact view she’d photographed today, of the twisted oak tree framed by the hills to either side, backlit by the lowering sun.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“He said exactlywhat you said. That he wanted the heart of it, not just the details.”
Ry knew his voice was a little raw, but he couldn’t seem to help it. It had dug at him when she’d stopped to take those photos of this scene, but he’d pushed it aside, thinking that he already knew she had an artist’s eye. But when she’d said that in the main house, using almost the identical words his father had used, it had pushed him over the edge. He stared at the painting he saw every day as if he’d never seen it before, but really it was to keep from looking at her.
He knew his family loved him, despite all his eccentricities. He knew his place in the tight fit they all were. Keller had gotten their father’s love for this place that had been his family’s for generations. Chance had taken up their father’s sword to defend the country he’d loved. Cody had had the least time with the man who had shaped them all, but even he had dedicated his life to trying to save others who served, by eliminating the hazard that had caused his death.
But he had gotten something else from that man, something he’d never really wanted, and it was something that put him into the difficult place of either denying it and going stark-raving crazy, or channeling it down a path he could accept. There was a reason he’d never tried painting. It quite simply hurt too much to even think about. His leatherwork had eased the itch without triggering the pain, and he was satisfied with that. Even happy with it.
Kaitlyn got it. She understood, in a way few did. She understood that you did what you could to live with the pain, once you realized that while it changed, it never went away. And she understood the passion of it, the need to let out what your mind saw, to express it in some visual way. She did it herself, with the same unerring eye his father had had. That he hoped he had. She knew what it was like to be so lost in the image you were trying to capture that all else faded away; he knew that from the way she hadn’t even heard him speaking a couple of times on that ride today.
No woman he’d ever met had understood the way she did.
His jaw sent out a signal warning him he’d been clenching it too tightly. He had to consciously relax the muscles. Then, finally, he looked at her.
She was still staring at the painting. And he saw, to his shock, tiny droplets trickling down her cheeks.
“Why?” It broke from him almost against his will. “Why does this make you cry?”
He saw her swallow, knew she was fighting the tears. And failing. She kept her gaze on the painting. “Because he saw what he saw. Because I know how brilliant he was, and that I saw the same thing makes me feel…” She swallowed again and then went on. “Because I wish I’d known him. Because—” she turned her head finally, and met his gaze “—you showed this to me.”
“I…” This time it was he who could not find the words.
“I get why it’s…up here. I don’t think you share it with everyone.”
“I share it with no one.” He hesitated, then thought to hell with it and plunged ahead. “And to answer what you didn’t ask, no woman has ever set foot up here.”
Her eyes widened. She started to back away, toward the stairs. As if he’d told her she shouldn’t be setting foot up here either. He reached out and took her hand, holding her there.
“That wasn’t a cue to leave, it was pointing out you’re an exception.”
