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She guessed Atticus was probably as close as any family her father ever had. He hadn’t had any siblings, and his parents had died when he was young. His first wife had died young and tragically, and Margaret, her mother, had been there to swoop him up in his grief, much like Derek had been there to do the same with her.
“And Atticus thought moving you to Idaho was the best thing for you?” Duncan asked.
She almost said safest, but she changed her mind at the last second. “He thought I’d fit in here. That it was a place I could belong.”
“Did he tell you about the snow?”
“He might have mentioned it,” she said. “I’m sure it’ll be an adjustment, but most things are. If it’s this beautiful in the rain, I can’t imagine what it looks like covered in snow.”
He grunted as if to say, “We’ll see,” and then he scooted back his chair.
A nerve had been touched somehow when they’d started talking about the change in weather. And she got the impression he didn’t expect her to last the first winter.
The pizza was gone, and so was the moment they’d shared, but at least the hollow ache in her stomach had disappeared.
“If you’re up to it,” he said, “the rain has lightened enough for me to get you to the lake house. I thought for a second you were going to fall asleep in your plate.”
“I’m up to it,” she said, thinking of crawling into the first available bed she could find. “I do appreciate the meal and the dry clothes. And I’m sorry I interrupted your work.”
“It is what it is,” he said. “Come on. I’ll drive you over, and we’ll see what’s going on with your car on the way.”
He grabbed his keys and went into the garage, leaving her in the living room alone with Winston.
“Well, Winston,” she said. “It was a pleasure to meet you. Come visit me sometime.”
Winston woofed at her and then went back to his bed. She guessed that was as close to a yes as she was going to get.
ChapterSix
Duncan hadto get her out of his house. He’d watched her try to take stock of him, and then her gaze had rested on his mouth and it had been everything he could do not to toss the pizza to the floor and take her in his arms.
She’d gasped in surprise—as if she hadn’t expected to feel that level of attraction—and then her eyes met his and what he saw in their depths made him want to shout in triumph and run in the opposite direction at the same time.
He wanted her—and not just on canvas. He wanted to know her, and to get her to trust him. And he wanted to take the sadness out of her expression when she thought no one was looking. But he’d learned with Jenna you couldn’t always have what you wanted.
Idaho was many things—beautiful, majestic, friendly, and wide open—but it wasn’t very forgiving if you didn’t have the wherewithal to take proper precautions. And Hattie was about as green as you could get. The snow could be beautiful at times, but it could be brutal and violent at others.
Atticus obviously cared for her, and Duncan knew he could trust him. If Atticus and Hattie’s father had really been as close as brothers then that’s all it would take for Atticus to give her anything she needed. Maybe it was as simple as that. But it didn’t feel simple.
Maybe it was him. He hadn’t even thought of another woman since Jenna left. But since a half-drowned warrior had entered his life only a couple of hours before, he knew he’d be thinking of nothing else but her.
Duncan had a stripped-down Jeep he used in the summer months when the weather was nice, but the rest of the time he relied on the Hummer he’d had for years. He was in the car before he realized she hadn’t followed behind him.
“Hattie?”
She appeared in the doorway a few seconds later with her bag of clothes in hand. His sweats fit her perfectly. Her hair had started to dry while they’d been eating, and he was pleasantly surprised to see the curls spring up around her face.
“Sorry, I was saying goodbye to Winston,” she said. “He promised to come visit.”
“That sounds like him,” Duncan said. “He’s always making social commitments and forgets he doesn’t drive.”
She laughed, low and husky, and the sound shot straight down his spine. “Maybe you could call him an Uber.”
She climbed into the passenger seat and buckled her seat belt, and he took a slow, steadying breath. He was an artist. And when something captivated his interest he knew it wouldn’t go away until he’d painted it. That’s all this was. Once he painted her, the attraction would pass. Feeling better about the whole situation, he put the SUV in reverse and backed out of the driveway.
The weather had given them a little bit of a reprieve, but he knew it was short lived. These end-of-summer storms came in with a vengeance and then blew out with the cooler temperatures of fall. The rain had turned into a soft drizzle, and the sound of the wipers swishing seemed loud in the silence between them.
He was about a mile down the road when he saw the tiny car sitting at an odd angle on the wrong side of the road.
