Page 2 of Love In Translation
She wanted to rewind time and return to the normality of regular paychecks, the security of her apartment, and her regular but brief interactions with her neighbors. She wanted what was comfortable, expected, everything that was predictable and planned for. She’d lived the first thirteen years of her life in turmoil and chaos. Her parents loved the unexpected and unforeseeable, but Rheo hated the shifting sand under her feet.
Or, more accurately, the rickety wheels of their always-breaking-down van.
Crap, she couldn’t get out of her head today.Think about something else, Whitlock, stop marinating in self-pity.Dosomething, call someone.
Despite spending her childhood summers here, she’d lost touch with the long-time residents of Gilmartin and had only made one friend since she’d arrived—Abi Curtis, the owner of the town’s deli and coffee shop. She and Abi bonded over their love of good food, excellent books, their mutual distaste for exercise, and their imperviousness to the charms of the vast natural wilderness surrounding Gilmartin.
They were poles apart—Abi was a little scatterbrained, slightly disorganized, and loud, God, so loud—but they’d instantly connected. Despite only knowing her for a few months, Rheo could call her at four in the morning and, without quibbling, knew Abi would help her bury the body. How was it that she could connect with someone who was so unlike her, but Rheo couldn’t relate to her own oh-so-different family? Strange.
Abi also possessed the uncanny ability to get Rheo out of her self-obsessed funk, so Rheo pulled up her name. Within a few seconds, Abi’s gorgeous face filled her screen. Dark-haired and even darker-eyed, Abi was tall, buxom, and full-figured...super sexy.
Rheo took in the white wraparound top showing off Abi’s canyon-like cleavage, and looked down at her own modest B-cup boobs. Sadly, there was no contest.
“You busy?” Rheo asked.
Abi turned her phone to show the mostly empty coffee shop and, beyond it, her deli. “We’re between the breakfast and lunch rush, so I can talk. What are you up to?”
Rheo shrugged. “Sitting here, looking at the view. It’s fucking gorgeous.”
Abi hooted at her deadpan expression and flat monotone. When she stopped laughing, Abi insisted Rheo admit it was a beautiful day.
Meh.
Before her tenth birthday, she’d seen the geysers at Yellowstone Park, the Antelope and Bryce Canyons in Arizona and Utah, glaciers in Alaska, and sky-high redwoods in California. She’d been forced to visit wild places, hike trails, scramble up mountains, and paddle rivers. She’d promised herself she’d never live anywhere she was out of her element again. Yet, here she was, back in Gilmartin, surrounded by crapping nature. It wasn’t part of the plan. Epic fail.
“I’ve seen too much of the great outdoors to get excited.”
Abi, because she’d landed in Gilmartin via a bad kayaker boyfriend and a broken-down truck, didn’t push the point. She leaned her hip against the counter and pushed a corkscrew curl behind her ear. “I still can’t imagine you living in a camper van, Rhee.”
“I was a kid and smaller,” Rheo pointed out. “But, admittedly, when I hit puberty, it became more of a nightmare. Thin walls.”
Abi pulled a face. “Eeeww.Listen, I’m free tonight. Should I bring a pizza over?”
“Sounds good.”
Rheo watched as an older model SUV, one of those British ones, trundled down the road, its white body streaked with dust. It slowed as it approached the neat bungalow two doors up and then swung to park in front of Mrs. Redfern’s pale gray house. That house was much more Rheo’s own style than her grandmother’s, actually. Paddy, in a fit of pique after her divorce, painted her ex-husband’s overly large Victorian family home coral over forty years ago. Rheo had never known it to be anything but a shade of provocative pink.
“I need to talk to Paddy about painting this house a sensible color,” she told Abi. “I love her, but, God Almighty, someone should’ve banned her from choosing paint. What’s wrong with a sensible pale blue or cream?”
“Mmm, I see two problems with your statement. One, your grandmother doesn’t know you are living in her house, and having that conversation would be a good way of cluing her in.”
Right. Good point.
“And even if Paddy agreed, and she never would, you’d also have to deal with the backlash from your neighbors and the town’s residents. They’d stage a riot if the Pink House wasn’t pink anymore,” Abi said, then tipped her head to the side. “You aren’t comfortable with nonconformity, are you?”
Well, no. Wasn’t that obvious?
Until she hit college, she had been an outsider looking in, wondering when she’d feel at home in her life, in her skin. This time last year, she’d finally,finallyarrived at a place in her life where she could breathe without restrictions, talk without being judged, where she was completely comfortable. She’d had a normal, not too good-looking, not too assured boyfriend, a great job, and a lovely apartment in the city she adored. Predictable, sure, but that was how she’d planned it. She’d finally acquired the life she’d dreamed of: steady, stable, and conventional. Her experience-chasing family members would call it unexciting, but unlike them, she didn’t like rocking the boat.
She’d worked damn hard to find a safe harbor to moor in, sheltered from any storms, a place where she belonged.
Then life decided to be a tempestuous bitch and slapped her with a super typhoon.
Rheo watched the driver’s door to the Land Rover open and a big boot hit the road, followed by the frayed cuff of well worn jeans. Her eyes slid up long legs and over a wide chest and tanned arms, and only two words rolled off her tongue. “Oh,yum.”
“What?” Abi demanded.
Rheo turned her phone so Abi could watch the man open the back passenger door and pull a duffel and a laptop bag from behind the driver’s seat. His overlong scruffy hair, a light brown interspersed with dark blond natural highlights, blew in the wind, and he impatiently pushed it off his face. A dirty-blond week-old beard covered his jaw and cheeks. The details of his face escaped her, but it was as rugged as the mountains in the distance. But who cared about his face when it was accompanied bythatincredible body?